Chapter Eighteen.A Mystery cleared up.“Is Nita unwell, Emma?” asked Lewis early one morning, not long after the sad event narrated in the last chapter.“I think not. She is merely depressed, as we all are, by the melancholy death of poor Le Croix.”“I can well believe it,” returned Lewis. “Nevertheless, it seems to me that her careworn expression and deep despondency cannot be accounted for by that event.”“You know that her father left last week very suddenly,” said Emma. “Perhaps there may be domestic affairs that weigh heavily on her. I know not, for she never refers to her family or kindred. The only time I ventured to do so she appeared unhappy, and quickly changed the subject.”The cousins were sauntering near their hotel and observed Dr Lawrence hurry from the front door.“Hallo! Lawrence,” called out Lewis.“Ah! the very man I want,” exclaimed the Doctor, hastening to join them, “do you know that Miss Horetzki is ill?”“How strange that we should just this moment have referred to her looking ill! Not seriously ill, I trust,” said Emma, with a troubled look in her sympathetic eyes.“I hope not, but her case puzzles me more than any that I have yet met with. I fancy it may be the result of an overstrained nervous system, but there appears no present cause for that. She evidently possesses a vigorous constitution, and every one here is kind to her—her father particularly so. Even if she were in love, which she doesn’t seem to be (a faint twinkle in the Doctor’s eye here), that would not account for her condition.”“I can’t help thinking,” observed Lewis, with a troubled look, “that her father is somehow the cause of her careworn looks. No doubt he is very kind to her in public, but may there not be a very different state of things behind the scenes?”“I think not. The Count’s temper is gentle, and his sentiments are good. If he were irascible there might be something behind the scenes, for when restraint is removed and temper gets headway, good principles may check but cannot always prevent unkindness. Now, Emma, I have sought you and Lewis to ask for counsel. I do not say that Nita is seriously ill, but she is ill enough to cause those who love her—as I know you do—some anxiety. It is very evident to me, from what she says, that she eagerly desires her father to be with her, and yet when I suggest that he should be sent for, she nervously declines to entertain the proposal. If this strange state of mind is allowed to go on, it will aggravate the feverish attack from which she now suffers. I wish, therefore, to send for the Count without letting her know. Do you think this a wise step?”“Undoubtedly; but why ask such a question of me?” said Emma, with a look of surprise.“First, because you are Nita’s friend—not perhaps, a friend of long standing, but, if I mistake not, a very loving one; and, secondly, as well as chiefly, because I want you to find out from her where her father is at present, and let me know.”“There is something disagreeably underhand in such a proceeding,” objected Emma.“You know that a doctor is, or ought to be, considered a sort of pope,” returned Lawrence. “I absolve you from all guilt by assuring you that there is urgent need for pursuing the course I suggest.”“Well, I will at all events do what I can to help you,” said Emma. “Shall I find her in her own room?”“Yes, in bed, attended, with Mrs Stoutley’s permission, by Susan Quick. Get rid of the maid before entering on the subject.”In a few minutes Emma returned to the Doctor, who still walked up and down in earnest conversation with Lewis. She had succeeded, she said, in persuading Nita to let her father be sent for, and the place to which he had gone for a few days was Saxon, in the Rhone valley. The Count’s address had also been obtained, but Nita had stipulated that the messenger should on no account disturb her father by entering the house, but should send for him and wait outside.“Strange prohibition!” exclaimed Lawrence. “However, we must send off a messenger without delay.”“Stay,” said Lewis, detaining his friend; “there seems to be delicacy as well as mystery connected with this matter, you must therefore allow me to be the messenger.”Lawrence had no objection to the proposal, and in less than an hour Lewis, guided by Antoine Grennon, was on the road to Martigny by way of the celebrated pass of the Tête-Noire.The guide was one of Nature’s gentlemen. Although low in the social scale, and trained in a rugged school, he possessed that innate refinement of sentiment and feeling—a gift of God sometimes transmitted through a gentle mother—which makes a true gentleman. Among men of the upper ranks this refinement of soul may be counterfeited by the superficial polish of manners; among those who stand lower in the social scale it cannot be counterfeited at all, but still less can it be concealed. As broadcloth can neither make nor mar a true gentleman, so fustian cannot hide one. If Antoine Grennon had been bred “at Court,” and arrayed in sumptuous apparel, he could not have been more considerate than he was of the feelings and wishes of others, or more gentle, yet manly, in his demeanour.If, on an excursion, you wished to proceed in a certain direction, Antoine never suggested that you should go in another, unless there were insurmountable difficulties in the way. If you chanced to grow weary, you could not have asked Antoine to carry your top-coat, because he would have observed your condition and anticipated your wishes. If you had been inclined to talk he would have chatted away by the hour on every subject that came within the range of his knowledge, and if you had taken him beyond his depth, he would have listened by the hour with profound respect, obviously pleased, and attempting to understand you. Yet he would not have “bored” you. He possessed great tact. He would have allowed you to lead the conversation, and when you ceased to do so he would have stopped. He never looked sulky or displeased. He never said unkind things, though he often said and did kind ones, and, with all that, was as independent in his opinions as the whistling wind among his native glaciers. In fact he was a prince among guides, and a pre-eminently unselfish man.Heigho! if all the world—you and I, reader, included—bore a stronger resemblance to Antoine Grennon, we should have happy times of it. Well, well, don’t let us sigh despairingly because of our inability to come up to the mark. It is some comfort that there are not a few such men about us to look up to as exemplars. We know several such, both men and women, among our own friends. Let’s be thankful for them. It does us good to think of them!From what we have said, the reader will not be surprised to hear that, after the first words of morning salutation, Lewis Stoutley walked smartly along the high road leading up the valley of Chamouni in perfect silence, with Antoine trudging like a mute by his side.Lewis was too busy with his thoughts to speak at first. Nita’s illness, and the mystery connected somehow with the Count, afforded food not only for meditation, but anxiety, and it was not until the town lay far behind them that he looked at his guide, and said:—“The route over the Tête-Noire is very grand, I am told?”“Very grand, Monsieur—magnificent!”“You are well acquainted with it, doubtless?”“Yes; I have passed over it hundreds of times. Does Monsieur intend to make a divergence to the Col de Balme?”“No; I have urgent business on hand, and must push on to catch the railway. Would the divergence you speak of take up much time? Is the Col de Balme worth going out of one’s way to see?”“It is well worthy of a visit,” said the guide, replying to the last query first, “as you can there have a completely uninterrupted view—one of the very finest views of Mont Blanc, and all its surroundings. The time required for the divergence is little more than two hours; with Monsieur’s walking powers perhaps not so much; besides, there is plenty of time, as we shall reach Martigny much too soon for the train.”“In that case we shall make the détour,” said Lewis. “Are the roads difficult?”“No; quite easy. It is well that Monsieur dispensed with a mule, as we shall be more independent; and a mule is not so quick in its progress as an active man.”While they chatted thus, walking at a quick pace up the valley, Antoine, observing that his young charge was now in a conversational frame of mind, commented on the magnificent scenery, and drew attention to points of interest as they came into view.Their route at first lay in the low ground by the banks of the river Arve, which rushed along, wild and muddy, as if rejoicing in its escape from the superincumbent glaciers that gave it birth. The great peaks of the Mont Blanc range hemmed them in on the right, the slopes of the Brévent on the left. Passing the village of Argentière with rapid strides, and pausing but a few moments to look at the vast glacier of the same name which pours into the valley the ice-floods gendered among the heights around the Aiguille Verte and the Aiguille du Chardonnet, which rise respectively to a height of above 13,400 and 12,500 feet they reached the point where the Tête-Noire route diverged to the left at that time, in the form of a mere bridle-path, and pushed forward towards the Col, or pass.On the way, Antoine pointed out heaps of slabs of black slate. These, he said, were collected by the peasants, who, in spring, covered their snow-clad fields with them; the sun, heating the slabs, caused the snow beneath to melt rapidly; and thus, by a very simple touch of art, they managed to wrest from Nature several weeks that would otherwise have been lost!As they rose into the higher grounds, heaps and rude pillars of stone were observed. These were the landmarks which guided travellers through that region when it was clad in its wintry robe of deep snow, and all paths obliterated.At last they stood on the Col de Balme. There was a solitary inn there, but Antoine turned aside from it and led his companion a mile or so to one side, to a white stone, which marked the boundary between Switzerland and France.It is vain to attempt in words a description of scenes of grandeur. Ink, at the best, is impotent in such matters; even paint fails to give an adequate idea. We can do no more than run over a list of names. From this commanding point of view Mont Blanc is visible in all his majesty—vast, boundless, solemn, incomprehensible—with his Aiguilles de Tour, d’Argentière, Verte, du Dru, de Charmoz, du Midi, etcetera, around him; his white head in the clouds, his glacial drapery rolling into the vale of Chamouni, his rocks and his pine-clad slopes toned down by distance into fine shadows. On the other side of the vale rise the steeps of the Aiguilles Rouges and the Brévent. To the north towers the Croix de Fer, and to the north-east is seen the entire chain of the Bernese Alps, rising like a mighty white leviathan, with a bristling back of pinnacles.Splendid though the view was, however, Lewis did not for a moment forget his mission. Allowing himself only a few minutes to drink it in, he hastened back to the Tête-Noire path, and soon found himself traversing a widely different scene. On the Col he had, as it were, stood aloof, and looked abroad on a vast and glorious region; now, he was involved in its rocky, ridgy, woody details. Here and there long vistas opened up to view, but, for the most part, his vision was circumscribed by towering cliffs and deep ravines. Sometimes he was down in the bottom of mountain valleys, at other times walking on ledges so high on the precipice-faces, that cottages in the vales below seemed little bigger than sheep. Now the country was wooded and soft; anon it was barren and rocky, but never tame or uninteresting.At one place, where the narrow gorge was strewn with huge boulders, Antoine pointed out a spot where two Swiss youths had been overwhelmed by an avalanche. It had come down from the red gorges of the Aiguilles Rouges, at a spot where the vale, or pass, was comparatively wide. Perhaps its width had induced the hapless lads to believe themselves quite safe from anything descending on the other side of the valley. If so, they were mistaken; the dreadful rush of rock and wrack swept the entire plain, and buried them in the ruin.Towards evening the travellers reached Martigny in good time for the train, which speedily