Chapter 5

CHAPTER XLVI.ARTEMISIA.'There is the restaurant,' said Miss Durham, 'and being painted within and without, impossible for us to enter. What say you to walking on to the head of the lake? I want to look over thecol, and see the mountains of the Rhine valley above Dissentis.'Philip hesitated, and again looked back.'I see,' said Miss Durham; 'you are afraid of stepping out of your cage.''Not at all,' answered Philip, flushing. 'I am prepared to go to the end of this trough in the mountains with you, but I greatly doubt seeing much from the further end.''Well—if we see nothing, we can talk. Have you looked about you much since we began the ascent?''The time has flown,' said Philip, looking at his watch. 'It seems to me but a few minutes since.'The long dreary valley or basin in which lay the lake was apparently closed at the end by a hill surmounted by a cross or flagstaff. The road ran along the north side of the lake, without a tree to shade it. The party behind, when they came to the restaurant, could not fail to see them if they continued along the road, and might follow, or await them there.Philip walked on, but no longer gave Artemisia Durham his arm. He saw far away in the rear Mrs. Sidebottom signalling with her parasol; but whether to him, or to the Labarte girls who were dispersed in the morass at the end of the lake, picking butterwort, soldanella, and primula, he could not tell.His eyes were on the ground. He was thinking of his companion, what a strange life hers must be, incomprehensible to him. He felt how, if he were thrown into it, he would not know how to strike out and hold his chin above water. At the same time his heart beat fast with a wild vain desire for a freer life than that of commerce.The restraints to which he had been subjected had compressed and shaped him, as the Chinese lady's shoe compresses and shapes her foot—but the pressure had been painful; it had marked him, but the marks were ever sensitive. The ancient robe of the Carmelite fathers was of white wool barred with black, and they pretended that they derived this habit from the mantle of Elijah, which he had dropped as he was being carried up to heaven, and the mantle had touched as it fell the spokes of the chariot of fire in which he ascended, and was scorched in stripes. Philip, and many another successful man of business who has been exalted to a position of comfort and warmth, has the inner garment of his soul scarred by the wheels of the chariot in which he has mounted. Philip felt his own awkwardness, his want of ease in other society than that narrow circle in which he had turned, his inability to move with that freedom and confidence which characterizes those born and reared in generous society. Even with this girl—this Bohemian—he was as one walking and talking with chains to his feet and a gag to his tongue. She was right; he was born to be at ease everywhere, to be able everywhere to walk upright, and to look around him; he had been put in a cramping position, tied hand and foot, and his head set in such a vice as photographers employ to give what they consider support and steadiness, and he was distorted, stiffened, contracted. Had his life been happy? He had never accounted it so—it had been formal at the solicitor's desk, and it was formal in the factory. Was man made and launched into life to be a piece of clockwork? He had thought, acted, lived an automaton life, and taken his pleasure in measuring glasses, never in full and free draughts.'Have you had a happy existence?' he asked thoughtfully.''Oh yes, the birds are happy; all nature is happy so long as it is free. It is in the cage that the bird mopes, and in the pot that the plant sickens.'Had Philip looked in her face he would have seen a strange expression of triumph pass over it. She had carried her first point and gained his interest.'Here,' she said, 'is a large rock above the water; let us sit on it, and I will tell you about myself. You had no confidence in me, and would not give me your story. I will return good for evil, and show you my past. I agree with you, there will be no view of the mountains above Dissentis from thecol. It is not worth our while going on. Besides, I am tired.'She took a seat on a broad boulder that had fallen from the mountains, and hung fast, wedged on one side, disengaged on the other, over the crystal water that, stirred by the light wind, lapped its supports. Looking into the clear flood beneath, they could see the char darting about, enjoying the sun that penetrated the water and made it to them an element of diffused light.Artemisia pointed to them, and said:'Who would not rather be one of these than a goldfish in a glass bottle?'Philip at once recalled the pond at Mergatroyd, with the hot water spurted into it from the engine, in which the goldfish teemed, and the globes in every cottage-window supplied with the unfortunate captives from this pond, swimming round and round all day, all night, every year, seeing nothing novel, without an interest, a zest in life. Such had his career been; he, a fish—not a gold one, nor even a silver one till recently, but quite a common brown fish—in a common glass receiver full of stale water, renewed periodically, but always flat.He looked at the darting char with interest.'We are in the land of freedom,' said Miss Durham. 'Then don't stand on the rock like a semaphore. Sit down beside me, and let your feet dangle over the water. Oh! as Polixenes says, "to be boy eternal!"''"With such a day to-morrow as to-day,"' added Philip, completing the quotation, as he seated himself on the rock.How wonderfully brilliant the sun was at that height! So utterly unlike the rusty ball that gave light at Mergatroyd, and there gave it charily. How intense the blue of the sky!—dark as the deep-belled gentian, not the washed-out cobalt of an English heaven. And the air was fresh; it made the heart dance, and the pulses throb faster, with a trip and a fandango such as the blood never attains in our gray and sober land.At a few hundred yards' distance was a road-mender leisurely performing his task, repairing a track made by a stone that had leaped from the cliffs above, torn up the road, and then plunged into the lake. Far behind could be seen Mrs. Sidebottom flourishing her parasol and gathering the rest of the disconnected party together before the restaurant.It was clear that she had decided they were not to go further, but to rest at one of the tables in the open air beside the lake, till it pleased the two of the advanced party to return.Had they been seen? Philip asked himself. Where he and Artemisia now sat, they were screened from observation from the tavern, though not from the road-mender, who was ahead on the way.'I am not quite sure,' said Philip, and he fidgeted with his fingers as he said it, 'I think I ought to be going back to the party—to my aunt.''To your wife, you mean. Why not say so? No; you shall not go. There are plenty with her, five in all, and I—I have only you.'A flutter and then a scalding rush of blood through Philip's veins.'This is the land of freedom,' said Artemisia; 'as you came over the Lake of Lucerne you saw Rütli, the sacred spot where the three confederates swore to shake off the chains that bound them and to be free, and its freedom is the glory of Switzerland now. Let this be Rütli. Break those conventional bonds that have tied you, and as a pledge remain seated and listen to me. Remember what I have told you—I want to give you a peep into my past life, and have your advice.'Philip made no more objection, but he plucked little scraps of sedum that grew on the stone and threw them into the water. Presently fish came to snap at them, and turned away in disgust, leaving them, when they saw they were not flies nor worms.'My mother,' said Miss Durham, 'was a German—that is how I can speak the language with as much ease as English. She was married to my father shortly after her arrival in America, and she never acquired the English tongue perfectly; she always spoke it with an accent and intonation that was foreign. But, though she did not acquire perfectly the language of the country of her adoption, she assimilated its prejudices pretty easily, and held them with that intensity which characterizes, in my experience, acquired prejudices, especially when unreasonable. My father had in him a couple of drops of dark blood, and although my mother thought nothing of that when she took him, she speedily came to regard it as an indelible stain. She threw it in his teeth, she fretted over it, and when I was born did not regard me with the love a child has a right to exact from its mother. The continual quarrels and growing antipathy between my parents led at length to their separation. My father left, and I believe is dead; I never saw him after they parted. He may have married again. I do not know; but I believe he is dead. He made no inquiries after me and my mother, to whom I was a burden and a reproach; she looked about for, and secured another, a more suitable partner, a German, working in a factory. They had children, fair-haired, moon-faced, thick-set—and I was alone amidst them, the drudge or enemy of all. I had a good voice, and I was made nurse to the youngest children, and to still them I was accustomed to sing to them. The eldest boy had a clear good voice also, and him I liked best of all my half-brothers and sisters. It was a great amusement to us to follow brass bands, or Italians with organs and monkeys; and when we saw how that these obtained money, my brother Thomas and I agreed together that we would try our luck. One day—it was the day of the Declaration of Independence, when everyone was out and all enjoying themselves—Tom and I went into the most-frequented avenue of our town, and began to sing. Carriages with ladies and gentlemen passed, and troops of people in their best clothes, all in good humour, and all seeking amusement. We began to sing "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten," Tom taking a second. Some Germans at once gathered about us, and threw coppers into Tom's cap. Presently a man came up with a red beard and a violin. He stood for a long time listening, and then instead of giving us money he asked where we lived, and what our parents were. I told him, and next day he came to see my mother. He was a musician, and he offered to buy me of her, that he might teach me to sing and accompany him.'Philip's face grew gray, and the lines in it became more marked. He no longer threw bits of sedum at the fish. He clutched the rock with both hands.'And—what did your mother say?' he asked.'She sold me—for seventy-five dollars.'Philip shuddered. He turned and looked in Artemisia's face—to see, perhaps, if her story had left its traces there.'She wanted a hundred dollars, he offered fifty. They came to terms for seventy-five.'Philip said nothing. He looked down into the bottle-green depths of the lake, and for some moments Artemisia was silent also.Presently—with a strange, forced voice—Philip asked:'How old were you when this transaction took place?''Still a child. I travelled about with the red-bearded man, and he taught me to sing, trained me well, and at concerts made me sing, and I got great applause. I liked that. I was happier with him than at my mother's; I had no babies to carry about, and to hush; none of the house drudging to do. Besides, he was kind, and he was an honourable man after his fashion. He treated me as if I were his daughter, and took immense pains to form me to be a public singer. But always the burden of his song was, "See what you cost me, what trouble you give me! Afterwards, when you are a finished artist, you must be engaged to me for a set of years and repay me for my pains." I had not a word against that. I was quite aware that I was indebted to him, and I intended to show my gratitude by doing as he required. So I grew up, going about with him, and he never allowed me to be treated with impertinence by any man; he always protected me, though not always in the most heroic manner. Once, in California, we were performing, he with his fiddle and I singing, at a liquor-bar, when a half tipsy gold-digger became offensively attentive to me. My master made me leave the place with him, and he ran away with me to San Francisco. I asked him why? He said that he must do that, or shoot or be shot by that fellow, and he had no wish for either. I remember sulking; I would have liked to see them fight about me.''How long did you remain with this man?''Till I was eighteen, and then, just as I was fit for something better, and to earn more money, my master spoiled his own game.''How so?''He wanted to marry me. I reckon he thought he could secure me best that way. If he had not asked me, and himself pestered me about this, I would have stayed with him and let him have a share—a lion's share, of my earnings; but he would not leave me in peace—he spoiled his own game by that, and set me free. I left him.''And then?''Oh! I have been independent since then. I have sung in America, but I have met with most success in Germany. I go about where I will. I have no master. I earn enough to enable me out of the opera season to go to the mountains or the seaside. This is a dull spot, and I would not have made so long a stay in it had it not been that I was ordered to the elevated air here, because I had suffered from a relaxed or overstrained organ. Now you know my story. What do you think of it?'Philip was watching her face, and feeling as if he received a shot in his heart every time she turned her splendid full eyes on him, and his hands trembled as they held the stone. 