by Grant Allen
Mrs. Egremont leaned forward with an impatient wave of the hand. “Oh, don’t talk of him!” she cried. “I am only happy — when I forget about him, Emilius.”
Sir Emilius paused. He took a puff or two at his cigarette. Then he resumed the conversation. “Still you must realize,” he said, slowly, “that if Hubert takes after you in some things, he must equally take after Walter in others. And Walter being a conspicuously selfish man, anything that tends to encourage selfishness in Hubert ought surely to be avoided.”
Mrs. Egremont paused too. For some minutes she seemed to turn the matter over in her mind. The doctor’s eyes were fixed steadily upon her. He was reading her through and through, and she knew it perfectly. She trembled under his glance. He could see into one’s brain. But at last she broke silence. “I suppose,” she said, hesitating, “certain characteristics of one parent, Emilius, tend rather to come out in children, and certain of the other. Now, Hubert’s father was undoubtedly, at least, a very able man; he was a man of intellect. And Hubert has intellect — far more intellect than he could ever have derived from me. Well, then, isn’t it possible — I don’t know, I put the question to you only as a physiologist — isn’t it possible that Hubert might take intellectually after his father, and emotionally after me? Might he not reproduce his father’s brains without — without reproducing any moral defects his father may have exhibited?”
“May have exhibited. Why, Julia,” Sir Emilius exclaimed, smiling, “how unnecessarily mild is your way of putting it! You know as well as I do what sort of man Walter really was. Could Hubert inherit any kind of good quality from him — other than intellectual?” Mrs. Egremont bowed her head. Again she was silent. “Don’t let’s talk of it,” she cried at last; “I can’t bear to think about it.” Sir Emilius rose from his place with great deliberation, and lighted another cigarette. “Selfishest pig I ever knew in my life,” he murmured to himself in a very slow drawl, as he paced up and down in front of the seat. “But Julia’s quite right! Hubert doesn’t take after him. This one-sided heredity is common enough, after all. Judge a man as a whole, and he’s half his father and half his mother. But which half of each will come out in each part — why, that’s more than physiology at present can decide for us!”
Mrs. Egremont rose too. “Emilius,” she cried, faltering, “I can’t stand it any longer. This suspense wears me out. I must go and meet him!”
“By all means,” Sir Emilius answered. “One walk like another! He’s as safe as houses, of course. But we’ll go and meet him.”
“It was so black on the Eselstein once this afternoon,” the mother added, after a forced pause. “He may have been caught in a thunderstorm.”
“Clouds designed in sepia,” Sir Emilius admitted. “But he’ll come to no harm. An expert climber like Hubert! Cats have nine lives, they say: boys have ten, I fancy.”
He walked on a pace or two, then he began again. “Hubert has intellect,” he said, “undoubted intellect. But it’s badly compounded. The worst of him is, he’s half a poet and half a physiologist. Now, you can’t drive poetry and physiology tandem.”
“Hubert drives them abreast,” Mrs. Egremont retorted, gently. “And, to my mind, they go very well in harness.”
CHAPTER II.
A FLORENTINE NOBLEMAN.
THE Black Eagle in the Rothenthal is one of those old-fashioned Swiss hotels which lie a little off the beaten track of tourists. The season was autumn, and the crop of visitors was nearly all garnered. On the verandah of the inn the concierge stood lounging, with his cap on one side, a cheap Swiss cigar stuck carelessly in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets. Nobody else stood about except a single chambermaid, in the Bernese dress now confined to her occupation. The concierge nodded. “Season’s over,” he murmured.
“Never knew it close so early,” the chambermaid answered.
“Bad weather in England,” the concierge replied. “Keeps them from coming south. Fine on the Italian lakes. Keeps them from coming north. I’m off to Nice, Rosa, if this sort of thing goes on much longer.”
“Well, I don’t mind it,” Rosa answered, with a saucy air. “A little relief after the hurry and scurry! I’m engaged till the thirtieth, come visitors or come nobody.”
“Ah, the patron engages you so; but I’m by the week,” the concierge continued; “and as things go now, there’s no tips worth speaking of.”