conveyed them to Saxon.This town is the only one in Switzerland—the only one, indeed, in Europe with the exception of Monaco—which possesses that great blight on civilisation, a public gambling-table. That the blight is an unusually terrible one may be assumed from the fact that every civilised European nation has found it absolutely necessary to put such places down with a strong hand.At the time Lewis Stoutley visited the town, however, it was not so singular in its infamy as it now is. He was ignorant of everything about the place save its name. Going straight to the first hotel that presented itself, he inquired for the Count Horetzki. The Count he was told, did not reside there; perhaps he was at the Casino.To the Casino Lewis went at once. It was an elegant Swiss building, the promenade of which was crowded with visitors. The strains of music fell sweetly on the youth’s ear as he approached.Leaving Antoine outside, he entered, and repeated his inquiries for the Count.They did not know the Count, was the reply, but if Monsieur would enter the rooms perhaps he might find him.Lewis, remembering the expressed desire of Nita, hesitated, but as no one seemed inclined to attend to his inquiries, beyond a civil reply that nothing was known about the Count he entered, not a little surprised at the difficulty thrown in his way.The appearance of the salon into which he was ushered at once explained the difficulty, and at the same time sent a sudden gleam of light into his mind. Crowds of ladies and gentlemen—some eager, some anxious, others flippant or dogged, and a good many quite calm and cool—surrounded the brilliantly-lighted gaming tables. Every one seemed to mind only his own business, and each man’s business may be said to have been the fleecing of his neighbour to the utmost of his power—not by means of skill or wisdom, but by means of mere chance, and through the medium of professional gamblers and rouge-et-noir.With a strange fluttering at his heart, for he remembered his own weakness, Lewis hurried forward and glanced quickly at the players. Almost the first face he saw was that of the Count. But what a changed countenance! Instead of the usual placid smile, and good-humoured though sad expression about the eyes, there was a terrible look of intense fixed anxiety, with deep-knotted lines on his brow, and a horribly drawn look about the mouth.“Make your play, gentlemen,” said the presiding genius of the tables, as he spun round the board on the action of which so much depended.The Count had already laid his stake on the table, and clutched his rake with such violence as almost to snap the handle.Other players had also placed their stakes, some with cool calculating precision, a few with nervous uncertainty, many with apparent indifference. With the exception of the Count and a lady near him, however, there was little of what might indicate very strong feeling on any countenance. One young and pretty girl, after placing her little pile of silver, stood awaiting the result with calm indifference—possibly assumed. Whatever might be the thoughts or feelings of the players, there was nothing but business-like gravity stamped on the countenances of the four men who presided over the revolving board, each with neatly-arranged rows of silver five-franc pieces in front of him, and a wooden rake lying ready to hand. Each player also had a rake, with which he or she pushed the coins staked upon a certain space of the table, or on one of the dividing lines, which gave at least a varied, if not a better, chance.The process of play was short and sharp. For a few seconds the board spun, the players continuing to place, or increase, or modify the arrangement of the stakes up to nearly the last moment. As the board revolved more slowly a pea fell into a hole—red or black—and upon this the fate of each hung. A notable event, truly, on which untold millions of money have changed hands, innumerable lives have been sacrificed, and unspeakable misery and crime produced in days gone by!The decision of the pea—if we may so express it—was quietly stated, and to an ignorant spectator it seemed as if the guardians of the table raked all the stakes into their own maws. But here and there, like white rocks in a dark sea, several little piles were left untouched. To the owners of these a number of silver pieces were tossed—tossed so deftly that we might almost say it rained silver on those regions of the table. No wizard of legerdemain ever equalled the sleight of hand with which these men pitched, reckoned, manipulated, and raked in silver pieces!The Count’s pile remained untouched, and a bright flush suffused his hitherto pale cheeks while the silver rain was falling on his square, but to the surprise of Lewis, he did not rake it towards him as did the others. He left the increased amount on exactly the same spot, merely drawing it gently together with his rake. As he did so the knotted haggard look returned to his once again bloodless brow and face. Not less precise and silent were his companions. The board again spun round; the inexorable pea fell; the raking and raining were repeated, and again the Count’s stake lay glittering before him. His eyes glittered even more brightly than the silver. Lewis concluded that he must have been brought down to desperate poverty, and meant to recover himself by desperate means, for he left the whole stake again on the same spot.This time the pea fell into black. The colour was symbolic of the Count’s feelings, for next moment the silver heap was raked from before him, along with other heaps, as if nothing unusual had happened; and, in truth, nothing had. Wholesale ruin and robbery was the daily occupation there!For a few seconds the Count gazed at the blank space before him with an expression of stony unbelief; then springing suddenly to his feet, he spurned his chair from him and rushed from the room. So quick was the movement, that he had reached the door and passed out before Lewis could stop him.Springing after him with a feeling of great alarm, the youth dashed across the entrance-hall, but turned in the wrong direction. Being put right by a porter, he leaped through the doorway and looked for Antoine, who, he knew, must have seen the Count pass, but Antoine was not there.As he quickly questioned one who stood near, he thought he saw a man running among the adjacent shrubbery. He could not be sure, the night being dark, but he promptly ran after him. On dashing round a turn in the gravel-walk, he found two men engaged in what appeared to be a deadly struggle. Suddenly the place was illumined by a red flash, a loud report followed, and one of the two fell.“Ah! Monsieur,” exclaimed Antoine, as Lewis came forward, “aid me here; he is not hurt, I think.”“Hurt! Do you mean that he tried to shoot himself?”“He had not time to try, but I’m quite sure that he meant to,” said Antoine; “so I ran after him and caught his hand. The pistol exploded in the struggle.”As the guide spoke, the Count rose slowly. The star-light was faint, but it sufficed to show that the stony look of despair was gone, and that the gentle expression, natural to him, had returned. He was deadly pale, and bowed his head as one overwhelmed with shame.“Oh pardon, Monsieur!” exclaimed poor Antoine, as he thought of the roughness with which he had been compelled to treat him. “I did not mean to throw you.”“You did not throw me, friend. I tripped and fell,” replied the Count, in a low, husky voice. “Mr Stoutley,” he added, turning to Lewis, “by what mischance you came here I know not but I trust that you were not—were not—present. I mean—do you know the cause of my conduct—this—”He stopped abruptly.“My dear sir,” said Lewis, in a low, kind voice, at the same time grasping the Count’s hand, and leading him aside, “I was in the rooms; I saw you there; but believe me when I assure you, that no feeling but that of sympathy can touch the heart of one who has been involved in the meshes of the same net.”The Count’s manner changed instantly. He returned the grasp of the young man, and looked eagerly in his face, as he repeated—“Hasbeen involved! How, then, did you escape?”“I’m not sure that Ihaveescaped,” answered Lewis, sadly.“Not sure! Oh, young man,makesure. Give no rest to your soul till you are quite sure. It is a dreadful net—terrible! When once wrapped tightly round one there is no escape—no escape. In this it resembles its sister passion—the love of strong drink.”The Count spoke with such deep pathos, and in tones so utterly hopeless, that Lewis’s ready sympathies were touched, and he would have given anything to be able to comfort his friend, but never before having been called upon to act as a comforter, he felt sorely perplexed.“Call it not a passion,” he said. “The love of gaming, as of drink, is a disease; and a disease may be cured—has been cured, even when desperate.”The Count shook his head.“You speak in ignorance, Mr Stoutley. You know nothing of the struggles I have made. It is impossible.”“With Godallthings are possible,” replied Lewis, quoting, almost to his own surprise, a text of Scripture. “But forgive my delay,” he added; “I came here on purpose to look for you. Your daughter Nita is ill—not seriously ill, I believe,” he said, on observing the Count’s startled look, “but ill enough to warrant your being sent for.”“I know—I know,” cried the Count, with a troubled look, as he passed his hand across his brow. “I might have expected it. She cannot sustain the misery I have brought on her. Oh! why was I prevented from freeing her from such a father. Is she very ill? Did she send for me? Did she tell you what I am?”The excited manner and wild aspect of the gambler, more than the words, told of a mind almost, if not altogether, unhinged. Observing this with some anxiety, Lewis tried to soothe him. While leading him to an hotel, he explained the nature of Nita’s attack as well as he could, and said that she had not only refrained from saying anything about her father, but that she seemed excessively unwilling to reveal the name of the place to which he had gone, or to send for him.“No one knows anything unfavourable about Count Horetzki,” said Lewis, in a gentle tone, “save his fellow-sinner, who now assures him of his sincere regard. As for Antoine Grennon, he is a wise, and can be a silent, man. No brother could be more tender of the feelings of others than he. Come, you will consent to be my guest to-night. You are unwell; I shall be your amateur physician. My treatment and a night of rest will put you all right, and to-morrow, by break of day, we will hie back to Chamouni over the Tête-Noire.”
“Is Nita unwell, Emma?” asked Lewis early one morning, not long after the sad event narrated in the last chapter.
“I think not. She is merely depressed, as we all are, by the melancholy death of poor Le Croix.”
“I can well believe it,” returned Lewis. “Nevertheless, it seems to me that her careworn expression and deep despondency cannot be accounted for by that event.”
“You know that her father left last week very suddenly,” said Emma. “Perhaps there may be domestic affairs that weigh heavily on her. I know not, for she never refers to her family or kindred. The only time I ventured to do so she appeared unhappy, and quickly changed the subject.”
The cousins were sauntering near their hotel and observed Dr Lawrence hurry from the front door.
“Hallo! Lawrence,” called out Lewis.
“Ah! the very man I want,” exclaimed the Doctor, hastening to join them, “do you know that Miss Horetzki is ill?”
“How strange that we should just this moment have referred to her looking ill! Not seriously ill, I trust,” said Emma, with a troubled look in her sympathetic eyes.
“I hope not, but her case puzzles me more than any that I have yet met with. I fancy it may be the result of an overstrained nervous system, but there appears no present cause for that. She evidently possesses a vigorous constitution, and every one here is kind to her—her father particularly so. Even if she were in love, which she doesn’t seem to be (a faint twinkle in the Doctor’s eye here), that would not account for her condition.”
“I can’t help thinking,” observed Lewis, with a troubled look, “that her father is somehow the cause of her careworn looks. No doubt he is very kind to her in public, but may there not be a very different state of things behind the scenes?”
