Bertram Mitford (continued 2)

There was still a pretty stiff sea running, and every now and then a wave would strike them, sousing them from head to foot. But it was little enough they cared for this after their recent experiences, and soon the boat was running in under the lee of the débarcadère.

Quite a little crowd had collected to witness the landing of these “mad English,” as they put it. Then, directing Berthod to call later for the very liberal remuneration awaiting him, the whole party started for the Hôtel Monnet to get their dripping clothes dried and to dine, causing quite a sensation as they hurried through the streets of the sleepy little town, in their capacity of shipwrecked castaways.

Chapter Eight.

An Inopportune Reminder.

Life at a mountain hotel affected by our compatriots is very much like life on board a passenger ship, with the difference and manifest advantages that the Johnsonian definition of the latter does not apply to the former, and you can generally steer clear of a bore—unless he, or she, should happen to be too near you at table, that is. But life on the whole is a free and easy unconventional thing, and as a rule everybody knows everybody, and people who as neighbours at home would take about two years to get beyond the rigid afternoon call, and cup-of-weak-tea stage of social intercourse, here become as “thick as thieves” in the same number of days. A chance walk does it, or a seat in proximity at table d’hôte; peradventure the fact that both venerate the same star Boanerges at home, or are alike enthusiastic believers in “General” Booth’s scheme; or it may be that both hold in common a choice bit of scandal concerning some other person or persons in the house. And then, as our said compatriots are nothing if not clique-ish, coteries will abound wherever these may be gathered together. There will be the chaplain’s clique and the worldly clique; the clique that won’t tolerate bores at any price, and that in which they reign paramount, and so on, and so on. But with all these dubious elements of weak humanity in active operation, life at such an hotel is rather a pleasant thing than otherwise, and to him who can derive diversion from the study of a heterogeneous crowd of his compatriots off their guard, vastly amusing.

Now with a gathering of this sort, three-fourths of it composed of the other sex, such a fellow as Philip Orlebar was pretty sure to be in general request; and within forty-eight hours of his arrival he was on good terms with very nearly everybody in the house. In fact, he was in danger of becoming “the rage”; for, apart from his good looks and rather taking manners, the superior sex was almost entirely represented by two or three quiet university men, a sprinkling of parsons, and a few contemporaries of General Wyatt. So, as was his wont, he threw himself with zest into the thing, determined to get all the fun out of it he could; and, truth to tell, he managed to get a good deal.

When Fordham, on the day of their arrival, predicted for himself a series of solitary undertakings, as far as his friend’s company was concerned, he was foretelling no more than the truth. For an expedition à deux, he, Fordham, being the second, Philip was never available. The Misses This wanted to be taken up the Cape-au-Moîne, or the Misses That had organised a picnic to the Folli or the Crêt de Molard; but why the deuce couldn’t Fordham shake himself together and be sociable, and come too? To which the latter would tranquilly reply that the rôle of universal flunkey was not congenial to his temperament.

Of late, however, Master Phil’s popularity had been on the wane. While he was an open question, each and all the damsels up there “on spec,” with but few exceptions, vied with each other to make things pleasant for him, and their mammas showed unimpeachable dentist’s fronts in beaming approval of their efforts. But when he devoted himself to one, and one only, manifestly and exclusively, then it became surprising how suddenly all these little attentions cooled down; how the dimpling smile became an acidulated sneer, and the bell-like voice rang a hard note; how the mammas aforesaid awoke to the fact that he seldom went to church, and when he did it was only to sit near that Miss Wyatt.

“That Miss Wyatt,” however, must be held to constitute pre-eminently one of the few exceptions referred to above. If Philip Orlebar had concentrated all his attentions upon her with that blundering suddenness men will be guilty of under such circumstances, she certainly had not given him a lead; in fact, he was wont to complain bitterly to himself—and sometimes to Fordham—that she treated him rather too calmly, might give him a few more opportunities. But Alma Wyatt was not the sort of girl who gives “opportunities.”

Fordham’s comment was characteristic.

“Oh! the divinity has a fault, then? See here, Phil. Supposing she had never come here, you would have cut out one of those other girls as your divinity, pro tem, and have planted her on a pedestal in the usual way. Now you see what sort of a crowd they are. Why do you think the other one more endowed with god-like attributes than they? I tell you all women are deadly alike, in spite of the spurious philosophical cant which affects to stamp them as an unknown quantity, inscrutable, mysterious, and so forth. The fact being that there is nothing incomprehensible about them or their ways except to such of ourselves who are greater fools than they. Now to me it is a perfectly safe conjecture how any given woman will act under any given circumstances.”

“How do you get at it?”

“By starting on the sure basis that she will act with cussedness, either overt or concealed, be it remembered. But what I want you to see is, that as long as you go on setting up these clay idols pro tem, it’s all right. Only don’t come to me and ask me to help you to hang one of them round your neck for life. You’ll find it a lumping heavy burden, my boy, I don’t care who it is, even if it doesn’t throttle you at the start.”

Two days after the boating incident Philip was strolling in the garden of the hotel with Alma and her aunt. It was Sunday, and they had just returned from the little tabernacle where, during his month of office, the irrepressible Scott dispensed spiritual nourishment to his flock—or was supposed to—and whither it is to be feared that one of the trio had betaken himself in obedience to the vitiated motives ascribed to him by sundry disappointed mammas above mentioned.

“What do you think I heard some of them saying as we came out of church?” said Mrs Wyatt, with an amused smile. “That Mr Scott’s sermon about the storm on Gennesaret was the finest ever preached.”

“Ha-ha! So it was, in one sense,” said Philip. “I know I was divided between an impulse to hurl a book at his head and to roar out laughing. You should have seen the fellow grovelling at the bottom of the boat and screaming—Wasn’t he, Miss Wyatt?”

“The poor man was rather frightened, certainly,” replied Alma. “But I never for a moment expected we should live through it. In fact, I was horribly frightened myself—quite shaken all day yesterday.”

“You!” cried Philip, in a blending of admiration and tenderness and incredulity. “I never heard such a libel in my life. But for your splendid nerve we should all have gone to the bottom, to a dead certainty. Even old Fordham admitted that much.”

“No—no?” expostulated Alma, a tinge of colour suffusing her face. “Please don’t try and make a heroine of me. And, talking of Mr Fordham, you know I told you the other day I didn’t like him, and you were very much offended with me.”

“I might have been with any one else,” he replied, meaningly.

“Well, now,” she went on rather shyly, “I want to retract what I said then. I never saw a man behave so splendidly in an emergency as he did.”

We dare not swear that the suspicion of a jealous pang did not shoot through Phil’s loyal heart at this warmly-spoken eulogy. But if so, he did manful penance by promptly informing his friend. Fordham gave vent to a sardonic chuckle.

“That’s a woman all over. She allows her deliberately-formed judgment to be clean overthrown by a mere fortuitous circumstance. From looking upon me with aversion and distrust the pendulum now swings the other way, and she invests me with heroic virtues because on one occasion I happen to demonstrate the possession of a negative quality—that of not being afraid, or seeming not to be. Faugh! that’s a woman all over! All impulse and featherhead.”

Which was all poor Alma’s warm-hearted little retraction gained from this armour-plated cynic; but she had the negative consolation of never knowing it.

“It isn’t the first time I’ve seen him all there at a pinch; in fact, he got me out of a queer corner once when we were in China. I shouldn’t be here or any where to-day, but for him. But it was a horrid business, and I can’t tell you how he did it; in fact, I hardly like to think of it myself.”

The look of vivid interest which had come over Alma’s face faded away in disappointment.

“Have you been roaming the world long together?” she said.

“Perhaps a couple of years, on and off. We ran against each other first in the course of knocking about. It was at a bull-fight in Barcelona. We had adjoining seats and got into conversation, and, as Britishers are few in the Peninsula, we soon became thick. But, you know, although he’s the best fellow in the world once you know him, old Fordham has his cranks. For instance, he’s a most thorough and confirmed woman-hater.”

“I suppose he was badly treated once,” said Mrs Wyatt. “Still, it strikes me as a foolish thing, and perhaps a little childish, that a man should judge all of us by the measure of one.”

“I don’t know, aunt,” said Alma. “It may be foolish from a certain point of view, morbid perhaps; but I think it shows character. Not many men, I should imagine, except in books, think any of us worth grieving over for long; and the fact that one affair turning out disastrously should stamp its mark on a man’s whole life shows that man to be endowed with a powerful capacity for feeling.”

“Perhaps so,” assented the old lady. “But, Alma, I don’t know what Mr Orlebar will think of us taking his friend to pieces in this free-and-easy fashion.”

“My dear Mrs Wyatt, there is really nothing to be uneasy about on that score,” cried Philip. “We are not abusing him, you know, or running him down. And by the way, queer as it may seem, I know absolutely no more of Fordham’s earlier life than you do. He may have had an ‘affair,’ or he may not. He has never let drop any clue to the mystery—if mystery there is.”

“You see, auntie, how different men are to us poor girls,” said Alma, with a queer little smile. “They know how to keep their own counsel. No such thing as pouring out confidences, even to their closest friends!”

There was a vague something about her tone and look which struck Philip uncomfortably. He could not for the life of him have told why, yet the feeling was there. Not for the first time either. More than once had Alma shown indications of a very keen tendency to satire underlying her normal openness of ideas and the fascination of her utterly unaffected manner. For a few moments he walked by her side in silence.

