VIII
Theytook the road very early again next morning, and turning their backs on the ruined castle of Süss and the triple peaks of Piz Mezdi, climbed steadily up past the long snow-galleries till they came to the mouth of the dreary Grialetsch Valley, with ragged Piz Vadret at its head; and there, with their backs against the road-mender’s hut, they sat for a long half-hour’s rest and the chance of passing a few words, for the road had claimed their breath as they climbed.
It was all so lonely, so peaceful, so aloof from the storm and stress of life, and so altogether delightful, that it was only now and again that the appalling reason for their being there obtruded itself upon them. And whenever it did so it came with something of a shock.
They had in themselves endless gardens of delight to ramble through, and it was, “—Do you remember that day at ——, Ray?” and “—I tell you, old girl, you gave me some rotten quarters-of-an-hour while that stuck-up little ramrod of a lieutenant was buzzing about you!”—and so on and so on,—every recollection rosy now with the joy of complete understanding, though at the time one and another had been anything but joyful.
The old road-mender came trudging up from his work while they still sat there. He nodded benevolently with something of a twinkle in his eye, as though he could still recall similar times of his own, and gave them a cordial “Grüss Gott!”
“We’re doing our best to hold your house up for you,” said Ray.
“So I see, Herr and Fräulein, and it is quite at your service. Everybody puts their backs against it afterclimbing from below. You are from Süss this morning?”
“From Süss this morning, and yesterday from Martinsbruck, and the day before that from Ried, and the day before that from Innsbruck,” said Ray.
“It is a long walk. But when one is young—— I also have been to Innsbruck. It is a great city. But there are too many people. They fall over one another in the streets. I like my mountains better and just one or two people a day. Thanks, Herr!”—at Ray’s offer of a cigar—“With permission I will smoke it later. I am going to eat now,” and he put it carefully away into his waistcoat pocket and got out bread and cheese from his little house, and sat and ate and talked.
“I had a Herr and a Fräulein here, yesterday,” he said reminiscently. “No, it was the daybefore——”
“We met them at Martinsbruck.”
“They were hastening home in fear of some war. But I did not clearly make out what it was all about. Is there going to be war, Herr?”
“I’m afraid it looks rather like it. That is why we are hastening home also.”
“But what is it all about, Herr? And why, in the name of God, do men want to fight in these times?”
“Ah! Now that is a big question, my friend, and it would take a lot of answering. But, so far as we know at present, it is only Austria that wants to fight. You heard of the Archduke and his wife being shot, down in Bosnia?”
“I heard of that. I was sorry. I have had them here. They sat with their backs against the house just as you are doing. They seemed nice enough people. He gave me five kroner for sitting against myhouse——”
“Ah!—he was an archduke and rolling in money.”
“I did not mean it that way, Herr. I do not want anything for people sitting against my house. It is a pleasure to me to have a word with them. There are not too many, you see.”
“It is not like Innsbruck where they fall over one another in the streets,” smiled Lois.
“No, it is not like Innsbruck, Fräulein, and I am glad of that. But why should their being shot make the rest want to fight?”
“That is only the pretext,” said Ray. “Austria wants to stretch herself down south. In fact, I suppose, what she really wants is to get to the sea, and Servia lies in her way.”
“If all men lived among the mountains they would learn a great many things you never learn down below there. I think one is nearer God up here, Herr and Fräulein.”
“I’m sure of it,” said Lois.
“But even the mountains have heard the sound of fighting,” said Ray, to draw him on.
“If the men from below wanted to take our rights from us we would fight again of course. But they are not likely to come up here, are they, Herr?”
“Not up here, I should say. The trouble is, you see, that if Austria attacks Servia, Russia will probably intervene, and then Germany will come in, and so France, and possibly Great Britain. We hope not, but one can never tell.”
“Herrgott! That sounds bad,” and the rough hand and big clasp-knife, which had been mechanically feeding the slow-munching jaws, stopped in mid-air and he sat staring at them. “Servians I do not know,” he said presently. “Russians I have had here, and Frenchmen, and Austrians, and many English, and all those I have found good. But Germans, of whom I have had still more, I do not like.... And yet I hardly know why,” he mused. “Their manners are not good, it is true; but it is something more than that. Well, I don’t know—it is just that I do not like them and perhaps they perceive it.”
“It is a very general feeling,” said Ray.
“Is it now? Well, that is strange, but it shows it is they who are somehow in the wrong.”
“They don’t think so,” laughed Ray, as he drew Lois to her feet by both hands. “We must be jogging on or we won’t reach Davos to-night.”
