To Journey Together (21 page)

"I had no ideas about you and Rosemary at all," declared Elinor, a little too quickly and with palpable untruth. "It was just that the time I—quite inadvertently—" she added with emphasis— 'overheard you telling Lady Connelton that she would be much better on this trip than I should, I naturally thought you had some special interest in her."

"I simply thought she would be fun on a journey of this sort."

"And that I shouldn't?"

"My dear girl, I didn't know you. As my aunt described you, you didn't sound at all as though you would be fun. And, even when I first met you "

He paused so long that she said, "Yes?" as casually as she could.

"I'd never met anyone at all like you before, Elinor," he said, frowning. "I didn't know what to make of you."

"But I'm the most ordinary and uncomplicated type," exclaimed Elinor with genuine astonishment. "I don't see what there could be about me to puzzle anyone."

He laughed a good deal at that.

"Perhaps that was the point," he said. "That you were uncomplicated, I mean. For ordinary you are not. But I don't want to embarrass you by analysing you to your face."

"It doesn't embarrass me in the least," declared Elinor, surprised to find that this was so. "I rather like it. It makes me feel important," and she smiled rather mischievously. "I don't think anyone before ever found me interesting enough to analyse."

He gave her a glance of mingled amusement and, strangely enough, a sort of exasperation.

"Perhaps you never encouraged anyone to do so," he said.

"Encouraged?" She queried his choice of word as though it faintly shocked her. "Does one deliberately encourage someone else to be interested?"

"Of course. Though the degree of deliberation may vary, I suppose. And possibly," he muttered, half to himself, "the less the deliberation, the more the charm."

"What did you say?"

"It doesn't matter. Do you know that you've changed a good deal on this trip, Elinor?"

She hesitated, remembering that Lady Connelton had said something the same of her.

"Have I?" she said doubtfully. "Do you mean—for the worse, Ken?"

"No. Of course not."

"For the better?"

Again he gave her that half-amused, half-vexed glance.

"Perhaps 'changed' wasn't quite the right word. You haven't actually altered in character. You've just developed enormously—if I may say that without sounding insufferable."

"Yes, you may," Elinor assured him, and a very slight dimple appeared in the cheek nearest to him.

"When I first met you, you were like—like a nice tight little bud on a rosebush-"

"Thorns and all?" suggested Elinor.

"Look here, you horrid child, are you laughing at me?" he demanded suddenly.

"Just a bit."

"Well, I suppose I deserve it." He laughed reluctantly himself then. "I don't usually talk in this fanciful way. It must be the moonlight and the lateness of the hour and the general romantic quality of the Austrian landscape. But what I wanted to say

was PI

"Dear me, we must surely be nearly home!" exclaimed Lady Connelton, waking up at this moment and leaning forward to try to see where they were. "What is the time, Ken?"

"Just after ten, Aunt Millicent," Kenneth replied with admirable self-control. "And we shall be home in less than half an hour."

"We shall none of us be sorry for that." Lady Connelton smothered a yawn. "It's been very dull for the last hour or so, but one can't expect anything else, once the light goes."

Elinor suppressed a rebellious denial of this. She liked—she really loved—Lady Connelton. But at the moment she could have done very well without her.

Why did she have to wake up just then? Ken's simile of herself and the nice little rosebud had been most engaging. But she wanted him to develop the subject further—at least to the point when the rose came out!

This idea amused her suddenly to such a degree that she caught her breath on a private laugh. For Elinor was not without her own special sense of humour, which did not usually desert her even at disappointing moments.

"What's that for?" enquired Kenneth, leaning his head rather close to hers and speaking in a whisper.

"Several things," whispered Elinor back again. "But none of them malicious."

He laughed too at that.

"Of course not. There's not a grain of malice in you," he replied. Whereupon she immediately wondered perversely if he would have preferred her to have just a small admixture of amusing malice in her.

"Do you wish there were?" she asked, on impulse.

"No. I wouldn't have a thing about you changed," he told her curtly. But so curtly that she suddenly found she could not ask him anything further.

They arrived in Erhwald soon after that, and it was undoubtedly very pleasant to step out of the rather cramped quarters of the car and stand for a few minutes in the cool, clear, starry silence outside the hotel.

But they were all tired, and soon hurried in—to a welcome meal and then, very thankfully, to their rooms. Elinor was glad to find that she once more had her "own" room, as she privately called it, where she could look out on to the moonlit slopes of the towering Zugspitze. But it was too late to linger even over that marvellous view, for the next day was to be a full and busy one. So she went almost immediately to bed—and dreamed that she was back in Vienna, dancing with Rudi.

It had been decided that they should go to Munich to pick up the train to Rome, because, although this would involve their retracing their journey as far as Innsbruck, it would enable them to board the night train at a more convenient hour.

"If we're lucky, we should all be fast asleep when we reach Innsbruck," Lady Connelton said. "It will be nearly two o'clock in the morning."

Elinor really thought it was a pity to have to sleep and miss any of the journey. But, by the time they had cleared up everything in Ehrwald, and travelled to Munich, she was beginning to feel that a night in the train would have to include some sleep at least.

To Elinor, who had never travelled all night in a train, the cosy intimacy of her "sleeper" was at least as attractive as her cabin on the ship had been. She experimented a little with the lights and the taps, she put her blind up and down, and finally she went to bed in the narrow but singularly comfortable bunk. Here she lay for some time, with the light out

but the blind up, and watched the passing, moonlit panorama of the Tyrol for the last time.

