Eva had never before heard Violet call her brother by his name, and she was glad at heart.
Chapter Eighteen.
The Alpen-Gluhen.
“And, last of all,
Love, like an Alpine harebell, hung with tears,
By some cold morning glacier.”
The Princess.
Violet’s fluttered nerves and wearied frame rendered it necessary for the party of English travellers to stay for a few days at Mürrem, and afterwards it was decided that they should all go down to Grindelwald, and spend there the remainder of the time which they had set apart for the Swiss tour. The landlord of the Jungfrau treated them with the utmost consideration, and amused Kennedy by paying him as much deference as if he had been Tell or Arnold himself. Leaving in his hands all endeavours to discover the two scoundrels, who had entirely decamped, Kennedy gave him one of the guns, while he carried with him the other to keep as a trophy in his rooms at Camford.
There are few sights more pleasant than that of two families bound together by the ties of friendship and affection, and living together as though they were all brothers and sisters of a common home. For long years afterwards the Homes and the Kennedys looked back on those days at Grindelwald as among the happiest of their lives, and, indeed, they glided by like a dream of unbroken pleasure. How is it that there can be such a thing as ennui, or that people ever can be at a loss what to do? In the morning they took short excursions to the glaciers or the roots of the great mountains, and Cyril made adventurous expeditions with his fishing-rod to the mountain-streams. And at evening they sat in the long twilight in the balcony of their room, while Eva and Violet sang them sweet, simple English songs, which rang so softly through the air, that the crowd of guides and porters which always hang about a Swiss hotel used to gather in the streets to listen, and the English visitors collected in the garden to catch the familiar tones. Julian and Kennedy always gave some hours every day to their books, and Cyril, though he could be persuaded to do little else, spent some of his unemployed time on his much-abused holiday task for the ensuing quarter at Marlby.
And when the candles were lit, the girls would sketch or work, and Julian or Kennedy would read or translate to them aloud. Sometimes they spent what Mr Kennedy used to call “an evening with the immortals,” and taking some volume of the poets, would each choose a favourite passage to read aloud in turn. This was Mr Kennedy’s great delight, and he got quite enthusiastic when the well-remembered lines came back to him with fresh beauty, borne on the pleasant voices of Eva, Julian, or Cyril, like an old jewel when new facets are cut on its lustrous surface.
“Stop there; that’s an immortal, lad—an immortal,” he would say to Cyril, when the boy seemed to be passing over some flower of poetic thought without sufficient admiration; and then he would repeat the passage from memory with such just emphasis, that on these evenings all felt that they were laying up precious thoughts for happy future hours.