The old man firmly but politely declined Ray’s offer of a mark, saying, “I thank you, Herr, but there is no need. It has been a great pleasure to talk with you and the Fräulein,” and, not to tarnish so bright and unusual a trait, Ray did not press the matter, but offered him instead another cigar which was accepted at once as between man and man, and they all shook hands and parted.
They crossed the river and threaded their way through a rock-strewn valley, and up and on, with the Weisshorn towering white on the right and the Schwarzhorn on the left. Then they passed two little lakes, the one on the right clear as crystal, the one on the left greenish-white and opaque, which Ray told her was glacier-water while the other was probably fed by hidden springs.
They had lunch and another long rest at the Hospice, and then began the easy ten-mile stretch to Davos, through long stretches of pine-woods, dropping with the stream till it joined the Landwasser at Davos-Dorf, where they took the omnibus for Davos-Platz.
“We’ll go to the Grand,” said Ray,—“clothes or no clothes. We’re sure to find English people there and we’ll learn what’s going on in the world outside.”
So to the Grand, and sumptuous rooms and meals, though the very trim young gentleman in the office and the pompous head-waiter did look somewhat superciliously at their lack in the matter of wedding-garments.
But breeding tells where uttermost perfection in attire without it makes no headway at all, and by the time dinner was over they were on the best of terms with their nearest neighbours, who were delighted to find someone who had had no news of the world’s doings for several days and were therefore eager and receptive listeners. And afterwards they sat in the lounge while a Canon, and a Doctor, and a Barrister, and a Colonel on the retired list,—whoknew Uncle Tony very well by repute and asked Ray at once if he were related to Sir Anthony Luard as soon as he heard his name,—and several of their wives and daughters, fed them volubly with fairy-tales and fictions, some of which had some small substratum of fact, but mostly they were snowball legends which had grown out of all knowledge as they passed from mouth to mouth.
Their latest English papers were three days old. Swiss and German papers they had as late as July 30, but the news in them was for the most part vague and unsatisfying to souls that craved simple actual fact as to what was going on behind the veiled frontiers. Local letters were arriving, but none from England since July 28.
Lois and Ray sat and listened but got little from all the talk that went on. The general opinion—to which the Colonel stoutly refused to conform—was that things looked decidedly unpleasant but that, somehow or other, Great Britain would manage not to be drawn into any such awful mess as a European war. Sir Edward Grey had handled the Balkan affair admirably, and though they were all on the opposite side in politics, they one and all,—not excepting even the Colonel—acknowledged that he was the very best possible man for his difficult and delicate post.
The Colonel however dogmatically prophesied war all round.
“We can no more get out of it,” he said warmly, “than we can any of us get home for some months to come.”
“Do you really think we can’t get home?” asked Lois anxiously.
“Think—my dear young lady?—I’m as sure of it as I am that I’m sitting here and expect to be still sitting here, or somewhere in this neighbourhood, two months hence. You see,”—and he proceeded to prove, beyond any possibility of doubt, that—granted the general war he was so certain of—every outlet—north, east, west, and south,—would be already blocked by the urgencies of mobilisation, and that until all the troops of the variousnations were massed along the frontiers traffic across the denuded countries behind would be out of the question.
“Martial law everywhere,” said he, “and thank God we’re not in Germany!”
“There won’t be any difficulty in getting about in Switzerland, I suppose,” said Ray.
“Not on your own two feet. The diligences may stop any day. They’ll want every horse they can lay hands on. They’re sure to mobilise at once, just as they did in 1870. Every man they have will be on the frontiers yonder, from Schaffhausen to Basel, and round the corner towards Pontarlier, and again in all the passes leading from Italy. It’s curious how they fear and detest the Italians. I met a young fellow the other day who went across to Tripoli solely to get a whack at the Italians, and got a bullet through the calf which he insisted on showing me. You see,” he said to Ray, “we can’t possibly keep out of it, for the simple reason that Germany will certainly try to get at France throughBelgium——”
“That’s just what Uncle Tony says.”
“Of course. Every military man who has studied the question knows that is their game. Russia is slow, and Germany’s plan is to smash France into little bits right away, then go for Russia, and then of course for us. Oh, it’s all been mapped out to the last haystack for years, I warrant you, while we’ve been swallowing their bunkum and persuading ourselves they are really very decent quiet people something like ourselves, who only want to be let alone to go their own gentle way.”
“And what’s your idea of the prospects all round, Colonel?”