'Ever since I left my red-bearded master I have been alone—alone in the world; I have had no one to whom to cling, no mind to which to go for advice in times of doubt and distress. Alone—do you know what it is to be alone?''Yes,' said Philip; he let sink his head on his breast, and looked down into the water. He also had spent a lonely youth, but in what opposite circumstances!'You can have no idea,' she continued, 'how I have longed, with agony of heart, for someone—someone whose judgment I could trust, whose mind was superior, whose experience had been made in just those departments of life to which I am strange. I have longed for such an one, whom I could regard as a very dear friend, and to whom I could go in trouble and perplexity. But I have no one! For all these years I have been as much alone as the man in the moon.'Philip put his hand to his collar. He tried to straighten the points which had become limp—his hand shook so that he could do nothing with them; he was being burnt up, consumed, by her eyes which were on him as she spoke of her desire to find a friend.'Is it not strange,' she said, 'that I who have been preaching freedom should feel the need of a bar—not of many, but just one to hold by. Do you know what it is to stand at the verge of a precipice? To stand on a spire top where there is sheer abyss on every side? Can you imagine the giddiness, the despair that comes over one? My place is one surrounded by precipices, dangers, everywhere; I see hands thrust out to give me the push to send me over, but not one—no, not one—to hold me.''You have mine,' said Philip, and laid his on her wrist. She took his hand and pressed it thankfully.'Now,' she continued, 'you can understand what it must be to one on a dizzy peak, or apex of a building, if there be a something—a bar even, to which to hold. Then the abysses below can be gazed into with impunity. Holding to that support, the dangers are no longer dreadful, there is no more fear of falling out of sheer desperation.'She let go Philip's hand, and stood up.'It is time to return to our party. Oh, what a relief it has been to me to pour out my heart to you! And now, in return, tell me about Colonel Yeo.'The sound of that name at once brought Philip to his senses. He rose to his feet and stepped into the road.'I am sorry to be unable to tell you about him, because I know little about him. As I said before, we belong to different spheres.'They walked back together, talking of the weather and the mountains and flowers, and found the rest at a table. The restaurant was under repair, and no refreshments could be obtained there.'Well?' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'you have kept us waiting a long time.''We have been waiting for you,' said Miss Durham. 'We thought you would come on to the head of the pass.'Philip caught Salome's eye and avoided it. She looked wistfully, wonderingly at him. What did he mean by at one minute treating the American lady with coldness and rudeness, and then reversing his behaviour towards her absolutely and at once?She took her husband's arm as they walked back to Andermatt. Philip was silent. He thought about the story he had heard, of the loneliness of the poor girl who had confided her history to him.'What a long way this is, dear!' said Philip. 'It seems an age since we began the descent.'CHAPTER XLVII.EDELWEISS.Philip could not sleep during the night that followed the expedition to the Ober-Alp. His mind was occupied with what he had heard. He thought of the poor girl, sold by her mother; of her rude apprenticeship, of the risks she had undergone; beautiful, young, attractive. He tossed in his bed. What would become of her? Could she stand exposed to the dangers that beset her and not, as she half-threatened, throw herself over? What could be done for her?She had spoken of the freedom of her life as giving zest to existence, but too great freedom may pall; it had palled on the girl, and she had put up her hands, pleading to be fitted with light but strong manacles. What a contrast was to be found between his life and hers! He had been cramped and hedged about with restrictions: she had enjoyed an excess of liberty. Virtue, says Aristotle, is to be found in a happy medium, and not virtue only, but the plenitude and manifoldness of life can only unfurl itself in a happy medium between excess of freedom and oppressive restriction. Philip was and ever had been conscious that his abilities had not been allowed due expansion in the career into which he had been squeezed; and this American girl, with doubtless splendid capabilities of mind and heart, had allowed them to run riot and dissipate their fragrance in untutored independence. When she fixed her great dark eyes on him, what a thrill passed through him! and when she took his hand, fire ran up his veins, and broke into a blaze in his heart.What could he do for her? How was it possible for him to assist her? to be to her the wise friend she desired? If he had made her acquaintance two years ago it would have been another matter, he would have thrown himself at her feet—metaphorically, of course—and asked her to take him as her guide, protector, and friend, to tie up her future with his, and so each would have contributed something to the other to make up what each lacked. Then what a different sort of life his would have been! His present mode of existence was similar, only better in quality, to that he had led before; one had been a sordid drudgery, the present was a gilded drudgery. The difference was in the adjective that qualified, not in the substance of which the stuff of his life was made up. He had now to devote the same attention to figures and technicalities and details as before. The figures, technicalities, details, were formerly relative to conveyancing, they now concerned linen manufacture. Such acquaintances as he had formed at Nottingham had not been interested in much beyond their business, and the acquaintances he had formed at Mergatroyd had their interests concentrated on their business. Art, literature, science, had been to those he knew at Nottingham, and were to those he knew at Mergatroyd, names, not ideas. Was life worth living in such surroundings, tied to such a routine? It is said that man as he gets older fossilizes, the currents of his blood choke the arteries, veins, vessels of heart and brain, till like furred waterpipes and crusted boilers they can no longer act. But was not the life to which he was condemned, with its monotony, its constraint, its isolation from the current of intellectual life—a mechanizing of man? Philip knew that he was losing, had lost, much of his individuality, almost all the spontaneity that had been lodged in him by the Creator, and was growing more and more into a machine, like his spinning-jennies and steam looms. He thought of Salome. Had she many ideas outside the round of ordinary life? Was she not an ennobled, sweeter lodging-house keeper? She had been well educated, but her mind did not naturally soar into the ideal world. It went up, spasmodically, like the grasshoppers, a little way, and was down on its feet again directly. She was interested in her baby, anxious to have her house neat, the cobwebs all away, the linen in perfect order, all the towels marked and numbered, the servants in thorough activity, the quotients for the cake and pudding measured in scales, not guessed. She was devoted to her flowers also—he recollected the hyacinths, and certainly they had filled his room with fragrance and anticipations of spring. But he had sent her to sleep by reading aloud Addison's 'Spectator,' and when he tried Shakespeare he found that she had no insight into the characters, and accepted the beauties rather than seized on them.What, Philip asked with a tremor—what if he had never met Salome, and had met Artemisia? Then indeed he would have been transported on strong wings out of the world of common-place, and the sound of common talk, and the murky atmosphere of vulgar interests, into a region where he would have shaken off his half-acquired habits of formality, his shyness, his cumbrousness and angularity, and become light-hearted, easy, and independent.In dreams we sometimes imagine ourselves to be flying; we rise from the ground and labour indefatigably with our arms as wings; and Philip was now dreaming, though not asleep, fancying that he could part with some of his gravity and by an effort maintain himself in another sphere. He had missed his way in life; he was never designed to become a piece of clockwork, but to enjoy life, seize it with both hands, and hold it fast, and drink the mingled cup to the dregs, crowned with roses. Hitherto he had not suspected that the blood in his arteries was an effervescing wine; he had supposed it very still.What was to be done for Artemisia? It would be inhuman, not to be reconciled with conscience, to turn away, to cast her off, when she entreated him to be her friend and help her with counsel. But how could he assist her? A drowning, despairing girl cried out for help. Could he suffer her to sink? Had he not promised her his assistance?'I am positively determined,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, next day, 'that we shall go to-morrow to the hospice. I want to see it, and the dogs, and the scenery. So I have ordered carriages; and what is more, we will stay there a day or two; then, such as like, can descend the Val Tremola, and such as like can climb the Pizzo Centrale.''I have no objection.' answered Salome. 