“I think not. The Count’s temper is gentle, and his sentiments are good. If he were irascible there might be something behind the scenes, for when restraint is removed and temper gets headway, good principles may check but cannot always prevent unkindness. Now, Emma, I have sought you and Lewis to ask for counsel. I do not say that Nita is seriously ill, but she is ill enough to cause those who love her—as I know you do—some anxiety. It is very evident to me, from what she says, that she eagerly desires her father to be with her, and yet when I suggest that he should be sent for, she nervously declines to entertain the proposal. If this strange state of mind is allowed to go on, it will aggravate the feverish attack from which she now suffers. I wish, therefore, to send for the Count without letting her know. Do you think this a wise step?”
“Undoubtedly; but why ask such a question of me?” said Emma, with a look of surprise.
“First, because you are Nita’s friend—not perhaps, a friend of long standing, but, if I mistake not, a very loving one; and, secondly, as well as chiefly, because I want you to find out from her where her father is at present, and let me know.”
“There is something disagreeably underhand in such a proceeding,” objected Emma.
“You know that a doctor is, or ought to be, considered a sort of pope,” returned Lawrence. “I absolve you from all guilt by assuring you that there is urgent need for pursuing the course I suggest.”
“Well, I will at all events do what I can to help you,” said Emma. “Shall I find her in her own room?”
“Yes, in bed, attended, with Mrs Stoutley’s permission, by Susan Quick. Get rid of the maid before entering on the subject.”
In a few minutes Emma returned to the Doctor, who still walked up and down in earnest conversation with Lewis. She had succeeded, she said, in persuading Nita to let her father be sent for, and the place to which he had gone for a few days was Saxon, in the Rhone valley. The Count’s address had also been obtained, but Nita had stipulated that the messenger should on no account disturb her father by entering the house, but should send for him and wait outside.
“Strange prohibition!” exclaimed Lawrence. “However, we must send off a messenger without delay.”
“Stay,” said Lewis, detaining his friend; “there seems to be delicacy as well as mystery connected with this matter, you must therefore allow me to be the messenger.”
Lawrence had no objection to the proposal, and in less than an hour Lewis, guided by Antoine Grennon, was on the road to Martigny by way of the celebrated pass of the Tête-Noire.
The guide was one of Nature’s gentlemen. Although low in the social scale, and trained in a rugged school, he possessed that innate refinement of sentiment and feeling—a gift of God sometimes transmitted through a gentle mother—which makes a true gentleman. Among men of the upper ranks this refinement of soul may be counterfeited by the superficial polish of manners; among those who stand lower in the social scale it cannot be counterfeited at all, but still less can it be concealed. As broadcloth can neither make nor mar a true gentleman, so fustian cannot hide one. If Antoine Grennon had been bred “at Court,” and arrayed in sumptuous apparel, he could not have been more considerate than he was of the feelings and wishes of others, or more gentle, yet manly, in his demeanour.
If, on an excursion, you wished to proceed in a certain direction, Antoine never suggested that you should go in another, unless there were insurmountable difficulties in the way. If you chanced to grow weary, you could not have asked Antoine to carry your top-coat, because he would have observed your condition and anticipated your wishes. If you had been inclined to talk he would have chatted away by the hour on every subject that came within the range of his knowledge, and if you had taken him beyond his depth, he would have listened by the hour with profound respect, obviously pleased, and attempting to understand you. Yet he would not have “bored” you. He possessed great tact. He would have allowed you to lead the conversation, and when you ceased to do so he would have stopped. He never looked sulky or displeased. He never said unkind things, though he often said and did kind ones, and, with all that, was as independent in his opinions as the whistling wind among his native glaciers. In fact he was a prince among guides, and a pre-eminently unselfish man.
Heigho! if all the world—you and I, reader, included—bore a stronger resemblance to Antoine Grennon, we should have happy times of it. Well, well, don’t let us sigh despairingly because of our inability to come up to the mark. It is some comfort that there are not a few such men about us to look up to as exemplars. We know several such, both men and women, among our own friends. Let’s be thankful for them. It does us good to think of them!
From what we have said, the reader will not be surprised to hear that, after the first words of morning salutation, Lewis Stoutley walked smartly along the high road leading up the valley of Chamouni in perfect silence, with Antoine trudging like a mute by his side.
Lewis was too busy with his thoughts to speak at first. Nita’s illness, and the mystery connected somehow with the Count, afforded food not only for meditation, but anxiety, and it was not until the town lay far behind them that he looked at his guide, and said:—
“The route over the Tête-Noire is very grand, I am told?”
“Very grand, Monsieur—magnificent!”
“You are well acquainted with it, doubtless?”
“Yes; I have passed over it hundreds of times. Does Monsieur intend to make a divergence to the Col de Balme?”
“No; I have urgent business on hand, and must push on to catch the railway. Would the divergence you speak of take up much time? Is the Col de Balme worth going out of one’s way to see?”
“It is well worthy of a visit,” said the guide, replying to the last query first, “as you can there have a completely uninterrupted view—one of the very finest views of Mont Blanc, and all its surroundings. The time required for the divergence is little more than two hours; with Monsieur’s walking powers perhaps not so much; besides, there is plenty of time, as we shall reach Martigny much too soon for the train.”
“In that case we shall make the détour,” said Lewis. “Are the roads difficult?”
“No; quite easy. It is well that Monsieur dispensed with a mule, as we shall be more independent; and a mule is not so quick in its progress as an active man.”
While they chatted thus, walking at a quick pace up the valley, Antoine, observing that his young charge was now in a conversational frame of mind, commented on the magnificent scenery, and drew attention to points of interest as they came into view.
Their route at first lay in the low ground by the banks of the river Arve, which rushed along, wild and muddy, as if rejoicing in its escape from the superincumbent glaciers that gave it birth. The great peaks of the Mont Blanc range hemmed them in on the right, the slopes of the Brévent on the left. Passing the village of Argentière with rapid strides, and pausing but a few moments to look at the vast glacier of the same name which pours into the valley the ice-floods gendered among the heights around the Aiguille Verte and the Aiguille du Chardonnet, which rise respectively to a height of above 13,400 and 12,500 feet they reached the point where the Tête-Noire route diverged to the left at that time, in the form of a mere bridle-path, and pushed forward towards the Col, or pass.
On the way, Antoine pointed out heaps of slabs of black slate. These, he said, were collected by the peasants, who, in spring, covered their snow-clad fields with them; the sun, heating the slabs, caused the snow beneath to melt rapidly; and thus, by a very simple touch of art, they managed to wrest from Nature several weeks that would otherwise have been lost!
As they rose into the higher grounds, heaps and rude pillars of stone were observed. These were the landmarks which guided travellers through that region when it was clad in its wintry robe of deep snow, and all paths obliterated.
At last they stood on the Col de Balme. There was a solitary inn there, but Antoine turned aside from it and led his companion a mile or so to one side, to a white stone, which marked the boundary between Switzerland and France.
It is vain to attempt in words a description of scenes of grandeur. Ink, at the best, is impotent in such matters; even paint fails to give an adequate idea. We can do no more than run over a list of names. From this commanding point of view Mont Blanc is visible in all his majesty—vast, boundless, solemn, incomprehensible—with his Aiguilles de Tour, d’Argentière, Verte, du Dru, de Charmoz, du Midi, etcetera, around him; his white head in the clouds, his glacial drapery rolling into the vale of Chamouni, his rocks and his pine-clad slopes toned down by distance into fine shadows. On the other side of the vale rise the steeps of the Aiguilles Rouges and the Brévent. To the north towers the Croix de Fer, and to the north-east is seen the entire chain of the Bernese Alps, rising like a mighty white leviathan, with a bristling back of pinnacles.
Splendid though the view was, however, Lewis did not for a moment forget his mission. Allowing himself only a few minutes to drink it in, he hastened back to the Tête-Noire path, and soon found himself traversing a widely different scene. On the Col he had, as it were, stood aloof, and looked abroad on a vast and glorious region; now, he was involved in its rocky, ridgy, woody details. Here and there long vistas opened up to view, but, for the most part, his vision was circumscribed by towering cliffs and deep ravines. Sometimes he was down in the bottom of mountain valleys, at other times walking on ledges so high on the precipice-faces, that cottages in the vales below seemed little bigger than sheep. Now the country was wooded and soft; anon it was barren and rocky, but never tame or uninteresting.
At one place, where the narrow gorge was strewn with huge boulders, Antoine pointed out a spot where two Swiss youths had been overwhelmed by an avalanche. It had come down from the red gorges of the Aiguilles Rouges, at a spot where the vale, or pass, was comparatively wide. Perhaps its width had induced the hapless lads to believe themselves quite safe from anything descending on the other side of the valley. If so, they were mistaken; the dreadful rush of rock and wrack swept the entire plain, and buried them in the ruin.
Towards evening the travellers reached Martigny in good time for the train, which speedily conveyed them to Saxon.
This town is the only one in Switzerland—the only one, indeed, in Europe with the exception of Monaco—which possesses that great blight on civilisation, a public gambling-table. That the blight is an unusually terrible one may be assumed from the fact that every civilised European nation has found it absolutely necessary to put such places down with a strong hand.
At the time Lewis Stoutley visited the town, however, it was not so singular in its infamy as it now is. He was ignorant of everything about the place save its name. Going straight to the first hotel that presented itself, he inquired for the Count Horetzki. The Count he was told, did not reside there; perhaps he was at the Casino.
To the Casino Lewis went at once. It was an elegant Swiss building, the promenade of which was crowded with visitors. The strains of music fell sweetly on the youth’s ear as he approached.
Leaving Antoine outside, he entered, and repeated his inquiries for the Count.
They did not know the Count, was the reply, but if Monsieur would enter the rooms perhaps he might find him.
Lewis, remembering the expressed desire of Nita, hesitated, but as no one seemed inclined to attend to his inquiries, beyond a civil reply that nothing was known about the Count he entered, not a little surprised at the difficulty thrown in his way.
The appearance of the salon into which he was ushered at once explained the difficulty, and at the same time sent a sudden gleam of light into his mind. Crowds of ladies and gentlemen—some eager, some anxious, others flippant or dogged, and a good many quite calm and cool—surrounded the brilliantly-lighted gaming tables. Every one seemed to mind only his own business, and each man’s business may be said to have been the fleecing of his neighbour to the utmost of his power—not by means of skill or wisdom, but by means of mere chance, and through the medium of professional gamblers and rouge-et-noir.
With a strange fluttering at his heart, for he remembered his own weakness, Lewis hurried forward and glanced quickly at the players. Almost the first face he saw was that of the Count. But what a changed countenance! Instead of the usual placid smile, and good-humoured though sad expression about the eyes, there was a terrible look of intense fixed anxiety, with deep-knotted lines on his brow, and a horribly drawn look about the mouth.