But at that the Colonel shook his head. “Germany is the principal factor in the case and I don’t know her well enough to express an opinion. If she’s really as strong and well-organised as she thinks she is, and as most people believe, it will be a red-hot business. Austria I don’t think much of from what I’ve seen. Italy I do not know well. But I’m sure they’re not hankering forthe expense of a big war. France is better than some folks think. Adversity has taught her something.”
“And England?” asked Ray, as the oracle lapsed into silence.
“England is, as usual, not ready. And besides she is not anxious for continental adventure. If England had hearkened to some of us old croakers—Jingoes and firebrands and scaremongers, we’ve been called,—she would be a decisive factor in the game. As itis——”
“Oh come! What about our fleet, Colonel?” said the Canon, whose eldest boy was second lieutenant on the “Audacious,” and his youngest a middy on the “Queen Mary.”
“Our fleet’s all right, thanks to Churchill. But you can’t utilise a fleet, say at Belfort or Nancy or on the borders of Belgium.”
“What about Belgium?” asked Ray. “Has she any fight in her?”
“I have never imagined so. If old Leopold were alive the Germans would have a walk-over and the old boy’s coffers would be fuller than ever. This new man—of whom I know very little—may be of a different kidney. But what can he do against Germany? She would simply roll over him if he tried to stand up for his rights. It would be sheer madness on his part.”
“Divine madness!” said the Canon musingly. “Such things at times effect wonders beyond the understanding of man.”
“And with England and France to back her up, and Russia piling in on the other side——” said Ray.
“There you are,” said the Colonel, “—practically a European war.”
Mrs Canon had meanwhile been quietly and unobtrusively, but none the less pertinaciously, affording Lois opportunities of explaining the exact nature of her relationship to Ray. And two vivacious Misses Canon, with their sympathies already openly given to the victim, eagerly awaited developments.
But Lois saw no reason for any beating about the bush. She explained the matter in full, acknowledging somewhat of irregularity in their proceedings but smilingly suggesting that if the war gave no one grounds for greater complaint they would all be very well off.
“How ripping!” said the younger girl, with dancing eyes.
“Katharine, mydear!” said her mother reprovingly.
“Absolutely and perfectly delectable!” asserted her sister, quite unabashed by the maternal disapproval. “I justwish——”
“Madeleine!”
And Madeleine’s envious desires remained locked in the secrecy of her maiden heart until she and Katharine went upstairs to bed that night. But she and her sister could not make enough of Lois for the rest of the evening, and their eyes rested on her caressingly and longingly as though by much looking they might possibly absorb some of her obvious happiness.
“It must be delightful beyond words,” whispered Katharine.
“It is,” beamed Lois.
“Just like a honeymoon, only more so,” sighed Madeleine rapturously.
“Just all that.”
“And you were at the Conservatorium at Leipsic!” said Katharine.
“I had nearly completed my two years there. It was a very jolly time. I enjoyed it every bit.”
“Do come and sing something for us. There’s a music-room over there and quite a decent piano.”
“I don’t mind. I love singing,” and they slipped quietly away to the music-room and shut themselves in.
But no doors made by man could contain the full rounded sweetness of that fresh young voice, and presently the handle was quietly turned from the outside and the door pushed noiselessly open so that the multitude beyond might share in the enjoyment of it.
She had no music with her, of course, and what lay about—the jetsam of the years—did not appeal to her. So she played and sang some of the old Scotch songs dear to her mother, and they went right home to the hearts of some of her listeners as perhaps the more stately productions of the greater masters would not have done.
Between times, on the expectant silence of the hall, there would trickle from the inner sanctuary a subdued murmur of talk and now and again a ripple of laughter, and then the chords would sound again and the full sweet voice would peal out gloriously, and hearts swelled large in sympathy with it.
She wound up with “Home, Sweet Home!” and before some of her listeners had finished using their handkerchiefs in various furtive and surreptitious ways, she was pealing out “God save the King!” like a trumpet-call, and “By Gad, sir! It went!”—as the Colonel said afterwards.
“My dear!” said the Canon, as he thanked her very warmly for the pleasure she had given them. “You have a God-given gift. You can touch the hearts of men and lift them to higher things. That is a wonderful power for good.”
“I love singing,” said Lois simply.
“Or you could not sing like that,” said the Canon. “Your joyous young heart is in your voice.”
As the following day was Sunday, and their next march would take them once more into the wilds—over the Strela and by Schanfiggthal to Chur and then up Rheinthal to Andermatt,—they decided to take a rest-day where they were, in the hope that further news from the outside world might arrive before Monday morning.