It was a lovely day. The air was heavy with the scent of narcissus and roses; languid and glowing with the rich warmth of early summer. Great bees drowsily boomed from flower to flower, dipping into the purple pansies, hovering round a carnation, and now and again unwarily venturing within the spray of the sparkling fountain. A swallow-tail butterfly on its broad embroidered wings fluttered about their faces so tamely, that by stretching out a hand they could almost have caught it. Cliff and abrupt slope, green pastureland and sombre pine forest, showed soft and slumbrous in the mellow glow; while overhead, her burnished plumage shining in the sun, floated a great eagle, the rush of whose pinions was almost audible in the noontide stillness as the noble bird described her airy circles in free and majestic sweep. An idyllic day and an idyllic scene, thought Philip, with more than one furtive glance at the beautiful face by his side.

Then, as usual at such moments, in came the prose of life in the shape of the post. A green-aproned porter, a sheaf of letters in his hand, drew near.

“Pour vous, Monsieur!” he said, handing one to Philip.

When a man starts, or describes a ridiculous pirouette at a street crossing because a hansom cabman utters a war-whoop in his ear, it is safe to assume that man’s nerves to be—well, not in the state they should be. But the war-whoop of the hansom cab fiend athirst for—bones, is nothing in the way of a test compared with the wholly unexpected receipt of an objectionable and unwelcome letter. When Philip took the missive from the porter’s hand, a glance at the superscription was enough. A very dismayed look came over his countenance. He held the obnoxious envelope as though it might sting him, then crushed it hurriedly into his pocket. But not before he, and peradventure his companion, had seen that it was directed in a very slanting, pointed, and insignificant feminine hand.

Then the luncheon bell rang.

Chapter Nine.

“Best to be off with the Old Love, Before...”

Philip was not up to his usual form during luncheon. Any one in the secret would have said that that letter was burning a hole in his pocket. It seemed to affect his appetite; it certainly affected his conversational powers. More than once he answered at random; more than once he relapsed into a spell of silence, almost of gloom, wholly foreign to his breezy and light-hearted temperament. Yet he was still in ignorance of its contents. He might have mastered them when he went up to his room at the ringing of the bell, yet he did not. Now, however, he wished that he had.

Fordham, glancing sharply at him across the table, more than three parts made up his mind as to the cause of this abnormal gravity and abstraction on the part of his volatile friend. He knew he had been wandering about with Alma Wyatt—the old lady had not been with them all the time—and was inclined to believe that the impulsive Phil had, contrary to his own advice, both hinted and outspoken, committed himself. At the same time he recognised that if that was so the answer had not been altogether satisfactory. In short, he decided that Master Phil had received a “facer,” and chuckled internally thereat.

The lunch at last over, Philip gained his room. The first thing he did was to lock the door. Then, drawing the obnoxious missive from his pocket, he tore it open, with something that sounded very like a “cussword,” and spread the sheet out on the table before him. The sheet? There were seven of them, all of the flimsiest paper, all closely written over on every side, in that thin, pointed, ill-formed hand. Well, he had got to go through them, so with a sort of effort he began.

“My own dear, dear old darling Phil,—It is just ages, months, years, centuries, since poor little I heard from you, you dreadfully awfully naughty, naughty boy!”

“Oh, Lord!” he ejaculated, turning the sheets over, in a kind of despair, as if to see how much more of this sort of thing was coming. But he derived no modicum of solace from his investigation, for there was a great deal more of it coming—in fact, the whole seven sheets full. Seven sheets of the sort of stuff that sets the court in a roar, and melts the collective heart of the dozen empanelled grocers and ironmongers gathered there to mulct the unwary of the substantial salve which should heal the wounds of the lovely and disconsolate—if slightly intriguing—plaintiff. And, as he read, an uncomfortable misgiving that it might ultimately come to this, invaded his mind more than once.

With a sigh of relief he turned the last page, but the feeling was promptly nipped in the bud as he read:—

“I’ve been at Pa again and again to take us abroad this year; how jolly it would be if we were to meet again in that love of a Switzerland, wouldn’t it, dear boy? But no such luck, he won’t, and we are going to St. Swithins instead, and it’s the next best thing, and I do love St. Swithins, and I shall think the blue sea is the Lake of Geneva and you are there. But we will go all over it together soon, you and I alone, won’t we, Phil, darling, you and your little Edie.” Then followed half a dozen lines of appropriate drivel, and a postscript:—“Be sure you send me a big bunch of adleweis from the top of the Matterhorn.”

If ever a man felt nauseated with himself and all the world, assuredly that man was Philip Orlebar, as he sat staring at this effusion. Its fearful style—or rather utter lack of it—its redundancy of conjunctions, its far from infrequent mis-spellings, its middle-class vulgarity of gush, would at any other time have been amusing, if painfully so; now it was all absolutely revolting. He took it up again. “‘Adleweis!’ (why couldn’t the girl borrow a dictionary), and ‘from the top of the Matterhorn’ (ugh!) And St. Swithins, staring, cockneyfied, yahoo-ridden St. Swithins, with its blazer-clad ’Arries and shrimp-devouring ’Arriets, its nigger minstrels and beach conjurers! (faugh!) What sort of a mind—what sort of ideas had the girl got? Then again, ‘dear boy’! Fancy Alma—” and at this suggestion he dropped the missive, and, starting up, began to pace the room.

“‘We will go all over it together soon!’ Will we, though!” he muttered bitterly. And then, with a savageness begotten of a feeling of being cornered, trapped, run to earth, he began to wonder whether he should suffer himself to be taken possession of in this slap-dash fashion. Had he really given himself away beyond recall! Old Glover entertained splendidly, and the sparkling burgundy was more than first-rate. What a fool he had been. Still it seemed impossible that Edith should have taken seriously all he said—impossible and preposterous! Yes, preposterous—if all that a man said while sitting out with a pretty girl, in a deliciously cool and secluded corner of the conservatory—after that first-rate sparkling burgundy too—was to be twisted into a downright proposal—an engagement. By Jove, it was—preposterous!

But through all his self-evolved indignation Philip could not disguise from himself that he had acted like a lunatic, had, in fact, given himself away. Between his susceptibility to feminine admiration and his laisser faire disposition, he had allowed his relations with Edith Glover to attain that stage where the boundary between the ordinary flirtatious society acquaintance and the affianced lover has touched vanishing point. The girl was pretty, and adored his noble self. Old Glover, who was a merchant-prince of some sort or other and rolling in money, would be sure to “come down” liberally. On the whole he might do worse. So he had reasoned. But now?

Throughout his perusal of that trying effusion his mind’s eye had been more than half absorbed in a vision of Alma Wyatt—Alma as he had last seen her—the sweet, patrician face, the grey earnest eyes, the exquisite tastefulness of her cool white apparel, the grace and poetry of her every movement, the modulated music of her voice. It seemed a profanation to contrast her—to place her on the same level with this other girl—this girl with her middle-class ideas, vile orthography, and exuberant gush.

What was he to do? that was the thing. Should he send a reply—one so chilling and decisive as to leave room for no further misapprehension? That would never do, he decided. The Glovers were just the sort of people to come straight over there and raise such a clamour about his ears that he might safely wish himself in a hornets’ nest by contrast. This they might do, and welcome, were it not for Alma. But then, were it not for Alma it is probable to the last degree that he would have drifted on, contented enough with the existing state of things.

“Heavens and earth, I believe old Fordham is right after all?” he ejaculated at last. “Women are the devil—the very devil, one and all of them. I’ll adopt his theory. Shot if I don’t!”

But profession and faith are not necessarily a synonym. Between our would-be misogynist and the proposed mental transformation stood that bright and wholly alluring potentiality whose name was Alma Wyatt.

With an effort he locked away the obnoxious missive, wishing to Heaven he could lock up the dilemma he was in as easily and indefinitely. Should he consult Fordham? No, that wouldn’t help matters; besides, he shrank from having to own that he had made a consummate ass of himself, nor did he feel disposed just then to open his heart even to Fordham. How beastly hot it had become! He would stay up in his room and take it easy—have a read and a smoke. Hang everybody! And with a growl he kicked off his boots, and, picking up a Tauchnitz novel, flung himself on the bed and lighted his pipe.

Rat-tat-tat-tat! Then a voice. “You there, Phil? The first dinner-bell has gone!”

He started up. The knock and the voice were Fordham’s. It was a quarter-past six, and he had been asleep just three hours.

“We were afraid you had heard bad news, Mr Orlebar,” said Mrs Wyatt, as he slid into his seat a quarter of an hour late. “You haven’t, have you?”

“Oh, no,” he answered, with splendid mendacity. “I’ve been feeling a little pulled down to-day, and dropped off to sleep without knowing it.”

“The thunder in the air, I suppose,” said Alma, with a bright, mischievous glance. “We had such a nice walk up to the Cubly, when it began to get cool.”

“The Cubly?”

“Yes. Uncle was looking for you everywhere, but, as it happens, it was lucky we didn’t disturb you. Besides, we feared you might have had bad news.”

This was what he had missed then—all through that infernal letter too. He felt more savage than ever. Bad news? Yes he had, and no mistake. But the next moment he was destined to hear worse.

“I’m sorry to say we are obliged to cut short our stay here,” General Wyatt was saying to Fordham. “Some friends whom we had arranged to meet have wired us to join them at the Grindelwald—an old brother officer and his family. They have turned up sooner than we expected, and, reckoning on our promise to join them, have already engaged our rooms. In fact they could not have got them otherwise, for the hotel is filling up rapidly.”

“Sorry to hear that, General—very sorry. When do you leave?”

“Not later than Tuesday, I’m afraid. That’ll give this young person a day clear for a final walk or climb.”

Here was a bolt from the blue with a vengeance, thought Philip.

“I don’t want to go in the least,” said Alma. “Don’t you think,” she added, with a flash of merriment, “it’s hateful to leave a place just as you have become fond of it?”

“Hateful isn’t the word for it,” replied Philip, with savage vehemence.