“Make your play, gentlemen,” said the presiding genius of the tables, as he spun round the board on the action of which so much depended.
The Count had already laid his stake on the table, and clutched his rake with such violence as almost to snap the handle.
Other players had also placed their stakes, some with cool calculating precision, a few with nervous uncertainty, many with apparent indifference. With the exception of the Count and a lady near him, however, there was little of what might indicate very strong feeling on any countenance. One young and pretty girl, after placing her little pile of silver, stood awaiting the result with calm indifference—possibly assumed. Whatever might be the thoughts or feelings of the players, there was nothing but business-like gravity stamped on the countenances of the four men who presided over the revolving board, each with neatly-arranged rows of silver five-franc pieces in front of him, and a wooden rake lying ready to hand. Each player also had a rake, with which he or she pushed the coins staked upon a certain space of the table, or on one of the dividing lines, which gave at least a varied, if not a better, chance.
The process of play was short and sharp. For a few seconds the board spun, the players continuing to place, or increase, or modify the arrangement of the stakes up to nearly the last moment. As the board revolved more slowly a pea fell into a hole—red or black—and upon this the fate of each hung. A notable event, truly, on which untold millions of money have changed hands, innumerable lives have been sacrificed, and unspeakable misery and crime produced in days gone by!
The decision of the pea—if we may so express it—was quietly stated, and to an ignorant spectator it seemed as if the guardians of the table raked all the stakes into their own maws. But here and there, like white rocks in a dark sea, several little piles were left untouched. To the owners of these a number of silver pieces were tossed—tossed so deftly that we might almost say it rained silver on those regions of the table. No wizard of legerdemain ever equalled the sleight of hand with which these men pitched, reckoned, manipulated, and raked in silver pieces!
The Count’s pile remained untouched, and a bright flush suffused his hitherto pale cheeks while the silver rain was falling on his square, but to the surprise of Lewis, he did not rake it towards him as did the others. He left the increased amount on exactly the same spot, merely drawing it gently together with his rake. As he did so the knotted haggard look returned to his once again bloodless brow and face. Not less precise and silent were his companions. The board again spun round; the inexorable pea fell; the raking and raining were repeated, and again the Count’s stake lay glittering before him. His eyes glittered even more brightly than the silver. Lewis concluded that he must have been brought down to desperate poverty, and meant to recover himself by desperate means, for he left the whole stake again on the same spot.
This time the pea fell into black. The colour was symbolic of the Count’s feelings, for next moment the silver heap was raked from before him, along with other heaps, as if nothing unusual had happened; and, in truth, nothing had. Wholesale ruin and robbery was the daily occupation there!
For a few seconds the Count gazed at the blank space before him with an expression of stony unbelief; then springing suddenly to his feet, he spurned his chair from him and rushed from the room. So quick was the movement, that he had reached the door and passed out before Lewis could stop him.
Springing after him with a feeling of great alarm, the youth dashed across the entrance-hall, but turned in the wrong direction. Being put right by a porter, he leaped through the doorway and looked for Antoine, who, he knew, must have seen the Count pass, but Antoine was not there.
As he quickly questioned one who stood near, he thought he saw a man running among the adjacent shrubbery. He could not be sure, the night being dark, but he promptly ran after him. On dashing round a turn in the gravel-walk, he found two men engaged in what appeared to be a deadly struggle. Suddenly the place was illumined by a red flash, a loud report followed, and one of the two fell.
“Ah! Monsieur,” exclaimed Antoine, as Lewis came forward, “aid me here; he is not hurt, I think.”
“Hurt! Do you mean that he tried to shoot himself?”
“He had not time to try, but I’m quite sure that he meant to,” said Antoine; “so I ran after him and caught his hand. The pistol exploded in the struggle.”
As the guide spoke, the Count rose slowly. The star-light was faint, but it sufficed to show that the stony look of despair was gone, and that the gentle expression, natural to him, had returned. He was deadly pale, and bowed his head as one overwhelmed with shame.
“Oh pardon, Monsieur!” exclaimed poor Antoine, as he thought of the roughness with which he had been compelled to treat him. “I did not mean to throw you.”
“You did not throw me, friend. I tripped and fell,” replied the Count, in a low, husky voice. “Mr Stoutley,” he added, turning to Lewis, “by what mischance you came here I know not but I trust that you were not—were not—present. I mean—do you know the cause of my conduct—this—”
He stopped abruptly.
“My dear sir,” said Lewis, in a low, kind voice, at the same time grasping the Count’s hand, and leading him aside, “I was in the rooms; I saw you there; but believe me when I assure you, that no feeling but that of sympathy can touch the heart of one who has been involved in the meshes of the same net.”
The Count’s manner changed instantly. He returned the grasp of the young man, and looked eagerly in his face, as he repeated—
“Hasbeen involved! How, then, did you escape?”
“I’m not sure that Ihaveescaped,” answered Lewis, sadly.
“Not sure! Oh, young man,makesure. Give no rest to your soul till you are quite sure. It is a dreadful net—terrible! When once wrapped tightly round one there is no escape—no escape. In this it resembles its sister passion—the love of strong drink.”
The Count spoke with such deep pathos, and in tones so utterly hopeless, that Lewis’s ready sympathies were touched, and he would have given anything to be able to comfort his friend, but never before having been called upon to act as a comforter, he felt sorely perplexed.
“Call it not a passion,” he said. “The love of gaming, as of drink, is a disease; and a disease may be cured—has been cured, even when desperate.”
The Count shook his head.
“You speak in ignorance, Mr Stoutley. You know nothing of the struggles I have made. It is impossible.”
“With Godallthings are possible,” replied Lewis, quoting, almost to his own surprise, a text of Scripture. “But forgive my delay,” he added; “I came here on purpose to look for you. Your daughter Nita is ill—not seriously ill, I believe,” he said, on observing the Count’s startled look, “but ill enough to warrant your being sent for.”
“I know—I know,” cried the Count, with a troubled look, as he passed his hand across his brow. “I might have expected it. She cannot sustain the misery I have brought on her. Oh! why was I prevented from freeing her from such a father. Is she very ill? Did she send for me? Did she tell you what I am?”
The excited manner and wild aspect of the gambler, more than the words, told of a mind almost, if not altogether, unhinged. Observing this with some anxiety, Lewis tried to soothe him. While leading him to an hotel, he explained the nature of Nita’s attack as well as he could, and said that she had not only refrained from saying anything about her father, but that she seemed excessively unwilling to reveal the name of the place to which he had gone, or to send for him.
“No one knows anything unfavourable about Count Horetzki,” said Lewis, in a gentle tone, “save his fellow-sinner, who now assures him of his sincere regard. As for Antoine Grennon, he is a wise, and can be a silent, man. No brother could be more tender of the feelings of others than he. Come, you will consent to be my guest to-night. You are unwell; I shall be your amateur physician. My treatment and a night of rest will put you all right, and to-morrow, by break of day, we will hie back to Chamouni over the Tête-Noire.”
Chapter Nineteen.Mountaineering in General.A week passed away, during which Nita was confined to bed, and the Count waited on her with the most tender solicitude. As their meals were sent to their rooms, it was not necessary for the latter to appear in thesalle-à-mangeror thesalon. He kept himself carefully out of sight, and intelligence of the invalid’s progress was carried to their friends by Susan Quick, who was allowed to remain as sick-nurse, and who rejoiced in filling that office to one so amiable and uncomplaining as Nita.Of course, Lewis was almost irresistibly tempted to talk with Susan about her charge, but he felt the impropriety of such a proceeding, and refrained. Not so Gillie White. That sapient blue spider, sitting in his wonted chair, resplendent with brass buttons and brazen impudence, availed himself of every opportunity to perform an operation which he styled “pumping;” but Susan, although ready enough to converse freely on things in general, was judicious in regard to things particular. Whatever might have passed in the sick-room, the pumping only brought up such facts as that the Count was a splendid nurse as well as a loving father, and that he and his daughter were tenderly attached to each other.“Well, Susan,” observed Gillie, with an approving nod, “I’m glad to hear wot you say, for it’s my b’lief that tender attachments is the right sort o’ thing. I’ve got one or two myself.”“Indeed!” said Susan, “who for, I wonder?”“W’y, for one,” replied the spider, “I’ve had a wery tender attachment to my mother ever since that blessed time w’en I was attached to her buzzum in the rampagin’ hunger of infancy. Then I’ve got another attachment—not quite so old, but wery strong, oh uncommon powerful—for a young lady named Susan Quick. D’you happen to know her?”“Oh, Gillie, you’re a sad boy,” said Susan.“Well, I make a pint never to contradict a ’ooman, believin’ it to be dangerous,” returned Gillie, “but I can’t say that Ifeelsad. I’m raither jolly than otherwise.”A summons from the sick-room cut short the conversation.During the week in question it had rained a good deal, compelling the visitors at Chamouni to pass the time in-doors with books, billiards, draughts, and chess. Towards the end of the week Lewis met the Count and discovered that he was absolutely destitute of funds—did not, in fact possess enough to defray the hotel expenses.“Mother,” said Lewis, during a private audience in her bed-chamber the same evening, “I want twenty pounds from you.”“Certainly, my boy; but why do you come to me? You know that Dr Lawrence has charge of and manages my money. How I wish there were no such thing as money, and no need for it!”Mrs Stoutley finished her remark with her usual languid smile and pathetic sigh, but if her physician, Dr Tough, had been there, he would probably have noted that mountain-air had robbed the smile of half its languor, and the sigh of nearly all its pathos. There was something like seriousness, too, in the good lady’s eye. She had been impressed more than she chose to admit by the sudden death of Le Croix, whom she had frequently seen, and whose stalwart frame and grave countenance she had greatly admired. Besides this, one or two accidents had occurred since her arrival in the Swiss valley; for there never passes a season without the occurrence of accidents more or less serious in the Alps. On one occasion the news had been brought that a young lady, recently married, whose good looks had been the subject of remark more than once, was killed by falling rocks before her husband’s eyes. On another occasion the spirits of the tourists were clouded by the report that a guide had fallen into a crevasse, and, though not killed, was much injured. Mrs Stoutley chanced to meet the rescue-party returning slowly to the village, with the poor shattered frame of the fine young fellow on a stretcher. It is one thing to read of such events in the newspapers. It is another and a very different thing to be near or to witness them—to be in the actual presence of physical and mental agony. Antoine Grennon, too, had made a favourable impression on Mrs Stoutley; and when, in passing one day his extremely humble cottage, she was invited by Antoine’s exceedingly pretty wife to enter and partake of bread and milk largely impregnated with cream, which was handed to her by Antoine’s excessively sweet blue-eyed daughter, the lady who had hitherto spent her life among the bright ice-pinnacles of society, was forced to admit to Emma Gray that Dr Tough was right when he said there were some beautiful and precious stones to be found among the moraines of social life.