She opened her eyes and looked up at him along his sleeve without moving, in a sort of surprise.
"This is Lucerne," he whispered, bending down; how soft she was, and how little!
"Is it? Why, that's where Robert and I—"
But she was asleep again.
She slept till he woke her up before Bellinzona, and so she never knew the moment she had thrilled to think of when they would in the dawn of the summer morning come out on the other side of the St. Gothard into what, in spite of anything the Swiss might say, was Italy; and still half asleep, mechanically putting on her hat and pausing to rub her eyes while he urged her to be quick, she did not realise where she was. When she did, and looked eagerly at the window, it was to turn to him immediately in consternation.
"Oh!" she said.
"Yes," said Ingram, passing his hand quickly over his hair, a gesture of his when annoyed.
It was raining.
They got out on to what seemed the most melancholy platform in the world, a grey wet junction with a grey level sky low down over it and over all the country round it. The Locarno train was waiting, and they went to it in silence. It was a quarter to six, a difficult time of day. The train, almost empty, jogged slowly through the valley of the Ticino. Down the windows raindrops chased each other. On the road alongside the railway, a road bound also for Locarno and dreary with brown puddles, an occasional high cart crawled drawn by a mule and driven by a huddled human being beneath a vast umbrella. The lake when they came in sight of it was a yawn of mist.
Ingeborg stared out at these things in silence. It was incredible that this should be Italy—again in spite of anything the Swiss might say—while on the other side of the Alps all Germany, including Kökensee, lay shimmering in light and colour. Ingram sat in the farthest corner of the carriage, his hands thrust in his pockets, his hat pulled over his eyes, looking straight in front of him. He was a mass of varied and profound exasperations. Everything exasperated him, even to the long trickle slowly creeping towards him down the floor from Ingeborg's wet umbrella. There was nothing she could have said or done at that moment that would not have rubbed his exasperation into a flame of swift and devastating speech. Luckily she said and did nothing, but sat quite silent with her face turned away towards the blurred window panes. But if she did not speak or do she yet was; and he was acutely conscious, though he never took his eyes off the cushions opposite, of every detail of her in that grey and horrible light, of her crumpled clothes, her drooping smudgedness, her hat grown careless, and her hair in wisps. He had wanted to show her Italy, he had extraordinarily wanted to show her Italy in its summer magnificence, and there was—this. As a result what he now extraordinarily wanted was to upbraid her. He did not stop to analyse why.