Fordham's Feud

Bertram Mitford

"Fordham's Feud"

Chapter One.

At First Sight.

The steamer Mont Blanc was sweeping round the rather dangerous promontory just beyond La Tour de Peilz.

The fine vessel was a brave sight as she sped arrowlike over the turquoise breast of Lake Léman, her straight stem shearing up a great scintillating blade of water on either side, her powerful paddles lashing up a long line of creaming rollers, hissing and curving away in her wake. From stem to stern she was gay with bunting, for this was but her second trip after being laid up through the winter season, and there was a spick-and-span newness about everything, from the whiteness of her commodious hurricane deck to the dazzling glass and luxurious lounges of her airy and spacious saloon.

The day was perfect. Not a cloud was in the arching heavens, not a ripple on the blue surface of the lake, which mirrored forth the hoary crowns of the Savoy Alps as though they were cut in steel. The great forest-clad slopes were rich in their velvety verdure, rising from the water’s edge on the Savoy side; and a dazzling snow shroud still covered the Dent du Midi half-way down to its base. On the Swiss shore the straggling towns and multitudinous villas lying among the fresh greenery of vineyards looked mere pigmy toys beneath the slopes of the great mountains. And from the same bosky slopes came ever and anon the glad, joyous shout of the cuckoo. It was June—but only just June—and the air, balmy and life-giving, knew no suspicion of sultriness.

“I say, Phil, my boy, it’s about time to collect our traps. We go off at the next stage but one—Hallo! What has become of the fellow?” broke off the speaker, turning to discover that his friend had left his side. “Ah! there he is. At it again too. By George, the dog’s irreclaimable!”

The said “dog” had withdrawn some yards from the speaker, and was standing with his back against the bulwarks apparently lost in contemplation of the scenery of the Savoy side. But he had chosen a very odd place for his study of Nature, for between the latter and himself, in the direction of his gaze, were multifold heads—and hats, and between these heads—and hats—and the canvas awning was a space of barely half a yard. Yet he seemed to gaze with rapt attention at something—or somebody. “I say, Phil, who is she, this time?” The suddenness of the question, the dry chuckle, the faintly sneering intonation, produced much the same effect on the gazer as the lash upon the half-broken thoroughbred. He started.

“Confound it, Fordham, you needn’t make a fellow jump so,” he retorted petulantly, with a slight flush. “Can’t a fellow look around him, I should like to know?”

“Oh, certainly he can. This is a free country—in fact ‘Liberté et Patrie’ is the Cantonal motto. You may even see it displayed at this moment—in triplicate too—among the bunting adorning this gallant craft. Ah—I see the point of attraction now—and this time, ’pon my life, Phil, I think there’s some excuse—for you,” he added, sticking his glass into his eye and sending a critical look into an apparently unconscious group opposite.

Philip Orlebar laughed, his good-humour quite restored. Indeed, it was never for long that he and that enviable attribute parted company.

Although the regular tourist season had not yet set in, the steamer’s decks still contained a sprinkling of all those nationalities which you would be sure to find represented there at that time of the day and of the year. Keen-faced Americans “doing” Europe with infinite zest and a Gladstone bag apiece; stolid Germans in long black coats—a duplicate of the latter invariably slung through the strap of their double field-glasses; a stray Muscovite noble, of refined manner and slightly blasé aspect; a group of English youths equipped with knapsack and alpenstock, bound for some mountain expedition with their Swiss tutor; and last but not least—in their own estimation at any rate—great in the importance of their somewhat aggressive sense of nationality, a muster of Britons numerically equalling all the other races and kindreds put together. There was the inevitable clergyman with his inevitable wife—the latter austere of visage, as became a good Evangelical in a land where the shops were kept open on the Sabbath. There was the British matron clucking around with her posse of daughters—which guileless damsels were being convoyed about the Continent to a like end as that which caused their mammas and grandmammas to be shipped off on the voyage round the Cape in the days of good old John Company. There were the regulation old maids, of the blue-stocking persuasion, Byron in hand, gazing yearningly upon the distant but gradually nearing walls of classic Chillon. And here and there, elderly but erect, natty of attire, and countenance darkly sunburnt beneath the turbanlike puggaree enshrouding his summit, stalked unmistakably the half-pay Anglo-Indian.

Upon one face in the group Fordham’s eyeglass, following his companion’s gaze, critically if somewhat contemptuously, came to a standstill. It was in profile at that moment, but whether in profile or full it was a face bound to attract attention. The regular features and short upper lip fully satisfied every requirement exacted by the canons of beauty. The eyes, large and earnest, now blue, now grey, according to the light under which they shone, rather imparted the idea that their possessor was inclined to take life seriously, and there was character in the strongly marked arching brows. A sheen of dark-brown hair rippled back in waves beneath a broad-brimmed sailor hat to roll into a heavy knot over the back of the neck.

“Well, you cynical old humbug,” said Orlebar, emphasising his words with an almost imperceptible nudge of the elbow. “Isn’t that about good enough to meet with even your approval?”

“H’m! No doubt. But what I wanted to impress upon you was that in less than ten minutes we shall have to quit this ship. So that if you’ve any loose gear among your traps—and I believe you have—now is the time to make it fast.”

The bell hanging in the steamer’s bows now began to peal, to the accompaniment of the slackening beat of her paddles as, slowing down to half-speed, she glided majestically up to the Clarens landing-stage. Philip Orlebar, turning a deaf ear to his companion’s warning, had left that mentor’s side, and was strolling with finely assumed carelessness towards the gangway—for the object of his attention, and already more than incipient adoration, had risen and was moving in the same direction. If she was about to land there, as seemed probable, might he not, by standing nigh at hand, obtain some chance clue as to her identity and destination?

But they met face to face in the little crowd—met with a suddenness which brought a slightly disconcerted look to his somewhat speaking countenance. Her large eyes encountered his, however, fearlessly and with an air of surprised inquiry, for in his eagerness she might be excused for thinking him on the point of addressing her.

There were few passengers to be landed at Clarens, and she was not one of them; fewer still to embark, and in barely a couple of minutes the Mont Blanc was speeding on her way again.

“Heavens alive, man?” said Fordham, veiling the faint sneer with which he had been watching the movements of his impressionable friend. “If you don’t collect your traps the chances are all in favour of half of them being left on board. We shall be at Montreux in three minutes.”

Again the bell gave forth its warning note, again the beat of the paddles slackened, as the Mont Blanc—sweeping so close in shore that any one of the groups lounging about in the gardens of the villa-like pensions, sloping down to the water’s edge, could have chucked a walnut on to her decks as she sped by—rapidly neared the poplar-fringed landing-stage. Then a great splashing of paddle-wheels as the engines were reversed, a throwing of warps and a mighty bustling, and the vessel was stationary.

“Confound that fellow!” grumbled Fordham, as his friend did not appear. “Directly his eye lights upon a fresh ‘skirt’ his wits are off woolgathering on the spot.”