“I know that Lawrence keeps the purse,” said Lewis, “but I want your special permission to take this money, because I intend to give it away.”“Twenty pounds is a pretty large gift, Lewis,” said his mother, raising her eyebrows. “Who is it that has touched the springs of your liberality? Not the family of poor Le Croix?”“No; Le Croix happily leaves no family. He was an unmarried man. I must not tell you, just yet, mother. Trust me, it shall be well bestowed; besides, I ask it as a loan. It shall be refunded.”“Don’t talk of refunding money to your mother, foolish boy. Go; you may have it.”Lewis kissed his mother’s cheek and thanked her. He quickly found the Count, but experienced considerable difficulty in persuading him to accept the money. However, by delicacy of management and by assuming, as a matter of course, that it was a loan, to be repaid when convenient, he prevailed. The Count made an entry of the loan in his notebook, with Lewis’s London address, and they parted with a kindly shake of the hand, little imagining that they had seen each other on earth for the last time.On the Monday following, a superb day opened on the vale of Chamouni, such a day as, through the medium of sight and scent, is calculated to gladden the heart of man and beast. That the beasts enjoyed it was manifest from the pleasant sounds that they sent, gushing, like a hymn of thanksgiving—and who shall say it was not!—into the bright blue sky.Birds carolled on the shrubs and in the air; cats ventured abroad with hair erect and backs curved, to exchange greetings with each other in wary defiance of dogs; kittens sprawled in the sunshine, and made frantic efforts to achieve the impossible feat of catching their own shadows, varying the pastime with more successful, though arduous, attempts at their own tails; dogs bounded and danced, chiefly on their hind legs, round their loved companion man (including woman); juvenile dogs chased, tumbled over, barked at, and gnawed each other with amiable fury, wagging their various tails with a vigour that suggested a desire to shake them off; tourist men and boys moved about with a decision that indicated the having of particular business on hand; tourist women and girls were busily engaged with baskets and botanical boxes, or flitted hither and thither in climbing costume with obtrusive alpenstocks, as though a general attack on Mont Blanc and all his satellite aiguilles were meditated.Among these were our friends the Professor, Captain Wopper, Emma Gray, Slingsby, Lewis, and Lawrence, under the guidance of Antoine Grennon.Strange to say they were all a little dull, notwithstanding the beauty of the weather, and the pleasant anticipation of a day on the hills—not a hard, toilsome day, with some awful Alpine summit as its aim, but what Lewis termed a jolly day, a picnicky day, to be extended into night, and to include any place, or to be cut short or extended according to whim.The Professor was dull, because, having to leave, this was to be his last excursion; Captain Wopper was dull, because his cherished matrimonial hopes were being gradually dissipated. He could not perceive that Lawrence was falling in love with Emma, or Emma with Lawrence. The utmost exertion of sly diplomacy of which he was capable, short of straightforward advice, had failed to accomplish anything towards the desirable end. Emma was dull, because her friend Nita, although recovering, was still far from well. Slingsby was dull for the same reason, and also because he felt his passion to be hopeless. Lewis was dull because he knew Nita’s circumstances to be so very sad; and Lawrence was dull because—well, we are not quite sure whyhewas dull. He was rather a self-contained fellow, and couldn’t be easily understood. Of the whole party, Antoine alone wasnotdull. Nothing could put him in that condition, but, seeing that the others were so, he was grave, quiet attentive.Some of the excursionists had left at a much earlier hour. Four strapping youths, with guides, had set out for the summit of Mont Blanc; a mingled party of ladies, gentlemen, guides, and mules, were on the point of starting to visit the Mer de Glace; a delicate student, unable for long excursions, was preparing to visit with his sister, the Glacier des Bossons. Others were going, or had gone, to the source of the Arveiron, and to the Brévent, while the British peer, having previously been conducted by a new and needlessly difficult path to the top of Monte Rosa, was led off by his persecutor to attempt, by an impossible route, to scale the Matterhorn—to reach the main-truck, as Captain Wopper put it, by going down the stern-post along the keel, over the bobstay, up the flyin’ jib, across the foretopmast-stay, and up the maintop-gallant halyards. This at least was Lewis Stoutley’s report of the Captain’s remark. We cannot answer for its correctness.But nothing can withstand the sweet influences of fresh mountain-air and sunshine. In a short time “dull care” was put to flight and when our party—Emma being on a mule—reached the neighbouring heights, past and future were largely forgotten in the enjoyment of the present.Besides being sunny and bright, the day was rather cool, so that, after dismissing the mule, and taking to the glaciers and ice-slope, the air was found to be eminently suitable for walking.“It’s a bad look-out,” murmured Captain Wopper, when he observed that Dr Lawrence turned deliberately to converse with the Professor, leaving Lewis to assist Emma to alight, even although he, the Captain, had, by means of laboured contrivance and vast sagacity, brought the Doctor and the mule into close juxtaposition at the right time. However, the Captain’s temperament was sanguine. He soon forgot his troubles in observing the curious position assumed by Slingsby on the first steep slope of rocky ground they had to descend, for descents as well as ascents were frequent at first.The artist walked on all-fours, but with his back to the hill instead of his face, his feet thus being in advance.“What sort of an outside-in fashion is that, Slingsby?” asked the Captain, when they had reached the bottom.“It’s a way I have of relieving my knees,” said Slingsby; “try it.”“Thank ’ee; no,” returned the Captain. “It don’t suit my pecooliar build; it would throw too much of my weight amidships.”“You’ve no idea,” said Slingsby, “what a comfort it is to a man whose knees suffer in descending. I’d rather go up twenty mountains than descend one. This plan answers only on steep places, and is but a temporary relief. Still that is something at the end of a long day.”The artist exemplified his plan at the next slope. The Captain tried it, but, as he expressed it, broke in two at the waist and rolled down the slope, to the unspeakable delight of his friends.“I fear you will find this rather severe?” said the Professor to Emma, during a pause in a steep ascent.“Oh no; I am remarkably strong,” replied Emma, smiling. “I was in Switzerland two years ago, and am quite accustomed to mountaineering.”“Yes,” remarked Lawrence, “and Miss Gray on that occasion, I am told, ascended to the top of the Dent du Midi, which you know is between ten and eleven thousand feet high; and she also, during the same season, walked from Champéry to Sixt which is a good day’s journey, so we need have no anxiety on her account.”Although the Doctor smiled as he spoke, he also glanced at Emma with a look of admiration. Captain Wopper noted the glance and was comforted. At luncheon, however, the Doctor seated himself so that the Professor’s bulky person came between him and Emma. The Captain noted that also, and was depressed. What between elation and depression, mingled with fatigue and victuals, the Captain ultimately became recklessly jovial.“What are yonder curious things?” asked Emma, pointing to so me gigantic objects which looked at a distance like rude pillars carved by man.“These,” said the Professor, “are Nature’s handiwork. You will observe that on each pillar rests a rugged capital. The capital is the cause of the pillar. It is a hard rock which originally rested on a softer bed of friable stone. The weather has worn away the soft bed, except where it has been protected by the hard stone, and thus a natural pillar has arisen—just like the ice-pillars, which are protected from the sun in the same way; only the latter are more evanescent.”Further on, the Professor drew the attention of his friends to the beautiful blue colour of the holes which their alpenstocks made in the snow. “Once,” said he, “while walking on the heights of Monte Rosa, I observed this effect with great interest, and, while engaged in the investigation of the cause, got a surprise which was not altogether agreeable. Some of the paths there are on very narrow ridges, and the snow on these ridges often overhangs them. I chanced to be walking in advance of my guide at the time to which I refer, and amused myself as I went along by driving my alpenstock deep into the snow, when suddenly, to my amazement I sent the end of the staff right through the snow, and, on withdrawing it, looked down into space! I had actually walked over the ridge altogether, and was standing above an abyss some thousands of feet deep!”“Horrible!” exclaimed Emma. “You jumped off pretty quickly, I dare say.”“Nay, I walked off with extreme caution; but I confess to having felt a sort of cold shudder with which my frame had not been acquainted previously.”While they were thus conversing, a cloud passed overhead and sent down a slight shower of snow. To most of the party this was a matter of indifference, but the man of science soon changed their feelings by drawing attention to the form of the flakes. He carried a magnifying glass with him, which enabled him to show their wonders more distinctly. It was like a shower of frozen flowers of the most delicate and exquisite kind. Each flake was a flower with six leaves. Some of the leaves threw out lateral spines or points, like ferns, some were rounded, others arrowy, reticulated, and serrated; but, although varied in many respects, there was no variation in the number of leaves.“What amazin’ beauty in a snowflake,” exclaimed the Captain, “many a one I’ve seen without knowin’ how splendid it was.”“The works of God are indeed wonderful,” said the Professor, “but they must be ‘sought out’—examined with care—to be fully understood and appreciated.”“Yet there are certain philosophers,” observed Lewis, “who hold that the evidence of design here and elsewhere does not at all prove the existence of God. They say that the crystals of these snow-flakes are drawn together and arrange themselves by means of natural forces.”“They say truly,” replied the Professor, “but they seem to me to stop short in their reasoning. They appear to ignore the fact that this elemental original force of which they speak must have had a Creator. However far they may go back into mysterious and incomprehensible elements, which they choose to call ‘blind forces,’ they do not escape the fact that matter cannot have created itself; that behind their utmost conceptions there must still be One non-created, eternal, living Being who created all, who upholds all, and whom we call God.”Descending again from the heights in order to cross a valley and gain the opposite mountain, our ramblers quitted the glacier, and, about noon, found themselves close to a lovely pine-clad knoll, the shaded slopes of which commanded an unusually fine view of rocky cliff and fringing wood, with a background of glacier and snow-flecked pinnacles.Halting, accidentally in a row, before this spot they looked at it with interest. Suddenly the Professor stepped in front of the others, and, pointing to the knoll, said, with twinkling eyes—“What does it suggest? Come, dux (to Slingsby, who happened to stand at the head of the line), tell me, sir, what does it suggest?”