Nothing came, however, except the Berne newspapers, which hinted at mobilisation in Russia, and told of the murder of M. Jaurès in Paris. Even these scraps of news, however, afforded the Colonel ground for ample comment, and that of the gloomiest character, on the general outlook.
“Jaurès,” he said, “was a great leader and he workedhard for a better understanding between France and Germany. His removal, at this crisis and in this fashion, seems to point to a fanatical revulsion of feeling against his ideas. That means that the tinder is ready for the match. If Russia is mobilising, Germany will follow suit, if she has not done so already. The fat may be in the fire at any moment. For all we know the fire may have broken out now, even while we sit here discussing it.” Which made them all unusually thoughtful.
And as a matter of fact, with good reason. For Germany had declared war on Russia at 7.30 the previous night.
“Which way were you thinking of going?” the Colonel asked Ray, over their cigars in the lounge that night.
“First to Chur. Then up the valley to Andermatt, over the Furka, and down the Rhone Valley to Montreux.”
“That’s your best way. The East and North of France will certainly be closed. You may eventually get through by the Midi. But you’ll probably have to wait even for that. It’ll be a terrible upsetting all round. And I wish to God we could keep out of it, because we’re not ready. But we can’t. I’m as certain of that as that I’m sitting here.”
“It’ll be an awful business if it comes to a general scrap,” said Ray.
“Yes. I’ve seen fighting in several parts of the world and it’s grim business at best, but this will beat anything we’ve ever imagined, if I know anything about it. Germany is just a huge fighting-machine, and she’ll fight like the devil. If Russia is in, France is in, and that almost certainly means we’re in too. How do you stand yourself, Mr. Luard?”
“I’m in the London Scottish,—lieutenant. Do you think they’ll want us?”
“Pretty sure to,—sooner or later,—every man that’s available. How long have you had?”
“Four years.”
“You should know your business fairly well. I think you’ll have to reckon on a call. You’ll go if needed?”
“Of course.”
Which brought the possibilities very close home and made Ray Luard a very thoughtful man that night.
Next day they bade their friends good-bye, such of them as were up at so early an hour. And the Colonel and Katharine and Madeleine walked with them through the freshness of the morning by the winding forest-paths up Schatzalp, and were loth to part with them even on the top.
The Colonel, indeed,—whose youth lay away back amid the mists of antiquity, and whose years had discovered to him the existence of a heart that pumped on up-gradients, and a certain stiffness in the legs which filled him with wrath,—called them to many a halt to view the scenery. His hearty good-will was so obvious, however, that they complied with his necessities and accommodated their pace to his without regret; and the girls buzzed about Lois with outspoken envy of her happy lot, and vehemently regretted that they could not go and do likewise in every particular.
At the restaurant on top they drank a parting cup of coffee together, and then Ray and Lois set their faces towards the long ascent of the Strela, and the others stood and waved to them till they were out of sight.
“Do you know what the old boy was saying, Lois?” Ray broke out as soon as they were quite alone.
“No. What?”
“He’s quite certain that England will have to go into the scrap, and that she’ll need every man she can put into the fighting-line. And I’m one of them, you see.”
“Oh!—Ray!” and she stopped in her tracks, and stood gazing at him with sudden woe in her face.
“It brings it close home to one, doesn’t it, dear?” he said quietly, pressing her arm tight to his heart. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. It will be hard on us, but if the call comes I must go.”
“Yes ...” she said, slowly and reluctantly; sense of duty prevailing, with obvious difficulty, over her heart’sdesire. “You must go.... But, oh,—it will be hard to let you go ... just when we’ve come to know one another, and life is at its brightest.... Oh, my dear! Suppose....”
“We won’t suppose anything of the kind,” he said cheerfully. “Life is not long enough at its longest to waste one minute of it on forebodings. But I named this, dear, because it seems to me that it settles for us the question I raised the other day. Unless you say no, we’ll get married as soon as we get to Montreux.”
“Yes!” she said simply, and the matter was settled.
And, in the feeling of still warmer and closer companionship that thereby came upon them, they climbed on up the Strela, and down the steep zig-zags on the other side to the Haupter Alp, and down and down past Schmitten and Dörfli, first this side of the river, then the other, till they came to the Schanfiggthal and Langwies, where they stopped for lunch and a long rest.
It was as they were coming down the hillside to Castiel that Lois had a quaint experience which Ray laughingly hoped would teach her a lesson.
