In the Mountains Part 25

There now, I said, holding it tight.

He looked up at me vaguely, absorbed in his thoughts; then, realising how tight his hand was being held, he smiled.

'You dear child,' he said, scanning my face as though he had never seen it before.

'Yes?' I said, smiling in my turn and not letting go of his hand. 'I like that. I didn't like any of the other dear children I was.'

'Which other dear children?'

'Uncle Rudolph,' I said, 'let's go home. This is a bleak place. Why do we sit here s.h.i.+vering forlornly when there's all that waiting for us down there?'

And loosing his hand I got on to my feet, and when I was on them I held out both my hands to him and pulled him up, and he standing lower than where I was our eyes were then on a level.

'All what?' he asked, his eyes searching mine.

'Oh, Uncle Rudolph! Warmth and Dolly, of course.'

_October 4th._

But it hasn't been quite so simple. Nothing last night was different. My uncle remained tongue-tied. Dolly sat waiting to smile at anecdotes that he never told. Mrs. Barnes knitted uneasily, already fearing, perhaps, because of his strange silence, that he somehow may have scented Siegfried, else how inexplicable his silence after that one bright, wonderful first evening and morning.

It was I last night who did the talking, it was I who took up the line, abandoned by my uncle, of wholesome entertainment. I too told anecdotes; and when I had told all the ones I knew and still n.o.body said anything, I began to tell all the ones I didn't know. Anything rather than that continued uncomfortable silence. But how very difficult it was. I grew quite damp with effort. And n.o.body except Dolly so much as smiled; and even Dolly, though she smiled, especially when I embarked on my second series of anecdotes, looked at me with a mild inquiry, as if she were wondering what was the matter with me.

Wretched, indeed, is the hostess upon whose guests has fallen, from whatever cause, a blight.

_October 5th._

Crabbe's son, in the life he wrote of his father, asks: '_Will it seem wonderful when we consider how he was situated at this time, that with a most affectionate heart, a peculiar attachment to female society, and with unwasted pa.s.sions, Mr. Crabbe, though in his sixty-second year should have again thought of marriage? I feel satisfied that no one will be seriously shocked with such an evidence of the freshness of his feelings._'

A little shocked; Crabbe's son was prepared to allow this much; but not _seriously_.

Well, it is a good thing my uncle didn't live at that period, for it would have gone hard with him. His feelings are more than fresh, they are violent.

_October 6th._

While Dolly is in the room Uncle Rudolph never moves, but sits tongue-tied staring at her. If she goes away he at once gets up and takes me by the arm and walks me off on to the terrace, where in a biting wind we pace up and down.

Our positions are completely reversed. It is I now who am the wise old relative, counselling, encouraging, listening to outpours. Up and down we pace, up and down, very fast because of the freshness of Uncle's Rudolph's feelings and also of the wind, arm in arm, I trying to keep step, he not bothering about such things as step, absorbed in his condition, his hopes, his fears--especially his fears. For he is terrified lest, having at last found the perfect woman, she won't have him. 'Why should she?' he asks almost angrily, 'Why should she? Tell me why she should.'

'I can't tell you,' I say, for Uncle Rudolph and I are now the frankest friends. 'But I can't tell you either why she shouldn't. Think how nice you are, Uncle Rudolph. And Dolly is naturally very affectionate.'

'She is perfect, perfect,' vehemently declares my uncle.

And Mrs. Barnes, who from the window watches us while we walk, looks with anxious questioning eyes at my face when we come in. What can my uncle have to talk about so eagerly to me when he is out on the terrace, and why does he stare in such stony silence at Dolly when he comes in?

Poor Mrs. Barnes.

_October 7th._

The difficulty about Dolly for courting purposes is that she is never to be got alone, not even into a corner out of earshot of Mrs. Barnes. Mrs.

Barnes doesn't go away for a moment, except together with Dolly.