'We must not leave Andermatt until we have been over the pass and seen the beauties or terrors of the further side. What do you say, Philip?''I shall be glad.'He stood up from table.'Where are you going, Philip?''To Miss Durham, to invite her to join us.''Of course,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'Let me see, we are eight. Oh! it won't matter, one of the girls can sit outside. The drivers always walk going up hill, so that there will be five in one carriage, and five in the other. And Miss Durham will pay her share. Besides, if there is any climbing and excursioning to be done, she will pay half of a guide.'But—strange caprice in Salome, she put her hand on Philip's arm, and said, in a low tone:'No! Philip; no!'Philip looked at her with surprise. Why should she not wish the American lady to join the party? She was her friend. She had been so desirous that he and Miss Durham should conclude peace, and now that peace was agreed upon, Salome said, 'No! Philip; no!' when he proposed to invite the Chicago girl to join them. How capricious! How unreasonable Salome was! She forms a wish, he hastens to accord it, and lo! she hangs back and is dissatisfied.His aunt's favourite expression, 'Fiddlestick-ends!' rose to his lips. He was not the man to be turned about by the wayward, unreasoned fancies of his wife.'Why not?' he asked.But Salome gave him no answer. She had formed no motive in her heart for asking him not to invite Miss Durham; she had not considered a reason. She reddened to the roots of her hair, but neither gave a reason nor repeated her request.There lingered all that day a little something, a dissonance of mood between Philip and Salome; neither could account for it, and neither attempted to account for it. He was silent; he wandered about the hotel and the grounds with a hope to light on Miss Durham He did not go into thesalleor on the terrace, into the reading-room, or about the garden searching for her. He did not ask the waiters where she was, but he looked about wherever he went, expecting to see her, and when he found her not in the reading-room orsalle, on the terrace or in the garden, he felt that the place was uninteresting, and he must perforce go elsewhere.Salome was gentle as usual, spending much time with her baby, showing it to those guests who were so gracious as to notice it, and smiling with pleasure when it was admired; but she was not herself, not as happy as she had been. Hitherto the only jar to her content was her husband's prejudice against Artemisia; now the jar arose—she did not explain to herself how it arose, but she wished that Philip had not gone so far in his change of sentiment. Yet with her natural modesty and shrinking from casting blame, she reproached herself for grudging to her friend that friendship which she had herself invited Philip to bestow.The next day was lovely, with a cloudless sky, and the carriages departed. Some grumbling ensued and had to be resisted, on the part of the drivers, because five persons were crammed into one carriage. Mrs. Sidebottom pointed out that the driver would walk. That was true, was the reply, but not till Hospenthal was reached; moreover the horses could not draw more than four up the St. Gothard road to the hospice. There was still snow over a considerable tract; however, at length the difference was overcome by the promise of a small extra payment—two and a half francs extra—which threw such energy into the horses, and so increased their power of traction, that they consented for that price to draw five instead of four persons up the ascent from Hospenthal to the hospice. In one carriage, that in front, sat Mrs. Sidebottom, Janet and the captain, and one of the girls, the youngest. In the other carriage were Salome and Miss Durham, Philip, and the two other Labarte girls.But Philip did not remain long in it; at the steep ascent above the little picturesque cluster of houses, church, and castle that constitute Hospenthal, he got out and walked. The banks were overgrown with the Alpine rhododendron, as flames bursting out of the low olive-green bushes, and Philip hastened to pick bunches for the ladies. By a singular chance the best flowers and those best arranged went to Miss Durham.'See dere?' said the driver, taking off his hat. 'Vot ish dat? Dat is edelweiss. You shee?'He held his dirty brown cap to Philip and showed him a tuft of white flowers as though made out of wool. Philip had never seen the like before.'Are these found here, in these mountains?''Jawohl! round here. Up high! Shee!' The man pointed with his whip to the rocky heights. 'She grow up very high, dat vlower you give to your loaf!''Loaf?''Jawohl!' The man winked, put his hand to his heart. 'To your loaf—shatz! You undershtand.'Philip flushed dark. He was hot with walking.'Let me have some of that flower. You shall have it back. No, thank you, not your hat.'The man pulled the blossoms out from the dirty ribbon that retained them. 'Dey is dry. But you should shee when dey fresh.'Philip took the little flowers to the side of the carriage.'Look at these,' he said. 'The man calls them—no, I cannot say the name.''Edelweiss,' said Salome; 'I have seen it dried in the shop windows. It is rare.''Edelweiss means the noble white flower,' said Miss Durham. 'It grows far from human habitation, and is much sought after. I have never found it myself, and never had any fresh picked given to me.''Would you like some?' asked Philip.'Very much indeed,' answered Artemisia.'If it be possible to get any, you shall have it,' he said. Then he walked on.The fore carriage was stopped, and Mrs. Sidebottom was descending with Claudine Labarte, whom she had persuaded to get out with her and pick flowers, thus leaving the captain and Janet by themselves.'Before long,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'we shall be beyond the line where flowers grow, so we must make the best of our opportunity now, Miss Labarte.'Then Mrs. Sidebottom fell back to where Philip was and took his arm, and pressed it, looked up at him humorously and said, 'I have a bit of news to tell you. He is going to propose. That is why I have got Félicité out of the carriage.''Who? Lambert?''Lambert, of course. Not the driver. And to Janet. Have you not seen it coming?''But perhaps she will not have him.''Fiddlestick-ends! Of course she will. Don't you see that she likes him, and has been drawing him on? Besides, I have sounded her. The only difficulty is about Salome.''How can she be a difficulty?''Oh, she may think it too soon for them to get married when Mrs. Cusworth died so recently.''Then they can postpone the marriage.''Fiddle-faddle! Of course not. Always strike whilst the iron is hot. That is edelweiss in your hand, is it? Oh, could you manage to find or get a man to find some quite fresh, for Lambert to present to Janet. It is the correct thing in the Alps. The graceful accompaniment of a declaration.''I will try to get some,' said Philip.'Lambert, you see, will be too much engaged with Janet to go far himself; besides, he is not able to take great exertion. Climbing has a deteriorating effect on the trouser-knees, it makes them baggy. You will get him some?''I will go searching for edelweiss when we reach the hospice,' said Philip. To himself he muttered, 'But not for Lambert and Janet.'CHAPTER XLVIII.TRAPPED.For the last hour of the ascent the carriages passed through snow, not continuous, but between walls cut in the avalanches and drifts that had formed in the basins. The air was cold. The ground was so wet through melted snow that Philip and Mrs. Sidebottom and Mdlle. Labarte were obliged to ride. The walls of snow had fallen in here and there, so that the horses were obliged to flounder through. The scenery was bleak and wintry. The ladies shivered. At length the lake was reached in which the Reuss has its source, and a little beyond it the roofs of the hospice and the inn were visible. In ten minutes the shivering party was assembled in thesalle-à-manger, which was heated, and was ordering dinner.The monks had been banished for many years, and the hospice let by the Canton of Tessin to an inn-keeper of Airolo, who with his worthy wife and family have been in no way inferior in hospitality, in care for the poor travellers, and in providing for the comforts of the rich than were the brothers of old.Signora Lombardi, stout, hale, and smiling, was in the hospice, exerting all her energies to get food ready for the large party that had come in. Wines—the best of North Italy, were to be had, and veal in various forms—but always veal, call it what you will.'Oh! my goodness, gracious me!' cried Mrs. Sidebottom, 'there is a dog—a Mount St. Bernard dog! Oh! the size! the beauty! It must become the rage. Why—I have heard of more than two hundred pounds being given for a tulip, and what would not be given for such a dog as this—and with pulmonary complaint too, that develops on the plains.''You do not mean to say, aunt, that you are going to invest in shares in the Beaple Yeo dog-breeding establishment?' said Philip satirically.'Colonel Yeo are you speaking about?' interrupted Miss Durham eagerly. 'Do tell me—do you think he will establish his claims to the title of Schofield?''He can establish his title to that name whenever he pleases,' said Philip, 'and—once more, if you have any regard for our feelings, you will not mention that person again in our hearing. Oh! here—in this glass on the table—are some draggled specimens of the white fluffy flower you call edelweiss. Perhaps our landlady, Signora Lombardi, will tell us if it grew near this inn.''Oh, signor,' answered the stout woman, 'it is to be found by the searchers, but I have never discovered it. I am too fat to climb, and, besides, my day for edelweiss is over.' She laughed and shook her sides as though she had made a good joke. 'I leave the edelweiss to the young people.' Her eye rested with a sly twinkle, first on the captain and Janet, about whom there could be no doubt, and then on Philip and—her eye hesitated a moment between Salome and Artemisia, and then rested on the latter. Philip looked uneasily out of the little window at the bleak outer world.When dinner was finished the afternoon was advanced. Philip went out in front of the inn, on the platform of rock upon which it is built. Some of the ladies talked of taking a stroll to the head of the Val Tremola, but determined not to go far, they would reserve their strength for the ensuing day. He did not volunteer to accompany them. He had another scheme in his head. Outside the inn was a guide lounging about, smoking and calling to such as passed in the road.Philip signed to him that he desired to speak to him, and the man came to him with alacrity, but shook his head, and pointed to one of the snowpeaks. He could speak only Italian, and Philip only English. They were obliged to converse in dumb show. Philip showed him the flower of edelweiss he had brought from the glass on the table inside. The man nodded his head. Philip raised his eyebrows in note of query and pointed to the rocks around.'Si! si!' answered the man, shaking his head like a poised China mandarin.'All about there? anywhere?' asked Philip, speaking very loud, as though by loudness he could make the man comprehend.'Oh! if it is anywhere I can find it easily.'The man shook his head and again pointed to a snow-peak over which a film of cloud was forming, then being blown away, then forming again.'Do you mean that it is not out there?' asked Philip. 'I knew that as well as you. There are only ice and snow yonder. Bless my soul, what idiots these men are!'Then he went back into the inn to equip himself with gaiters and strong boots, and to fetch his stick, with a chamois horn for a handle, that he had bought. Whilst he was engaged fastening his leggings, he heard the voices of the young ladies outside the house. They were starting for a walk. Presently he descended from his room and studied the map of the district, suspended in thesalle, till he thought he had it well impressed on his brain, after which he sallied forth. The guide was no longer outside. The afternoon was verging to a close, and no one would be likely to require his services, he supposed; consequently he had retired to the lower room of the hospice on a level with the road, where the drivers and carriers, the guides and peasants were regaled with sour wine.Philip was relieved to see that the fellow was no longer there. He might have wanted to come with him and show him the way, and it would have been irksome to trudge beside a man with whom it was not possible to converse; besides, edelweiss was to be found everywhere, Madame Lombardi had said, if looked for on the rocks. Those guides made difficulties about finding it, so as to induce the uninitiated and easily persuaded to engage them to direct them to spots where it grew. Philip resolved to go by himself. He would not go far; he could not lose his way; there were no yawning chasms down which he might tumble that he could see, and avalanches, he was told; fell in the early spring. He must do some climbing, of course, because the tourists would have picked all the edelweiss within reach on both sides of the road, and he must scramble to places they had not ransacked, but he would not go into any danger; he would keep his eye on the hospice, or at least, the road. Along the road he trudged in his heavy boots till he came to a great weather-beaten crucifix, that marked the beginning of the descent on the Italian side. The cross was painted dull red, but the paint had peeled away in patches, blistered by frost or sun. Philip looked up wonderingly at it. How out of place it seemed there, in that wilderness of bare rock and pure snow! He seemed to be in the midst of a primeval world, which had not yet begun to produce green trees and herbs, the fowl and living beasts—all around was utter silence, the world around was lifeless. The sun was behind the great wall of snowy glacier mountains, and the vapour