“Embarquement!” sung out the bronzed skipper from the bridge. “Allons, allons, messieurs et mesdames! Dépêchez vous, s’il vous plaît. Nous sommes déjà en retard!” he added, testily.

The last embarking passenger was on board, and while the gangway plank was in the act of withdrawal the defaulter emerged from below, laden with loose luggage. He was not slow about his movements then. A couple of leaps and he stood panting and flurried on the pier beside his companion, who had taken the precaution of landing everything that he could lay hands on.

“I s-say, old man,” stuttered Philip Orlebar, relinquishing to the care of mother earth—or rather the pavement of the landing-stage—the impedimenta which he had rescued at the cost of such flurry and risk. “W-w-what became of her? Did she come ashore?”

“What became of her? Why by this time she’s half-way to Territet, laughing fit to die over the ridiculous figure you cut; in short, the wholly astonishing attitudes you struck, hurtling through the air with a Gladstone under each arm and half a score of telescopes and bundles and flying straps dancing about you like a kettle of beans tied to a dog’s tail.”

“Did I look such a fool as that? Hang it, I suppose I must have looked a bit grotesque though, eh, Fordham?”

“Infernally so,” was the consoling reply. “In fact, I noticed her looking over the side, taking particular stock of you in your admirably acted rôle of escaped lunatic. Ah, bonjour, François! Ca va bien, hein!” broke off the speaker in response to the smiling commissionaire who stepped forward at that moment to take charge of their luggage.

“Tenez, François,” went on Fordham, at the conclusion of the string of hearty inquiries with which the man had greeted him, for they were old acquaintances. “Vous allez nous emballer ces colis là sur la poste des Avants. Faut qu’ils nous réjoignent demain. Sans faute, mon brave, n’est ce pas?”

“Mais oui, Monsieur Fordhamme. Restez seulment tranquille. Vous pouvez y compter. Ah, vous allez monter par le Chauderon? Et bien—belle promenade, messieurs, et je vous remercie bien. Au revoir, messieurs!”

“That seems a good sort of chap,” began Philip Orlebar, dubiously, as they turned away. “But, hang it all, is it safe—don’t cher know?”

“What? The luggage? Rather. You may trust François to see a matter of this kind through. He is a good chap—most of these fellows are. They have a name among the British for being keen on pourboires—in a word, grasping. But show me the true-born Briton of the same class who in a race for gratuities couldn’t give them long odds, and beat them at that. It’s not to be done, I tell you. And now, Phil, we’ve plenty of time. First a cool lager at yonder café, then for our stroll up the Chauderon. And that said stroll on an afternoon like this is enough to make a man feel the pleasure of living, if anything is.”

Chapter Two.

Two Unlikes.

In his eulogy of the beauties of that fairy glen, the Gorge du Chauderon, Fordham was not exaggerating one whit; and while our two friends are pursuing their way along its winding path, under the cool shelter of a wealth of luxuriant greenery meeting overhead, and the roar and rush of the mountain stream leaping through a succession of black, rock-girt caldrons in their ears, we will take the opportunity of improving their acquaintance.

Philip Orlebar was a tall, fair, well-built young fellow of six and twenty, who had devoted the four years which had elapsed since he left college to sowing his wild oats; though, in justice to him, we must say that his crop was of the most moderate dimensions, in spite of his opportunities, for a sunny lightheadedness of manner, combined with a more than ordinarily prepossessing exterior, rendered him popular with everybody. This especially held good as regarded the other sex, and was bad both for it and for himself; in fact, his susceptibility in that line was a source of chronic misgiving to his friends, who never knew into what sort of entanglement it might plunge him.

He was the only son of a baronet, who doted on him. But his expectations were not great, for Sir Francis Orlebar, who had been a widower since a year or two after Philip’s birth, had recently endowed himself with a second wife, and taking this with the fact that his income did not exceed by a shilling 2,000 pounds per annum, it follows that a superfluity of spare cash was never a distinguishing feature in the Orlebar household.

But if Sir Francis doted on his son, his new spouse did not. She grudged the allowance of five hundred a year which that fortunate youth enjoyed. She would have grudged it just as much if it had been fifty. Two thousand a year to keep up the title and the house upon was a mere pittance, declared Lady Orlebar the Second—who, by the way, had never possessed a shilling of her own—and a quarter of that was to be thrown away upon an idle young man, who squandered it all on his own selfish pleasures. But on this point Sir Francis was firm. He refused to reduce his son’s allowance by one single penny.

So Philip came and went as he chose, and took life easily. He had no expensive tastes, and with a sufficiency of cash, good looks, excellent spirits, and an unlimited capacity for enjoyment, little is it to be wondered at if he found the process of “seeing the world” a very pleasant experience indeed. And he did so find it.

Richard Fordham was the exact antipodes to his friend both in appearance and disposition, which may have accounted for the excellent relations existing between the two. Externally he was of medium height and well-proportioned. His dark, almost swarthy countenance was handsome too, for his features were good and regular. But there was something sinister in his expression, something ruthless in the glitter of his keen black eyes as he emitted one of his pungent sarcasms; and he was a man to whom sarcasm was as the very breath of life. One peculiarity about him was that, though possessed of an abnormal sense of humour, he never laughed. At most he would break into a short dry guffaw which had more of a sneer in it than of mirth; and although he could send a roomful of people into roars whenever he chose, not a muscle of his own saturnine countenance would relax.

He was a good many years older than his travelling companion—how many it would have puzzled most people to determine, for he was one of those men whose ages are hard to guess. And what constituted the bond of union between them was also a poser, unless their utter dissimilarity. Anyhow, light-hearted Phil was wont enthusiastically to declare that “Old Fordham was the best fellow in the world. Only wanted knowing a bit. Why, there never was a fellow easier to get on with, by Jove—once you knew him.”

It is only fair to say that in his own experience the encomium was wholly deserved. They had been travelling companions for some time now, and yet had never had a difference, which is something to be able to say. The dry, caustic sparkle of the older man’s conversation had a great charm for the younger. “He could take any amount of chaff from Fordham,” the latter was wont to declare; “for he was a chap whose head was screwed on the right way, and, moreover, thoroughly knew his way about,” a qualification sure to inspire respect in the young.

We have said that Philip Orlebar was more than popular with the other sex, and here again the dissimilarity between the friends held good. Women detested Fordham uniformly and instinctively. There is something in the theory of reciprocity; Fordham, for his part, cordially and unaffectedly detested women.

“By Jove!” cried Philip, when they had covered rather more than half their distance—“By Jove! but this place is well named—‘Kettle,’ isn’t it, eh, Fordham?”

“No, ‘Caldron,’ to be accurate.”

“Well, it’s pretty steamy just here. Let’s call a halt under that big rock and poke a smipe. What d’you say?”

