Part 3, Chapter VII.
Life and Death.
Constancy’s college career ended, as had always been anticipated, with credit, and even with a share of renown. She helped to prove the power of her sex to compete for laurels formerly reserved for the other, and she was made much of accordingly. She was very much pleased, and not greatly surprised, for the kind of power that she possessed is rarely unconscious. It was not through the sense of intellectual failure that the gospel was to come to her. She was not even tired with the hard work, only ready for a holiday, and Kitty and Violet Staunton were glad enough to share it with her.
So off they went, prepared for every sort of exercise and adventure. After about a fortnight of successful sight-seeing the three ladies found themselves in a charming little settlement in a broad mountain valley, which we will here call Zwei-brücken, where cool green rivers rushed through green fields and flowed from the heart of dark, snow-tipped mountains. There were large fawn-coloured oxen and little fawn-coloured goats, houses surprisingly like toy Swiss cottages, and a new hotel in the same style, with the usual variety of tourists. It was a centre for mountain ascents and for excursions, and Constancy and Violet sat under a wide verandah, on the afternoon of their arrival, and watched the groups of travellers.
“Don’t you remember,” said Constancy, “talking about the feeling of London? What’s the feeling of this? It’s green, it’s cool, it’s windy, it’s rushing and fresh.”
“When Guy Waynflete came in in the middle, and we settled about Moorhead,” said Violet, “I was provoked with him this year for not going abroad when he promised, for Cuthbert simply buried himself in the British Museum, and said all the sources of culture were to be found there.”
Constancy did not answer; she had fallen into a dream. She leant her chin on her hand, and looked over the wide valley, while into her open eyes there came the same look with which Florella “saw” the picture in her flowers. At such moments there was a promise for the future in Constancy’s young face of which, with all her successes, the present had shown no performance. Suddenly her intent look brightened.
“The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,” she exclaimed. “You can’t get ‘back of that.’ Free, free, free! That’s the feeling of it! The river, the wind, the sky—every one out on a holiday, and—the curate there in his flannels, how he enjoys them. It makes one a little mad— Why, Vi! Good gracious!”
For Violet, in startling confirmation of the last words, had suddenly rushed forward and launched herself on the neck of a young man in brown tweed, who was coming up the steps of the verandah.
“Cuth, Cuth! Oh, how lovely! Oh, did you know we were here?”