that was collected like smoke on its head, so that the prospect seemed to be that of a world such as existed when there was light but the sun was uncreate. And, in the centre of this inchoate, unvitalized world, stood the crucifix. The mountains looked down on it, the glaciers frowned on it, as a thing of to-day, as though they said, 'We were before ever you were dreamed of, and we shall be long after mankind has ceased to believe in self-devotion, and has come to laugh at every creed save the idolatry of self.'Then Philip diverged from the road, and began to climb. There was a valley opening here from the highest peaks, down which a little rill fell; and on the flank of the mountain which faced the south there was comparatively little snow, and Philip saw tracts of moss and herbage. That would be the garden of the edelweiss; there he must search, and he would find the desired flower without serious trouble.He was surprised to find the distances greater than they appeared. In that highly-rarefied and clear air things far off appeared close, and dimensions as well as distances were deceptive. He found green carpets of dwarf campion, studded with pink flower, dense as moss; and in the bogs soldanella shaking their delicately fringed purple bells—but no edelweiss. Disappointed in his search on the slope which had promised, he crossed the brook and crept along the flank of the opposite mountain; he would turn its shoulder and get to the side well exposed to the sun; that which he had just explored was, he now perceived, shut off from all but vertical rays by the mountain-ridge south of it. He groped and scrambled, turned back, went higher, had long lost sight of the hospice, had not, indeed, remembered to look for it, when suddenly he was enveloped in dense white fog. He could, however, see the sun through it like a copper ball, but only for a minute, and then it sank behind a ridge, at least so he supposed, for it was extinguished gradually. He must now retrace his steps. He dare not advance; he thought he could find his way back. He remembered several landmarks—a rock, on the top of which was some dwarf shrub, like a wig worn by an old fellow he knew at Nottingham, and a furrow which, if he followed it, must lead him to the brook. But he soon found that he had lost all sense of direction; the disappearance of the sun had taken from him the only clue as to the points of the compass.He was hot. He sat down for a moment and wiped his face; the water was streaming off it. He was not as yet alarmed, only vexed—vexed especially at his having made this expedition in vain. He would have to return without the edelweiss.'That is old Jarvis's head with the wig thrust back!' he said, as a nodule of rolled rock appeared through the mist. But when he took a second look at it he doubted.'I wish I had brought a whisky-flask with me,' he muttered; 'I am beginning to feel an ache in my muscles.'He stumbled on, and now, to his alarm, saw that the darkness was closing in rapidly. He had not considered, when he started, that in the South of Europe there is no twilight, and that night comes after day without hours of grace.Now it flashed upon him that what the guide had meant when indicating the mountain-top wreathed in vapour was—not that edelweiss grew there, but that the weather was going to change, or the fog to descend. He hurried on, but did not know in which direction he was going. He was on a steep slope of snow that stretched before him apparently interminably, lost itself in vapour and curled over and enveloped him as in an apple-pie bed, a cold sheet of white below, before, above, behind. And, at that moment, he saw on the rock above him, almost within reach, the white, starry, nodding head of an edelweiss; the woolly flower was burdened with the moisture that had condensed on it from the fog, and was hanging over the stone to shake itself free.With an exclamation of satisfaction Philip sprang up the slope, caught the rock with the hook of his stick, and tore the edelweiss away.Had the crook of his stick been what it professed to be—a chamois' horn, he would have been safe, it would have sustained his weight; but as it was only bone, and the curve came across the grain, it snapped, and Philip shot down the snowy declivity. He still grasped the tuft of edelweiss; he thrust his stick into the snow to arrest his descent; he tore up the snow, twisted the stick in his hand, and shot further down—shot instantaneously out of the fog into dusk, in which everything was distinct, and below he saw a great sweep of snow like a sheet. He looked into it as Sancho Panza into that in which he was being tossed. He drove his heels into the snow, his elbows, his stick, to retard his descent, and suddenly dropped. Then found himself on rubble, still sliding, and brought up with a jerk by a rock. For a few minutes Philip was unconscious. He was aware of a shock, a slide, darkness and noise, that was all. But—where was he? He had vanished from the face of the earth, gone through the surface of snow into a depth beneath. A field of snow had filled the bottom of a valley, and the river ran beneath in a ravine. Nothing could be seen of the cleft, nothing of the river, the smooth sheet of snow hid both; but the force of Philip's descent had broken through that portion of the covering where it was thinnest, near the rock and rubble; he had gone through, and was buried alive. Beneath him, about him, was darkness—pitch darkness; only above could he see the hole through which he had fallen, looking like a silver-gray disc. The air about him was filled with thunder, the pulsating thunder such as he had heard at the fall of the Reuss at the Devil's Bridge, such as he had heard that very day where the river plunged over a wall of rock in the gorge above Hospenthal. The air moreover was as full of water here beneath as it had been above in the fog, but the particles here were much larger. This was the spray cast up by the raging, leaping, headlong water in the abyss.How far down was it to that torrent? Eye could not penetrate, ear could not tell. The vault of snow overhead reverberated with the boom of the water, and cast it back into the gulf as it cast back the up-thrown spray. He could see no water, he could see nothing save the gap overhead.What was he to do? His arms were heavy and numbed with cold. He cautiously lifted one and found that the snow had been driven, even rammed, hard up the sleeve by his descent. He was safe where he lodged, on rock, and he shook out the snow from one sleeve and then the other. In doing this he found the bunch of edelweiss. He did not see it; he felt it up his sleeve; it had been carried there by the snow. He did not throw it away; he left it where it was. What was he to do? His situation was precarious. He might turn giddy and fall over. That terrible fascination there is in an abyss might lay hold of him and draw him down. Artemisia had spoken of that fascination, the fascination of despair. Now he felt it.He tried to scramble up, but the shale slipped away beneath his feet, and he was fain, in an agony of terror to recover his former place on firm rock. It was not practicable to ascend. He leaned back against the stones, that dripped and ran with water, the melting of the snow overhead, the condensation of the foam from the river beneath. The water condensed also on his forehead and ran off his brows—water cold as ice. Where his fingers worked hollows in the loose soil, the water settled, and soaked his fingers and turned them dead with cold.Was it that there was rhythm in the fall of the water, or was it that his pulses beat in his ear and gave rhythm to the continuous thunder? He could not tell. He heard the throb of sound, or it seemed to him to be the rattle of the machinery of his mill at Mergatroyd multiplied to infinity.His feet had glowed with the exercise, but now they began gradually to lose heat, and turn stone-cold. In time, they would cease to have feeling in them, then in numbness and weariness his knees would buckle under him, and he would shoot head-long, like a diver into the black void. How far down was it to the water—to death—he wondered. Would he feel—be conscious of the shock over the edge before he went into the water, or crash with his head against a rock? He had heard a fellow clerk say that as he was drowning the whole of his past life rushed before his eyes and spread itself out as a panorama, a succession of scenes, in a moment of time, twenty years unfolded leisurely in one second, displaying every incident, not crowded but in sequence, and all articulate. Would it be so as he went over the edge, in the span of time between the rocks on which he stood and the clash and extinction below? His heart grew faint; and he felt in him the qualm that a bad sailor knows as the vessel plunges into a deep sea-trough.But—surely he would be sought by the people at the inn. Certainly he would be sought, but in what direction would they look for him? How trace him in the mist? How suppose he was below the surface of the smooth quilt of snow in the Val Tremola, sunk out of sight, hanging over a boiling torrent? And now down past Philip ran a thread of silver; it startled him, and he looked up the line to see a glimpse of the moon appear above the hole through which he had fallen. The fog must have cleared away, or be clinging partially to certain mountain-tops. If the moon were clear, then the search for him could be prosecuted with some chance of success. But Philip was not over-confident. His powers of endurance were ebbing. He raised his feet and stamped on the rock; he could feel the shock in his joints, but not in his feet—they were dead. His hands were stiff. He put his fingers into his mouth, but this only momentarily restored vitality. After the feeling had gone the muscular power would become paralyzed. He was not hungry, but squeamish. He looked again at the moon, and continued watching it eagerly; it slid forward and shone full through the window of his dungeon. The light fell on rocky point and rill of leaping water, but could not illumine the abyss below, out of which rose the voices and thunderings—the voices of death, the thunderings preceding judgment.And now the white ray of the moon smote down into the gulf below his feet and disclosed a shoot of the purest, most sparkling silver, the leaping torrent as it danced over a ledge into utter darkness, into which no moon-ray could dive.Suddenly from above a mass of snow detached itself and fell past him, a mass so big that had it smitten him it would have carried him down with it.The side of the hole in the snow-dome grazed the moon and ate more and still more out of it. Philip looked with fear—he felt that when the whole of the moon had passed beyond that opening, and not another ray fell into it, when again the darkness of that vault would become utter, hope would die away from his heart, and he must fall.But as he stood looking up, watching the slipping away of the moon, he saw sharp cut against it a black something, and heard, above the roar of the water, the discordant sounds of a bark. He was found—found by one of the hospice dogs.The first giddiness of renewed hope almost overcame him. He trembled as in a fit, and his knees bent so that only by a supreme effort of the will could he brace them again. He believed he heard shouts, but was uncertain.What followed remained ever after confused in his memory. He heard some Italian words in his ear, saw or felt someone by him, was grasped, a rope fastened round him, he heard himself encouraged to make an effort, tried to scramble, helped by the rope, broke through the snow, was in the upper world again, was surrounded, had brandy poured down his throat.Then he was seized by the hand and shaken.'Old fellow! Phil! 'Pon my word, you have given us a turn. We have been hunting you everywhere.''Lambert!''Yes, Phil, and who'd have thought to find you trapped under the snow?'The men of the party urged immediate movement to restore circulation. Philip's hand, when dropped by Lambert, was seized again and held tightly, but he had lost feeling in it. Nor could he see clearly; he was dazzled by the light—the brilliance of the moon and the glare of the snow—after the darkness below.'Who is that laughing?' he asked suddenly.'Oh—Miss Durham,' answered Lambert.'And—who is that crying?'A whisper in his ear—'It is I—Salome.'