“Just as you like,” was the tranquil reply. They had reached that part of the gorge where two great perpendicular cliffs, their black surface thickly grown with ferns and trailers, form a huge natural portal, narrowing the way to the road itself and the brawling, leaping mountain torrent which skirts it. A delightfully cool resting-place—almost too cool—for the whirl of the spray reached them even there. Soon the blue curl from a brace of pipes mingled fragrantly with the scent of pine resin and damp fern.

Hardly were they seated than a sound of approaching voices was heard, and two girls appeared in sight round the bend in the path. One carried a basket filled with wild flowers, eke a large handful of the same; the other a bag of sketching materials. Both shot a rapid glance at the two smokers as they walked swiftly by.

“Rather good-looking, eh?” said Phil, as soon as they were out of sight. “English, of course?”

“No mistake. The whole lake-side from Lausanne eastwards simply grows Britishers. I predict we shall soon be for annexing it.”

“They’re bound in the same direction as ourselves,” went on Philip. “At least there’s no other place than Les Avants up this way, is there?”

The other’s mouth drew down at the corners in a faint sneer.

“Don’t be alarmed, Phil. They’re bound there all right—in fact they’re quartered there. They’ve just been down into the gorge; one to pick a lot of daisies and buttercups, over which she and a pet parson will enjoy a not altogether scientific tête-à-tête this evening—the other to execute a hideous libel on the existing scenery.”

“Now how the deuce do you know all this, Fordham?”

“Oh, I know all their little ways. I know something more, viz, that in forty-eight hours’ time you will be the chosen and privileged bearer of the truss of hay and the daubing bag—I mean the wild flowers and the sketching gear.”

“Oh, you don’t know everything, old chap,” cried Philip, with a laugh.

“Don’t I? By the bye, if you’re not eager to catch a chill, we’d better start again. I know this much: there will be a flutter of rejoicing in the dovecote when those two arrive, brimful of the intelligence that a couple of new men—one, rather, for I don’t count—are ascending to Les Avants, for at this time of year our estimable sex is almost exclusively represented in these hotels by invalids, parsons, or half-pay veterans. With some of whom, by the way, I shall have to fraternise, unless I want to do my expeditions alone, for you will be in such demand as universal porter in the matter of shawls and wraps and lunch-baskets, up the Rochers de Naye or the Dent de Jaman, or any other point of altitude to which the ambition of the enterprising fair may aspire, that we had better take a formal and affecting farewell of each other as soon as we arrive at the door.”

“Shut up, you old fraud,” was the jolly retort. “At present all my aspirations are of the earth earthy, for they are of the cellar. I hope they keep a good brew up there, for I feel like breeding a drought in the hotel the moment we arrive.”

“Well, the brew’s first-rate, and now the sooner we get over this bit of heavy collar-work the sooner we shall reach it.”

“Right. Excelsior’s the word,” assented Phil, with a glance at the steep and rugged path zigzagging above at a frightfully laborious angle.

There may be more attractive spots than Les Avants as you arrive there within an hour or two of sunset in the early summer, but there cannot be many. The golden rays of the sinking sun light up the frowning Rochers de Naye and the mighty precipice which constitutes the face of the Dent de Jaman with a fiery glow. The quiet reposeful aspect of the hollow, which the aforesaid sunbeams have now abandoned, lying in its amphitheatre of bold sweeping slopes crowned with black pine forests, is soothing, tranquillising of effect; and the handsome, plentifully gabled hotel, rearing up among a sprinkling of modest chalets, is suggestive of comfort and abundance. But what is this milk-white carpet spread in snowy sheen over the meadows, covering the green of the adjoining slopes to a considerable height? Is it snow? Not it. That white and dazzling expanse consists of nothing less than a mass of the most magnificent narcissus blossoms, growing in serried profusion, distilling in heavy fumes a fragrance of paradise upon the balmy evening air. Such was the aspect of Les Avants as our two friends arrived there on that evening in early June.

“By Jove, Fordham, but this is a sweet place!” cried Philip Orlebar, moved to real earnestness as they emerged from the wooded path suddenly upon the beautiful scene. “A perfect Eden!”

“Plenty of Eves, anyhow?” was the characteristic and laconic retort.

But Philip had already noted a flutter of light dresses, though still some little distance off. Tennis racket in hand, a number of girls in groups of twos and threes, here and there a male form interspersed, were wending along a gravel path leading from the tennis-court towards the hotel, for the first dinner-bell was just ringing. The sight called up a sneer to Fordham’s lip.

“Look at that, Phil, and note the vagaries of the British idiot abroad. Fancy coming to the Swiss mountains to play lawn tennis.”

“Well, old man, and if they like it?”

“Ah, yes, quite so; I forgot!” was the significant answer.

Chapter Three.

Breaking the Ice.

“We sha’n’t be intolerably crowded here, Phil,” remarked Fordham, as they sat down to table d’hôte. “It’s early in the season yet, you see.”

But although the long tables running round the fine dining-hall—the latter occupying the whole ground-floor of one wing—were only laid half-way down the room, yet there was a good concourse flowing in. Portly matrons with bevies of daughters, clergymen and clergywomen with or without daughters, spectacled old maids hunting in couples, an undergraduate or two abroad for the “Long,” here and there a long-haired German, and a sprinkling of white-whiskered Anglo-Indians, by the time they had all taken their seats, constituted a gathering little short of threescore persons. A pretty cheerful gathering, too, judging from the clatter of tongues; for the Briton abroad is a wholly expansive animal, and as great a contrast to his or her—especially her—starch and buckram personality at home as the precept of the average professor of faith and morals is to his practice.

Our two friends found themselves at the transverse table at the lower end of the room, with their backs to the bulk of the diners. But in front of them were the open windows, no small advantage in a room full of dining fellow-creatures. The sunset glow fell redly on the purple heads of the Savoy Alps, and the thick, heavy perfume of narcissus came floating in, triumphing over the savoury odours of fleshpots.

The room had just settled down steadily to work through the menu when Phil’s neighbour, a lady of uncertain age with spinster writ large, opened fire upon him in this wise:

“How very thick the scent of the narcissus is this evening.”

“It is. A sort of Rimmel’s shop turned loose in the Alps.”

“But such a heavy perfume must be very unhealthy, must it not?”

“Possibly.”

“But don’t you think it must be?”

“I really can’t give an opinion. You see, I don’t know anything about the matter,” replied Phil, good-humouredly, and in something like desperation as the blank truth dawned upon him that he was located next to a bore of the first water, and the worst kind of bore at that—the bore feminine. His persecutor went on:

“But they say that flowers too strongly scented are very unhealthy in a room, don’t they?”

“Do they? I don’t know. But, after all, these are not in the room; they are outside.”

“But don’t you think it comes to the same thing?” Heavens! What was to be the end of this? Instinctively he stole a glance at Fordham, but that worthy’s impassive countenance betrayed nothing, unless it were the faintest possible appreciation, in his grim, saturnine way, of the humour of the thing. He mumbled something not very intelligible by way of reply, and applied himself with extra vigour to the prime duty of the gathering. But he was not to escape so easily.