“Iknow, sir!” exclaimed the Captain, who stood at the dunce’s extremity of the line, holding out his fist with true schoolboy eagerness.“It suggests,” said the artist, rolling his eyes, “‘a thing of beauty;’ and—”“Next!” interrupted the Professor, pointing to Lawrence.“Iknow, sir,” shouted the Captain.“Hold your tongue, sir!”“Ay, ay, sir.”“It is suggestive,” said Lawrence, “of an oasis in the desert.”“Very poor, sir,” said the Professor, severely. “Next.”“It suggests a cool shade on a hot day,” said Emma.“Better, but not right. Next.”“Please, sir, I’d rather not answer,” said Lewis, putting his forefinger in his mouth.“You must, sir.”“Iknow, sir,” interrupted Captain Wopper, shaking his fist eagerly.“Silence, you booby!—Well, boy, what does it suggest toyou?”“Please, sir,” answered Lewis, “it suggests the mole on your professorial cheek.”“Sir,” cried the Professor, sternly, “remind me to give you a severe caning to-night.”“Yes, sir.”“Well, booby, what haveyougot to say to it?”“Wittles!” shouted the Captain.“Right,” cried the Professor, “only it would have been better expressed had you said—Luncheon. Go up, sir; put yourself at the head of the class, and lead it to a scene of glorious festivity.”Thus instructed, the Captain put himself at the head of the line.“Now, then, Captain,” said Lewis, “let’s have a true-blue nautical word of command—hoist yer main tops’l sky-scrapers abaft the cleat o’ the spanker boom, heave the main deck overboard and let go the painter—or something o’ that sort.”“Hold on to the painter, you mean,” said Slingsby.“You’re both wrong,” cried the Captain, “my orders are those of the immortal Nelson—‘Close action, my lads—England expects every man to’—hooray!”With a wild cheer, and waving his hat, the seaman rushed up the side of the knoll, followed by his obedient and willing crew.In order to render the feast more complete, several members of the party had brought small private supplies to supplement the cold mutton, ham, bread, and light claret which Antoine and two porters had carried in their knapsacks. Captain Wopper had brought a supply of variously coloured abominations known in England by the name of comfits, in Scotland as sweeties. These, mixed with snow and water, he styled “iced-lemonade.” Emma tried the mixture and declared it excellent, which caused someone to remark that the expression of her face contradicted her tongue. Lewis produced a small flask full of a rich dark port-winey liquid, which he said he had brought because it had formerly been one of the most delightful beverages of his childish years. It was tasted with interest and rejected with horror, being liquorice water! Emma produced a bottle of milk, in the consumption of which she was ably assisted by the Professor, who declared that his natural spirits required no artificial stimulants. The Professor himself had not been forgetful of the general good. He had brought with him a complex copper implement, which his friends had supposed was a new species of theodolite, but which turned out to be a scientific coffee-pot, in the development of which and its purposes, as the man of science carefully explained, there was called into play some of the principles involved in the sciences of hydraulics and pneumatics, to which list Lewis added, in an under-tone, those of aquatics, ecstatics, and rheumatics. The machine was perfect, but the Professor’s natural turn for practical mechanics not being equal to his knowledge of other branches of science, he failed properly to adjust a screw. This resulted in an explosion of the pot which blew its lid, as Lewis expressed it, into the north of Italy, and its contents into the fire. A second effort, using the remains of the scientific pot as an ordinary kettle, was more successful.“You see, my friends,” said the Professor, apologetically, “it is one of the prerogatives of science that her progress cannot be hindered. Her resources and appliances are inexhaustible. When one style of experiment fails we turn at once to another and obtain our result, as I now prove to you by handing this cup of coffee to Miss Gray. You had better not sweeten it, Mademoiselle. It is quite unnecessary to make the very trite observation that in your case no sugar is required. Yes, the progress of science is slow, but it is sure. Everything must fall before it in time.”“Ah, just so—‘one down, another come on,’—that’s your motto, ain’t it?” said Captain Wopper, who invariably, during the meal, delivered his remarks from a cavern filled with a compound of mutton, bread, and ham. “But I say, Professor, are you spliced?”“Spliced?” echoed the man of science.“Ay; married, I mean.”“Yes, I am wed,” he replied, with enthusiasm. “I have a beautiful wife in Russia, and she is good as beautiful.”“In Roosia—eh! Well, it’s a longish way off, but I’d advise you, as a friend, not to let her know that you pay such wallopin’ compliments to young English ladies. It might disagree with her, d’ye see?”At this point the conversation and festivities were interrupted by Slingsby, who, having gone off to sketch, had seated himself on a mound within sight of his friends, in a position so doubled up and ridiculous as to call forth the remark from Lawrence, that few traits of character were more admirable and interesting than those which illustrated the utter disregard of personal appearance in true and enthusiastic devotees of art. To which Captain Wopper added that “he was a rum lot an’ no mistake.”The devotee was seen by the revellers to start once or twice and clap his hands to various pockets, as though he had forgotten his india-rubber or pen-knife. Then he was observed to drop his sketching-book and hastily slap all his pockets, as if he had forgotten fifty pieces of india-rubber and innumerable pen-knives. Finally, he sprang up and slapped himself all over wildly, yelling at the same time as if he had been a maniac.He had inadvertently selected an ant-hill as his seat, that was all; but that was sufficient to check his devotion to art, and necessitate his retirement to a rocky defile, where he devoted himself to the study of “the nude” in his own person, and whence he returned looking imbecile and hot.Suchcontretemps, however, do not materially affect the health or spirits of the young and strong. Ere long Slingsby was following his companions with his wonted enthusiasm and devotee-like admiration of Nature in all her varying aspects.His enthusiasm was, however, diverted from the study of vegetable and mineral, if we may so put it, to that of animal nature, for one of the porters, who had a tendency to go poking his staff into holes and crannies of the rocks, suddenly touched a marmot. He dropped his pack and began at once to dig up earth and stones as fast as possible, assisted by his comrades; but the little creature was too sagacious for them. They came to its bed at last, and found that, while they had been busy at one end of the hole, the marmot had quietly walked out at the other, and made off.Having pushed over the valley, and once more ascended to the regions of perpetual ice, the ramblers determined to “attack”—as the phrase goes among Alpine climbers—a neighbouring summit. It was not a very high one, and Emma declared that she was not only quite able, but very anxious, to attempt it. The attempt was, therefore, made, and, after a couple of hours of pretty laborious work, accomplished. They found themselves on a pinnacle which overlooked a large portion of the ice-world around Mont Blanc. While standing there, one or two avalanches were observed, and the Professor pointed out that avalanches were not all of one character. Some, he said, were composed of rock, mud, and water; others entirely of ice; many of them were composed of these elements mixed, and others were entirely of snow.“True, Monsieur,” observed the guide, “and the last kind is sometimes very fatal. There was one from which my wife and child had a narrow escape. They were visiting at the time a near relation who dwelt in a village in a valley not far distant from this spot. Behind the village there is a steep slope covered with pines; behind that the mountain rises still more steeply. The little forest stands between that village and destruction. But for it, avalanches would soon sweep the village away; but wood is not always a sure protector. Sometimes, when frost renders the snow crisp and dry, the trees fail to check its descent. It was so on the last night of my wife’s visit. A brother was about to set off with her from the door of our relative’s house, when the snow began to descend through the trees like water. It was like dry flour. There was not much noise, merely a hissing sound, but it came down in a deluge, filled all the houses, and suffocated nearly all the people in them. My brother-in-law saw it in time. He put his horse to full speed, and brought my dear wife and child away in safety, but his own father, mother, and sister were lost. We tried to reach their house the next day, but could advance through the soft snow only by taking two planks with us, and placing one before the other as we went along.”Soon after the ramblers had begun their return journey, they came to a slope which they thought might be descended by sliding or “glissading.” It was the first time that Emma had seen such work, and she felt much inclined to try it, but was dissuaded by Antoine, who led her round by an easier way. At the foot of the slope they came to a couloir, or sloping gorge, so steep that snow could not lie on it. Its surface was, therefore, hard ice. Although passable, Antoine deemed it prudent not to cross, the more so that he observed some ominous obelisks of ice impending at the top of the slope.“Why not cross and let Emma see how we manage by cutting steps in the ice?” said Lewis.He received a conclusive though unexpected answer from one of the obelisks above-mentioned, which fell at the moment, broke into fragments, and swept the couloir from top to bottom with incredible violence.It is wonderful what a deal of experience is required to make foolish people wise! Winthin the next ten minutes this warning was forgotten, and Lewis led his cousin into a danger which almost cost the lives of three of the party.
A week passed away, during which Nita was confined to bed, and the Count waited on her with the most tender solicitude. As their meals were sent to their rooms, it was not necessary for the latter to appear in thesalle-à-mangeror thesalon. He kept himself carefully out of sight, and intelligence of the invalid’s progress was carried to their friends by Susan Quick, who was allowed to remain as sick-nurse, and who rejoiced in filling that office to one so amiable and uncomplaining as Nita.
Of course, Lewis was almost irresistibly tempted to talk with Susan about her charge, but he felt the impropriety of such a proceeding, and refrained. Not so Gillie White. That sapient blue spider, sitting in his wonted chair, resplendent with brass buttons and brazen impudence, availed himself of every opportunity to perform an operation which he styled “pumping;” but Susan, although ready enough to converse freely on things in general, was judicious in regard to things particular. Whatever might have passed in the sick-room, the pumping only brought up such facts as that the Count was a splendid nurse as well as a loving father, and that he and his daughter were tenderly attached to each other.
“Well, Susan,” observed Gillie, with an approving nod, “I’m glad to hear wot you say, for it’s my b’lief that tender attachments is the right sort o’ thing. I’ve got one or two myself.”
“Indeed!” said Susan, “who for, I wonder?”
“W’y, for one,” replied the spider, “I’ve had a wery tender attachment to my mother ever since that blessed time w’en I was attached to her buzzum in the rampagin’ hunger of infancy. Then I’ve got another attachment—not quite so old, but wery strong, oh uncommon powerful—for a young lady named Susan Quick. D’you happen to know her?”
“Oh, Gillie, you’re a sad boy,” said Susan.
“Well, I make a pint never to contradict a ’ooman, believin’ it to be dangerous,” returned Gillie, “but I can’t say that Ifeelsad. I’m raither jolly than otherwise.”