They came suddenly on an immense herd of goats, whose bells they had heard tinkling far away below them for half an hour or more. Captivated by the graceful activities of a black and white kid, which sprang up a high rock at the side of the road and posed there like a little Rodin, with its glassy eyes fixed vaguely on them, Lois produced a biscuit from her pocket and proffered it to the youngster. He sniffed doubtfully, nibbled eagerly, and leaped down for more. And in an instant she was the centre of a writhing mass of goats, who pushed and reared themselves against her and would take no denial.
At first she laughed and pushed them off with her hands. Then it got beyond a joke. She gave them all she had, but they wanted more. Like the Danes and Ethelred, payment to go only drew them in larger numbers. Ray did his best to drag them back and get her clear, but they pushed and struggled and reared, with weirdest determinationin their strange eyes and curving horns, till Lois grew somewhat startled.
“Stupid beasts! Don’t you understand? You’ve had it all,” and she shook her empty hands in their stolid straining faces. They pushed all the harder. She grew frightened, especially when she saw the futility of Ray’s efforts.
It was his angry shouts, as he laid about on their bony ribs and backs with his alpenstock, that at last drew a small boy in velveteens and a slouch hat round the corner, and at a shrill whistle from him the beasts came to their senses and left their victim hot and dishevelled and very much put out.
“Why don’t you keep your ugly beasts in order?” shouted Ray.
“Grüss Gott!” said the small boy with a vacant grin, and with stones and blows sent his flock jangling down into the lower woods.
“That’s the most forcible argument I’ve ever come across against promiscuous charity,” laughed Ray, as Lois shook herself clear of the sense and smell of them and did up her hair.
“The hideous beasts! Their stony eyes and stupid faces were awful,—a perfect nightmare! I shall dream of them for ages.”
They stopped that night at Chur, and Lois duly dreamed of a never-ending struggle with multitudinous stony-eyed goats, and had a fairly bad night of it.
She seemed, indeed, so unrefreshed in the morning that Ray decided to make an easy day’s work by taking train to Ilanz, and the diligence, if it was still running, for such further distance as it would take them.
And so it was half-past six in the evening when they reached Ruēras, where the diligence stopped for the night and they perforce stopped also. The accommodation was somewhat primitive, but the freedom of the simple life condoned everything. They ate well and slept well, and started off next morning in the best of spirits, with nocloud upon their horizon but the nebulous possibilities of the unknown future; and quite unconscious of the fact that, at eleven o’clock the night before, the mightiest die in the world’s history had been cast. Great Britain had declared war on Germany.
They crossed a brook and a torrent, and in a deep ravine below the fragment of a ruined castle, Ray pointed out to her the little stream which he told her was the Baby Rhine in its cradle.
“It’s always interesting to get back right to the beginning of a thing which in the end becomes a very big thing. We know what the Rhine is at its best and there’s where it begins.”
“I shall never forget it,” said Lois, hanging on to his arm.
“And if the old Colonel is right, away over yonder it will soon be running red,” said Ray thoughtfully.
“We’ll try and not think about it till we have to.... But whatever comes, Ray, life has been very good to us.”
“Yes, thank God! We have tasted the joy of it, whatever follows.”
And away over yonder, the German hordes had, days ago, surged over the Rhine, and now they had burst into Belgium and were hammering at Liége, and the Meuse was running red and pouring its flood into the Rhine on its way to the sea.
They climbed steadily, with wonderful views over Rheintal and up into Vorder Rheintal, crossed the summit of Pass da Tiarms, and came down again to the old high-road at the eastern end of the gloomy little Oberalp-See.
“There lies the highway to happiness,” said Ray, pointing away in front where, in the dim distance, a white thread of a road wound along a lofty mountain-side. “That’s the Furka. Once we’re over that we’re in the Rhone Valley and almost at Montreux,” and he pressed her arm tight again as a reminder of all that Montreux would mean for them.
They took the short cut down to Andermatt, got shakenalmost to pieces with its stony steepness, and went to the Bellevue to recuperate with a well-earned lunch, and in hopes of getting some recent news from the outside world. But the Berne papers had not yet arrived and the foreign ones were many days old, and a chat with the manager furnished only disquieting war-like rumours, gathered by him from the officers of the big artillery-camp who sometimes came into the hotel for a meal or a smoke.
Ray was obviously restless under this lack of news, and Lois was quick to perceive and understand it.
“Let us get on,” she said.
“Can you? Sure you’re not done up?”