The lady was intently scrutinising the menu. Then to Phil:

“Don’t you think ferras is an extremely bony fish?”

This was too much even for Fordham. The corners of his mouth dropped perceptibly, and a faintly audible chuckle escaped him.

“I—I—’pon my life I don’t know,” stuttered poor Phil. “The fact is I never knew the scheme of creation comprised such a fish.”

“Didn’t you really? How very odd. But do you really mean it though?”

“Oh, yes; it’s a fact,” he declared, wearily.

“Ah! they are bringing it round now. You will soon be able to give me your opinion.”

Phil was deciding that he would die rather than prosecute any investigations into the osseously reputed ferras, and was on the point of asserting that he loathed the whole finny race, when a diversion occurred. Three chairs opposite had remained vacant, and into these three persons were now seating themselves. Looking up suddenly, Phil found himself face to face with the girl who had so strongly attracted his attention on board the Mont Blanc.

The old couple were her parents, of course, he decided straight out of hand. Military and Indian, he went on, pursuing his verdict, and a fine-looking old man. The elder lady seemed in frail health. Of course they were the girl’s parents—not a doubt about it. But what a piece of luck! She to be his vis-à-vis at the table! He quite forgot the existence of the exemplary bore at his elbow, now.

The girl herself, as soon as she was seated, sent a searching glance all down the room, as if appraising the style of people who were to be their fellow-sojourners. This he noted; also her perfect and graceful self-possession. But for all the interest taken in the new arrivals by Fordham, they might just as well not have come in.

Dinner was more than half through, and still he had found no opportunity of utilising the pleasant unconventionality afforded by the table d’hôte system. If only they had been next to him; but being opposite tended to hinder matters. He could not even volunteer the salt or the mustard, and under cover of that flimsy advance work up a conversation, for both those condiments—and everything needful—were as lavishly supplied on the other side of the table as on his own. What the deuce was he to say? For once in his life, easy-going Philip Orlebar felt his normal stock of assurance fail him.

“Alma, child,” the elder lady was saying in a low tone, but audible across the table, “hadn’t you better change places with your uncle and come next to me? I don’t think he ought to sit with his back to the window.”

“Not her parents, by Jove!” thought Phil. “‘Alma.’ That’s a name I never heard before.”

“’Tisn’t that,” grumbled the veteran, before his niece could reply. “There’s no draught—none at all. But what the deuce do they mean by sticking us up in this corner with our backs to the view? I don’t want to look at a lot of other animals feeding. I want to get the benefit of the mountains opposite, and the sunsets and all that.”

“But, uncle,” struck in the girl—and Phil noted that she had a sweet voice, beautifully modulated and clear—“we can look at the mountains opposite all day long, but this grand opportunity of studying a considerable collection of our fellow-creatures all off their guard is only vouchsafed at table d’hôte time. And I was just congratulating myself on having the whole population in front of me.”

“Pooh-pooh, child! When you get to my age you’ll have had quite enough of studying your fellow-creatures—more than enough, I’ll lay a guinea. And confound it, we come to this country to study Nature,” added the old man, relapsing into his original growl.

Now this conversation, though carried on in a low tone, was distinctly audible across the table—a fact of which the parties to it should have been aware but for that inconceivable fatuity peculiar to our fellow-countrymen when abroad, a conviction that everybody but themselves is either deaf or afflicted with an opacity of understanding which could hardly exist outside an asylum for imbeciles. So they were not a little surprised and slightly perturbed when Fordham, looking up, said quietly:

“If you will allow me, sir, I shall be happy to exchange seats. It is perfectly immaterial to me which way I face.”

The trio looked astonished, but the relief on one countenance could hardly dissemble itself.

“Er—you are very kind,” stuttered the veteran. “But—er—really—I hardly like—er—unfair advantage to take of your good-nature.”

“It is kind of you, indeed,” struck in the old lady, somewhat hurriedly, as though she feared the offer would be allowed to drop. “But the fact is the General never can bear to sit with his back to the light. And, if it is really all the same to you—”

“It is, I assure you. I am delighted to be of service. So I’ll mention the matter to the head waiter, and you may consider it settled.”

The girl was placed between her uncle and aunt. This change would result in Fordham being placed next to her. “What the deuce is the fellow driving at now?” thought Philip, in mingled wrath and alarm. Then it dawned upon him that his friend was driving at nothing less than the securing of that coveted position for him, Philip. “Good old Fordham! What a brick he is!” he mentally resolved, with a glow at his heart. “Best fellow that ever lived, by Jove?”

But the ice thus broken, our two friends and the new arrivals were soon chatting away as if they had known each other for at least some time.

“I noticed you on board the Mont Blanc this afternoon,” said Phil to the old General, with magnificent mendacity—the fact being that he was unaware of that veteran’s very existence. “But you didn’t land at Montreux, did you?”

“No. We went on to Territet. The ladies drove, with the luggage. I took the funicular railway up to Glion and walked the rest.”

“Don’t you think that Glion railway is very dangerous?” struck in Philip’s neighbour, seeing her opportunity.

“Oh, dear no. Perfectly safe, they tell me,” answered the old gentleman. “I daresay, though, it’s rather a trying affair for you ladies, finding yourselves let straight down the steep side of a mountain in a thing for all the world like a bucket in a well.”

“But don’t you think it may one of these days come to grief?” pursued the Infliction.

“But, my dear madam, just consider the number of times it has gone up and down in perfect safety.”

“Ah, but don’t you think it may break down just that one time you may happen to be in it?”

It was dreadful. The octopus-like tenacity of this bore was enough to paralyse the most mercurial. There fell a kind of languid despair upon the countenances of the group, and each looked helplessly at the other, as if to ascertain who was equal to the titanic task of warding off this terrible person. But, meeting the large eyes of his vis-à-vis, Phil at any rate found comfort. They would have something to laugh at between them, anyway.

“Here! I say—you! What are you doing?” called out Fordham, as at that moment a waiter came bustling up and began to shut the window.

“I shut de window, sir. Dere is one German gentleman at de oder end of de room say dat de window must be shut.”

“Oh, indeed! Well, then, give my compliments to the one German gentleman at the other end of the room and tell him the window won’t be shut. We’ll see him in Halifax first.”

The waiter paused a moment, then skipped away to deliver the message.

“Confound the fellow’s cheek!” cried Philip, indignantly. “Likely we are going to have our window bossed by some cadaverous brass-band player at the other end of the room.”

And one and all in the vicinity of the disputed window seconded, in varying terms, his protest.

Just then the waiter reappeared.

“Ver’ sorry, sir; but de German gentleman say it must be shut.”

“Does he?” said Fordham. “Well, look here. Tell him—this time without my compliments—that there are a few people at this end of the room whose convenience is of as much importance as his own, and that they are equally resolved that this window shall stand open. There—leave it alone. If you do shut it we shall open it again at once.”