“Well, I don’t mind for that,” Rosa answered. “I’ve made a good season — and I want to stop on here as long as I can; for I’m doing my winter at Naples, where my term doesn’t begin before the 10th of November. So of course it suits me best to hang on here and take it easy, There’s nobody left on my floor flow, except those English in Number Twenty.”
“Ten coming to-morrow,” the concierge said, briefly.
“Yes, but only Cookies. They give more trouble than pourboire, those Cook’s tourists.”
“Too many Cooks spoil the Continent,” the concierge murmured, reflectively. “If it weren’t for the Americans—”
Rosa drew herself up suddenly. She was a transformed woman. The easy-going air of the chambermaid-at-large gave way at once to the official demeanor of the chambermaid-inwaiting. At the same moment a similar transformation came over the concierge. He pulled his cap straight, hid his cigar in his palm, and assumed the severely well-bred air which is the badge of his position. Anyone could guess that strangers were coming. And, as a matter of fact, it was the roll of carriage-wheels that had wrought this metamorphosis. A Family was arriving. “Must be those stingy Italians who telegraphed for rooms on the third floor from Milan,” Rosa murmured, pulling her Bernese bodice straight, and arranging her hair in the most approved fashion. “He calls himself a Marquis; but he wants on salon! Just like those Italians!”
The concierge rang the big bell. All at once, from the recesses of the kitchen and dining-room, a whole posse of waiters in very white ties and very black coats swarmed out like ants, to take their stand on the steps and welcome the new-comers. The patron himself, all cringing obsequiousness, one wrinkled smile, stood at the top of the flight and rubbed his hands in expectation: the waiters and chambermaids, the boots and porters, all stood at attention in their various positions. As the carriage with the “stingy Italians,” drew up at the foot of the steps, the concierge advanced, all servility, to greet them; while the landlord, representative of the only real aristocracy in modern Switzerland, bowed his profoundest bow from the top of the flight to the prospective customers.
The concierge took the rugs and umbrellas as they descended. “For 70,” he observed in an undertone to the porter. “Take that bag down, Karl! The lady’s parasol, Rosa! Alphonse, the portmanteau!”
A stout but well-built Italian gentleman rose from his seat in a leisurely manner. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with very big mustaches and a bushy black beard, and his appearance was that of a born aristocrat. He smiled a bland smile of somewhat cynical amusement. “Received, as usual, by the whole strength of the company,” he said, in his soft Tuscan, turning round to his pretty young daughter who accompanied him. “We shall have to pay for it, Fede! No pay, no politeness; nothing in Switzerland without paying through the nose for it!” Then he went on in good colloquial German to the concierge, “I telegraphed from Milan for rooms for myself and my daughter. I hope you have reserved them. The Marchese and Marchesa Tornabuoni.” He said the last words with just a touch of pomposity.
“Si, signore,” the concierge answered in Italian, anxious to show he had fully understood that part of the colloquy which was not intended for him, — and politer than usual in order to disprove its libellous insinuations. “Your rooms are ready for you. Will your excellency and the Signora Marchesa give yourselves the trouble to mount at once to them?”
“A lift?” the Marchese inquired, raising his eyebrows.
“Si, signore; a lift and electric light; we made the installation for both this season.”
“Looks comfortable, Fede,” the
Marchese went on, under his breath, shaking off the first layer of the dust of travel. “Pouf! that St. Gottard is dusty enough for anything; but the road here from Goeschenen — my faith, what clouds! I shall never be clean again!”
“I wonder Hubert wasn’t here to meet us,” Fede observed, glancing round her. She was a tall girl of eighteen, with abundant dark hair and a dusky complexion; yet bright-colored and rosy, with the ingenuous beauty of young southern girls in the opening rosebud stage of development.
“Hubert here to meet us!” the Marchese exclaimed, gazing about him in return. “Hubert here to meet us. Not if I can help it! My child, how foolish of you! No, no, I took good care to prevent such a mischance. I wrote particularly that we would not arrive at Rothenthal till to-morrow. Why, what is the girl thinking of? Your hair is full of dust; you’re as brown as a myrtle-berry; you’re flushed and blown about; your hat’s on one side; and your dress doesn’t look the least bit becoming. No pure-blooded Italian girl would ever dream of appearing in such a state as yours before her inamorato. That’s the English blood in you — your poor dear mother’s blood — and the English training!”