Wonderful how clever she is at it. She is obsessed by terror lest the horrid marriage to the German uncle should somehow be discovered. If she was afraid of my knowing it she is a hundred times more afraid of Uncle Rudolph's knowing it. So persistent is her humility, so great and remote a dignitary does he seem to her, that the real situation hasn't even glimmered on her. All she craves is to keep this holy and distinguished man's good opinion, to protect her Dolly, her darling erring one, from his just but unbearable contempt. Therefore she doesn't budge. Dolly is never to be got alone.

'A man,' said my uncle violently to me this morning, 'can't propose to a woman before her sister.'

'You've quite decided you're going to?' I asked, keeping up with him as best I could, trotting beside him up and down the terrace.

'The minute I can catch her alone. I can't stand any more of this. I must know. If she won't have me--my G.o.d, if she won't have me--!'

I laid hold affectionately of his arm. 'Oh, but she will,' I said rea.s.suringly. 'Dolly is rather a creature of habit, you know.'

'You mean she has got used to marriage--'

'Well, I do think she is rather used to it. Uncle Rudolph,' I went on, hesitating as I have hesitated a dozen times these last few days as to whether I oughtn't to tell him about Juchs--Siegfried would be a shock, but Juchs would be crus.h.i.+ng unless very carefully explained--'you don't feel you don't think you'd like to know something more about Dolly first? I mean before you propose?'

'No!' shouted my uncle.

Afterwards he said more quietly that he could see through a brick wall as well as most men, and that Dolly wasn't a brick wall but the perfect woman. What could be told him that he didn't see for himself? Nothing, said my uncle.

What can be done with a man in love? Nothing, say I.

_October 8th._

Sometimes I feel very angry with Dolly that she should have got herself so tiresomely mixed up with Germans. How simple everything would be now if only she hadn't! But when I am calm again I realise that she couldn't help it. It is as natural to her to get mixed up as to breathe. Very sweet, affectionate natures are always getting mixed up. I suppose if it weren't for Mrs. Barnes's constant watchfulness and her own earnest desire never again to distress poor Kitty, she would at an early stage of their war wanderings have become some ardent Swiss hotelkeeper's wife. Just to please him; just because else he would be miserable. Dolly ought to be married. It is the only certain way of saving her from marriage.

_October 9th._

It is snowing. The wind howls, and the snow whirls, and we can't go out and so get away from each other. Uncle Rudolph is obliged, when Dolly isn't there, to continue sitting with Mrs. Barnes. He can't to-day hurry me out on to the terrace. There's only the hall in this house to sit in, for that place I pay the household books in is no more than a cupboard.

Uncle Rudolph could just bear Mrs. Barnes when he could get away from her; to-day he can't bear her at all. Everything that should be characteristic of a dean--patience, courtesy, kindliness, has been stripped off him by his eagerness to propose and the impossibility of doing it. There's nothing at all left now of what he was but that empty symbol, his ap.r.o.n.

_October 10th._

My uncle is fermenting with checked, prevented courting. And he ought to be back in England. He ought to have gone back almost at once, he says.

He only came out for three or four days--

'Yes; just time to settle _me_ in,' I said.

'Yes,' he said, smiling, 'and then take you home with me by the ear.'

He has some very important meetings he is to preside at coming off soon, and here he is, hung up. It is Mrs. Barnes who is the cause of it, and naturally he isn't very nice to her. In vain does she try to please him; the one thing he wants her to do, to go away and leave him with Dolly, she of course doesn't. She sits there, saying meek things about the weather, expressing a modest optimism, ready to relinquish even that if my uncle differs, becoming, when he takes up a book, respectfully quiet, ready the moment he puts it down to rejoice with him if he wishes to rejoice or weep with him if he prefers weeping; and the more she is concerned to give satisfaction the less well-disposed is he towards her.

He can't forgive her inexplicable fixedness. Her persistent, unintermittent gregariousness is incomprehensible to him. All he wants, being reduced to simplicity by love, is to be left alone with Dolly. He can't understand, being a man, why if he wants this he shouldn't get it.