Chapter III

At breakfast I encountered his ladies—his wife and daughter. They were placed, however, at a distance from me, and it was not until the pensionnaires had dispersed and some of them, according to custom, had come out into the garden, that he had an opportunity of carrying out his offer.

“Will you allow me to introduce you to my daughter?” he said, moved apparently by a paternal inclination to provide this young lady with social diversion. She was standing with her mother in one of the paths, where she looked about with no great complacency, I inferred, at the homely characteristics of the place. Old M. Pigeonneau meanwhile hovered near, hesitating apparently between the desire to be urbane and the absence of a pretext. “Mrs. Ruck, Miss Sophy Ruck”—my friend led me up.

Mrs. Ruck was a ponderous light-coloured person with a smooth fair face, a somnolent eye and an arrangement of hair, with forehead-tendrils, water-waves and other complications, that reminded me of those framed “capillary” tributes to the dead which used long ago to hang over artless mantel-shelves between the pair of glass domes protecting wax flowers. Miss Sophy was a girl of one-and-twenty, tiny and pretty and lively, with no more maiden shyness than a feminine terrier in a tinkling collar. Both of these ladies were arrayed in black silk dresses, much ruffled and flounced, and if elegance were _all_ a matter of trimming they would have been elegant.

“Do you think highly of this pension?” asked Mrs. Ruck after a few preliminaries.

“It’s a little rough,” I made answer, “but it seems to me comfortable.”

“Does it take a high rank in Geneva?”

“I imagine it enjoys a very fair fame.”

“I should never dream of comparing it to a New York boarding-house,” Mrs. Ruck pursued.

“It’s quite in a different style,” her daughter observed. Miss Ruck had folded her arms; she held her elbows with a pair of small white hands and tapped the ground with a pretty little foot.

“We hardly expected to come to a pension,” said Mrs. Ruck, who looked considerably over my head and seemed to confide the truth in question, as with an odd austerity or chastity, a marked remoteness, to the general air. “But we thought we’d try; we had heard so much about Swiss pensions. I was saying to Mr. Ruck that I wondered if this is a favourable specimen. I was afraid we might have made a mistake.”

“Well, we know some people who have been here; they think everything of Madame Beaurepas,” said Miss Sophy. “They say she’s a real friend.”

Mrs. Ruck, at this, drew down a little. “Mr. and Mrs. Parker—perhaps you’ve heard her speak of them.”

“Madame Beaurepas has had a great many Americans; she’s very fond of Americans,” I replied.

“Well, I must say I should think she would be if she compares them with some others.”

“Mother’s death on comparing,” remarked Miss Ruck.

“Of course I like to study things and to see for myself,” the elder lady returned. “I never had a chance till now; I never knew my privileges. Give me an American!” And, recovering her distance again, she seemed to impose this tax on the universe.

“Well, I must say there are some things I like over here,” said Miss Sophy with courage. And indeed I could see that she was a young woman of sharp affirmations.

Her father gave one of his ghostly grunts. “You like the stores—that’s what you like most, I guess.”

The young lady addressed herself to me without heeding this charge. “I suppose you feel quite at home here.”

“Oh he likes it—he has got used to the life. He says you _can_!” Mr. Ruck proclaimed.

“I wish you’d teach Mr. Ruck then,” said his wife. “It seems as if he couldn’t get used to anything.”

“I’m used to you, my dear,” he retorted, but with his melancholy eyes on me.

“He’s intensely restless,” continued Mrs. Ruck. “That’s what made me want to come to a pension. I thought he’d settle down more.”

“Well, lovey,” he sighed, “I’ve had hitherto mainly to settle up!”

In view of a possible clash between her parents I took refuge in conversation with Miss Ruck, who struck me as well out in the open—as leaning, subject to any swing, so to speak, on the easy gate of the house of life. I learned from her that with her companions, after a visit to the British islands, she had been spending a month in Paris and that she thought she should have died on quitting that city. “I hung out of the carriage, when we left the hotel—I assure you I did. And I guess mother did, too.”

“Out of the other window, I hope,” said I.

“Yes, one out of each window”—her promptitude was perfect. “Father had hard work, I can tell you. We hadn’t half-finished—there were ever so many other places we wanted to go to.”

“Your father insisted on coming away?”