The waiter paused again very irresolute, shrugged his shoulders, smirked, shrugged his shoulders again, then skipped away. Watching him, they had no difficulty in locating the offender—a lank-haired bespectacled Teuton occupying the remotest possible seat from the window in dispute. He, in wrath, vehemently evoked the proprietor, who, however, at that moment was not on hand.

“That Battle of the Windows is an oft-recurring phase of hotel life out here,” remarked Fordham. “No man is more absolutely unprejudiced against Continental nationalities than myself: yet it is a fact that whenever there is anything like a respectable sprinkling of Germans or Frenchmen in these hotels, they invariably insist upon having the room hermetically sealed all through dinner-time.”

“The deuce they do!” growled the old General. “But do you mean to tell me, sir, that a few of these unbarbered music-masters are going to cram their confounded love of fustiness down our throats?”

“Well, I’ve seen more than one lively episode over that window question,” replied Fordham. “And the fact of that one fellow trying it on just now is sufficient proof that the tradition exists—and exists pretty strongly too.”

“But don’t you think they may perhaps, after all, be more susceptible to cold than we English?” struck in the Infliction.

“Undoubtedly,” assented Fordham, blandly, preparing to beat a retreat from the table under cover of his reply, for the dessert had already gone round, and the room was emptying fast.

“By Jove, Fordham, but isn’t it a deuced rum thing they should have turned up here?” said Phil, as the two made their way to the promenoir for a cigar.

“She, I suppose you mean. No, it isn’t particularly rum. I knew they were bound here all along.”

“What—on board the steamer? No. How did you know?”

“Oh, while you were taking particular stock of the chick, I happened to overhear tags of the old birds’ conversation,” said Fordham, acidly, as if the subject bored him.

“Well, and why didn’t you tell a fellow?”

“Why didn’t I? Hang it all, it’s bad form to repeat what you hear by accident, you know. Besides, it was rather sport to watch your face under the pleasant little surprise.”

“Oh, that be hanged for a yarn?” cried Philip, impatiently. “But I say, who are they, I wonder? What’s their name?”

“Don’t know. Easily found out though.”

“But how?”

“Why, go and look at the arrival book in the bureau. I’ll wait for you here. I’m not interested in the matter.”

Away went Philip without a word. Turning the pages of the book, the last entry of all, freshly made, read:

“Major-General and Mrs Wyatt.”

“Miss Wyatt.”

Chapter Four.

Alma.

Everybody visiting at Les Avants for the first time while the narcissus is in full bloom, is apt to grow more than enthusiastic over that lovely and fragrant flower, even as in higher localities everybody is bound to gush inordinately over that other blossom which is like unto a gun-wad picked into fluff, and is neither lovely nor fragrant—to wit, the edelweiss. This being so, it is not surprising that Alma Wyatt should have seized the very first opportunity of escaping from the house with intent to cull as huge a bunch of the beautiful blossoms as she could possibly carry.

It was a radiant morning. The sky a deep and dazzling blue, such as is never to be seen over this uncertain and watery England of ours, was unflecked by a single cloud, and the air, mellow and balmy in the early forenoon, distilled a most exquisite perfume. To Alma it seemed as if all the glories of Paradise lay spread around her as she wandered on through the white and shining fields, drinking in the floods of fragrance diffused by the breath of a million snowy petals. Opposite, the great slopes were all aglow with green and gold, relieved by the sombre plumage of shaggy pines straggling up to the frowning scarp of the Dent de Jaman as though they aspired to scale that grim and forbidding wall, and had been forced to yield sullenly in the attempt. A mellow haze rested upon the soaring peaks beyond the fragment of blue lake just visible—blue as the sky above; and from his pent-up prison far down in the deep and wooded gorge the hoarse thunder of the mountain torrent was borne upward in subdued and unending cadence, to mingle with the hum of bees culling their sweet stores from the luscious cells of the narcissus blossoms. Small wonder that to this girl with the large, earnest eyes and poetic temperament—small wonder that to this girl, but two days out from damp and cockneyfied Surbiton, the majesty of the great mountains, the hoary cliffs still flaked with snow towering on high, the black and stately pines, the vernal pastures and the far-away echo of melodious cow-bells, the blue lake and the golden splendour of this radiant Swiss summer, should be as something more than a glimpse of the glories of Paradise.

She was glad that she had come out alone, glad that she had not met any of the other girls with whom she had made acquaintance the evening before. It was delicious to be free to drink in all the wealth of this Elysium without feeling constrained to talk, to reply to commonplaces which should let in the outside world, vulgar by comparison, upon the illimitable charm of this fairy scene. For this was her first experience of Switzerland—almost of the Continent—and it in nowise fell short of the ideal she had formed.

Alma Wyatt had been left fatherless at an early age. Better for her had she been orphaned altogether. Her childhood had been wholly uncared for, and, as far as her mother was concerned, unloved. For she had a younger sister upon whom that mother’s love was concentrated to doting point. All the bitterness of home life had fallen to Alma, all the sweets thereof to her sister. Their mother, a selfish, domineering woman, whose redeeming qualities were infinitesimal even to vanishing point, simply made the elder girl’s life wretched within that semi-detached villa at cockneyfied Surbiton, but for the younger the slender resources of a cramped income were strained to the uttermost. No wonder that the beautiful face was seldom free from a tinge of sadness; no wonder that her character had acquired a concentrativeness and reserve beyond her short twenty years of life.

We said that it would have been better for her were she an orphan indeed, and in saying this we are not exaggerating. Her uncle and aunt, under whose care we first make her acquaintance, looked upon her almost as their own child—would have been only too glad to have adopted her as such, for they were childless. But her mother would not hear of this. Alma was necessary as, figuratively speaking, a whipping-post for Constance, the younger girl. She could not part with her altogether—besides, she was useful in other ways. But the General and his wife managed to have her with them as frequently as they could, and the widow, who could not afford to quarrel with her brother-in-law, dared not oppose his wishes in the matter beyond a certain point. So here was Alma, with a prospect of two months to spend with her dearly-loved and indulgent uncle and aunt; two months of easy travel and varying sojourn among the fairest and most inspiring scenes that this world can show; two months of unconventional life as near to perfect freedom as the trammels of civilisation will allow; and above all, two months of emancipation from home worries and suburban semi-detached pettinesses, and the galling fetter of a show of “duty” towards those whom she could neither love nor honour.

Standing there among the narcissus, gazing around upon the radiant scenes spread in lustrous splendour about her, she made a wondrously beautiful picture. Her eyes shone with a light of gladness, and the normally calm regularity of the patrician features had given way to a slight flush of eagerness which was infinitely winsome. But as her glance suddenly met that of another the glad light vanished as by magic, yielding place to a look of vexation, coldness, reserve. She had been surprised in the midst of a rhapsody—taken off her guard.