“Not a bit of it. It is delightful rambling along like this, but I’ve always the feeling that dreadful things may be going on outside, and if they are, the sooner we know the better.”
“Yes. It’s the not knowing that’s so worrying. It’s like wandering about in a fog with collisions and smashes going on all about one and no chance of seeing what’s up. I’d sooner know the worst than nothing at all. I wanted to stop at the jolly little Golden Lion at Hospenthal. I stopped three days there once and I’ve always wanted to go back. But if we can get as far as Realp it will shorten to-morrow’s walk over the Furka. The hotels at Gletsch are only for millionaires, not for tramps like us.”
So they started off, determined to push along to Realp, or even to Tiefenbach if they could manage it, but Fate had arranged for them to stop at Hospenthal after all.
While they sat at lunch the sky darkened. The rain began before they had gone half a mile, and it came down in such sheets that Ray considered the advisability of turning back. But Lois would not hear of it, so with their Loden cloaks outside their rucksacs, they plodded on up the stony road which very soon became a river, while the mountain tops all round took on new white coats of snow.
“We’ll have a rough time on the Furka to-morrow,” said Ray. “I know what it’s like in snow.”
“I think I’d sooner have snow than cataracts like this. Will these cloaks keep the wet out?”
“They will, my child. The wetter they get outside, the less gets through.”
“Then it’s all right. We’ll stop at your little hotel as soon as we come to it and get dry stockings on.”
“And a jolly big fire and a first-rate supper. We’ll be as cosy as cats.”
“Who are all these men in front?”
“Weary ploughmen plodding their homeward way. But they look to me like Italian navvies—about the unpleasantest class of person you can meet in Switzerland. The rain’s too much for them, I suppose, so they’re knocking off for the day.”
“Here’s another lot coming the other way.”
“Switzers these, by the look of them.”
The two bands of about a score each passed one another some distance ahead of them, just about where the road forked, and one part struck up to the left towards the stony desolations and frowning peaks of the Gothard.
“Hello!” cried Ray. “What on earth are they up to?”
For the dark clump of men now nearest them, the Switzers,—halted suddenly, and turned, and then, as though moved by one spring, these made a dash at the others and flung themselves on them with shouts and blows till they broke and fled up the stony way.
“Well, well!” said Ray, watching keenly. “That’s a little bit of racial feeling right under our noses, unless I’m mistaken. Symptomatic of the times. The Colonel said there was no love lost between them, and here’s the proof of it. War’s in the air, my child.”
The Switzers having chased their opponents well up the stony road came swinging along now with cheerful faces and martial tread.
“What was it?” asked Ray as they came up.
“Just a swarm of Italian rats, Herr,” said one jovially, while the rest gathered round grinning delightedly, and one or two wiped away smears of blood from their faces.
“They’re mobilising for the war, over there, you see, and we’re mobilising for the war, over here; and one of them showed his teeth at us as he passed, so we gave them a lesson in manners.”
“But you will have no war here.”
“Please God, no, Herr! But we’ve got to be ready, and if anyone sets foot on Swiss soil so much the worse for him. Those rascals would like to try it, we know, but if they do we’ll treat them as we did this little lot and kick them back into their own country. We do not like them,” and he spat disdainfully and all the others did the same.
“You are not thinking of going up Gothard way, Herr?” asked another meaningly.
“No, we stop at Hospenthal for the night, since it’s raining so, and cross the Furka to-morrow.”
“I wouldn’t like to cross the Gothard within arm’s length of that lot all by myself,” said a third. “They may be good men but they don’t look it. Have you any news of the war, Herr? Is France in it?”
“We’ve no news for days past. We’re hoping to get some over yonder. But I’m afraid there’s little hope of France keeping out.”
“It’ll be a big blaze,” said the leader. “What about you, Herr, in England? Will you be in it too?”
“I’m very much afraid so. We’re hurrying home as quick as we can.”
“Well, for me, I hope Germany will get her head broken. Frenchmen I like, and Englishmen and Americans still better. But Italians I do not like, and Germans still less. They are too big for their clothes, and they are pigs to have any dealings with,” and the others said “So!” and “Jawohl!”
“Well—grüss Gott, Herr and Frau! And may we all live to see better times!” and with a rumble of “grüss Gotts!” they went on their way, and Ray and Lois plodded on towards Hospenthal and a big fire and dry stockings and such defiance of the rigoursof the road and the weather as a warm welcome could supply.