Fede’s face grew still redder. “But I should have liked him to be here,” she said, simply.
“And he would have been here, of course, if he’d known I was coming.”
“No doubt,” her father answered, with the same cynical smile. “To prevent which misfortune, my poor dear innocent, I wrote we would arrive by midday to-morrow, and so secured you time to put your hair straight and wash your face and hands before meeting your lover. We know nothing as yet of his position and prospects; but if he’s a proper person to marry you at all, it’s as well you should make a good first impression upon him and his family.”
“I don’t feel like that to Hubert,” Fede answered, smiling. “Hubert is — well, in England, you know, it’s all so different.”
“But we are not in England,” the Marchese replied, biting the end of his moustache. “So now go to your room and make yourself presentable. A girl should always look her best before her lover — until she’s married him. Here, concierge, one moment!”
“Signore!”
“Is there a Mr. Egremont in the house?”
“Yes, signore; and Mrs. Egremont, his mother; and Sir Emilius Rawson; all three of them English.”
“Then don’t tell them we’ve arrived. We’ll go up to our rooms now, and see them later.”
“Is Mr Egremont in the hotel at present?” Fede interposed, all crimson.
“No, signora, not at this moment. He started for a trip up the Eselstein this morning, and has not yet returned. His mother and uncle have gone out to meet him.”
“That’s well,” the Marchese answered. “Go up to your room at once, Fede. You’re a perfect fright at present. It would be absolutely fatal to your chance of marriage if your Uberto were to see you.”
Fede went off to the lift; the Marchese followed her. Rosa showed them to their rooms as obsequiously as if they were not “stingy Italians.” Fede unpacked her portmanteau and did her hair as desired. They had come over from Milan that day, and driven across from Goeschenen. Yet she was not tired. In scenery like that, she thought, she could never get tired. Besides, had she not come to meet Hubert once more? And though she was naturally nervous as to what papa might think of Hubert, and what Hubert might think of papa, she was absolutely happy at the thought of meeting him. Her cheek was flushed with quite unusual roses, and her eye was bright, when she went out on the balcony. Her father was there before her, smoking his inevitable cigar, and gazing rather lazily across at the mountains. Even after all the glorious scenery she had come through that day, the view delighted Fede. “Oh, papa,” she cried, gazing out upon it, “did you ever in your life see anything so lovely?”
The Marchese waved his cigar over the field of view with Italian demonstrativeness. “Why, yes, my child,” he answered. “Dozens of times. At home, on our estate at Florence.” He punctuated each phrase with a puff and a wave. “For my part, I consider a basking Tuscan hillside — covered with a good terraced Chianti vineyard — a vast deal more attractive than all this useless snow and ice and pinewood.”
“Papa,” Fede cried, clasping her hands, “you’ve no sense of the picturesque!”
“So your mother used to say, my dear. And perhaps I haven’t. I’m a man of business. But I believe you allow these Swiss to bamboozle you, as they bamboozle everybody.” The Marchese sank his voice to a confidential whisper. “My dear, the Swiss are an extremely clever commercial nation. They manage to delude all the rest of the world in a most extraordinary fashion.”
Fede’s eyes were far away upon the cloud-topped peaks, now just beginning to glow with the pink light of sunset. “Delude them?” she murmured. “How do you mean, delude them?”
The Marchese took a puff or two, and then continued deliberately. “It was a fellow called De Saussure,” he said, “who first hit upon the principle — very clever fellow, as you may naturally imagine. You see, Switzerland, to start with, was a poor and out-of-the way pastoral country.