“But don’t you think you may become just as fond of where you’re going?” struck in the eternal female opposite.

“I’m perfectly sure you won’t in this case,” said Fordham, speaking to, and answering for, the Wyatts at the same time. “The Grindelwald is about the most noisy, crowded, and cheap-tripper-ridden resort in the Alps. A chronic dust cloud overhangs the whole Lütschinen Thal by reason of a perennial string of vehicles ascending from and descending to Interlaken with scarce a break of fifty yards. You can’t go on a glacier without paying gate-money—a franc a head. Fancy that! Fancy reducing a glacier to the level of a cockney tea-garden! Then between the village and either of the said glaciers is an ever-moving stream of the personally conducted, mostly mounted on mules and holding umbrellas aloft.”

“But don’t you think you are painting poor Grindelwald in very unattractive colours?” expostulated the Infliction.

“Think? No, I’m sure of it,” was the short reply. “And I haven’t done yet. The place swarms with beggars and cadgers. Go where you will, you are beset by small ragamuffins pestering you to purchase evil-looking edelweiss blossoms or mobbing your heels to be allowed to show you the way, which you know a vast deal better than they do. Every fifty yards or so you come upon the Alpine horn fiend, prepared to make hideous melody for a consideration; or wherever a rock occurs which can by any chance produce an echo, there lurks a vagabond ready to explode a howitzer upon receipt of a franc. No. Taking it all in all, I don’t think one is far out in defining Grindelwald as the Rosherville of Switzerland.”

“That sounds truly dreadful,” said Alma. “But were it the reverse I should still be sorry to leave here—very sorry.”

“We must get up a jolly long walk to-morrow,” said Philip, eagerly. “It’ll be the last time, and we ought to have a good one. Let’s go up the Cape au Moine.”

“But isn’t that a very dangerous climb?” objected Mrs Wyatt.

“Oh, no. At least, I believe not. Wentworth, who has been up ever so many times, says it’s awfully over-rated. But we’ll get him to come along and to show us the way.”

Fordham looked quickly up, intending to throw cold water on the whole scheme. But Philip’s boot coming in violent and significant contact with a rather troublesome corn, stifled in a vehement scowl the remark he was about to make, as his friend intended it should.

“That’ll be delightful,” assented Alma, gleefully. “Now who shall we ask to go? Mr Wentworth, the two Ottleys—they are sure to ask Mr Scott.”

“Should have thought that boat experience would have choked him off any further enterprise,” grunted Fordham.

“That’ll be four,” went on Alma, not heeding the interruption. “Then you two, uncle and myself—eight altogether. We ought to be roped. It’s a real climb, isn’t it?”

“Oh, very,” said Fordham. “So real that not half of us will reach the top.”

“Well, I mean to for one,” declared Alma. “And oh, I do hope it’ll be fine.”

Chapter Ten.

On the Cape au Moine.

Alma’s wish was destined to be fulfilled, for the morning broke clear and cloudless. Starting in the highest spirits, a couple of hours’ easy walking brought the party to the foot of the steep and grassy slope which leads right up to the left arête of the Cape au Moine.

Though the morning was yet young it was uncomfortably warm. The mighty grass slopes of the Rochers des Verreaux, of which the Cape au Moine is the principal summit, stood forth with the distinctness of a steel engraving, so clear was the air. A suspicious clearness which, taken in conjunction with certain light cloud streamers flecking the sky, and the unwonted heat of that early hour, betokened to the practised eye an impending change of weather.

“Wet jackets,” remarked Wentworth, laconically, with a glance at these signs.

“Likely enough,” assented Fordham. “Hallo! what’s the row down there? They seem to be beginning already.”

These two were leading the way up the steep, slippery path, and were a little distance ahead of the rest. The above remarks referred to a sudden halt at the tail of the party, caused by one of the Miss Ottleys finding her heart fail her: for the path at that point skirts the very brink of a precipice.

“Only what I expected,” sneered Fordham. “Look at that, Wentworth. What sort of figure will all these women cut when we get them up on the arête yonder, if they can’t stand an easy, beaten track up a grass slope? We shall have them squalling and hystericking and fainting, and perhaps taking a header over. Eh?”

Wentworth merely shrugged his shoulders. “Who is that new specimen they’ve caught?” he said, as, the difficulty apparently overcome, the group behind was seen to resume its way.

“That?” said Fordham, glancing at the person indicated, a tallish, loosely-hung youth in knickerbockers, who seemed to be dividing his time between squiring the Miss Ottleys and arguing with Scott, the parson. “Don’t know who he is—and don’t want to. Confound the fellow!—began ‘Fordham-ing’ me after barely a quarter of an hour’s talk. Name’s Gedge, I believe. I suppose some of the women cut him into this trip.”

“Most probably,” replied Wentworth. “I haven’t exchanged any remarks with him myself. But he sits near me at table and talks nineteen to the dozen. It’s like having a full-sized cow-bell swinging in your ear just the time you are within his proximity.”

“They say everything has its use,” returned Fordham, meditatively. “I own to having discovered a use for friend Gedge—viz, to demonstrate that there can actually exist a more thoroughly self-sufficient and aggressive bore than even that fellow Scott.”

The other laughed. And by this time they had gained the dip where the path—a mere thread of a track—crosses the high ridge of the Chaîne des Verreaux at its extreme end, and sat down to await the arrival of the residue of the party.

The latter, broken up into twos and threes, was straggling up the slope. The temporary impediment had apparently been successfully overcome, and the trepidation of the fearful fair one removed. Still, to those unaccustomed to heights it was nervous work, for the path was, as we have said, a mere thread, intersecting the long, slippery grass, more treacherous than ice, of the frightfully steep mountain-side—and lying below was more than one precipice, comparatively insignificant, but high enough to mean a broken limb if not a broken neck.

“Well, Miss Wyatt, do you feel like going the whole way?” said Wentworth, as Alma, with her uncle and Philip Orlebar, gained the ridge where they were halted.

“Of course I do,” she answered gaily. “I always said I would get to the top if I got the chance—and I will.”

“There are five arêtes—three of them like knife-blades,” pursued Wentworth, who rather shared Fordham’s opinions regarding the other sex. “What if you begin to feel giddy in the middle of one of them?”

“But I’m not going to feel anything of the kind,” she answered, with defiant good-humour. “So don’t try and put me off, for it’s of no use.”

“I say, Fordham,” sung out a sort of hail-the-maintop voice, the property of the youth referred to as Gedge, as its owner climbed puffing up to where they sat, followed by the rest of the party. “I don’t think overmuch of this Cape au Moine of yours. Why one can dance up it on one leg.”

“And one can dance down it on one head—and that in a surprisingly short space of time—viz, a few seconds,” said Wentworth, tranquilly. “However, you’ll see directly.”

“Well, who’s going up and who’s going to wait for us here?” said Philip, after a rest of ten minutes or so.

“I don’t think we are,” said the elder Miss Ottley. “I more than half promised mamma we wouldn’t. And Monsieur Dufour says it’s such a dangerous mountain. We’ll stay here and take care of General Wyatt.”

There was some demur to this on the part of the more inexperienced section of the males. The experienced ones said nothing.

“You’d better stay with us, Alma,” said the General, with a shade of anxiety. “Remember there have been several people killed up there.”

“Just why I particularly want to go, uncle. I want to be able to say I have been up a mountain on which several people have been killed.”

“I think Miss Wyatt has a steady enough head, General,” said Wentworth, who was an experienced Alpine climber. “At least, judging from the way in which she stood looking over that precipice down yonder, I should say so. If she will allow me I will take care of her.”

“I’ll be hanged if you will though!” said Phil to himself. And then they started.

The mere climbing part of what followed was not hard. But what was apt to prove trying to the nerves of the uninitiated was when, after feeling their way carefully along the narrow ledge-like path which runs beneath the rocks near the crest of the ridge, they came right out upon the summit of the arête itself. Here, indeed, it was a good deal like walking on the edge of a knife-blade even as Wentworth had defined it, and here it was that two, at any rate, of the party began to feel dubious. On the right was a precipitous fall of rocks, then the steep, slippery, grassy slope—broken here and there by a cliff—which constituted the whole of that side of the mountain; on the left an unbroken drop of seven or eight hundred feet. And on the apex of this rock ridge, in single file, poised, like Mohammed’s coffin, between the heavens and the earth, the aspiring party had to walk or crawl.

“Well, Miss Wyatt, how do you feel now?” said Wentworth, who was leading the way. Alma was immediately behind him, then came Philip Orlebar, then Fordham, Scott and Gedge bringing up the rear. “Not giddy at all, I hope?”

“Not in the very least,” said Alma, brightly. “Quite sure? I can give you a hand if you like.”

“Not for the world. I assure you I’m thoroughly enjoying it. And what a view!”

“Well, look carefully where you’re going,” continued Wentworth. “Leave the view to take care of itself until you get to the top. It won’t run away.”

That the warning was by no means superfluous was shown by a sudden stagger on the part of Philip. He reeled for a moment, then, with a great effort, recovered his balance. He had been so absorbed in watching Alma’s progress in front, that he had quite neglected the attention due to his own footing. Now this cannot be done with impunity upon the edge of a knife-like ridge about one thousand feet in mid-air—as he learned when he found himself within an ace of plunging into space. Fordham, for a moment, thought he had gone.

“You’ll add to the record of this much maligned climb, Phil, if you don’t mind,” he said. “What’s the row? Feel heady?”

“Not a bit. Only made a slip. Sha’n’t do it again though. I say, Wentworth, how far would a fellow fall here—on this side?”

“Oh, about eight hundred feet. Then he’d go footballing two or three hundred more,” was the nonchalant reply. “I wouldn’t try it, though, if I were you.”

