Running Water

"Yes."

"Who was it?"

"A Captain Chayne. He was at the hotel all last week. It was his friend who was killed on the Glacier des Nantillons."

"Were you alone at the inn, you and he?"

"Yes."

"Did he know your father?"

Sylvia stared at her mother.

"I don't know. I suppose not. How should he?"

"It's not impossible," replied Mrs. Thesiger. Then she leaned on the table. "It was he who put these ideas into your head about going away, about leaving me." She made an accusation rather than put a question, and made it angrily.

"No, mother," Sylvia replied. "He never spoke of you. The ideas have been growing in my mind for a long time, and to-day--" She raised her head, and turning slightly, looked up to where just behind her the ice-peaks of the Aiguilles du Midi and de Blaitiere soared into the moonlit sky.

"To-day the end came. I became certain that I must go away. I am very sorry, mother."

"The message of the mountains!" said her mother with a sneer, and Sylvia answered quietly:

"Yes."

"Very well," said Mrs. Thesiger. She had been deeply stung by her daughter's words, by her wish to go, and if she delayed her consent, it was chiefly through a hankering to punish Sylvia. But the thought came to her that she would punish Sylvia more completely if she let her go. She smiled cruelly as she looked at the girl's pure and gentle face. And, after all, she herself would be free--free from Sylvia's unconscious rivalry, free from the compet.i.tion of her freshness and her youth, free from the grave criticism of her eyes.

"Very well, you shall go to your father. But remember! You have made your choice. You mustn't come whining back to me, because I won't have you,"

she said, brutally. "You shall go to-morrow."

She took the letter from its envelope but she did not show it to her daughter.

"I don't use your father's name," she said. "I have not used it since"--and again the cruel smile appeared upon her lips--"since he left me, as you say. He is called Garratt Skinner, and he lives in a little house in Hobart Place. Yes, you shall start for your home to-morrow."

Sylvia stood up.

"Thank you," she said. She looked wistfully at her mother, asking her pardon with the look. But she did not approach her. She stood sadly in front of her. Mrs. Thesiger made no advance.

"Well?" she asked, in her hard, cold voice.

"Thank you, mother," Sylvia repeated, and she walked slowly to the door of the hotel. She looked up to the mountains. Needle spires of rock, glistening pinnacles of ice, they stood dreaming to the moonlight and the stars. The great step had been taken. She prayed for something of their calm, something of their proud indifference to storm and sunshine, solitude and company. She went up to her room and began to pack her trunks. And as she packed, the tears gathered in her eyes and fell.

Meanwhile, her mother sat in the garden. So Sylvia wanted a home; she could not endure the life she lived with her mother. Afar off a band played; the streets beyond were noisy as a river; beneath the trees of the garden here people talked quietly. Mrs. Thesiger sat with a little vindictive smile upon her face. Her rival was going to be punished. Mrs.

Thesiger had left her husband, not he her. She read through the letter which she had received from him this evening. It was a pressing request for money. She was not going to send him money. She wondered how he would appreciate the present of a daughter instead.

CHAPTER IX

SYLVIA MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF HER FATHER


Sylvia left Chamonix the next afternoon. It was a Sat.u.r.day, and she stepped out of her railway-carriage on to the platform of Victoria Station at seven o'clock on the Sunday evening. She was tired by her long journey, and she felt rather lonely as she waited for her trunks to be pa.s.sed by the officers of the custom-house. It was her very first visit to London, and there was not one person to meet her. Other travelers were being welcomed on all sides by their friends. No one in all London expected her. She doubted if she had one single acquaintance in the whole town. Her mother, foreseeing this very moment, had with a subtlety of malice refrained from so much as sending a telegram to the girl's father; and Sylvia herself, not knowing him, had kept silence too. Since he did not expect her, she thought her better plan was to see him, or rather, since her thoughts were frank, to let him see her. Her mirror had a.s.sured her that her looks would be a better introduction than a telegram.

She had her boxes placed upon a cab and drove off to Hobart Place. The sense of loneliness soon left her. She was buoyed up by excitement. The novelty of the streets amused her. Moreover, she had invented her father, clothed him with many qualities as with shining raiment, and set him high among the persons of her dreams. Would he be satisfied with his daughter?

That was her fear, and with the help of the looking-gla.s.s at the side of her hansom, she tried to remove the traces of travel from her young face.

The cab stopped at a door in a narrow wall between two houses, and she got out. Over the wall she saw the green leaves and branches of a few lime trees which rose from a little garden, and at the end of the garden, in the far recess between the two side walls, the upper windows of a little neat white house. Sylvia was charmed with it. She rang the bell, and a servant came to the door.

"Is Mr. Skinner in?" asked Sylvia.

"Yes," she said, doubtfully, "but--"

Sylvia, however, had made her plans.

"Thank you," she said. She made a sign to the cabman, and walked on through the doorway into a little garden of gra.s.s with a few flowers on each side against the walls. A tiled path led through the middle of the gra.s.s to the gla.s.s door of the house. Sylvia walked straight down, followed by the cabman who brought her boxes in one after the other. The servant, giving way before the composure of this strange young visitor, opened the door of a sitting-room upon the left hand, and Sylvia, followed by her trunks, entered and took possession.

"What name shall I say?" asked the servant in perplexity. She had had no orders to expect a visitor. Sylvia paid the cabman and waited until she heard the garden door close and the jingle of the cab as it was driven away. Then, and not till then, she answered the question.

"No name. Just please tell Mr. Skinner that some one would like to see him."

The servant stared, but went slowly away. Sylvia seated herself firmly upon one of the boxes. In spite of her composed manner, her heart was beating wildly. She heard a door open and the firm tread of a man along the pa.s.sage. Sylvia clung to her box. After all she was in the house, she and her baggage. The door opened and a tall broad-shouldered man, who seemed to fill the whole tiny room, came in and stared at her. Then he saw her boxes, and he frowned in perplexity. As he appeared to Sylvia, he was a man of about forty-five, with a handsome, deeply-lined aquiline face. He had thick, dark brown hair, a mustache of a lighter brown and eyes of the color of hers--a man rather lean but of an athletic build.

Sylvia watched him intently, but the only look upon his face was one of absolute astonishment. He saw a young lady, quite unknown to him, perched upon her luggage in a sitting-room of his house.

"You wanted to see me?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied, getting on to her feet. She looked at him gravely. "I am Sylvia," she said.

A smile, rather like her own smile, hesitated about his mouth.

"And--

"Who is Sylvia? What is she?

Her trunks do not proclaim her!"

he said. "Beyond that Sylvia has apparently come to stay, I am rather in the dark."

"You are Mr. Garratt Skinner?"

"Yes."

"I am your daughter Sylvia."

"My daughter Sylvia!" he exclaimed in a daze. Then he sat down and held his head between his hands.

"Yes, by George. I _have_ got a daughter Sylvia," he said, obviously recollecting the fact with surprise. "But you are at Chamonix."

"I was at Chamonix yesterday."