She would, she thought, always remember Austria with affection, and that touch of enjoyable nostalgia which Sir Daniel had assured her she would find there. Now they were travelling rapidly southwards towards Italy—another country of romance and charm. But a more full-blooded charm, Elinor thought, from all that she had heard. If Austria might be viewed in pastel colours, Italy should have all the colour and richness and warmth of an oil painting.

How lucky she was to see both. How incredibly lucky she was to have these wonderful experiences. No wonder they had changed her. Or, rather—no, "developed" was the word dear Ken had used, though he had been a little diffident about it.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Ken had showed no diffidence at all where she was concerned. If she had changed, so had he. Or else it was that he viewed her somewhat differently. She smiled a little at the thought, and her heavy eyelids drooped.

The train rushed on through the night, and long before they reached the lofty, remote loneliness of the Brenner Pass, or started the long, slow descent into the plains of northern Italy, Elinor was fast asleep.

She was up early, however, and when the train stopped at Verona, she came out into the corridor already dressed. Kenneth was just coming out of his compartment, and he smiled and said, "Good morning. Are you coming for a stroll on the platform? We stop here some time and there'll be a chance to stretch your legs."

Very willingly Elinor came with him, and, in the early morning sunlight, they strolled up and down while they exchanged reports on their excellent night, and he told her a little about Verona.

"We—you must come here again in the summer," he told her. "It's confoundedly hot, but there is a fascinating short season of opera, given in the open air in the Roman arena."

"Really Roman, you mean? From ancient times, that is?"

"Oh, certainly. Rather like the Colosseum in Rome, though, as a matter of fact, it is in a better state of preservation. I believe Verona is supposed to be the architect's idea of Paradise. There are the most wonderful churches and archways and things," explained Kenneth a little vaguely. "It's also the city of Romeo and Juliet, of course," he added irrelevantly.

"Is it?" said Elinor, to whom this somehow seemed to have a special sort of significance, though she could not have quite said why. Then the train showed signs of resuming its journey once more, so they ran along the platform and jumped in, laughing and rather breathless, just as the Conneltons came out of their compartment in search of breakfast.

All that morning and until well on in the afternoon they travelled onwards. Through Bologna, where Elinor glimpsed the buildings of the ancient University, and on to Florence, with its pink and white-washed houses, its miraculous domed Cathedral, and the soaring lines of Giotto's Campanile. As they stayed some time in the station, she even heard the faint, silver-sweet sound of the bells from the Campanile borne on the afternoon breeze. And then on again, to the glory and majesty of Rome.

The great station seemed disconcertingly modern. But, as they drove through the streets to their hotel, Elinor gazed in fascinated awe on buildings and vistas so famous and familiar through countless reproductions that it seemed incredible one was seeing them in actual fact at last.

"However long we stay, we shan't be able to see a tenth of this properly," she exclaimed at last.

"No, of course not." Sir Daniel smiled cheerfully at her, for Rome did not appear to make him nostalgically reminiscent. "See what you can and enjoy it. There are three Romes at least, you know. Ancient Rome, Renaissance Rome, and modern Rome. Well, well, Ken ought to be able to find time to show you something of each of them. In the

intervals of work, of course," he added, suddenly recalling that they had not all come to Rome for the sole purpose of enjoying themselves.

Elinor smiled. Then she twisted round on the taxi seat to look rather shyly at Kenneth. He said nothing, however, and so she looked away again very quickly, in case he might think she were showing an undue amount of expectancy.

They had been going
uphill
for some time, turning and twisting along a road which had a curiously countrified look, even though it led straight out of one of the main thoroughfares. Now at last they arrived at their hotel, which stood high on what Elinor could not help hoping was one of the famous Seven Hills of Rome.

Her room, she found to her delight, was on the top floor, and from her balconied window she could look across the confused mass of the city to the shining dome of St. Peter's with the tremendous sweep of curved colonnades on either side. She stood there for some time, intoxicated by the warmth and colour of a Roman spring. Then at last she turned to unpack, and presently, having bathed and changed to a cool, patterned frock, she went downstairs in search of the others.

It was a quiet, faintly somnolent hour of the day and not many people were about. So Elinor went through the almost deserted lounge and stepped out into a formal paved garden at the rear of the hotel. Rock plants grew in every crevice, and she saw a small, bright-eyed lizard dart along the warm, sun-drenched wall. In the centre of the garden was a fountain, where the figure of a nymph held aloft a shell from which water fell ceaselessly, with a soft, tinkling sound that was like cool laughter.

Although the place was small, it was curiously secluded, and Elinor strolled about for a few minutes, enjoying the peace and stillness after the continual movement of the train. Then she stood to watch the water falling from the nymph's shell. And here, at the edge of the little pool, Kenneth found her.

"Well, is your room comfortable?" he asked her, coming to stand beside her.

"Yes; lovely, thank you. And I have a wonderful view again. Not like the view of the mountains, of course—but a glorious glimpse of Rome and St. Peter's in the distance."

"You must let me take you there."

"But of course—if you want to."

"Why should I not want to, for heaven's sake?" he demanded a trifle irritably.

Elinor counted ten and reminded herself that he was probably tired after the journey, and the long day's driving before that.

"You needn't snap at me," she said composedly. "I didn't mean anything special. But when Sir

an el suggested that you should take me sightseeing, you didn't pick up the suggestion, and I thought you didn't want to be stampeded into having to do so."

"I am not the sort of man who gets stampeded into doing anything he doesn't want," Kenneth pointed out rather heavily.