CHAPTER XLVI.

ARTEMISIA.

'There is the restaurant,' said Miss Durham, 'and being painted within and without, impossible for us to enter. What say you to walking on to the head of the lake? I want to look over thecol, and see the mountains of the Rhine valley above Dissentis.'

Philip hesitated, and again looked back.

'I see,' said Miss Durham; 'you are afraid of stepping out of your cage.'

'Not at all,' answered Philip, flushing. 'I am prepared to go to the end of this trough in the mountains with you, but I greatly doubt seeing much from the further end.'

'Well—if we see nothing, we can talk. Have you looked about you much since we began the ascent?'

'The time has flown,' said Philip, looking at his watch. 'It seems to me but a few minutes since.'

The long dreary valley or basin in which lay the lake was apparently closed at the end by a hill surmounted by a cross or flagstaff. The road ran along the north side of the lake, without a tree to shade it. The party behind, when they came to the restaurant, could not fail to see them if they continued along the road, and might follow, or await them there.

Philip walked on, but no longer gave Artemisia Durham his arm. He saw far away in the rear Mrs. Sidebottom signalling with her parasol; but whether to him, or to the Labarte girls who were dispersed in the morass at the end of the lake, picking butterwort, soldanella, and primula, he could not tell.

His eyes were on the ground. He was thinking of his companion, what a strange life hers must be, incomprehensible to him. He felt how, if he were thrown into it, he would not know how to strike out and hold his chin above water. At the same time his heart beat fast with a wild vain desire for a freer life than that of commerce.

The restraints to which he had been subjected had compressed and shaped him, as the Chinese lady's shoe compresses and shapes her foot—but the pressure had been painful; it had marked him, but the marks were ever sensitive. The ancient robe of the Carmelite fathers was of white wool barred with black, and they pretended that they derived this habit from the mantle of Elijah, which he had dropped as he was being carried up to heaven, and the mantle had touched as it fell the spokes of the chariot of fire in which he ascended, and was scorched in stripes. Philip, and many another successful man of business who has been exalted to a position of comfort and warmth, has the inner garment of his soul scarred by the wheels of the chariot in which he has mounted. Philip felt his own awkwardness, his want of ease in other society than that narrow circle in which he had turned, his inability to move with that freedom and confidence which characterizes those born and reared in generous society. Even with this girl—this Bohemian—he was as one walking and talking with chains to his feet and a gag to his tongue. She was right; he was born to be at ease everywhere, to be able everywhere to walk upright, and to look around him; he had been put in a cramping position, tied hand and foot, and his head set in such a vice as photographers employ to give what they consider support and steadiness, and he was distorted, stiffened, contracted. Had his life been happy? He had never accounted it so—it had been formal at the solicitor's desk, and it was formal in the factory. Was man made and launched into life to be a piece of clockwork? He had thought, acted, lived an automaton life, and taken his pleasure in measuring glasses, never in full and free draughts.

'Have you had a happy existence?' he asked thoughtfully.'

'Oh yes, the birds are happy; all nature is happy so long as it is free. It is in the cage that the bird mopes, and in the pot that the plant sickens.'

Had Philip looked in her face he would have seen a strange expression of triumph pass over it. She had carried her first point and gained his interest.

'Here,' she said, 'is a large rock above the water; let us sit on it, and I will tell you about myself. You had no confidence in me, and would not give me your story. I will return good for evil, and show you my past. I agree with you, there will be no view of the mountains above Dissentis from thecol. It is not worth our while going on. Besides, I am tired.'

She took a seat on a broad boulder that had fallen from the mountains, and hung fast, wedged on one side, disengaged on the other, over the crystal water that, stirred by the light wind, lapped its supports. Looking into the clear flood beneath, they could see the char darting about, enjoying the sun that penetrated the water and made it to them an element of diffused light.

Artemisia pointed to them, and said:

'Who would not rather be one of these than a goldfish in a glass bottle?'

Philip at once recalled the pond at Mergatroyd, with the hot water spurted into it from the engine, in which the goldfish teemed, and the globes in every cottage-window supplied with the unfortunate captives from this pond, swimming round and round all day, all night, every year, seeing nothing novel, without an interest, a zest in life. Such had his career been; he, a fish—not a gold one, nor even a silver one till recently, but quite a common brown fish—in a common glass receiver full of stale water, renewed periodically, but always flat.

He looked at the darting char with interest.

'We are in the land of freedom,' said Miss Durham. 'Then don't stand on the rock like a semaphore. Sit down beside me, and let your feet dangle over the water. Oh! as Polixenes says, "to be boy eternal!"'

'"With such a day to-morrow as to-day,"' added Philip, completing the quotation, as he seated himself on the rock.

How wonderfully brilliant the sun was at that height! So utterly unlike the rusty ball that gave light at Mergatroyd, and there gave it charily. How intense the blue of the sky!—dark as the deep-belled gentian, not the washed-out cobalt of an English heaven. And the air was fresh; it made the heart dance, and the pulses throb faster, with a trip and a fandango such as the blood never attains in our gray and sober land.

At a few hundred yards' distance was a road-mender leisurely performing his task, repairing a track made by a stone that had leaped from the cliffs above, torn up the road, and then plunged into the lake. Far behind could be seen Mrs. Sidebottom flourishing her parasol and gathering the rest of the disconnected party together before the restaurant.

It was clear that she had decided they were not to go further, but to rest at one of the tables in the open air beside the lake, till it pleased the two of the advanced party to return.

Had they been seen? Philip asked himself. Where he and Artemisia now sat, they were screened from observation from the tavern, though not from the road-mender, who was ahead on the way.

'I am not quite sure,' said Philip, and he fidgeted with his fingers as he said it, 'I think I ought to be going back to the party—to my aunt.'

'To your wife, you mean. Why not say so? No; you shall not go. There are plenty with her, five in all, and I—I have only you.'

A flutter and then a scalding rush of blood through Philip's veins.

'This is the land of freedom,' said Artemisia; 'as you came over the Lake of Lucerne you saw Rütli, the sacred spot where the three confederates swore to shake off the chains that bound them and to be free, and its freedom is the glory of Switzerland now. Let this be Rütli. Break those conventional bonds that have tied you, and as a pledge remain seated and listen to me. Remember what I have told you—I want to give you a peep into my past life, and have your advice.'

Philip made no more objection, but he plucked little scraps of sedum that grew on the stone and threw them into the water. Presently fish came to snap at them, and turned away in disgust, leaving them, when they saw they were not flies nor worms.

'My mother,' said Miss Durham, 'was a German—that is how I can speak the language with as much ease as English. She was married to my father shortly after her arrival in America, and she never acquired the English tongue perfectly; she always spoke it with an accent and intonation that was foreign. But, though she did not acquire perfectly the language of the country of her adoption, she assimilated its prejudices pretty easily, and held them with that intensity which characterizes, in my experience, acquired prejudices, especially when unreasonable. My father had in him a couple of drops of dark blood, and although my mother thought nothing of that when she took him, she speedily came to regard it as an indelible stain. She threw it in his teeth, she fretted over it, and when I was born did not regard me with the love a child has a right to exact from its mother. The continual quarrels and growing antipathy between my parents led at length to their separation. My father left, and I believe is dead; I never saw him after they parted. He may have married again. I do not know; but I believe he is dead. He made no inquiries after me and my mother, to whom I was a burden and a reproach; she looked about for, and secured another, a more suitable partner, a German, working in a factory. They had children, fair-haired, moon-faced, thick-set—and I was alone amidst them, the drudge or enemy of all. I had a good voice, and I was made nurse to the youngest children, and to still them I was accustomed to sing to them. The eldest boy had a clear good voice also, and him I liked best of all my half-brothers and sisters. It was a great amusement to us to follow brass bands, or Italians with organs and monkeys; and when we saw how that these obtained money, my brother Thomas and I agreed together that we would try our luck. One day—it was the day of the Declaration of Independence, when everyone was out and all enjoying themselves—Tom and I went into the most-frequented avenue of our town, and began to sing. Carriages with ladies and gentlemen passed, and troops of people in their best clothes, all in good humour, and all seeking amusement. We began to sing "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten," Tom taking a second. Some Germans at once gathered about us, and threw coppers into Tom's cap. Presently a man came up with a red beard and a violin. He stood for a long time listening, and then instead of giving us money he asked where we lived, and what our parents were. I told him, and next day he came to see my mother. He was a musician, and he offered to buy me of her, that he might teach me to sing and accompany him.'

Philip's face grew gray, and the lines in it became more marked. He no longer threw bits of sedum at the fish. He clutched the rock with both hands.

'And—what did your mother say?' he asked.

'She sold me—for seventy-five dollars.'

Philip shuddered. He turned and looked in Artemisia's face—to see, perhaps, if her story had left its traces there.

'She wanted a hundred dollars, he offered fifty. They came to terms for seventy-five.'

Philip said nothing. He looked down into the bottle-green depths of the lake, and for some moments Artemisia was silent also.

Presently—with a strange, forced voice—Philip asked:

'How old were you when this transaction took place?'

'Still a child. I travelled about with the red-bearded man, and he taught me to sing, trained me well, and at concerts made me sing, and I got great applause. I liked that. I was happier with him than at my mother's; I had no babies to carry about, and to hush; none of the house drudging to do. Besides, he was kind, and he was an honourable man after his fashion. He treated me as if I were his daughter, and took immense pains to form me to be a public singer. But always the burden of his song was, "See what you cost me, what trouble you give me! Afterwards, when you are a finished artist, you must be engaged to me for a set of years and repay me for my pains." I had not a word against that. I was quite aware that I was indebted to him, and I intended to show my gratitude by doing as he required. So I grew up, going about with him, and he never allowed me to be treated with impertinence by any man; he always protected me, though not always in the most heroic manner. Once, in California, we were performing, he with his fiddle and I singing, at a liquor-bar, when a half tipsy gold-digger became offensively attentive to me. My master made me leave the place with him, and he ran away with me to San Francisco. I asked him why? He said that he must do that, or shoot or be shot by that fellow, and he had no wish for either. I remember sulking; I would have liked to see them fight about me.'

'How long did you remain with this man?'

'Till I was eighteen, and then, just as I was fit for something better, and to earn more money, my master spoiled his own game.'

'How so?'