“Yes—after we had been there about a month he claimed he had had enough. He’s fearfully restless; he’s very much out of health. Mother and I took the ground that if he was restless in Paris he needn’t hope for peace anywhere. We don’t mean to let up on him till he takes us back.” There was an air of keen resolution in Miss Ruck’s pretty face, of the lucid apprehension of desirable ends, which made me, as she pronounced these words, direct a glance of covert compassion toward her poor recalcitrant sire. He had walked away a little with his wife, and I saw only his back and his stooping patient-looking shoulders, whose air of acute resignation was thrown into relief by the cold serenity of his companion. “He’ll have to take us back in September anyway,” the girl pursued; “he’ll have to take us back to get some things we’ve ordered.”

I had an idea it was my duty to draw her out. “Have you ordered a great many things?”

“Well, I guess we’ve ordered _some_. Of course we wanted to take advantage of being in Paris—ladies always do. We’ve left the most important ones till we go back. Of course that’s the principal interest for ladies. Mother said she’d feel so shabby if she just passed through. We’ve promised all the people to be right there in September, and I never broke a promise yet. So Mr. Ruck has got to make his plans accordingly.”

“And what are his plans?” I continued, true to my high conception.

“I don’t know; he doesn’t seem able to make any. His great idea was to get to Geneva, but now that he has got here he doesn’t seem to see the point. It’s the effect of bad health. He used to be so bright and natural, but now he’s quite subdued. It’s about time he should improve, anyway. We went out last night to look at the jewellers’ windows—in that street behind the hotel. I had always heard of those jewellers’ windows. We saw some lovely things, but it didn’t seem to rouse father. He’ll get tired of Geneva sooner than he did of Paris.”

“Ah,” said I, “there are finer things here than the jewellers’ windows. We’re very near some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe.”

“I suppose you mean the mountains. Well, I guess we’ve seen plenty of mountains at home. We used to go to the mountains every summer. We’re familiar enough with the mountains. Aren’t we, mother?” my young woman demanded, appealing to Mrs. Ruck, who, with her husband, had drawn near again.

“Aren’t we what?” inquired the elder lady.

“Aren’t we familiar with the mountains?”

“Well, I hope so,” said Mrs. Ruck.

Mr. Ruck, with his hands in his pockets, gave me a sociable wink. “There’s nothing much you can _tell_ them!”

The two ladies stood face to face a few moments, surveying each other’s garments. Then the girl put her mother a question. “Don’t you want to go out?”

“Well, I think we’d better. We’ve got to go up to that place.”

“To what place?” asked Mr. Ruck.

“To that jeweller’s—to that big one.”

“They all seemed big enough—they were _too_ big!” And he gave me another dry wink.

“That one where we saw the blue cross,” said his daughter.

“Oh come, what do you want of that blue cross?” poor Mr. Ruck demanded.

“She wants to hang it on a black velvet ribbon and tie it round her neck,” said his wife.

“A black velvet ribbon? Not much!” cried the young lady. “Do you suppose I’d wear that cross on a black velvet ribbon? On a nice little gold chain, if you please—a little narrow gold chain like an old-fashioned watch-chain. That’s the proper thing for that blue cross. I know the sort of chain I mean; I’m going to look for one. When I want a thing,” said Miss Ruck with decision, “I can generally find it.”

“Look here, Sophy,” her father urged, “you don’t want that blue cross.”

“I do want it—I happen to want it.” And her light laugh, with which she glanced at me, was like the flutter of some gage of battle.

The grace of this demonstration, in itself marked, suggested that there were various relations in which one might stand to Miss Ruck; but I felt that the sharpest of the strain would come on the paternal. “Don’t worry the poor child,” said her mother.

She took it sharply up. “Come on, mother.”

“We’re going to look round a little,” the elder lady explained to me by way of taking leave.

“I know what that means,” their companion dropped as they moved away. He stood looking at them while he raised his hand to his head, behind, and rubbed it with a movement that displaced his hat. (I may remark in parenthesis that I never saw a hat more easily displaced than Mr. Ruck’s.) I supposed him about to exhale some plaint, but I was mistaken. Mr. Ruck was unhappy, but he was a touching fatalist. “Well, they want to pick up something,” he contented himself with recognising. “That’s the principal interest for ladies.”