But as though he read her thoughts, Philip Orlebar was not the man to add to her discomfiture. He was thoroughbred, aux bouts des ongles, and with all his lightheadedness and devil-may-care jollity, was endowed with tact beyond the endowment of most Englishmen—young Englishmen at any rate.

“Good morning, Miss Wyatt,” he said, snatching the pipe from between his teeth. “Out among the narcissus already, I see. Just what I’ve been doing myself—though, as a rule, flower gathering isn’t much in my line. I only pick up an extra fine blossom now and again as I stroll along, which may account for the meagreness of my bunch,” exhibiting a small handful containing some dozen of stalks. “But you—you have got a grand bouquet.”

The unaffectedness of his address, the breezy lightheadedness of his tone, was not without its influence even upon her. The gravity of her reserve melted into a smile.

“They are so lovely,” she answered; “I couldn’t remain indoors a moment longer.”

“Just the state of the case with me. Surprising how great minds always jump together. But to be serious, I believe the blossoms up above there are larger than these. Some one or other in the hotel told me I ought to go and look at them, and I did,” added mendacious Phil. “That lazy dog, Fordham, wouldn’t move—planted himself at the end of a pipe in a cane chair in one of those arbours. I couldn’t stand that, so I started a stroll in a small way. Let me carry those for you.” And in a twinkling he had possessed himself of the two huge bunches of narcissus which she had gathered.

“Thanks. It’s a shame to burden you, though. Isn’t this a beautiful place?”

“Rather. Old Fordham is enthusiastic about it, and I don’t much wonder. He knows it well, you see. I never was here before in my life, but now I am here I’m in no hurry to move on. There are some grand walks and first-rate climbs to be had. You were saying last night you were looking forward to that sort of thing. I hope we shall be able to show you the way about a little. We must make up a party for a climb somewhere before this splendid weather changes. Fordham is worth any round dozen of guides.”

“But—we can hardly lay your friend’s good-nature under such a heavy contribution,” she said, with a queer little smile.

“Oh, can’t we! Old Fordham is the best fellow in the world—only wants knowing a bit. He’ll do anything he’s asked.”

That queer smile broadened round Alma’s lips. She had sat opposite the now eulogised Fordham during the whole of dinner-time; and, be it remembered, she was given to studying character. But she said nothing, and by this time they had regained the hotel.

A cool fountain was playing in the terraced garden in front of the promenoir, shooting high in the air and falling back into its basin in a shower of scattering diamond drops. Beside this, leaning on an alpenstock, a big meerschaum in his mouth, stood General Wyatt.

“Well, Alma. Been ravaging the narcissus fields?” he said, as they came up. “But what on earth will you do with all that lot? A trifle too strong, won’t it be, for any ordinary-sized room?”

“I don’t think so, uncle. Why, in England people would give anything for such magnificent blossoms as these, and here we are already beginning to think them nothing very great. But I’ll go and put them in water for the present.”

“Well, don’t be long, dear, or we sha’n’t get our walk,” he called after her.

“Grand day, General?” said Philip, re-lighting his pipe.

“It is, indeed. By the bye, since I’ve heard your name, are you in any way related to Francis Orlebar—Sir Francis he is now?”

“Rather closely. He happens to be my father. Did you know him well?”

“You don’t say so! Well, well! It’s a small world, after all. Know him well? I should think I did. I was some years his senior though, and he wasn’t long in the service. But that must have been before you were born.”

“And have you never met since, General?”

“Only once—just about the time he got into that—er—ah.” And the old man, remembering who he was talking to, suddenly pulled himself up and launched forth into a tremendous sneeze. The slip was not lost upon Phil, but he came to the rescue promptly.

“Think we are like each other, General?” he said.

“N-no! Don’t know though. There is a likeness. You’re the finer built fellow of the two—taller and broader. Bless my soul, though, but the world is a small one. To think of Frank Orlebar’s son turning up in this way?”

“I hope I’m not interrupting, General Wyatt,” said a feminine and tentative voice. “Your niece was saying last night she was a perfect stranger here, and we thought she might like to go with us. We are going to the Cubly. It isn’t far, and we shall be back to lunch. We hope you will come too.”

The speaker was one of the two girls who had passed our friends in the Gorge du Chauderon. Phil had already made a little conversation with her the evening before. So now she turned and extended the invitation to him. He gladly accepted, while the General answered for Alma and himself that nothing would give them greater pleasure. And at that moment Alma reappeared and they started. The Miss Ottleys were pleasant well-bred girls of artistic tastes and plenty of conversation, and the walk promised to be a success.

We shall not, however, follow the party to the pine-crowned height sheering up from the vine-clad slopes immediately behind Montreux, nor share in the magnificent panorama which it affords. Sufficient to say that at the end of three hours they returned, in the highest spirits and on the best of terms with themselves and each other. In such free and easy fashion are acquaintanceships formed and often consolidated into friendships, amid the pleasant unconventionally of life in mountain hotels.

Chapter Five.

Fordham Philosophises.

“I say, Fordham. We’re getting up an expedition for to-morrow, and you’ve got to come,” cried Phil, bursting into his friend’s room just before dinner one evening.

“Have I?” replied the latter leisurely, turning round with a half-soaped visage, and razor arrested in mid-air. “But, Phil, it’s rather lucky you didn’t swoop down in such hurricane method upon a more nervous man than yours truly, or it’s wildly hunting for sticking plaster he’d be at this moment. And now, for my enlightenment, who’s we?”

“Oh, the Ottleys and the Wyatts and one or two more. We want to start early, cross the lake by steamer and get as far up that valley on the other side as we can.”

“To Novèl? Yes, and then?”

“Why then we are going to charter a boat and row back in the cool of the evening.”

“Not a bad scheme. Who do you say are going, beside the inseparables?”

“One of the Miss Milnes—the pretty one—and that fellow Scott.”

“Scott, the devil-dodger?”

“Yes. The Ottleys have asked him. I can’t think why, for he’s a rank ‘outsider.’”

“Most of the ‘shepherds’ appointed to administer ‘Dearly beloved brethren’ to their countrywomen in this otherwise favoured land are, my dear chap. But it’s all the better for you. He can take the two Ottley nymphs off your hands while you offer latria to the fair Inkermann—no Alma—I beg your pardon.”

“But—but hang it, that’s just what the beggar won’t do,” blurted Phil in desperation. “Fact is he’s always in the way, and really it’s contemptible, you know; but what’s to be done with a cad like that, who ignores a snub that another fellow would knock you down for—or try to? You’ll come along, old man, won’t you?”

“Let’s see. There’s the General, he’s too old and don’t count. Then there’s yourself and the parson; and they want a third donkey—I mean beast of burden. Two won’t be enough to sling all the panniers they’ll want along. I’m afraid, Phil, you mustn’t count upon me, unless you can manage to supply the missing steed first.”

“Bosh, Fordham! You won’t be wanted to carry anything.”