'He wanted to marry me. I reckon he thought he could secure me best that way. If he had not asked me, and himself pestered me about this, I would have stayed with him and let him have a share—a lion's share, of my earnings; but he would not leave me in peace—he spoiled his own game by that, and set me free. I left him.'

'And then?'

'Oh! I have been independent since then. I have sung in America, but I have met with most success in Germany. I go about where I will. I have no master. I earn enough to enable me out of the opera season to go to the mountains or the seaside. This is a dull spot, and I would not have made so long a stay in it had it not been that I was ordered to the elevated air here, because I had suffered from a relaxed or overstrained organ. Now you know my story. What do you think of it?'

Philip was watching her face, and feeling as if he received a shot in his heart every time she turned her splendid full eyes on him, and his hands trembled as they held the stone. 'Ever since I left my red-bearded master I have been alone—alone in the world; I have had no one to whom to cling, no mind to which to go for advice in times of doubt and distress. Alone—do you know what it is to be alone?'

'Yes,' said Philip; he let sink his head on his breast, and looked down into the water. He also had spent a lonely youth, but in what opposite circumstances!

'You can have no idea,' she continued, 'how I have longed, with agony of heart, for someone—someone whose judgment I could trust, whose mind was superior, whose experience had been made in just those departments of life to which I am strange. I have longed for such an one, whom I could regard as a very dear friend, and to whom I could go in trouble and perplexity. But I have no one! For all these years I have been as much alone as the man in the moon.'

Philip put his hand to his collar. He tried to straighten the points which had become limp—his hand shook so that he could do nothing with them; he was being burnt up, consumed, by her eyes which were on him as she spoke of her desire to find a friend.

'Is it not strange,' she said, 'that I who have been preaching freedom should feel the need of a bar—not of many, but just one to hold by. Do you know what it is to stand at the verge of a precipice? To stand on a spire top where there is sheer abyss on every side? Can you imagine the giddiness, the despair that comes over one? My place is one surrounded by precipices, dangers, everywhere; I see hands thrust out to give me the push to send me over, but not one—no, not one—to hold me.'

'You have mine,' said Philip, and laid his on her wrist. She took his hand and pressed it thankfully.

'Now,' she continued, 'you can understand what it must be to one on a dizzy peak, or apex of a building, if there be a something—a bar even, to which to hold. Then the abysses below can be gazed into with impunity. Holding to that support, the dangers are no longer dreadful, there is no more fear of falling out of sheer desperation.'

She let go Philip's hand, and stood up.

'It is time to return to our party. Oh, what a relief it has been to me to pour out my heart to you! And now, in return, tell me about Colonel Yeo.'

The sound of that name at once brought Philip to his senses. He rose to his feet and stepped into the road.

'I am sorry to be unable to tell you about him, because I know little about him. As I said before, we belong to different spheres.'

They walked back together, talking of the weather and the mountains and flowers, and found the rest at a table. The restaurant was under repair, and no refreshments could be obtained there.

'Well?' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'you have kept us waiting a long time.'

'We have been waiting for you,' said Miss Durham. 'We thought you would come on to the head of the pass.'

Philip caught Salome's eye and avoided it. She looked wistfully, wonderingly at him. What did he mean by at one minute treating the American lady with coldness and rudeness, and then reversing his behaviour towards her absolutely and at once?

She took her husband's arm as they walked back to Andermatt. Philip was silent. He thought about the story he had heard, of the loneliness of the poor girl who had confided her history to him.

'What a long way this is, dear!' said Philip. 'It seems an age since we began the descent.'

CHAPTER XLVII.

EDELWEISS.

Philip could not sleep during the night that followed the expedition to the Ober-Alp. His mind was occupied with what he had heard. He thought of the poor girl, sold by her mother; of her rude apprenticeship, of the risks she had undergone; beautiful, young, attractive. He tossed in his bed. What would become of her? Could she stand exposed to the dangers that beset her and not, as she half-threatened, throw herself over? What could be done for her?

She had spoken of the freedom of her life as giving zest to existence, but too great freedom may pall; it had palled on the girl, and she had put up her hands, pleading to be fitted with light but strong manacles. What a contrast was to be found between his life and hers! He had been cramped and hedged about with restrictions: she had enjoyed an excess of liberty. Virtue, says Aristotle, is to be found in a happy medium, and not virtue only, but the plenitude and manifoldness of life can only unfurl itself in a happy medium between excess of freedom and oppressive restriction. Philip was and ever had been conscious that his abilities had not been allowed due expansion in the career into which he had been squeezed; and this American girl, with doubtless splendid capabilities of mind and heart, had allowed them to run riot and dissipate their fragrance in untutored independence. When she fixed her great dark eyes on him, what a thrill passed through him! and when she took his hand, fire ran up his veins, and broke into a blaze in his heart.

What could he do for her? How was it possible for him to assist her? to be to her the wise friend she desired? If he had made her acquaintance two years ago it would have been another matter, he would have thrown himself at her feet—metaphorically, of course—and asked her to take him as her guide, protector, and friend, to tie up her future with his, and so each would have contributed something to the other to make up what each lacked. Then what a different sort of life his would have been! His present mode of existence was similar, only better in quality, to that he had led before; one had been a sordid drudgery, the present was a gilded drudgery. The difference was in the adjective that qualified, not in the substance of which the stuff of his life was made up. He had now to devote the same attention to figures and technicalities and details as before. The figures, technicalities, details, were formerly relative to conveyancing, they now concerned linen manufacture. Such acquaintances as he had formed at Nottingham had not been interested in much beyond their business, and the acquaintances he had formed at Mergatroyd had their interests concentrated on their business. Art, literature, science, had been to those he knew at Nottingham, and were to those he knew at Mergatroyd, names, not ideas. Was life worth living in such surroundings, tied to such a routine? It is said that man as he gets older fossilizes, the currents of his blood choke the arteries, veins, vessels of heart and brain, till like furred waterpipes and crusted boilers they can no longer act. But was not the life to which he was condemned, with its monotony, its constraint, its isolation from the current of intellectual life—a mechanizing of man? Philip knew that he was losing, had lost, much of his individuality, almost all the spontaneity that had been lodged in him by the Creator, and was growing more and more into a machine, like his spinning-jennies and steam looms. He thought of Salome. Had she many ideas outside the round of ordinary life? Was she not an ennobled, sweeter lodging-house keeper? She had been well educated, but her mind did not naturally soar into the ideal world. It went up, spasmodically, like the grasshoppers, a little way, and was down on its feet again directly. She was interested in her baby, anxious to have her house neat, the cobwebs all away, the linen in perfect order, all the towels marked and numbered, the servants in thorough activity, the quotients for the cake and pudding measured in scales, not guessed. She was devoted to her flowers also—he recollected the hyacinths, and certainly they had filled his room with fragrance and anticipations of spring. But he had sent her to sleep by reading aloud Addison's 'Spectator,' and when he tried Shakespeare he found that she had no insight into the characters, and accepted the beauties rather than seized on them.

What, Philip asked with a tremor—what if he had never met Salome, and had met Artemisia? Then indeed he would have been transported on strong wings out of the world of common-place, and the sound of common talk, and the murky atmosphere of vulgar interests, into a region where he would have shaken off his half-acquired habits of formality, his shyness, his cumbrousness and angularity, and become light-hearted, easy, and independent.

In dreams we sometimes imagine ourselves to be flying; we rise from the ground and labour indefatigably with our arms as wings; and Philip was now dreaming, though not asleep, fancying that he could part with some of his gravity and by an effort maintain himself in another sphere. He had missed his way in life; he was never designed to become a piece of clockwork, but to enjoy life, seize it with both hands, and hold it fast, and drink the mingled cup to the dregs, crowned with roses. Hitherto he had not suspected that the blood in his arteries was an effervescing wine; he had supposed it very still.

What was to be done for Artemisia? It would be inhuman, not to be reconciled with conscience, to turn away, to cast her off, when she entreated him to be her friend and help her with counsel. But how could he assist her? A drowning, despairing girl cried out for help. Could he suffer her to sink? Had he not promised her his assistance?

'I am positively determined,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, next day, 'that we shall go to-morrow to the hospice. I want to see it, and the dogs, and the scenery. So I have ordered carriages; and what is more, we will stay there a day or two; then, such as like, can descend the Val Tremola, and such as like can climb the Pizzo Centrale.'

'I have no objection.' answered Salome. 'We must not leave Andermatt until we have been over the pass and seen the beauties or terrors of the further side. What do you say, Philip?'

'I shall be glad.'

He stood up from table.

'Where are you going, Philip?'

'To Miss Durham, to invite her to join us.'

'Of course,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'Let me see, we are eight. Oh! it won't matter, one of the girls can sit outside. The drivers always walk going up hill, so that there will be five in one carriage, and five in the other. And Miss Durham will pay her share. Besides, if there is any climbing and excursioning to be done, she will pay half of a guide.'

But—strange caprice in Salome, she put her hand on Philip's arm, and said, in a low tone:

'No! Philip; no!'

Philip looked at her with surprise. Why should she not wish the American lady to join the party? She was her friend. She had been so desirous that he and Miss Durham should conclude peace, and now that peace was agreed upon, Salome said, 'No! Philip; no!' when he proposed to invite the Chicago girl to join them. How capricious! How unreasonable Salome was! She forms a wish, he hastens to accord it, and lo! she hangs back and is dissatisfied.

His aunt's favourite expression, 'Fiddlestick-ends!' rose to his lips. He was not the man to be turned about by the wayward, unreasoned fancies of his wife.

'Why not?' he asked.

But Salome gave him no answer. She had formed no motive in her heart for asking him not to invite Miss Durham; she had not considered a reason. She reddened to the roots of her hair, but neither gave a reason nor repeated her request.

There lingered all that day a little something, a dissonance of mood between Philip and Salome; neither could account for it, and neither attempted to account for it. He was silent; he wandered about the hotel and the grounds with a hope to light on Miss Durham He did not go into thesalleor on the terrace, into the reading-room, or about the garden searching for her. He did not ask the waiters where she was, but he looked about wherever he went, expecting to see her, and when he found her not in the reading-room orsalle, on the terrace or in the garden, he felt that the place was uninteresting, and he must perforce go elsewhere.