It was with a sigh of relief that Lois hastily felt over her rucksac, as the smiling maid drew off her dripping cloak, and found it sound and dry; and in spite of her soddened feet and streaming face and draggled hair the sight of a roaring fire in a room on the right induced a sense of coming comfort.
“You are wet, madame?—no?—not inside? That is goot. You will change your feet, and then hot tea, and all will be well,”—she had the cheerfullest face Lois had seen for months and she spoke English charmingly.
“That’s the ticket, Freda,” said Ray joyously. “The hottest tea you can make and a dash of cognac in it, and poke up that fire still more if you can do it without setting the place ablaze.”
“Ach!”—and then, running at him with outstretched hands. “Why it is the Herr who stopped with us two years ago, and I did not for the moment know him. And this is madame? And you will stop the night? Yes?—in such weather?”
“Oh, we’ll stop the night all right. Wild horses could not drag us away from that fire such a day as this.”
“I will show you to your room and the tea will be ready by the time you come down. This way, madame—iff you please!”
“Steady on, Freda! Two rooms—iff you please.”
“So?” in a tone of vast surprise, with a touch of disappointment in it.
“Mademoiselle is to become my wife as soon as we reach Montreux. I have been to deliver her from the hands of the Philistines—the Germans, I mean. She was inLeipsic——”
“Ach—those verdomte Germans! They are always making trouble. Then two rooms. This way, mademoiselle, iff you please!”
Hail and rain thrashed wildly on the window-panes as Lois refitted herself, but a quarter of an hour later, whenthey came down the stair together, and entered the cosy room whose dark wood panelling reflected the dancing flames all round, there was their tea-table drawn up close to the blazing hearth with two easy chairs alongside, and she felt a sense of home-iness greater than she had enjoyed during the last two years.
At a table not far away a burly, broad-backed man was busily writing letters with a big cigar in his mouth.
At sight of them he jumped up in vast surprise and came at them.
“Why—Ray Luard!—and Miss Lois?... Now what in the name of—what is it?—Mrs Ghrundy—are you two wandering round here for?”
“Hello? Why!—if it isn’t Dr Rhenius! How are you, sir? We’re as right as trivets—whatever they are, though wehavewalked from Ruēras to-day.”
“Ah—you come from Ruēras? And before that?”
“Lois was in Leipsic, as you know. Mrs Dare sent me to fetch her home. We couldn’t get direct so we came round. What news have you? We’ve heard nothing but rumours for days. Let’s have tea, Lois. I’m sure you’re only half warmed yet. Have a cup of tea, Doctor?”
“I thank you, no. But I will smoke—if I may,” with an appealing look at Lois.
“Oh do, please! I like it.”
“Well now—where areyoufrom, Doctor, and what’s the latest facts?” asked Ray, as he laced his hot tea with cognac and insisted on doing the same with Lois’s in spite of her protesting hand. “It’s good for her under these circumstances. Now isn’t it, Doctor?”
“I do not prescribe stimulants as a rule, as you know,” said Dr Rhenius weightily. “But to anyone who has been out in that”—as the hail dashed against the windows again—“a moderate dose is undoubtedly indicated.”
“That’s better,” said Ray, passing up his cup again. “Now, sir,—where are we?”
“At war,” said the Doctor gravely. “Great Britain declared war against Germany last night.”
“That’s bad,” said Ray, and he and Lois both sat staring aghast at the massive face lit up by the dancing flames.
They had known Dr Rhenius for ten years or more. He was established in Willstead before any of them came there. He had a good practice and private means of his own, and was generally esteemed and trusted. He was a bachelor, of five-and-forty or so, and in spite of his German-sounding name claimed Polish descent. His father, Casimir Rienkiwicz, had, he had told them, fled from Russian domination in Warsaw to the freedom of London, where his son was born. The father had adopted the less cumbrous name of Rhenius, and prospered in business. The son studied medicine in Edinburgh, in London, in Munich and in Paris, spoke German, French, and English with equal fluency, kept in close touch with the most advanced medical thought of all three countries, and employed their latest curative discoveries while his English confrères were still sniffing suspiciously at their outer wrappers.
The one thing that ever disturbed his equanimity was to be referred to as a German. At times the younger folk with humorous malice would drop an innocent, “Of course, you Germans,” etc. etc., when the Doctor would lose his placidity and repudiate the innuendo with scorn and indignation. Victoria Luard was especially good at baiting him and enjoyed his outbursts to the full.