They were off the arête now, and paused to rest under the rocks to allow the others time to come up.

“Hallo, Gedge!” continued Wentworth, as the addressed came crawling along on all-fours, and that very gingerly. “I thought you felt like doing this climb on one leg, and instead of that it seems to take you all four.”

“You people go on at such a rate. Besides, I find I’m not up to much on a place like this. No, I’ll climb down from the ‘one-leg’ position, absolutely and unreservedly.”

“There’s another man who isn’t up to much on a place like this,” said Fordham, with a dry chuckle.

Scott, to whom this remark referred, had nearly reached the middle of the arête. He, too, was creeping on hands and knees. But suddenly his heart seemed to fail him, for there he sat, straddling the ridge, one leg on each side of the mountain, the very picture of wild panic. His hat had blown off, and hung by a string over his shoulder, and he dared not move a finger to replace it. His hands shook as he grasped the rock in a strained, terror-stricken grasp, and his eyes seemed to start from his deadly white face.

“Oh, help me off!” he cried piteously. “For Heaven’s sake, some of you help me off!”

In vain they called out to him that he was perfectly safe—that if Miss Wyatt could get along the place without any difficulty surely he could. The poor man’s reasoning faculties seemed to have deserted him altogether.

“I suppose I must go back and salvage him!” said Wentworth, resignedly. “You had better wait here for me, though.” And in a moment he was beside the distressed chaplain.

“Hang it all, Mr Scott!” he said in an undertone, “do remember what an exhibition you are making of yourself before Miss Wyatt, and pull yourself together. You’re quite safe, I tell you. Now, turn round—carefully as you like—and then crawl back again as you came.”

When a man of Scott’s calibre is in a horrible funk, poised a thousand feet in mid-air, appeals to his reason or his sense of shame are apt to fall alike on deaf ears. To all Wentworth’s adjurations he only reiterated piteously, “I can’t move! What is to be done? I can’t move!”

What, indeed, was to be done? It was a position in which if a man will not help himself nobody can help him. Wentworth was in despair. Suddenly a happy thought struck him. His flask!

“Here, take a nip of this and pull yourself together. That’s right,” as Scott eagerly seized the proffered refreshment.

And soon the effects were felt. A liberal gulp or two having infused into his system a faint modicum of that artificial courage libellously termed “Dutch,” the panic-stricken cleric managed to turn round upon his aërial perch, and began to crawl gingerly back in the same ignominious posture as that in which he had come, stipulating eagerly that his succourer should keep just behind him in order to grab hold of him if he should show the least sign of falling. Wentworth was glad to get rid of him on any terms, and, depositing him in safety under a rock, solemnly enjoined upon him not to move therefrom until they should return.

“Well, Mr Fordham,” said Alma, wickedly, “we poor women are not always the ones who give the most trouble, you see.”

“No, by Jove, you’re not, Miss Wyatt,” struck in Gedge, characteristically eager to answer for everybody. “What an awful fool I must have looked myself. I’ll do the next arête on my hind legs like the rest of you.” And he was as good as his word.

Two more of these narrow rock-ridges, overhanging a dizzy height, then a particularly awkward “corner” where a very slight excrescence of the rock constituted the only foothold, and where Wentworth and Philip’s combined caution availed to render the danger for Alma practically nil, and they began the steep but easy climb of the grassy cone itself. A few minutes later they stood on the summit.

“Well, Miss Wyatt, I must in all due sincerity congratulate you,” said Wentworth, as they sat down to rest after their exertions. “No one could have got along better than you have done. And you have never climbed a mountain before?”

“Never. Why, I’ve never even seen a mountain before I came to this country a couple of weeks ago,” answered Alma, with a gratified smile.

“Wonderful I wonderful! Isn’t it, Fordham?”

“Very,” replied that worthy, drily.

“No chance of any one holding too good an opinion of herself when Mr Fordham is by,” said Alma, with mischievous emphasis on the “her.”

“Which is to say that everything—everybody, rather—is of some use,” was the ready rejoinder.

“I don’t see the point of that at all,” cried Phil, dimly conscious that his deity was being made the butt of his crusty friend’s satire. “No, I don’t. Come now, Fordham.”

“I suppose not. There is another point you don’t see either, which is that when a man has taken the trouble to shin up the Cape au Moine on a particularly hot and surpassingly clear day, he prefers the enjoyment of the magnificent view which a bountiful Providence has spread around him to the labour of driving this or that ‘point’ into the somewhat opaque brain-box of Philip Orlebar, Esq.”

“You had better take that as final, Mr Orlebar, ere worse befall you,” laughed! Alma, interrupting the derisive hoot wherewith her adorer had greeted the above contemptuous speech. “And Mr Fordham’s principle is a sound one in the main, for I never could have imagined the world could show anything so glorious, so perfectly heavenly as this view. Let us make the most of it.”

Her enthusiasm was not feigned, and for it there was every justification. The atmosphere balmy and clear, the lofty elevation at which they found themselves—these alone were enough to engender an unbounded sense of exhilaration. But what a panorama! Range upon range of noble mountains, the dazzling snow-summits of the giants of the Oberland reaching in a stately line across the whole eastern background of the picture, from the cloud-like Wetterhorn to the massive rock rampart of the Diablerets. Mountains, mountains everywhere—one vast rolling sea of tossing peaks, rock-ridges, and smooth, hump-like backs; of bold and sweeping slopes, here black with pine forest, there vividly green in the full blaze of unclouded sunlight; and, cleaving the heart of the billowy expanse, such a maze of sequestered and peaceful valleys resonant with the far-away music of cow-bells, at eventide sweet with the melodious jodel of the Ranz des Vaches. In the distance the turbid Sarine winding its way by more than one cluster of red roofs grouping around a modest steeple on its banks. This on the one hand. On the other, the rolling, wooded champaign and rich pasture-lands of the plain of Switzerland stretching away to the lakes of Neuchatel and Bienne, and historic Morat; and below, like a huge turquoise, the blue Lake Léman in its mountain-girt setting, between the far-away line of the purple Jura and the great masses of the Savoy Alps rearing up opposite. What a panorama, beneath a sky of deep and unclouded blue, lighted by the golden radiance of a summer sun! It was indeed something to make the most of—to store up within the treasure-house of the memory.

Seated upon the rank grass which carpeted the windswept summit of the narrow pinnacle, Alma was making Wentworth tell her the names of the sea of peaks, far and near, which lay around them. This he was well qualified to do, knowing them as he did by heart, and for nearly an hour the object lesson went on. Fordham lay on the grass, smoking a pipe, in an attitude of the most perfect repose, and the irrepressible Gedge was bearing his part in a bawled colloquy between himself and those they had left to await their return. Neither heard what the other said, but this was a secondary consideration. The great thing was to be saying something—anyhow as far as the volatile Gedge was concerned.

“It isn’t the snow mountains that are responsible for the greatest number of smashes,” said Wentworth, having pointed out two or three peaks which, like the one they were on, were responsible for having killed somebody. “The grass peaks like this are far the worst. It’s this way. A fellow makes up his mind to do a regular climb—say the Matterhorn or the Jungfrau. All right. He makes up his mind that he’s going to do a big thing, and from start to finish he’s keenly on the look out. Besides, he has guides, who won’t allow him to take any risk. Now, on a thing like this, that you can just hop up and down again between the two table d’hôtes, why he thinks he is going to do it on one leg, like friend Gedge there.”

“Well, but—Wentworth—you don’t call this a small thing?” struck in he named. “The confounded—what d’you call ’em?—arêtes require a pretty strong head.”

“Yes, that’s so. This is, perhaps, a little more difficult than some of the other climbs that break fellows’ necks. Take the old Jaman, for instance. You could almost ride a mule up and down it. Anyhow, the path, with ordinary care, is as safe as a church. But some day the know-everything Briton spots a rather fine gentian growing just off the path. Quite easy, of course. But he soon finds all the difference in the world between the path and the mountain-side. The grass is as slippery as ice, especially if it is a little wet. His feet slide from under him and away he goes. A toboggan’s nothing to it. He shoots down the grass slope like a streak of lightning, then over the inevitable cliff—and—a sack of bones is brought back to the hotel, and a paragraph goes the round of the English papers, headed ‘Another Alpine Accident.’ Thus a mountain gets the name of being a dangerous one, whereas really it is a mere idiot-trap, sensible people being perfectly safe on it—in ordinarily decent weather, that is.”

“Horrible!” said Alma, with a little shiver. “And at this height it all seems to come home to one so.”

“I say, Wentworth,” said Phil, “you’d better keep those bogey disquisitions of yours until we get down. You will spoil Miss Wyatt’s nerve for the arêtes going back.”

“Not at all,” said Alma. “I am very much interested. Tell me, Mr Wentworth, don’t people often come to grief by climbing down places that look easier than they are?”

“Of course they do. You notice, from below, a bit of rock that looks as if you could sit on it and then have your feet on the ground, but when you get to it it’s a cliff fifty or sixty feet high. But I’ve taken the trouble to go into the cases, and in nine instances out of ten it is the little grass fiend that does for its victim, not the eternal snow-capped giant.”

“Ever come up here in the snow, Wentworth?” said Gedge.

“Yes. It’s dangerous, though—very dangerous indeed. I don’t care about doing it again—in winter, I mean, not when there’s a mere temporary powdering of it. Of course, you understand, the whole aspect of the mountain is changed, every feature as unfamiliar as if it was a new thing. And snow is apt to slide away in great masses, taking you with it. It’s bad in wind, too. I’ve crossed those arêtes when I’ve had to lie flat and grab the rock rather harder than we saw friend Scott doing just now. You have no idea of the force of the wind on a place like that.”