Salome was gentle as usual, spending much time with her baby, showing it to those guests who were so gracious as to notice it, and smiling with pleasure when it was admired; but she was not herself, not as happy as she had been. Hitherto the only jar to her content was her husband's prejudice against Artemisia; now the jar arose—she did not explain to herself how it arose, but she wished that Philip had not gone so far in his change of sentiment. Yet with her natural modesty and shrinking from casting blame, she reproached herself for grudging to her friend that friendship which she had herself invited Philip to bestow.

The next day was lovely, with a cloudless sky, and the carriages departed. Some grumbling ensued and had to be resisted, on the part of the drivers, because five persons were crammed into one carriage. Mrs. Sidebottom pointed out that the driver would walk. That was true, was the reply, but not till Hospenthal was reached; moreover the horses could not draw more than four up the St. Gothard road to the hospice. There was still snow over a considerable tract; however, at length the difference was overcome by the promise of a small extra payment—two and a half francs extra—which threw such energy into the horses, and so increased their power of traction, that they consented for that price to draw five instead of four persons up the ascent from Hospenthal to the hospice. In one carriage, that in front, sat Mrs. Sidebottom, Janet and the captain, and one of the girls, the youngest. In the other carriage were Salome and Miss Durham, Philip, and the two other Labarte girls.

But Philip did not remain long in it; at the steep ascent above the little picturesque cluster of houses, church, and castle that constitute Hospenthal, he got out and walked. The banks were overgrown with the Alpine rhododendron, as flames bursting out of the low olive-green bushes, and Philip hastened to pick bunches for the ladies. By a singular chance the best flowers and those best arranged went to Miss Durham.

'See dere?' said the driver, taking off his hat. 'Vot ish dat? Dat is edelweiss. You shee?'

He held his dirty brown cap to Philip and showed him a tuft of white flowers as though made out of wool. Philip had never seen the like before.

'Are these found here, in these mountains?'

'Jawohl! round here. Up high! Shee!' The man pointed with his whip to the rocky heights. 'She grow up very high, dat vlower you give to your loaf!'

'Loaf?'

'Jawohl!' The man winked, put his hand to his heart. 'To your loaf—shatz! You undershtand.'

Philip flushed dark. He was hot with walking.

'Let me have some of that flower. You shall have it back. No, thank you, not your hat.'

The man pulled the blossoms out from the dirty ribbon that retained them. 'Dey is dry. But you should shee when dey fresh.'

Philip took the little flowers to the side of the carriage.

'Look at these,' he said. 'The man calls them—no, I cannot say the name.'

'Edelweiss,' said Salome; 'I have seen it dried in the shop windows. It is rare.'

'Edelweiss means the noble white flower,' said Miss Durham. 'It grows far from human habitation, and is much sought after. I have never found it myself, and never had any fresh picked given to me.'

'Would you like some?' asked Philip.

'Very much indeed,' answered Artemisia.

'If it be possible to get any, you shall have it,' he said. Then he walked on.

The fore carriage was stopped, and Mrs. Sidebottom was descending with Claudine Labarte, whom she had persuaded to get out with her and pick flowers, thus leaving the captain and Janet by themselves.

'Before long,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'we shall be beyond the line where flowers grow, so we must make the best of our opportunity now, Miss Labarte.'

Then Mrs. Sidebottom fell back to where Philip was and took his arm, and pressed it, looked up at him humorously and said, 'I have a bit of news to tell you. He is going to propose. That is why I have got Félicité out of the carriage.'

'Who? Lambert?'

'Lambert, of course. Not the driver. And to Janet. Have you not seen it coming?'

'But perhaps she will not have him.'

'Fiddlestick-ends! Of course she will. Don't you see that she likes him, and has been drawing him on? Besides, I have sounded her. The only difficulty is about Salome.'

'How can she be a difficulty?'

'Oh, she may think it too soon for them to get married when Mrs. Cusworth died so recently.'

'Then they can postpone the marriage.'

'Fiddle-faddle! Of course not. Always strike whilst the iron is hot. That is edelweiss in your hand, is it? Oh, could you manage to find or get a man to find some quite fresh, for Lambert to present to Janet. It is the correct thing in the Alps. The graceful accompaniment of a declaration.'

'I will try to get some,' said Philip.

'Lambert, you see, will be too much engaged with Janet to go far himself; besides, he is not able to take great exertion. Climbing has a deteriorating effect on the trouser-knees, it makes them baggy. You will get him some?'

'I will go searching for edelweiss when we reach the hospice,' said Philip. To himself he muttered, 'But not for Lambert and Janet.'

CHAPTER XLVIII.

TRAPPED.

For the last hour of the ascent the carriages passed through snow, not continuous, but between walls cut in the avalanches and drifts that had formed in the basins. The air was cold. The ground was so wet through melted snow that Philip and Mrs. Sidebottom and Mdlle. Labarte were obliged to ride. The walls of snow had fallen in here and there, so that the horses were obliged to flounder through. The scenery was bleak and wintry. The ladies shivered. At length the lake was reached in which the Reuss has its source, and a little beyond it the roofs of the hospice and the inn were visible. In ten minutes the shivering party was assembled in thesalle-à-manger, which was heated, and was ordering dinner.

The monks had been banished for many years, and the hospice let by the Canton of Tessin to an inn-keeper of Airolo, who with his worthy wife and family have been in no way inferior in hospitality, in care for the poor travellers, and in providing for the comforts of the rich than were the brothers of old.

Signora Lombardi, stout, hale, and smiling, was in the hospice, exerting all her energies to get food ready for the large party that had come in. Wines—the best of North Italy, were to be had, and veal in various forms—but always veal, call it what you will.

'Oh! my goodness, gracious me!' cried Mrs. Sidebottom, 'there is a dog—a Mount St. Bernard dog! Oh! the size! the beauty! It must become the rage. Why—I have heard of more than two hundred pounds being given for a tulip, and what would not be given for such a dog as this—and with pulmonary complaint too, that develops on the plains.'

'You do not mean to say, aunt, that you are going to invest in shares in the Beaple Yeo dog-breeding establishment?' said Philip satirically.

'Colonel Yeo are you speaking about?' interrupted Miss Durham eagerly. 'Do tell me—do you think he will establish his claims to the title of Schofield?'

'He can establish his title to that name whenever he pleases,' said Philip, 'and—once more, if you have any regard for our feelings, you will not mention that person again in our hearing. Oh! here—in this glass on the table—are some draggled specimens of the white fluffy flower you call edelweiss. Perhaps our landlady, Signora Lombardi, will tell us if it grew near this inn.'

'Oh, signor,' answered the stout woman, 'it is to be found by the searchers, but I have never discovered it. I am too fat to climb, and, besides, my day for edelweiss is over.' She laughed and shook her sides as though she had made a good joke. 'I leave the edelweiss to the young people.' Her eye rested with a sly twinkle, first on the captain and Janet, about whom there could be no doubt, and then on Philip and—her eye hesitated a moment between Salome and Artemisia, and then rested on the latter. Philip looked uneasily out of the little window at the bleak outer world.

When dinner was finished the afternoon was advanced. Philip went out in front of the inn, on the platform of rock upon which it is built. Some of the ladies talked of taking a stroll to the head of the Val Tremola, but determined not to go far, they would reserve their strength for the ensuing day. He did not volunteer to accompany them. He had another scheme in his head. Outside the inn was a guide lounging about, smoking and calling to such as passed in the road.

Philip signed to him that he desired to speak to him, and the man came to him with alacrity, but shook his head, and pointed to one of the snowpeaks. He could speak only Italian, and Philip only English. They were obliged to converse in dumb show. Philip showed him the flower of edelweiss he had brought from the glass on the table inside. The man nodded his head. Philip raised his eyebrows in note of query and pointed to the rocks around.

'Si! si!' answered the man, shaking his head like a poised China mandarin.

'All about there? anywhere?' asked Philip, speaking very loud, as though by loudness he could make the man comprehend.

'Oh! if it is anywhere I can find it easily.'

The man shook his head and again pointed to a snow-peak over which a film of cloud was forming, then being blown away, then forming again.

'Do you mean that it is not out there?' asked Philip. 'I knew that as well as you. There are only ice and snow yonder. Bless my soul, what idiots these men are!'

Then he went back into the inn to equip himself with gaiters and strong boots, and to fetch his stick, with a chamois horn for a handle, that he had bought. Whilst he was engaged fastening his leggings, he heard the voices of the young ladies outside the house. They were starting for a walk. Presently he descended from his room and studied the map of the district, suspended in thesalle, till he thought he had it well impressed on his brain, after which he sallied forth. The guide was no longer outside. The afternoon was verging to a close, and no one would be likely to require his services, he supposed; consequently he had retired to the lower room of the hospice on a level with the road, where the drivers and carriers, the guides and peasants were regaled with sour wine.

Philip was relieved to see that the fellow was no longer there. He might have wanted to come with him and show him the way, and it would have been irksome to trudge beside a man with whom it was not possible to converse; besides, edelweiss was to be found everywhere, Madame Lombardi had said, if looked for on the rocks. Those guides made difficulties about finding it, so as to induce the uninitiated and easily persuaded to engage them to direct them to spots where it grew. Philip resolved to go by himself. He would not go far; he could not lose his way; there were no yawning chasms down which he might tumble that he could see, and avalanches, he was told; fell in the early spring. He must do some climbing, of course, because the tourists would have picked all the edelweiss within reach on both sides of the road, and he must scramble to places they had not ransacked, but he would not go into any danger; he would keep his eye on the hospice, or at least, the road. Along the road he trudged in his heavy boots till he came to a great weather-beaten crucifix, that marked the beginning of the descent on the Italian side. The cross was painted dull red, but the paint had peeled away in patches, blistered by frost or sun. Philip looked up wonderingly at it. How out of place it seemed there, in that wilderness of bare rock and pure snow! He seemed to be in the midst of a primeval world, which had not yet begun to produce green trees and herbs, the fowl and living beasts—all around was utter silence, the world around was lifeless. The sun was behind the great wall of snowy glacier mountains, and the vapour that was collected like smoke on its head, so that the prospect seemed to be that of a world such as existed when there was light but the sun was uncreate. And, in the centre of this inchoate, unvitalized world, stood the crucifix. The mountains looked down on it, the glaciers frowned on it, as a thing of to-day, as though they said, 'We were before ever you were dreamed of, and we shall be long after mankind has ceased to believe in self-devotion, and has come to laugh at every creed save the idolatry of self.'