A summons from the sick-room cut short the conversation.
During the week in question it had rained a good deal, compelling the visitors at Chamouni to pass the time in-doors with books, billiards, draughts, and chess. Towards the end of the week Lewis met the Count and discovered that he was absolutely destitute of funds—did not, in fact possess enough to defray the hotel expenses.
“Mother,” said Lewis, during a private audience in her bed-chamber the same evening, “I want twenty pounds from you.”
“Certainly, my boy; but why do you come to me? You know that Dr Lawrence has charge of and manages my money. How I wish there were no such thing as money, and no need for it!”
Mrs Stoutley finished her remark with her usual languid smile and pathetic sigh, but if her physician, Dr Tough, had been there, he would probably have noted that mountain-air had robbed the smile of half its languor, and the sigh of nearly all its pathos. There was something like seriousness, too, in the good lady’s eye. She had been impressed more than she chose to admit by the sudden death of Le Croix, whom she had frequently seen, and whose stalwart frame and grave countenance she had greatly admired. Besides this, one or two accidents had occurred since her arrival in the Swiss valley; for there never passes a season without the occurrence of accidents more or less serious in the Alps. On one occasion the news had been brought that a young lady, recently married, whose good looks had been the subject of remark more than once, was killed by falling rocks before her husband’s eyes. On another occasion the spirits of the tourists were clouded by the report that a guide had fallen into a crevasse, and, though not killed, was much injured. Mrs Stoutley chanced to meet the rescue-party returning slowly to the village, with the poor shattered frame of the fine young fellow on a stretcher. It is one thing to read of such events in the newspapers. It is another and a very different thing to be near or to witness them—to be in the actual presence of physical and mental agony. Antoine Grennon, too, had made a favourable impression on Mrs Stoutley; and when, in passing one day his extremely humble cottage, she was invited by Antoine’s exceedingly pretty wife to enter and partake of bread and milk largely impregnated with cream, which was handed to her by Antoine’s excessively sweet blue-eyed daughter, the lady who had hitherto spent her life among the bright ice-pinnacles of society, was forced to admit to Emma Gray that Dr Tough was right when he said there were some beautiful and precious stones to be found among the moraines of social life.
“I know that Lawrence keeps the purse,” said Lewis, “but I want your special permission to take this money, because I intend to give it away.”
“Twenty pounds is a pretty large gift, Lewis,” said his mother, raising her eyebrows. “Who is it that has touched the springs of your liberality? Not the family of poor Le Croix?”
“No; Le Croix happily leaves no family. He was an unmarried man. I must not tell you, just yet, mother. Trust me, it shall be well bestowed; besides, I ask it as a loan. It shall be refunded.”
“Don’t talk of refunding money to your mother, foolish boy. Go; you may have it.”
Lewis kissed his mother’s cheek and thanked her. He quickly found the Count, but experienced considerable difficulty in persuading him to accept the money. However, by delicacy of management and by assuming, as a matter of course, that it was a loan, to be repaid when convenient, he prevailed. The Count made an entry of the loan in his notebook, with Lewis’s London address, and they parted with a kindly shake of the hand, little imagining that they had seen each other on earth for the last time.
On the Monday following, a superb day opened on the vale of Chamouni, such a day as, through the medium of sight and scent, is calculated to gladden the heart of man and beast. That the beasts enjoyed it was manifest from the pleasant sounds that they sent, gushing, like a hymn of thanksgiving—and who shall say it was not!—into the bright blue sky.
Birds carolled on the shrubs and in the air; cats ventured abroad with hair erect and backs curved, to exchange greetings with each other in wary defiance of dogs; kittens sprawled in the sunshine, and made frantic efforts to achieve the impossible feat of catching their own shadows, varying the pastime with more successful, though arduous, attempts at their own tails; dogs bounded and danced, chiefly on their hind legs, round their loved companion man (including woman); juvenile dogs chased, tumbled over, barked at, and gnawed each other with amiable fury, wagging their various tails with a vigour that suggested a desire to shake them off; tourist men and boys moved about with a decision that indicated the having of particular business on hand; tourist women and girls were busily engaged with baskets and botanical boxes, or flitted hither and thither in climbing costume with obtrusive alpenstocks, as though a general attack on Mont Blanc and all his satellite aiguilles were meditated.
Among these were our friends the Professor, Captain Wopper, Emma Gray, Slingsby, Lewis, and Lawrence, under the guidance of Antoine Grennon.
Strange to say they were all a little dull, notwithstanding the beauty of the weather, and the pleasant anticipation of a day on the hills—not a hard, toilsome day, with some awful Alpine summit as its aim, but what Lewis termed a jolly day, a picnicky day, to be extended into night, and to include any place, or to be cut short or extended according to whim.
The Professor was dull, because, having to leave, this was to be his last excursion; Captain Wopper was dull, because his cherished matrimonial hopes were being gradually dissipated. He could not perceive that Lawrence was falling in love with Emma, or Emma with Lawrence. The utmost exertion of sly diplomacy of which he was capable, short of straightforward advice, had failed to accomplish anything towards the desirable end. Emma was dull, because her friend Nita, although recovering, was still far from well. Slingsby was dull for the same reason, and also because he felt his passion to be hopeless. Lewis was dull because he knew Nita’s circumstances to be so very sad; and Lawrence was dull because—well, we are not quite sure whyhewas dull. He was rather a self-contained fellow, and couldn’t be easily understood. Of the whole party, Antoine alone wasnotdull. Nothing could put him in that condition, but, seeing that the others were so, he was grave, quiet attentive.
Some of the excursionists had left at a much earlier hour. Four strapping youths, with guides, had set out for the summit of Mont Blanc; a mingled party of ladies, gentlemen, guides, and mules, were on the point of starting to visit the Mer de Glace; a delicate student, unable for long excursions, was preparing to visit with his sister, the Glacier des Bossons. Others were going, or had gone, to the source of the Arveiron, and to the Brévent, while the British peer, having previously been conducted by a new and needlessly difficult path to the top of Monte Rosa, was led off by his persecutor to attempt, by an impossible route, to scale the Matterhorn—to reach the main-truck, as Captain Wopper put it, by going down the stern-post along the keel, over the bobstay, up the flyin’ jib, across the foretopmast-stay, and up the maintop-gallant halyards. This at least was Lewis Stoutley’s report of the Captain’s remark. We cannot answer for its correctness.
But nothing can withstand the sweet influences of fresh mountain-air and sunshine. In a short time “dull care” was put to flight and when our party—Emma being on a mule—reached the neighbouring heights, past and future were largely forgotten in the enjoyment of the present.
Besides being sunny and bright, the day was rather cool, so that, after dismissing the mule, and taking to the glaciers and ice-slope, the air was found to be eminently suitable for walking.
“It’s a bad look-out,” murmured Captain Wopper, when he observed that Dr Lawrence turned deliberately to converse with the Professor, leaving Lewis to assist Emma to alight, even although he, the Captain, had, by means of laboured contrivance and vast sagacity, brought the Doctor and the mule into close juxtaposition at the right time. However, the Captain’s temperament was sanguine. He soon forgot his troubles in observing the curious position assumed by Slingsby on the first steep slope of rocky ground they had to descend, for descents as well as ascents were frequent at first.
The artist walked on all-fours, but with his back to the hill instead of his face, his feet thus being in advance.
“What sort of an outside-in fashion is that, Slingsby?” asked the Captain, when they had reached the bottom.
“It’s a way I have of relieving my knees,” said Slingsby; “try it.”
“Thank ’ee; no,” returned the Captain. “It don’t suit my pecooliar build; it would throw too much of my weight amidships.”
“You’ve no idea,” said Slingsby, “what a comfort it is to a man whose knees suffer in descending. I’d rather go up twenty mountains than descend one. This plan answers only on steep places, and is but a temporary relief. Still that is something at the end of a long day.”
The artist exemplified his plan at the next slope. The Captain tried it, but, as he expressed it, broke in two at the waist and rolled down the slope, to the unspeakable delight of his friends.
“I fear you will find this rather severe?” said the Professor to Emma, during a pause in a steep ascent.
“Oh no; I am remarkably strong,” replied Emma, smiling. “I was in Switzerland two years ago, and am quite accustomed to mountaineering.”
“Yes,” remarked Lawrence, “and Miss Gray on that occasion, I am told, ascended to the top of the Dent du Midi, which you know is between ten and eleven thousand feet high; and she also, during the same season, walked from Champéry to Sixt which is a good day’s journey, so we need have no anxiety on her account.”
Although the Doctor smiled as he spoke, he also glanced at Emma with a look of admiration. Captain Wopper noted the glance and was comforted. At luncheon, however, the Doctor seated himself so that the Professor’s bulky person came between him and Emma. The Captain noted that also, and was depressed. What between elation and depression, mingled with fatigue and victuals, the Captain ultimately became recklessly jovial.
“What are yonder curious things?” asked Emma, pointing to so me gigantic objects which looked at a distance like rude pillars carved by man.
“These,” said the Professor, “are Nature’s handiwork. You will observe that on each pillar rests a rugged capital. The capital is the cause of the pillar. It is a hard rock which originally rested on a softer bed of friable stone. The weather has worn away the soft bed, except where it has been protected by the hard stone, and thus a natural pillar has arisen—just like the ice-pillars, which are protected from the sun in the same way; only the latter are more evanescent.”
Further on, the Professor drew the attention of his friends to the beautiful blue colour of the holes which their alpenstocks made in the snow. “Once,” said he, “while walking on the heights of Monte Rosa, I observed this effect with great interest, and, while engaged in the investigation of the cause, got a surprise which was not altogether agreeable. Some of the paths there are on very narrow ridges, and the snow on these ridges often overhangs them. I chanced to be walking in advance of my guide at the time to which I refer, and amused myself as I went along by driving my alpenstock deep into the snow, when suddenly, to my amazement I sent the end of the staff right through the snow, and, on withdrawing it, looked down into space! I had actually walked over the ridge altogether, and was standing above an abyss some thousands of feet deep!”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Emma. “You jumped off pretty quickly, I dare say.”
“Nay, I walked off with extreme caution; but I confess to having felt a sort of cold shudder with which my frame had not been acquainted previously.”