Fordham and Gedge now started to go down. Alma, however, begged for a little longer time. She might never see such a view again in her lifetime, she urged, and they had still the best part of the day before them. So Wentworth had yielded—that is to say, he had remained behind too, ignoring Philip Orlebar’s airy hint that he needn’t bother to wait if he would rather go, for that he—Phil—would undertake to bring Miss Wyatt down safely. But Wentworth, who was a good-natured fellow, and whose inclinations in nowise moved him to cut out Master Phil even temporarily, was impervious to the latter’s wishes now. He felt himself in a measure responsible, and Philip was comparatively inexperienced at mountain work.

So they sat and talked on, till suddenly Alma exclaimed, with a shiver—

“Why, the sun is going in. And look! we are almost in a cloud.”

Wentworth, hitherto absorbed in a favourite topic, doubly attractive as shared by a new and interested listener, looked quickly round.

“Yes,” he said, rising, “we had better go down.”

Chapter Eleven.

Peril.

It had stolen upon them like an enemy unawares.

A moment ago they were in a full blaze of noonday radiance, revelling in its golden, undimmed splendour; now this had, as by the wave of a magic wand, given place to a semi-gloom, chill and depressing in its misty suddenness. A moment ago a panorama as of half a continent lay spread around them, now an object the size of a human being was invisible at twelve yards. Creeping up, swift, stealthy, and ghost-like, the cloud curtain was wreathing its dank and shadowy folds round the pinnacle-like cone of the Cape au Moine, and already imparting a rimy slipperiness to the rocks and grass.

“We had better go down,” Wentworth had said, unconcernedly. Heartily now he wished they had done so half an hour earlier, for he, in common with the rest of them, was sensible of a sudden rising of the wind, which, taken with the fact that, so far from dispelling the cloud, it only seemed to be rolling it up thicker, pointed to the possibility of a gusty squall, the extent and suddenness of whose force it was impossible to predict.

The very features of the mountain seemed to have changed. As they got off the grassy cone on to the first arête, the summit, dimly visible as they looked back, seemed to tower up at least four times its actual height, and the vertical line of the great precipice which forms its eastern face stood forth black and forbidding against the opaque background of vapour. A pair of crows flapped forth from some rocky recess and, uttering a raucous croak, soared away into the misty space. The straight, narrow edge of their dizzy path disappeared in the cloud not a dozen yards in front.

No one knew better than Wentworth the utterly disconcerting effect of this sort of phenomenon upon even the most skilled mountaineer. Every well-known feature or landmark assumes a puzzling unfamiliarity—in fact, a complete metamorphosis of the whole scene appears to have taken place. So, with a dubious glance to windward, he remarked—

“It might be our best plan not to attempt the arêtes at present. We can get back on to the cone and wait until this blows over, in perfect safety. What do you think, Miss Wyatt?”

“Oh, let’s try it, if it can be done,” she exclaimed, eagerly. “My uncle will be so dreadfully frightened if we wait here. Only think of it. He will certainly imagine we have come to grief. No, let’s go on; I am not in the least afraid.”

Wentworth made no further objection, and they resumed their now perilous way. For the wind had gained in strength and volume with alarming rapidity, and, balanced there on that knife-like ridge, those three adventurous ones were exposed to its full force and fury. More than once they were obliged to take refuge on their hands and knees, and indeed were finally reduced to crawling ignominiously thereon. The shrill whistle of the blast tore past their ears, singing through the weather-beaten herbage which straggled upon the side of the arête. The mist swirled over the crest of the ridge in rimy puffs, and below, whenever they snatched half a glance from their precarious progress, the climbers could note a seething, whirling chaos of vapour filling up the great hollow whose bottom lay at a dizzy depth beneath.

“Not much further to go, is there?” said Philip, anxiously, as they stood resting beneath the rocks at the end of the second arête from the summit. It had devolved upon Wentworth as guide to help Alma down the steeper and more dangerous places, even to the placing of her feet; but this Philip had quite ceased to secretly resent. He himself was as bewildered as a child in this unaccustomed cloud-land.

“Not so very much,” answered Wentworth, ambiguously and in fact somewhat absently, for often as he had been there before, the cloud had disconcerted him more than he chose to admit, and he was thinking whether it would not really be rank lunacy to resume their attempt. But a slight shiver of cold on Alma’s part decided him.

“Had enough rest, Miss Wyatt?” he said. “Come along, then. We must not lose any time.”

He stepped forth from their resting-place. The shrieking fury of the wind had become almost a gale. This arête was the worst of all, for whereas the path on the others ran here and there along the face of the slope, thus partially shielding them from the full force of the blast, here they would have to crawl along the very crest itself.

“It seems to be blowing harder than ever!” said Wentworth, imprudently standing upright upon the sharp ridge.

A perfect roar drowned his words. As though struck by some unseen power he staggered, made a frantic attempt to regain a recumbent posture, then clutching wildly at the ground he disappeared into space; while the horrified spectators who had not yet left their shelter, blown flat against the rock by the incredible force of the sudden gust, realised that but for this providential rampart they too would have met with the same fate.

For many minutes they gazed at each other in silence, too unnerved, too horror-stricken to speak. And that they were so is little to be wondered at. They had just seen their companion blown into the abyss within a few paces of them. At that very moment they pictured him lying far, far down where the boiling vapours swirled blackly through space—lying in scattered, mangled fragments, poor relics of the strong, cool-headed man who but a moment ago was guiding them with such skill and judgment. And their own position was sufficiently alarming. Here they were, up in the clouds, exposed to the force and fury of a mountain storm whose duration it was impossible to pre-estimate.

“How awful?” gasped Alma, at length, during a lull in the bellowing of the gale. “How truly awful! Is—is there no chance for him?”

Philip shook his head gloomily, and there was a shudder in his voice. “Not a shadow of a chance, I’m afraid. You saw, as we came along, the sort of drop there is on that side. But—try not to think of it.”

“I cannot help thinking of it. Oh, it is too frightful!” and, thoroughly unnerved, she burst into a wild storm of tears.

It was too much for Philip. Not there on that lonely mountain height, enveloped in the black darkness of the cloud, witnessing her distress, her only protector, could he any longer restrain the tenderness which took possession of him with every glance from her eyes, every tone of her voice.

“Alma—darling”—he broke forth—“think only of yourself now. Keep up your spirits like your own brave self. Look. It may not last long, and once the wind drops we shall have no difficulty in finding the way.”

His words of consolation—no less than those of love which had been drawn from him involuntarily as it were—seemed to fall on deaf ears. The shock of the horrible fate which had overtaken poor Wentworth before their very eyes was too overwhelming, and she continued to weep unrestrainedly, almost hysterically. The black peaty turf of the narrow space where they rested had grown wet and slippery, for it was beginning to rain, and overhead the grey crags loomed athwart the flying misty scud, breaking it up into long fantastic wreaths and streamers, where it swirled past the cloven and jagged facets of the rock.

“What are you doing?—No; I will not have that!” said Alma presently, resisting an attempt on his part to button around her shoulders his coat, which he had taken off for the purpose.

“You must have it. I saw you shiver,” he answered decisively, at the same time holding the garment around her in such wise as to make the very most of its warming powers.

“I will not. I am more warmly clad than you are. You will catch your death of cold yourself.”

“Now, it’s of no use arguing—you must have it. I have a will of my own sometimes, and I’ll fling the coat over the cliff rather than wear it myself. It is cold, as you say,” he added, with a violent shiver, “but I’m not made of sugar.”

It was cold indeed. The wind blew chill and piercing, and the rain, which was driving in upon them in a sleety penetrating shower, began to render things more and more uncomfortable for poor Phil in his shirtsleeves. And yet amid the cold and the wet, weatherbound up there in that weird noonday night, with the horror of a comrade’s fate still upon him—fear, uncertainty, and danger around them, Philip Orlebar was, strange to say, uncontrollably, blissfully happy. Stranger still, it might be that the day would come when he should look back to that period of doubt and horror spent in the semi-darkness of the mountain storm, and the fury of its icy blasts around their shelterless heads, with the same sad, aching hopelessness wherewith a lost soul might look upon the paradise it has forfeited by its own act.

The time went by—he standing before her in order that she might benefit by even that slight barrier from the force of the wind—talking ever, in order to keep up her spirits, to keep her mind from dwelling upon the horror they had both witnessed; but for which event, indeed, it is probable that he would have spoken all that was on his mind there and then. Even he, however, recognised that this was no time for anything of the kind; and indeed, in the fearless protectiveness of his demeanour, the tact and fixity of purpose wherewith he strove to take her out of herself, no one would have recognised the thoughtless, devil-may-care, and, truth to tell, somewhat selfish temperament of Philip Orlebar. His whole nature seemed transformed. He seemed a dozen years older. But the love tremor in his voice spoke the high pressure of restraint he had put upon himself. Did Alma detect it? We cannot say.

A faint halloo came through the opaque folds of the mist—then another much nearer. At the same time they realised that the force of the wind had materially abated; moreover it seemed to be getting much lighter.

“That’s Fordham,” said Philip, with a start. Then he answered the shout.

“Is Miss Wyatt all right?” sung out Fordham.

“Safe as a church,” roared Philip, and the welcome news was passed on to those waiting further back.

A ray of sunlight shot through the gloom, and lo, as if by magic, the opaque inky wall thus breached began to fall asunder, yielding before each successive piercing ray, and the patch of blue sky thus opened spread wider and wider till the whole of the arête lay revealed, wet and glistening in the sunshine, and beyond the gleaming crags the cloudcap around the apex of the cone grew smaller and beautifully less until it was whirled away altogether.

“Where’s Wentworth?” was Fordham’s first query on joining them. Philip looked very blank.