Such spare time as his patients allowed him he devoted to research into the subject of mental diseases. Whereby he and Connal Dare had become great friends. He had encouraged Con in the choice of his special line, and had helped him freely out of his own well-filled stores of knowledge and experience. When they met, which was rarely now, they went at it hammer and tongs, and in the intervals corresponded vigorously concerning any unusual cases Con came across, and the newest methods of treating them, and the results.
“Yes,” said Dr Rhenius soberly. “It looks like being a general flare up, and that will mean—it will mean more than any of us can imagine.”
“Where did you hear it?” asked Ray. “We have been aching for some definite word of what was going on, but no one seemed to know anything and no letters or papers were coming through.”
“I was at Piora, near Airolo. The news came there this morning, and I packed up and started at once for home. I came through the tunnel to Göschenen, booked a seat in the diligence for to-morrow morning, and walked on here, because I know this little place of old and always enjoy it. It may be the last time some of us will enjoy it for a long time to come.”
“You think it will be a long business, Doctor?” asked Lois anxiously.
He shook his big head discouragingly. “War is full of surprises, my dear. It is the very last thing I would care to prophesy about.”
“Italy will go in with Germany and Austria, of course,” said Ray.
The Doctor’s big moustache crinkled up as he compressed his lips. “Eventually, one would suppose so. But, truly, I could discover no enthusiasm, or even inclination, for warlike adventure in the few with whom I had the opportunity of conversing. They are still suffering from Tripoli, down there, you see.... Where are you making for?”
“Two big M’s, Doctor. Montreux and Marriage. We’re going to get married as soon as we get there.”
“So!”
“You see it’s hardly right and proper—as you suggested just now—to be gadding about in this fashion together. So we’re going to regularise the situation at the first possible moment.”
“I will chaperone you with pleasure.”
“Thanks awfully! But we’d sooner get married. We wouldn’t like to be a burden on anyone.”
“And how do you go?”
“We’ve walked mostly so far—all the way from Landeck, except one spell from Chur to Ruēras. We like it.”
“If you take my advice you will get them to telephone for seats in the diligence and come along with me. It will not be walking weather for some days now. And the Furka in snow is a tough job. We get to Brigue to-morrow evening and to Montreux next day. They are mobilising here but the trains are still running. I wired to ask.”
“I think we will. Lois is a splendid walker, but if it’s going to be like this the sooner we’re at Montreux the better,” and he went at once and got Freda to telephone to Göschenen for seats in the diligence for the following morning.
She came in presently with the information that every seat was booked both for the morning and afternoon service.
“And for the following day?” he asked.
“Two coupé-seats only are left, Herr.”
“Book them for us at once, Freda, and we will either stop here or walk on up the Furka and take our places when the diligence catches us up.”
“Jawohl, Herr!”
“I must get on,” said the Doctor, “or I would joyfully wait with you here.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t think of it. How about getting on from Montreux?”
The Doctor nodded musingly. “There one will have to be guided by circumstances. I shall go on to Geneva and endeavour to make my way through France. But it may not be an easy matter. Everything will be under military law and mere civilians will not be of much account just now. You may have to wait there for a time till the first rush to the frontiers is over.”
“We expected that. That’s why we’re going to get married as soon as we get there.”
“I will tell them all about it at home, if I succeed ingetting there. They will be very suspicious of foreigners in France. They may lock me up. You have no passports, I suppose.”
“Not a scrap between us. I’ve never carried one in my life.”
“This has taken us all unawares. But I always carry one. It is useful at times, in procuring one’s registered letters and so on.... And money?—you have plenty?”
“Enough to go on with. If we don’t turn up you might ask Uncle Tony to send us some more—to Poste Restante, Montreux,” and the Doctor methodically made a note of it.
They talked much of matters connected with the coming war, all through supper and afterwards. They had the hotel to themselves. Freda told them that up to three days ago they were full; then, at once, everyone fled at news of the possibility of war.
But, except as to the broad facts of the case, the Doctor was very non-committal, and thinking over all their discursive talk afterwards, Ray found himself very little the wiser for it all. His own opinions he could remember expressing very fully and freely. But, though the Doctor had discoursed weightily at times on various points, Ray could not recall anything of any great importance that he had said or any new light that he had cast upon the complex situation. The matter visibly weighed upon him and even cast its shadow on him.
They saw him for a few minutes next morning, and then the diligence rolled up and he was gone.
It was a bleak day, cold slush under foot and a wind that held in it the chill of the snow-peaks. They delighted Freda by deciding to wait there for the diligence next morning, and enjoyed the warmth within the more for the cold without.