While they were thus conversing, a cloud passed overhead and sent down a slight shower of snow. To most of the party this was a matter of indifference, but the man of science soon changed their feelings by drawing attention to the form of the flakes. He carried a magnifying glass with him, which enabled him to show their wonders more distinctly. It was like a shower of frozen flowers of the most delicate and exquisite kind. Each flake was a flower with six leaves. Some of the leaves threw out lateral spines or points, like ferns, some were rounded, others arrowy, reticulated, and serrated; but, although varied in many respects, there was no variation in the number of leaves.
“What amazin’ beauty in a snowflake,” exclaimed the Captain, “many a one I’ve seen without knowin’ how splendid it was.”
“The works of God are indeed wonderful,” said the Professor, “but they must be ‘sought out’—examined with care—to be fully understood and appreciated.”
“Yet there are certain philosophers,” observed Lewis, “who hold that the evidence of design here and elsewhere does not at all prove the existence of God. They say that the crystals of these snow-flakes are drawn together and arrange themselves by means of natural forces.”
“They say truly,” replied the Professor, “but they seem to me to stop short in their reasoning. They appear to ignore the fact that this elemental original force of which they speak must have had a Creator. However far they may go back into mysterious and incomprehensible elements, which they choose to call ‘blind forces,’ they do not escape the fact that matter cannot have created itself; that behind their utmost conceptions there must still be One non-created, eternal, living Being who created all, who upholds all, and whom we call God.”
Descending again from the heights in order to cross a valley and gain the opposite mountain, our ramblers quitted the glacier, and, about noon, found themselves close to a lovely pine-clad knoll, the shaded slopes of which commanded an unusually fine view of rocky cliff and fringing wood, with a background of glacier and snow-flecked pinnacles.
Halting, accidentally in a row, before this spot they looked at it with interest. Suddenly the Professor stepped in front of the others, and, pointing to the knoll, said, with twinkling eyes—
“What does it suggest? Come, dux (to Slingsby, who happened to stand at the head of the line), tell me, sir, what does it suggest?”
“Iknow, sir!” exclaimed the Captain, who stood at the dunce’s extremity of the line, holding out his fist with true schoolboy eagerness.
“It suggests,” said the artist, rolling his eyes, “‘a thing of beauty;’ and—”
“Next!” interrupted the Professor, pointing to Lawrence.
“Iknow, sir,” shouted the Captain.
“Hold your tongue, sir!”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“It is suggestive,” said Lawrence, “of an oasis in the desert.”
“Very poor, sir,” said the Professor, severely. “Next.”
“It suggests a cool shade on a hot day,” said Emma.
“Better, but not right. Next.”
“Please, sir, I’d rather not answer,” said Lewis, putting his forefinger in his mouth.
“You must, sir.”
“Iknow, sir,” interrupted Captain Wopper, shaking his fist eagerly.
“Silence, you booby!—Well, boy, what does it suggest toyou?”
“Please, sir,” answered Lewis, “it suggests the mole on your professorial cheek.”
“Sir,” cried the Professor, sternly, “remind me to give you a severe caning to-night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, booby, what haveyougot to say to it?”
“Wittles!” shouted the Captain.
“Right,” cried the Professor, “only it would have been better expressed had you said—Luncheon. Go up, sir; put yourself at the head of the class, and lead it to a scene of glorious festivity.”
Thus instructed, the Captain put himself at the head of the line.
“Now, then, Captain,” said Lewis, “let’s have a true-blue nautical word of command—hoist yer main tops’l sky-scrapers abaft the cleat o’ the spanker boom, heave the main deck overboard and let go the painter—or something o’ that sort.”
“Hold on to the painter, you mean,” said Slingsby.
“You’re both wrong,” cried the Captain, “my orders are those of the immortal Nelson—‘Close action, my lads—England expects every man to’—hooray!”
With a wild cheer, and waving his hat, the seaman rushed up the side of the knoll, followed by his obedient and willing crew.
In order to render the feast more complete, several members of the party had brought small private supplies to supplement the cold mutton, ham, bread, and light claret which Antoine and two porters had carried in their knapsacks. Captain Wopper had brought a supply of variously coloured abominations known in England by the name of comfits, in Scotland as sweeties. These, mixed with snow and water, he styled “iced-lemonade.” Emma tried the mixture and declared it excellent, which caused someone to remark that the expression of her face contradicted her tongue. Lewis produced a small flask full of a rich dark port-winey liquid, which he said he had brought because it had formerly been one of the most delightful beverages of his childish years. It was tasted with interest and rejected with horror, being liquorice water! Emma produced a bottle of milk, in the consumption of which she was ably assisted by the Professor, who declared that his natural spirits required no artificial stimulants. The Professor himself had not been forgetful of the general good. He had brought with him a complex copper implement, which his friends had supposed was a new species of theodolite, but which turned out to be a scientific coffee-pot, in the development of which and its purposes, as the man of science carefully explained, there was called into play some of the principles involved in the sciences of hydraulics and pneumatics, to which list Lewis added, in an under-tone, those of aquatics, ecstatics, and rheumatics. The machine was perfect, but the Professor’s natural turn for practical mechanics not being equal to his knowledge of other branches of science, he failed properly to adjust a screw. This resulted in an explosion of the pot which blew its lid, as Lewis expressed it, into the north of Italy, and its contents into the fire. A second effort, using the remains of the scientific pot as an ordinary kettle, was more successful.
“You see, my friends,” said the Professor, apologetically, “it is one of the prerogatives of science that her progress cannot be hindered. Her resources and appliances are inexhaustible. When one style of experiment fails we turn at once to another and obtain our result, as I now prove to you by handing this cup of coffee to Miss Gray. You had better not sweeten it, Mademoiselle. It is quite unnecessary to make the very trite observation that in your case no sugar is required. Yes, the progress of science is slow, but it is sure. Everything must fall before it in time.”
“Ah, just so—‘one down, another come on,’—that’s your motto, ain’t it?” said Captain Wopper, who invariably, during the meal, delivered his remarks from a cavern filled with a compound of mutton, bread, and ham. “But I say, Professor, are you spliced?”
“Spliced?” echoed the man of science.
“Ay; married, I mean.”
“Yes, I am wed,” he replied, with enthusiasm. “I have a beautiful wife in Russia, and she is good as beautiful.”
“In Roosia—eh! Well, it’s a longish way off, but I’d advise you, as a friend, not to let her know that you pay such wallopin’ compliments to young English ladies. It might disagree with her, d’ye see?”
At this point the conversation and festivities were interrupted by Slingsby, who, having gone off to sketch, had seated himself on a mound within sight of his friends, in a position so doubled up and ridiculous as to call forth the remark from Lawrence, that few traits of character were more admirable and interesting than those which illustrated the utter disregard of personal appearance in true and enthusiastic devotees of art. To which Captain Wopper added that “he was a rum lot an’ no mistake.”
The devotee was seen by the revellers to start once or twice and clap his hands to various pockets, as though he had forgotten his india-rubber or pen-knife. Then he was observed to drop his sketching-book and hastily slap all his pockets, as if he had forgotten fifty pieces of india-rubber and innumerable pen-knives. Finally, he sprang up and slapped himself all over wildly, yelling at the same time as if he had been a maniac.
He had inadvertently selected an ant-hill as his seat, that was all; but that was sufficient to check his devotion to art, and necessitate his retirement to a rocky defile, where he devoted himself to the study of “the nude” in his own person, and whence he returned looking imbecile and hot.
Suchcontretemps, however, do not materially affect the health or spirits of the young and strong. Ere long Slingsby was following his companions with his wonted enthusiasm and devotee-like admiration of Nature in all her varying aspects.
His enthusiasm was, however, diverted from the study of vegetable and mineral, if we may so put it, to that of animal nature, for one of the porters, who had a tendency to go poking his staff into holes and crannies of the rocks, suddenly touched a marmot. He dropped his pack and began at once to dig up earth and stones as fast as possible, assisted by his comrades; but the little creature was too sagacious for them. They came to its bed at last, and found that, while they had been busy at one end of the hole, the marmot had quietly walked out at the other, and made off.
Having pushed over the valley, and once more ascended to the regions of perpetual ice, the ramblers determined to “attack”—as the phrase goes among Alpine climbers—a neighbouring summit. It was not a very high one, and Emma declared that she was not only quite able, but very anxious, to attempt it. The attempt was, therefore, made, and, after a couple of hours of pretty laborious work, accomplished. They found themselves on a pinnacle which overlooked a large portion of the ice-world around Mont Blanc. While standing there, one or two avalanches were observed, and the Professor pointed out that avalanches were not all of one character. Some, he said, were composed of rock, mud, and water; others entirely of ice; many of them were composed of these elements mixed, and others were entirely of snow.
“True, Monsieur,” observed the guide, “and the last kind is sometimes very fatal. There was one from which my wife and child had a narrow escape. They were visiting at the time a near relation who dwelt in a village in a valley not far distant from this spot. Behind the village there is a steep slope covered with pines; behind that the mountain rises still more steeply. The little forest stands between that village and destruction. But for it, avalanches would soon sweep the village away; but wood is not always a sure protector. Sometimes, when frost renders the snow crisp and dry, the trees fail to check its descent. It was so on the last night of my wife’s visit. A brother was about to set off with her from the door of our relative’s house, when the snow began to descend through the trees like water. It was like dry flour. There was not much noise, merely a hissing sound, but it came down in a deluge, filled all the houses, and suffocated nearly all the people in them. My brother-in-law saw it in time. He put his horse to full speed, and brought my dear wife and child away in safety, but his own father, mother, and sister were lost. We tried to reach their house the next day, but could advance through the soft snow only by taking two planks with us, and placing one before the other as we went along.”
Soon after the ramblers had begun their return journey, they came to a slope which they thought might be descended by sliding or “glissading.” It was the first time that Emma had seen such work, and she felt much inclined to try it, but was dissuaded by Antoine, who led her round by an easier way. At the foot of the slope they came to a couloir, or sloping gorge, so steep that snow could not lie on it. Its surface was, therefore, hard ice. Although passable, Antoine deemed it prudent not to cross, the more so that he observed some ominous obelisks of ice impending at the top of the slope.
“Why not cross and let Emma see how we manage by cutting steps in the ice?” said Lewis.
He received a conclusive though unexpected answer from one of the obelisks above-mentioned, which fell at the moment, broke into fragments, and swept the couloir from top to bottom with incredible violence.
It is wonderful what a deal of experience is required to make foolish people wise! Winthin the next ten minutes this warning was forgotten, and Lewis led his cousin into a danger which almost cost the lives of three of the party.