“Not, eh? Let’s see again. Four females—that means eight wraps, putting it at the lowest computation. Add to that the delicate creatures’ rations—for you can’t get anything eatable or drinkable at Novèl—and sunshades, which they must have for crossing the lake, don’t you know, and which they’ll discard directly they begin to walk. And there’s all the amateur-commissionaire business into the bargain. No, no, Phil. Having given the matter my most careful consideration, I regret to say that I am unable to undertake it—as the publisher said when he ‘chucked’ the budding author’s MS.”

“You old savage! If you weren’t shaving I’d ‘chuck’ all the boots and bolsters in the room at your head.”

“Well, I’ve done now, so you can begin. But, I say, Phil,” he went on, tranquilly, “how long have we been here?”

Philip Orlebar’s handsome head was well through the open window at that moment. His friend therefore found it necessary to repeat the question.

“Eh—what? How long? Oh, about ten days, haven’t we?”

“I believe we have,” rejoined the other in the same silky tone. “And, my dear boy, doesn’t it strike you that you are getting on ra-ather rapidly?”

“No. Why?”

“Nothing. Only that even the charm of my improving conversation does not avail to keep your head within that window, when some inexplicable instinct—for you couldn’t possibly have seen her—warns you that your divinity is on the terrace below. And yet, in a few minutes more you will be seated by her side for at least an hour—such being unfortunately the length of table d’hôte, and after that may safely be counted upon to pass the residue of the evening not a hundred yards apart from her by any means.”

“Well, I’m only one of a crowd then,” retorted Philip, with a dash of irritation. “Those confounded Ottley girls are always on hand—a good deal too much so.”

“Are they? Look here now, Phil. What is there about that girl that makes a difference between her and any other girl?”

“Ah! You—even you, you old ruffian, own that there is a difference?”

“Not so fast, my dear chap. I asked you the question. But if you want me to answer it myself, I reply ‘Nothing.’”

“What? You don’t see any difference?”

“Not a particle,” responded his tormentor, blandly. Philip stared for a moment. He hardly knew what to say. Then:

“Well, with all your shelliness, you crustaceous old cuss, I gave you credit for more discrimination. Why, confound it all, look at her alongside the rest of the crowd here. Isn’t she a head and shoulders above them all—in every particular?”

“H’m, h’m! Oh, yes! no doubt. But that isn’t saying very much. She looks thoroughbred, I admit, and talks well, and has some ideas—not bad ones, either; not that I’ve ever been favoured with them myself, for I’ve never laid myself out for that honour. Women, you see, are like children. As long as you keep them at arm’s length they respect you. Directly you have ever so little to do with them, then good-bye to your peace, for they will allow you none; then, presto, the collar is round your neck and you find yourself cast for the rôle of general poodle before you know where you are. It’s fetch-and-carry, will-you-do-this and would-you-mind-doing-that. And then you are expected to act the sympathetic listener to all their infernal egotistic fads; and God help you if at any moment you forget the sympathetic part of it. But to return to our sheep. You think this particular girl an angel, because she’s good-looking and thoroughbred, and has a hovering sort of suggestion about her of being an ill-used mortal and welcoming a sympathetic spirit, and all that sort of thing. Then, again, you run against her up here, where you’re both of you showing at your best because you’ve neither of you anything in the world to put you out—splendid weather, lovely country, good old times all round—sort of paradise in which she stands out as the Eve to you, and I daresay you as the Adam to her. That’s not life, my dear fellow; that’s not life. A mere summer idyll and no more. Can’t possibly last, you know.”

“And why the deuce can’t it last?” said Phil, who had been listening somewhat impatiently to this harangue.

Fordham emitted a short, dry guffaw.

“Well now, can it? I put it to you. Just run over all the ‘happy couples’ within the circle of your acquaintance: to how many of them is life a summer idyll, or any sort of idyll at all? You needn’t go further than this house, which at present contains a good few ‘yoke-fellows,’ to use a thoroughly expressive term. If you haven’t yet found time to observe them, just keep your eyes open for the next day or two—if you can divert those killing orbs from the adorable Alma, that is—and a place like this is good for observations of the kind, because the subjects of them are always more or less off their guard. Putting it at the lowest computation, eight marriages out of every ten are abject failures—the other two very dubious.”

“Oh, indeed! And how many are there that turn out satisfactorily?” said Phil, ironically.

“Perhaps one in five thousand.”

“Oh—well—it’s something to have got you to admit that much. Now why shouldn’t I, for instance, hit off that one?”

“Why shouldn’t you? Well now, Phil, I put it to you as one not wholly unacquainted with sporting matters. What would you say to a fellow who should ask you to take tickets in a lottery where the chances were five thousand to one against you—or rather to take one ticket, and that at the price of all you were worth? You’d vote him drunk, of course. Yet if I know anything of my fellow-creatures, you are in a fair way towards perpetrating that identical suicidal imbecility. Now, what do you say? Chuck your expedition across the lake to-morrow, and let’s go on to Zermatt now instead of a week or so later. That, or your fate is sealed.”

“No you don’t, old chap; no you don’t,” said Phil, who, far from being offended by the other’s ill-conditionedness, was hugely pleased thereat, since it confirmed and encouraged certain hopes he had already more than half shaped. “By Jove, I never had such a good time in my life as I’ve been having here. Too soon to cut it just yet.”

Fordham’s shoulders went up in an expressive shrug as he turned away to the door.

“Don’t say you weren’t shown the cliff you proposed to jump over,” he said. “Jump now, and be—blessed to you.”

“By the way, Fordham,” said Phil, “isn’t it a deuced rum thing? The old General knows my governor well—or rather did, years ago.”

“Did he?” was the sharp reply, as the speaker faced suddenly round. “Ah well—yes—it is queer. But the world’s a pretty small one. There goes the second bell,” he added, in his normally unconcerned tones, as he again turned to the door.

His manner struck even Philip, though faintly. But for the fact that Fordham was literally a man in an iron mask, Philip could have sworn that the tone was a startled one. That, however, was absurd, anyhow. Fordham was not even acquainted with Sir Francis. The two had met and become intimate merely as travelling companions.

“Well, Mr Fordham, what do you think of these young people’s plan for to-morrow?” said General Wyatt as they met at table.

“Not a bad one. The valley of the Morge is well worth walking up, but you must start from here so as to catch the early steamer.”

“Make old Fordham go with us. He says he won’t,” said Phil, in an undertone, to Alma Wyatt, next to whom he was seated, for the change of places had been effected satisfactorily to all parties concerned. “You can get round him if any one can.”

“I don’t know so much about that,” she answered, with a smile. “I’ll try, though.” Then across the table, “Why do you say ‘you must start early,’ Mr Fordham, as if you weren’t going with us? You really must come. The gentians, they say, are lovely up that valley. We are quite reckoning on you.”

“To carry the gentians?” he rejoined drily. “Or to pick them?”