Then Philip diverged from the road, and began to climb. There was a valley opening here from the highest peaks, down which a little rill fell; and on the flank of the mountain which faced the south there was comparatively little snow, and Philip saw tracts of moss and herbage. That would be the garden of the edelweiss; there he must search, and he would find the desired flower without serious trouble.

He was surprised to find the distances greater than they appeared. In that highly-rarefied and clear air things far off appeared close, and dimensions as well as distances were deceptive. He found green carpets of dwarf campion, studded with pink flower, dense as moss; and in the bogs soldanella shaking their delicately fringed purple bells—but no edelweiss. Disappointed in his search on the slope which had promised, he crossed the brook and crept along the flank of the opposite mountain; he would turn its shoulder and get to the side well exposed to the sun; that which he had just explored was, he now perceived, shut off from all but vertical rays by the mountain-ridge south of it. He groped and scrambled, turned back, went higher, had long lost sight of the hospice, had not, indeed, remembered to look for it, when suddenly he was enveloped in dense white fog. He could, however, see the sun through it like a copper ball, but only for a minute, and then it sank behind a ridge, at least so he supposed, for it was extinguished gradually. He must now retrace his steps. He dare not advance; he thought he could find his way back. He remembered several landmarks—a rock, on the top of which was some dwarf shrub, like a wig worn by an old fellow he knew at Nottingham, and a furrow which, if he followed it, must lead him to the brook. But he soon found that he had lost all sense of direction; the disappearance of the sun had taken from him the only clue as to the points of the compass.

He was hot. He sat down for a moment and wiped his face; the water was streaming off it. He was not as yet alarmed, only vexed—vexed especially at his having made this expedition in vain. He would have to return without the edelweiss.

'That is old Jarvis's head with the wig thrust back!' he said, as a nodule of rolled rock appeared through the mist. But when he took a second look at it he doubted.

'I wish I had brought a whisky-flask with me,' he muttered; 'I am beginning to feel an ache in my muscles.'

He stumbled on, and now, to his alarm, saw that the darkness was closing in rapidly. He had not considered, when he started, that in the South of Europe there is no twilight, and that night comes after day without hours of grace.

Now it flashed upon him that what the guide had meant when indicating the mountain-top wreathed in vapour was—not that edelweiss grew there, but that the weather was going to change, or the fog to descend. He hurried on, but did not know in which direction he was going. He was on a steep slope of snow that stretched before him apparently interminably, lost itself in vapour and curled over and enveloped him as in an apple-pie bed, a cold sheet of white below, before, above, behind. And, at that moment, he saw on the rock above him, almost within reach, the white, starry, nodding head of an edelweiss; the woolly flower was burdened with the moisture that had condensed on it from the fog, and was hanging over the stone to shake itself free.

With an exclamation of satisfaction Philip sprang up the slope, caught the rock with the hook of his stick, and tore the edelweiss away.

Had the crook of his stick been what it professed to be—a chamois' horn, he would have been safe, it would have sustained his weight; but as it was only bone, and the curve came across the grain, it snapped, and Philip shot down the snowy declivity. He still grasped the tuft of edelweiss; he thrust his stick into the snow to arrest his descent; he tore up the snow, twisted the stick in his hand, and shot further down—shot instantaneously out of the fog into dusk, in which everything was distinct, and below he saw a great sweep of snow like a sheet. He looked into it as Sancho Panza into that in which he was being tossed. He drove his heels into the snow, his elbows, his stick, to retard his descent, and suddenly dropped. Then found himself on rubble, still sliding, and brought up with a jerk by a rock. For a few minutes Philip was unconscious. He was aware of a shock, a slide, darkness and noise, that was all. But—where was he? He had vanished from the face of the earth, gone through the surface of snow into a depth beneath. A field of snow had filled the bottom of a valley, and the river ran beneath in a ravine. Nothing could be seen of the cleft, nothing of the river, the smooth sheet of snow hid both; but the force of Philip's descent had broken through that portion of the covering where it was thinnest, near the rock and rubble; he had gone through, and was buried alive. Beneath him, about him, was darkness—pitch darkness; only above could he see the hole through which he had fallen, looking like a silver-gray disc. The air about him was filled with thunder, the pulsating thunder such as he had heard at the fall of the Reuss at the Devil's Bridge, such as he had heard that very day where the river plunged over a wall of rock in the gorge above Hospenthal. The air moreover was as full of water here beneath as it had been above in the fog, but the particles here were much larger. This was the spray cast up by the raging, leaping, headlong water in the abyss.

How far down was it to that torrent? Eye could not penetrate, ear could not tell. The vault of snow overhead reverberated with the boom of the water, and cast it back into the gulf as it cast back the up-thrown spray. He could see no water, he could see nothing save the gap overhead.

What was he to do? His arms were heavy and numbed with cold. He cautiously lifted one and found that the snow had been driven, even rammed, hard up the sleeve by his descent. He was safe where he lodged, on rock, and he shook out the snow from one sleeve and then the other. In doing this he found the bunch of edelweiss. He did not see it; he felt it up his sleeve; it had been carried there by the snow. He did not throw it away; he left it where it was. What was he to do? His situation was precarious. He might turn giddy and fall over. That terrible fascination there is in an abyss might lay hold of him and draw him down. Artemisia had spoken of that fascination, the fascination of despair. Now he felt it.

He tried to scramble up, but the shale slipped away beneath his feet, and he was fain, in an agony of terror to recover his former place on firm rock. It was not practicable to ascend. He leaned back against the stones, that dripped and ran with water, the melting of the snow overhead, the condensation of the foam from the river beneath. The water condensed also on his forehead and ran off his brows—water cold as ice. Where his fingers worked hollows in the loose soil, the water settled, and soaked his fingers and turned them dead with cold.

Was it that there was rhythm in the fall of the water, or was it that his pulses beat in his ear and gave rhythm to the continuous thunder? He could not tell. He heard the throb of sound, or it seemed to him to be the rattle of the machinery of his mill at Mergatroyd multiplied to infinity.

His feet had glowed with the exercise, but now they began gradually to lose heat, and turn stone-cold. In time, they would cease to have feeling in them, then in numbness and weariness his knees would buckle under him, and he would shoot head-long, like a diver into the black void. How far down was it to the water—to death—he wondered. Would he feel—be conscious of the shock over the edge before he went into the water, or crash with his head against a rock? He had heard a fellow clerk say that as he was drowning the whole of his past life rushed before his eyes and spread itself out as a panorama, a succession of scenes, in a moment of time, twenty years unfolded leisurely in one second, displaying every incident, not crowded but in sequence, and all articulate. Would it be so as he went over the edge, in the span of time between the rocks on which he stood and the clash and extinction below? His heart grew faint; and he felt in him the qualm that a bad sailor knows as the vessel plunges into a deep sea-trough.

But—surely he would be sought by the people at the inn. Certainly he would be sought, but in what direction would they look for him? How trace him in the mist? How suppose he was below the surface of the smooth quilt of snow in the Val Tremola, sunk out of sight, hanging over a boiling torrent? And now down past Philip ran a thread of silver; it startled him, and he looked up the line to see a glimpse of the moon appear above the hole through which he had fallen. The fog must have cleared away, or be clinging partially to certain mountain-tops. If the moon were clear, then the search for him could be prosecuted with some chance of success. But Philip was not over-confident. His powers of endurance were ebbing. He raised his feet and stamped on the rock; he could feel the shock in his joints, but not in his feet—they were dead. His hands were stiff. He put his fingers into his mouth, but this only momentarily restored vitality. After the feeling had gone the muscular power would become paralyzed. He was not hungry, but squeamish. He looked again at the moon, and continued watching it eagerly; it slid forward and shone full through the window of his dungeon. The light fell on rocky point and rill of leaping water, but could not illumine the abyss below, out of which rose the voices and thunderings—the voices of death, the thunderings preceding judgment.

And now the white ray of the moon smote down into the gulf below his feet and disclosed a shoot of the purest, most sparkling silver, the leaping torrent as it danced over a ledge into utter darkness, into which no moon-ray could dive.

Suddenly from above a mass of snow detached itself and fell past him, a mass so big that had it smitten him it would have carried him down with it.

The side of the hole in the snow-dome grazed the moon and ate more and still more out of it. Philip looked with fear—he felt that when the whole of the moon had passed beyond that opening, and not another ray fell into it, when again the darkness of that vault would become utter, hope would die away from his heart, and he must fall.

But as he stood looking up, watching the slipping away of the moon, he saw sharp cut against it a black something, and heard, above the roar of the water, the discordant sounds of a bark. He was found—found by one of the hospice dogs.

The first giddiness of renewed hope almost overcame him. He trembled as in a fit, and his knees bent so that only by a supreme effort of the will could he brace them again. He believed he heard shouts, but was uncertain.

What followed remained ever after confused in his memory. He heard some Italian words in his ear, saw or felt someone by him, was grasped, a rope fastened round him, he heard himself encouraged to make an effort, tried to scramble, helped by the rope, broke through the snow, was in the upper world again, was surrounded, had brandy poured down his throat.

Then he was seized by the hand and shaken.

'Old fellow! Phil! 'Pon my word, you have given us a turn. We have been hunting you everywhere.'

'Lambert!'

'Yes, Phil, and who'd have thought to find you trapped under the snow?'

The men of the party urged immediate movement to restore circulation. Philip's hand, when dropped by Lambert, was seized again and held tightly, but he had lost feeling in it. Nor could he see clearly; he was dazzled by the light—the brilliance of the moon and the glare of the snow—after the darkness below.

'Who is that laughing?' he asked suddenly.

'Oh—Miss Durham,' answered Lambert.

'And—who is that crying?'

A whisper in his ear—'It is I—Salome.'

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