It lived on pasture. The Swiss produce a quantity of beef, and mutton, and milk, and cream, and eggs, and butter — and they don’t know what to do with them. There they are, stuck in the very middle of the map of Europe — remote from the consumer — remote from all the great markets — Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Naples; and they can’t afford to send their stuff away by rail, because it wouldn’t even pay the cost of carriage. They have plenty to eat — and nobody to eat it. So, happy thought — as they can’t send their produce away to the consumer, they must make the consumer come to their produce. Naturally, however, there was nothing in the world to bring people of their own free wills to these inhospitable wilds; but that difficulty didn’t daunt the ingenious Switzers. They invented scenery — and the rest of the world fell into the trap like lambs, and came to Switzerland to eat the beef, and stare at the mountains?” And the Marchese puffed away, with eyes half-closed, well pleased at his own philosophical cleverness.
“But, papa, they’re so beautiful!” Fede cried, clasping her hands ecstatically.
“What, the Swiss?”
“No, no, of course not; the mountains! Look at them now, turning crimson in the setting sun. Aren’t they just lovely?”
The Marchese shrugged his shoulders.
“People didn’t look at crags in the eighteenth century,” he replied, with his two hands extended in a rhetorical gesture. “The Swiss hadn’t then developed the scenery business. Glaciers were not as yet the fashion. Everybody in those days used sensibly to admire fine open stretches of cultivable land — like the plain of Lombardy as you see it from the top of Milan Cathedral. That was before the time of Monsieur de Saussure, who discovered the commercial value of these uninteresting Alps. Putting up statues is a precious bad way of investing your money, or else I suspect the grateful Swiss would have put up a statue to De Saussure long ago. But they’re a prudent people; they never do anything except with a single eye to remunerative investment.”
“Oh, papa,” Fede cried, “you’re incorrigible. I believe you only care for our own lovely place on the Arno for the sake of the wine and oil you make in it.”
“My dear,” the Marchese answered, with the common sense of the modern Italian, “in spite of the present depressed condition of the wine market, my Chianti fetches the highest price in the English ports of any brand in Tuscany, and that’s quite enough for me. I leave the picturesque to those who care for it.”
“But these mountains!” Fede cried, stretching her arms towards them impulsively.
The Marchese spread his hands. “Mere anfractuosities in the earth’s crust,” he answered. “They would make much more land, ironed out and distributed.”
Fede laughed in spite of herself. “You’re a degenerate Tornabuoni, dear,” she said, half in jest, half in earnest. “I’m sure Giovanni Tornabuoni, who had the pictures painted by Ghirlandaio in the choir of Santa Maria Nov
ella, wouldn’t have thought as you do.”
“Very probably not,” her father replied, patting her head. “But he would have burnt you for a heretic, my dear; so there are advantages both ways. I don’t pretend, myself, that I live outside my own century.”
Fede’s eyes were far away on the rose-tipped peaks. “I’m glad,” she said, slowly, “I’m not as practical as you, papa. Hubert loves the mountains — I mean the anfractuosities — and I love them too. And that will be nice for Hubert. I don’t think Englishmen are so practical as Italians; though in England, of course, everybody thinks differently.”
“In England,” her father observed, leaning over the parapet and puffing away reflectively, “everybody thinks the average Italian is a judicious mixture of an operatic tenor, an organ-grinder, a Calabrian brigand, and a Neapolitan macaroni-seller. The Italian of real life is little known, even to Englishmen who have lived long in Italy.”
“That’s true,” Fede replied. “For, as a matter of fact, the Italians I have met have all been intensely practical, while the English I have met, no matter how businesslike, have always had some undercurrent at least in their natures of romance and poetry.”
“Too true,” the Marchese murmured. “Too true, I fear, Fede. Your good mother was an Englishwoman, and for romantic — well, you remember her. In that, you show yourself your mother’s daughter. I sent you to England to be educated, because it was her dying wish, and also because an Italian girl in Florence has far better chances of marrying an Englishman of fortune than a Florentine of equal means and of suitable position. And you come back telling me you are in love with ‘Hubert.’
‘Who is Hubert?’ I naturally ask; and you answer me, ‘His other name is Egremont. Isn’t it a pretty one? — so soft, Hubert Egremont!’— ‘Very soft,’ I admit, ‘but his fortune, his prospects, his family, Fede?’ And you reply, ‘His family lives in Devonshire, the loveliest part of England, with beautiful red cliffs and purple bays and green valleys.’