“Come this way, Fordham,” he said, leading the other to the spot, not many paces distant, where the unfortunate man had disappeared. “Look at that. What sort of a chance would a fellow have who went over there?”

Fordham looked at the speaker with a start of dismay, then at the line where the abrupt slope of the ridge broke into sheer precipice half a dozen yards below.

“I’m afraid he wouldn’t have the ghost of a shadow of a chance,” he muttered. “But—how was it?”

“Blown over,” answered Philip.

“The devil!”

Both men stood gazing down in gloomy silence. The strength of the wind was still a trifle too powerful to be pleasant up there on the arête; but below, sheltered from its force, the whole vast depth of the valley was filled with a sea of snowy vapour, slowly heaving itself up into round billowy humps.

“By Jove! Did you hear that?” suddenly exclaimed Philip, with a start that nearly sent him to share the fate of the luckless Wentworth.

“Yes, I did,” was the hardly less eager reply. “But—it isn’t possible. Wait—now—listen again!”

A faint and far-away shout from below now rose distinctly to their ears. Both listened with an intensity of eagerness that was painful.

“Only some native, herding cattle down there!” said Philip, despondently.

“Shut up, man, and listen again. Cattle-herds in this canton don’t as a rule talk good English,” interrupted Fordham. “Ah! I thought so,” he added, as this time the voice was distinctly audible—articulating, though somewhat feebly—“Any one up there?”

“Yes. Where are you?”

“About forty feet down. Get a rope quick. I can’t hold on for ever.”

“Now, Phil,” said Fordham, quickly, “you’re younger than I am, and you’ve got longer legs. So just cut away down to the Chalet Soladier, that one we passed coming up, and levy upon them for all the ropes on the premises. Wait—be careful though,” he added, as the other was already starting. “Don’t hurry too much until you’re clear of the arêtes, or you may miss your own footing. After that, as hard as you like.”

Away went Philip; Alma, her nerves in a state of the wildest excitement, dividing her attention between following with her eyes his dangerous course along the knife-like ridges, and listening to the dialogue between Fordham and Wentworth. The latter’s fall, it transpired, had fortunately been arrested by a growth of rhododendron bushes, anchored in the very face of the cliff. He had no footing to speak of, he said, and dared not even trust all his weight upon so precarious a hold as the roots of a bush or two, especially where there could be but the most insignificant depth of soil. He was distributing his weight as much as possible, upon such slight slope as this bushy projection afforded; indeed, so constrained was his position that he could not even give free play to his voice, hence the faint and far-away sound of his first hail. He hoped the rope would not be long coming, he added, for the bushes might give way at any moment; moreover he himself was becoming somewhat played out.

Alma felt every drop of blood curdle within her as she listened to this voice out of the abyss, and pictured to herself its owner hanging there by a few twigs, with hardly a foothold, however slight, between himself and hundreds of feet of grisly death. Even Fordham felt sick at heart as he realised the frightful suspense of the situation.

“Keep up your nerve, Wentworth,” he shouted. “Phil has nearly reached the châlet now. They can be here in half an hour.”

“He is there now,” said Alma, who was watching every step of his progress through his own glasses which he had left up there. “And the man is all ready for him—and—yes—he is meeting him with ropes. Now they are starting. Thank Heaven for that!”

Fortunate indeed was it for Wentworth that the châlet was inhabited at that time of year, and that its occupier happened to be there that day. The latter, who had watched the ascent, and had seen some of the party on the cone just before the cloud had hidden everything, was a trifle uneasy himself. But the sight of a tall athletic young Englishman tearing down the slope in his shirtsleeves confirmed his fears. He put two and two together, and, being a quick-witted fellow, had started to meet Philip with all the ropes his establishment could muster.

All this was shouted down to Wentworth for the encouragement of the latter. And the excitement of those on the arête, no less than that of the party left behind on the high col, became more and more intense as they watched the distance diminish between them and the bearers of the needful ropes, upon which depended a fellow-creature’s life. Minutes seemed hours. But what must they have seemed to the man who hung there over that dizzy height—his strength ebbing fast—counting the very seconds to the time his rescue should begin!

By the time Philip and the cowherd had joined him, together with Gedge, who had come to render what help he could, Fordham’s plan was laid. They could not all stand on the narrow arête in such wise as to obtain anything like the requisite purchase on the rope. But on the other side of the ridge a precipitous fall of rock, some ten or twelve feet, ended in an abrupt grass slope. Here two of them could stand, holding the end of the rope, while two more on the apex of the ridge could direct the ascent of the rescued man as well as assist in hauling.

“Now, Phil,” he said, “if you’ve quite got back your wind”—for the two men were somewhat out of breath with their rapid climb—“get away down there with Gedge, and hold on like grim death. No, Miss Wyatt, not you,” in response to an appeal on Alma’s part to be allowed to help. “Four of us will be enough. We can manage easily.”

There were two good lengths of rope, each about forty feet—for the peasants in mountain localities frequently adopt the precaution of tying themselves together when mowing the grass on some of the more dangerous and precipitous slopes. These were securely knotted together and manned as aforesaid.

“I don’t like knots,” muttered Fordham, as he let down the end, having first tied his flask to the same with a bit of twine the stopper being loosened so as to render the contents accessible without an effort—“I don’t like knots, but there’s no help for it. Now, Wentworth,” he shouted, “is that right?”

“Little more to the left—about a yard and a half. There—so. All right. I’ve got it. Pay out a little more line.”

“Take a pull at the flask, and then sing out when you’re quite ready,” bawled Fordham.

There was silence for a few minutes, then:

“Ready. Haul away,” cried Wentworth.

And they did haul away—those on the arête flat on their faces, carefully watching the ascent of the rope lest it should be worn through by any friction. In a very short time Wentworth appeared in sight where the line of the slope broke into the precipice; a moment more and he was beside them in safety.

Then what a stentorian cheer split the echoes of those craggy heights, conveying to the rest of the party, waiting in anxious, breathless suspense below, that the rescue had been safely effected. Wentworth himself seemed rather dazed, and said but little; nor did it add to his composure when he found Alma Wyatt wringing both his hands, and ejaculating, “Oh, I am so glad—I am so glad!” preparatory to breaking forth into a perfect paroxysm of unnerved crying.

“You’ve had a narrow squeak, old chap!” said Philip.

“Hurt at all?” asked the more practical Fordham.

“No. Don’t seem like it. Scratched a bit—nothing more.”

His face was badly scratched and covered with blood. One sleeve of his coat was nearly torn from the shoulder, and he had lost his watch.

“Vous vous y-êtes joliment tiré—Nom de nom!” said the cowherd oracularly. “Remplacer une montre c’est plus simple que de remplacer ses membres broyés—allez!”

Chapter Twelve.

Light.

“Wentworth, old man, here’s to your lucky escape,” cried Gedge, with his usual effusiveness, flourishing a brimming bumper of Beaune.

A roaring fire blazed in the wide chimney-place of the Châlet Soladier. The air was raw and chill, for another rain-gust had swept suddenly up; and seated around the cheerful glow our party was engaged in the comfortable and highly congenial occupation of assimilating the luncheon which had been brought along.

“That’s a most appropriate toast, and one we ought all to join in,” said the old General, approvingly. “Here, Philip, give the châlet man a full bumper. He is entitled to join if any one is, and, Alma—explain to him what it is all about.”

This was done, and the toast drunk with a hearty cheer. The recipient of the honour, however, was in no responsive mood. That he, of all people, should have been fool enough to miss his footing; he an experienced climber, and who, moreover, was in a way the leader of the expedition! It was intolerable. And this aspect of the situation tended far more towards the somewhat silent and subdued demeanour he had worn ever since, than any recollection of the ghastly peril from which he had been extricated, than even the thought of the grisly death from which he had been saved almost by a miracle. Yes, he felt small, and said so unreservedly.

But Alma came to the rescue in no ambiguous fashion.

“You are not fair to yourself, Mr Wentworth,” she declared. “The thing might have happened to anybody up there in that awful wind. Of course I don’t know anything about mountain climbing, but what strikes me is that if, as you say, you considered yourself in a way responsible for us, the fact that you incurred the danger, while we have all come down safe and sound—incurred it, too, out of care for our safety—is not a thing to feel small about, but very much the reverse.”

“Hear, hear!” sung out Gedge, lustily, stamping with his feet in such wise as to upset a whole heap of sandwiches and the residue of Fordham’s beverage. But Wentworth shook his head.

“It’s very kind of you to put it that way, Miss Wyatt. Still the fact remains that it oughtn’t to have happened; and perhaps the best side of the affair is that it happened to me after all, and not to one of yourselves. By Jove! though,” he added, with a laugh. “Friend Dufour will score off me now for all time. We are always having arguments about the Cape au Moine. I always say it is an over-rated climb, and for the matter of that I say so still.”

“That may easily be,” struck in Philip. “I suppose any mountain is dangerous with a gale of five hundred hurricane power blowing.”

“Of course. But where I blame myself, Orlebar, is in not starting to come down sooner. And I fancy that is the line Miss Wyatt’s advocacy will take when she finds herself laid up with a bad cold after getting wet through up there.”

“It will take nothing of the kind, Mr Wentworth,” replied Alma, “for I am not going to be laid up with any cold at all. The walk down here almost dried my things, and this splendid fire has done the rest.”

Luncheon over pipes were produced, indeed the suggestion to that effect originated with the representatives of the softer sex there present, who preferred the, at other times much-decried, narcotic to the somewhat rancid odour emanating from sundry tubs used in cheese-making, which stood in the corner of the room. The rain beat hard upon the roof without, but nothing could have been more snug than the interior of the châlet in its semi-darkness, the firelight dancing upon the beams and quaint appointments of this rough but picturesque habitation.

“Now, Gedge, you’re by way of being a logician,” said Wentworth, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Can you tell us why a man can’t keep his head just as well over a drop of a thousand feet as over one of six?”

“Do you mean when the wind is blowing,” answered Gedge, suspecting a “catch.”

“No. I mean when there’s no apparent reason why he shouldn’t.”

“Because he gets confoundedly dizzy, I suppose.”

“But why should he? He has the same foothold. Take that arête up there. If the drop on each side were only six feet, no fellow would hesitate to run along it like a cat along a wall.”

“Not even Scott,” muttered Fordham, in a tone just audible to Alma, who at the picture thus conjured up of the unfortunate chaplain straddling the arête, and screaming to be taken off, could hardly restrain herself from breaking forth into a peal of laughter.

“It’s a clear case of the triumph of mind over matter, I take it,” answered Gedge. “What do you say, Scott?”

“Oh, I’m no authority,” mumbled the latter hastily. “Don’t appeal to me. My head seems going round still.”

“Scott is no authority on matters outside the smoking-room,” said Fordham, mercilessly—thereby nearly causing Alma to choke again, and begetting inextinguishable resentment in the breast of the youngest Miss Ottley, who had taken the parson under her own especial wing. “Within those sacred precincts we all bow to him as supreme.”

“I don’t quite see where that comes in,” rejoined Wentworth, in answer to Gedge. “If anything it would be the other way about—triumph of matter over mind: the matter being represented by several hundred feet of perpendicularity, before, or rather above, which the ‘mind’ takes a back seat; or, in plainer English, gets in a funk.”

“That very fact proves the mind to be paramount; proves its triumph, paradoxical as it may sound,” argued Gedge. “An idiot, for instance, wouldn’t care twopence whether the drop was six feet or six hundred. As long as there was firm ground under him, he’d shuffle along it gaily. Why? Because he is incapable of thought—deficient in mind.”

“Upon that showing,” said General Wyatt, with a twinkle in his eye—“upon that showing, the Miss Ottleys and myself must be the most sensible people of the lot; for, unlike your hypothetical idiot, Gedge, we emphatically did care twopence whether the drop was six feet or six hundred. In other words, we funked it egregiously and stayed behind. Our minds, you see triumphed over matter in the most practical way of all.”

“I guess this argument’s going to end in a clean draw,” said Philip. “Hallo! the sun’s out again, and, by Jove, there isn’t a cloud in the sky,” he added, flinging the door open and going outside. “The day is young yet. How would it be to go over the Col de Falvay and work round home again by way of the Alliaz? It’s a lovely walk.”

But this, after some discussion, was voted too large an undertaking. At Alma’s suggestion it was decided that the party should stroll over the col into the next valley and pick flowers.

“It is our last day here, uncle,” she urged, in answer to the old General’s somewhat half-hearted objection that they would have had about enough walking by the time they reached home. “It is our last day, so we ought to make the most of it. And look how lovely it has turned out!”

It had. No sign was left now of the dour mist curtain which had swept the heavens but a short while before. Wandering in the golden sunshine, among fragrant pine woods and pastures, knee-deep in narcissus, the party soon split up as such parties will. Fordham and the General took it very easily; strolling a little, sitting down a little, they chatted and smoked many pipes, and were happy. Scott and his fair admirer paired off in search of floral and botanical specimens, and were also happy. The residue of the crowd assimilated themselves in like harmonious fashion, or did not—as they chose. Two units of it at any rate did, for crafty Phil seized an early opportunity of carrying off Alma to a spot where he knew they would find lilies of the valley. As a matter of fact they did not find any, but this was of no consequence to him. What was of consequence was the blissful fact that he had got her all to himself for the afternoon. And this was her last afternoon, their last afternoon together. And in consideration of this, the light-hearted, easy-going Phil became seized with an abnormal melancholy.

“You are a rank deceiver,” said Alma, some three hours later, as, in obedience to a shout of recall, they turned to rejoin the rest of the party now taking the homeward way, but as yet some distance off. “You told me you knew we should find the lilies there—you knew, mind, not you thought. Then when we found none at the first place, you knew we should at another; and you dragged me from place to place, but yet I haven’t found one. And now I must be content with the bundle of bell-gentians I gathered this morning. Poor things! how they have faded,” she added, undoing a corner of the handkerchief containing them. “Ah! here is some water. I must freshen them up a bit.”

“What a day this has been,” said Philip, regretfully, as Alma stooped down to freshen the gentians with water from the tiny runnel which, dripping from the mossy undergrowth beneath the shadowy pines, sped at their feet with a bell-like tinkle. There was a moist fragrance as of crushed blossoms in the air, and the unearthly glow of a cloudless evening was upon the sunlit slopes, and the grey solemn faces of the cliffs across the valley.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered, her wet, tapering hands plunged lightly among the rich blue blossoms of the bell-gentians.

“And it is your last!”

“Unfortunately it is. But—who would have thought, to look around now—who would have believed the awful time we went through up there only this morning! When Mr Wentworth was drawn up again safe and unhurt, I could not help crying for joy. Poor fellow! What must he have gone through all that time, with nothing but a rhododendron bush between him and a frightful death!”

“I reverse the usual order and begin to think I’d rather it was me than him,” said Philip, gruffly. “May I ask whether, in that case, you would have manifested the same delight?”

There was a flash of mischievous mirth in Alma’s great grey eyes as she looked up at him.

“You foolish boy! I sha’n’t answer that question. But, if you had been down there, how could you have taken such splendid care of me?”

“Oh, I did take care of you then?” he said quickly. “You did, indeed.”

“Let me take care of you for life then, Alma.” Just those few words, curt even to lameness. But there was a very volume of pent-up feeling in their tone as he stood there, his face a trifle paler, his fine frame outlined against the black background of the pines, his eyes dilated and fixed upon hers, as though to read there his answer.

She started. Her face flushed, then grew pale again. Released by the tremor of her hand, another corner of the handkerchief fell, and the bell-gentians poured down into her lap and on the ground. She did not answer immediately, and a troubled look came over her face. Yet the question could not have been such a surprising one. Reading every changing expression of the lovely face eagerly, hungrily, Philip continued, and there was a quaver of forestalled despair in his voice.

“Not to be—is it?” with a ghastly attempt at a laugh. “I’m a presumptuous idiot, and had better go my way rejoicing—especially rejoicing. Isn’t that it?”

But a radiantly killing smile was the answer now, scattering his despondency as the sun-ray had dispelled the dark storm-cloud which had overshadowed them up there on the arête.

“You are in a great hurry to answer your own question,” she said. “Doesn’t it strike you that I am the right person to do that—Phil?”

The very tone was a caress. The half-timid, half-mischievous way in which his Christian name—abbreviated too—escaped her was maddening, entrancing. Hardly knowing what he said in his incoherent transport of delight, he cast himself upon the bank beside her, regardless of bristling pine needles and the outpost prowlers of a large nest of red ants hard by. But Alma was not yet prepared to allow herself to be taken by storm in any such impetuous fashion.

“Now wait a minute, you supremely foolish creature,” holding up a hand warningly as he flung himself at her side—and her face flushed again; but there was a sunny light in her eyes, and a very sweet smile playing around her lips. “What I was going to say is this. You can’t decide any important question out of hand. It requires talking over—and—thinking over.”

“You darling! you tantalising enchantress!” he cried passionately. “Let us talk over it then, as much as you like. As for thinking over it—why, we’ve done enough of that already.”

“You have, you mean,” she corrected, archly. “Never mind. But—now listen, Phil. You think you are very, very fond of my unworthy self. Wait—don’t interrupt,” as the expression “you think” brought to his lips an indignant protest. “Yet you hardly know me.”

“I know you to be perfection,” he broke in hotly.

“That’s foolish,” she rejoined, but with a by no means displeased smile. “But, I say it again, you hardly know me. We meet here and see each other at our best, where everything is conducive to enjoyment and absolute freedom from worry, and then you tell me I am perfection—”

“So you are,” he interrupted emphatically.

“Well, we meet under the most favourable circumstances, wherein we show at our best. But that isn’t life. It is a mere idyll. Life is a far more serious thing than that.”

“Why, that’s just how that fellow Fordham talks,” exclaimed Philip, aghast.

“Mr Fordham is an extremely sensible man then,” she rejoined, with a queer smile. “No. What I want you to consider is, how do you know I could make you happy, only meeting as we do, up here and in this way? We must not fall into the fatal error of mistaking a mere summer idyllic existence for a sample of stern, hard life.”

“Oh, darling! you cannot really care for me if you can reason so coldly, so deliberately!” he exclaimed, in piteous consternation. “I am afraid you don’t know me yet, if you think me so shallow as all that.”

“I do know you, Phil, and I don’t think you shallow at all—know you better than you think—better, perhaps, than you know yourself,” she answered, placing her hand upon his, which promptly closed over it in emblematical would-be possession of its owner. “I am a bit of a character-student, and I have studied you—among others.”

“Oh! only among others?”

She laughed.

“Is that so very derogatory? Well, for your consolation, perhaps my study has so far been satisfactory; indeed, we should hardly be talking together now as we are had it been otherwise. Now—what more do you want me to say?”

“What more! Why, of course I want you to say you will give me yourself—your own sweet, dear self, Alma, you lovely, teasing, tantalising bundle of witchery. Now, say you will.”

“Not now—not here. In a little more than a month I shall be at home again,” she answered, with a dash of sadness in her voice, as though the prospect of “home, sweet home” were anything but an alluring one. “Come and see me then—if you still care to. Who knows? You may have got over this—this—fancy—by that time.”

“Alma! You hurt me.” His voice betrayed the ring of real pain as he gazed at her with a world of reproach in his eyes.

“Do I? I don’t want to. But by then you will know your own mind better. Wait—let me have my say. By that time you will not have seen me for a month or more, as we are leaving this to-morrow. You may have more than half forgotten me by then. ‘Out of sight,’ you know. I am not going to take advantage of your warm, impulsive temperament now, and I should like to feel sure of you, Phil—once and for all—if we are to be anything to each other. So I would rather it remained that way.”

“You are hurting me, dearest, with this distrust. At any rate let me tell—er, ask—er, speak to your uncle to-night—”

“No. On that point I am firm,” she answered, rising. “When I am at home again I will give you a final answer—if you still want it, that is. Till then—things are as they were.”

“Hard lines!” he answered, with a sigh. “Still, one must be thankful for small mercies, I suppose. But—you will write to me when we are apart, will you not, love?”

“I don’t know. I ought not. Perhaps once or twice, though.”

For a moment they stood facing each other in silence, then his arms were round her.

“Alma, my dearest life!” he whispered passionately. “You are very cold and calculating, you know. You have not said one really sweet or loving thing to me through all this reasoning. Now—kiss me!”

She looked into his eyes with a momentary hesitation, and again the sweet fair face was tinged with a suffusing flush. Then she raised her lips to his.

“There,” she said. “There—that is the first. Will it be the last, I wonder? Oh, Phil, I would like to love you—and you are a very lovable subject, you know. There! Now you must be as happy as the day is long until—until—you know when,” she added, restraining with an effort the thrill of tenderness in her voice.

“And I will be, darling,” he cried. “The memory of this sweet moment will soon carry me over one short month. And you will write to me?”

“Not often—once or twice, perhaps, as I said before. And now we must pick up my gentians, and move on, or the others will be wondering what has become of us. Look; they are waiting for us now, on the col,” she added, as their path emerged from the cover of the friendly pines.

But by the time they gained that eminence—and we may be sure they did not hurry themselves—the rest of the party had gone on, and they were still alone together. Alone together in paradise—the air redolent with myriad narcissus blossoms, soft, sweet-scented as with the breath of Eden—alone together in the falling eve, each vernal slope, each rounded spur starting forth in vivid clearness; each soaring peak on fire in the westering rays; and afar to the southward, seen from the elevation of the path, the great domed summit of Mont Blanc, bathed in a roseate flush responsive to the last kisses of the dying sun. Homeward, alone together, amid the fragrant dews exhaling from rich and luscious pastures, the music of cow-bells floating upon the hush of evening; then a full golden moon sailing on high, above the black and shaggy pines hoary with bearded festoons of mossy lichens, throwing a pale network upon the sombre woodland path, accentuating the heavy gloom of forest depths, ever and anon melodious with the hooting of owls in ghostly cadence, resonant with the shrill cry of the pine marten and the faint mysterious rustling as of unearthly whispers. Homeward alone together. Ah, Heaven! Will they ever again know such moments as these?

Never, we trow. The sweet, subtle, enchanted spell is upon them in all its entrancing, its delirious fulness.

Chapter Thirteen.

Shadow.

Nearly a week had elapsed since the departure of the Wyatts, and yet, contrary to all precedent, the volatile Phil’s normal good spirits showed no sign of returning. He was hard hit.

No further opportunity of meeting alone did Alma afford him after that one long, glowing evening. Her manner to him at parting had been very kind and sweet; and with a last look into her eyes, and a pressure of the hand a good deal more lingering on his part than etiquette demanded, let alone justified, the poor fellow was obliged to be contented, for of opportunities for taking a more affectionate farewell she would give him none. They would meet again, she said, and he must wait patiently until then. But to him such meeting seemed a very long way off, and meanwhile the residue of the bright summer, hitherto so joyously mapped out for walking and climbing and fun in general, to which he had been looking forward with all the delight of a sound organisation both physical and mental, seemed now to represent a flat and dreary hiatus—to be filled up as best it might, to be got through as quickly as possible.

Philip Orlebar was hard hit—indeed, very hard hit. He had never been genuinely in love in his life, though nobody had more often fancied himself in that parlous state. But now he was undergoing his first sharp attack of the genuine disorder, and the experience was—well, somewhat trying.

And the symptoms, like those of hydrophobia, manifested themselves diversely. Genial, sunny-tempered Phil became morose—“surly as a chained bulldog developing influenza,” as the elastic Gedge tersely put it. He avoided his kind, and evinced a desire for wandering, by his own sweet self, into all manner of breakneck places. More especially did he avoid Fordham, whose continually cropping up sarcasms at the expense of the sex now ennobled and deified by the production of one Alma Wyatt, fairly maddened him.

“Damned cheap kind of cynicism, don’t you know,” he growled one day. “I wonder you don’t drop it, Fordham.” In fact, so confoundedly quarrelsome did he wax that it became a source of wonder how Fordham stood it so equably, and at last some one said so. The answer was characteristic.

“Look here, Wentworth. If you were down with fever, and delirious, you’d think me a mighty queer chap if I took mortal offence at anything you said in the course of your ravings. Now that poor chap is down with the worst kind of fever and delirium. By and by, when he wakes up and convalesces, he’ll ask shamefacedly whether he didn’t act and talk like an awful fool during his delirium. No. You can’t quarrel with a man for being off his nut. You can only pity him.”

On the letter whose receipt had caused him such disquietude but a week ago Philip had since bestowed no further thought. It seemed such a far back event—it and the individual whose existence it so inopportunely recalled—and withal such an insignificant one. For beside the withdrawal of Alma Wyatt’s daily presence, all other ills, past, present, and to come, looked incomparably small, and the contemplation of them not worth undertaking.

However indulgent might be Fordham with regard to his younger friend’s disorder, secretly he hugged himself with mirth, and enjoyed the joke hugely in his own saturnine fashion as he read off the symptoms. How well he knew them all. How many and many a one had he seen go through them, and live to laugh at his own abject, if helpless, imbecility—to laugh in not a few instances with almost as much bitterness as he himself might do. He believed that it was in his power to comfort poor Phil, up to a certain point. As a looker on at the game, and a keen-sighted one, he felt pretty sure that Alma Wyatt was far more tenderly disposed towards her adorer than the latter dreamed. But it was not in accordance with his principles to do this. Richard Fordham turned matchmaker! More likely patchmaker! he thought, with a diabolical guffaw as the whimsicality of the idea and the jingle thereof struck him; for like the proverbial patching of the old garment with the new cloth would be the lifelong alliance of his friend with Alma Wyatt—or any other woman. No. His mission was, if anything, to bring about a contrary result, and thus save the guileless Philip from riveting upon his yet free limbs the iron fetters of a degrading and fraudulent bondage—for such, we grieve to say, was Fordham’s definition of the estate of holy matrimony.

“Well, Phil,” he said, as the latter, returned from a recent and solitary climb, tired and listless, took his seat a quarter of an hour late at table d’hôte, “does the world present a more propitious aspect from the giddy summit of the Corbex?”

“Oh, hang it, no! But, I say, Fordham—what a deuced slow crowd there is here now. Just look at that table over there.”

“Nine old maids—no, eleven—in a row,” said the other, putting up his eyeglass. “Four parsons—poor specimens of the breed, too. That is to say, three old maids and a devil-dodger; then three more ditto and two devil-dodgers; finally the balance, with the remaining sky-pilot mixed among them somewhere. Truly an interesting crowd!”

“By Jove, rather!” growled Philip. “And just look at that infernal tailor’s boy over there laying down the law.”

Following his glance, Fordham beheld a carroty-headed snobling fresh from the counter or the cutting-board, who, in all the exuberance of his hard-earned holiday and the enterprising spirit which had prompted him to enjoy the same among Alpine sublimities in preference to the more homely and raffish attractions of shrimp-producing Margate, was delivering himself on Church and State, the House of Peers and the Constitution in general, with a freedom which left nothing to be desired, for the edification of his appreciative neighbours—only they didn’t look appreciative. Philip contemplated this natural product of an age of progress and the Rights of Man with unconcealed disgust.

“Faugh! Are we going to be overrun with bounders of that description?” he growled.

“Later on we may drop across a sprinkling of the species,” said Fordham. “Even the Alps are no longer sacred against the invasion of the modern Hun.”

“Well, it’s no longer any fun sticking here, and I’m sick of it,” went on Phil.

“All right. Let’s adjourn to Zermatt or somewhere, and begin climbing. You want shaking up a bit.”

Chapter Fourteen.

Fordham Proves Accommodating.

“Dear me—how very disagreeable (sniff-sniff)—how exceedingly unpleasant this smoking is?”

The afternoon train was crawling up the Rhone valley, wending its leisurely way over the flat and low-lying bottom as though to afford its passengers, mostly foreigners, every opportunity of admiring its native marsh. In the corner of a second-class smoking-carriage sat the typical British matron whom her feelings had moved to unburden herself as above. Beside her, half effaced by her imposing personality, sat her spouse, a mild country parson. A great number of bundles and a great number of wraps completed the outfit.

“I must say it is most disagreeable,” went on the lady, with renewed sniffs. “And how ill-mannered these foreigners are, smoking in the presence of ladies.” This with a dagger-glance at the other two occupants of the carriage, who each, with a knapsack on the rack above his head and clad in serviceable walking attire, were lounging back on the comfortable seats, placidly blowing clouds.

“Hush, my dear!” expostulated the parson. “It’s a smoking-carriage, you know. I told you so before we got in at Martigny. Why not go into the other compartment? It’s quite empty.”

It was. On the Swiss lines the carriages are generally built on American principles; you can walk the entire length of them, and indeed of the whole train. They are, however, divided into two compartments, the smaller being reserved for the convenience of non-smokers, the other way about, as with us.