“Neither. You shall talk to us while we pick them. And you shall not carry anything, and we’ll promise to be very good and give no trouble.”

Few men could have stood this appeal, or the look which accompanied it. Phil felt quite hot. Though used to his friend’s ways, he thought him an ill-conditioned dog at that moment. Had he not unequivocally snubbed his—Phil’s—divinity? But the said divinity rather enjoyed it than otherwise. For, in spite of the extremely derogatory deliverances we have just heard from Fordham’s lips concerning her, Alma Wyatt was the only woman in the hotel to whom he had addressed a spontaneous remark; and she, so far from being offended at his brusqueness or taciturnity, looked upon him as a character, to be studied with avidity.

“To put it on other grounds,” she went on gaily. “Uncle will be quite lost without you. What will become of him all day with no one to argue with?” She could not have ventured upon safer ground. Fordham, though he detested women, by no means extended his antipathy to his own sex, and when away from the obnoxious skirts no man was better company. He was a power in the smoking-room, and as a travelling companion very nearly perfect. He and General Wyatt had become great friends during their short acquaintance, and now as it struck him that the old man had probably been relying upon his company for the proposed undertaking, his mind was made up.

“Well, General, I shall be happy to make one of the party,” he said. “And after all, if it’s a case of rowing back across the lake, another oar won’t come out of place.”

“Don’t you think it very dangerous to cross the lake in a small boat?” struck in the Infliction, at his elbow.

“Not if the weather’s fine.”

“Ah, but don’t you think storms come up very suddenly on this lake?”

“Oh, Lord,” said Phil in an undertone, “the Gadfly is getting her sting into old Fordham.”

“Be quiet, she’ll hear you,” replied Alma, trying to hide a laugh. “Besides, I want to enjoy the fun.”

But while Fordham was ruminating over a suitable extinguisher, a mild clergyman on the opposite side of the table struck in eagerly, and requested to know if that was really the case, and further manifested such a desire for information on that particular subject that the Infliction turned to him with reinvigorated purpose, and the rest were spared. The good man had only arrived that evening, and little knew what floodgates he was opening.

Chapter Six.

The Fire of the Live Coal.

“I believe we are all here now,” remarked Fordham, ironically, sending a significant glance round the little group assembled on the débarcadère at Montreux.

“Better count and make sure,” responded Scott, the parson, with an asinine guffaw.

The first remark was evoked by the recollection that, even as they now stood watching the swift, shearing approach of the Mont Blanc sweeping up to the jetty, so had they arrived on that spot some three hours earlier, just in time to gaze after the steamer preceding, as she disappeared round the promontory previous to standing in for Territet. And for having missed their boat, and lost three hours of the day, they had to thank the Miss Ottleys, or rather the maternal parent of those young ladies, who, with the usual feminine lack of a sense of the eternal fitness of things, had instructed them to combine business with pleasure, and execute sundry commissions for her in Montreux, on the way to the steamer. Wherefore they—and the parson—had arrived at the pier in time to find the residue of the party gazing discontentedly after the receding boat.

But no one would fall in with Fordham’s suggestion to return. If they had lost three hours’ the days were long and the evenings moonlight. All agreed that they would wait for the next boat.

“En route!” shouted the skipper, with his lips to the speaking-tube. The gangway was withdrawn with a bang—the great paddle-wheels churned the blue water into creamy foam, and the fine vessel, panting and snorting like a courser impatient of the momentary restraint, plunged forward as she swung round obedient to the hand of the helmsman.

“What a disagreeable chap that man Fordham is,” remarked Scott to the Miss Ottleys, with whom he had withdrawn to a comfortable corner of the deck.

“He can be about as rude as any man I ever knew,” returned the younger of the two girls, who had a hazy sort of idea that any man ought to think it rather an honour than otherwise to have all his arrangements thrown out by her dilatoriness.

“I don’t think we can blame him this time,” objected the elder. “It must have been very provoking to the dear old General as well.”

“Ah, he’s different,” said Scott. “But that fellow Fordham just thinks the world was made to suit his convenience. By the bye, who asked him to come to-day?”

“Well, you see, it was Mr Orlebar who suggested the trip, and it isn’t likely he’d leave his friend out.”

“Oh, ah—I see! Pity he didn’t though. The fellow is a regular wet blanket.”

There was reason in the speaker’s venom. Scott, who held the proud position of English chaplain at Les Avants for that month, was a fair specimen of the young “masher” parson. He wore a carefully-trimmed moustache and talked with a drawl. He affected lawn tennis in preference to any other form of exercise because it enabled him to array his graceful five foot six of dimensions in faultlessly fitting flannels, and when so arrayed he was under the impression that Apollo himself might take a back seat. He was not a gentleman by birth, and, having all the exuberant assurance of the self-estimating “ranker,” was a standing offence to those who were. Though made much of by a large section of the ladies, always ready to constitute a pet tame cat of a young parson, the men abhorred him. His bumptiousness and chronic infringements of good form met with systematic snubbing, and on more than one occasion nothing but his “cloth” had saved him from being incontinently kicked. Now of all the “setting down” he had received since his arrival at the hotel, that which he had encountered at the hands of Fordham had been the most merciless and exhaustive.

The latter and General Wyatt were leaning against the taffrail smoking their cigars.

“Have you known young Orlebar long?” the old man was saying. “I gathered from what he told me that you had been travelling together for some years.”

“Well, we have only been a couple of months together this summer. Last autumn, though, we returned from a thirteen months’ trip to China and Japan, then home across the Rockies.”

“Indeed! You ought to know of what sort of stuff a fellow is made after a trip of that kind with him.”

“Yes. Phil is a good fellow enough, and he and I suit each other admirably. He always does what he’s told, and can stand being chaffed for his own good. Not many fellows of his age can do that.”

“I like the boy,” went on General Wyatt, “like him immensely. He’s a fine fellow—a finer fellow than his father was. But it’s a thousand pities he has no sort of profession, for when he comes into Claxby and the title he won’t have too much to keep up either upon.”

“I suppose not,” assented Fordham, indifferently. “But then he hasn’t got any expensive tastes or habits.”

“That’s a very good point about him. Still, if his father had put him into some profession instead of allowing him ample means to lead an idle life, it would have been all the better for him. But that’s Frank Orlebar all over. He dotes upon the boy, and so feels bound to indulge him in every particular. That sort of sentimentality was always a grave weakness in Frank Orlebar’s character. His heart was always stronger than his head, and it invariably led him into some serious blunder.”

“Didn’t he come rather to grief once and have to go abroad for a time?” said Fordham, meditatively trimming the ash of his cigar with his thumbnail. “Phil never mentioned it, but I seem to remember the case some twenty years back.”

“Oh, you remember it?” said the General, looking furtively around and lowering his voice. “Well, it wasn’t a ‘case’ exactly—never came to that, luckily. But there was the devil of a scandal, and Orlebar went abroad for a time. It was said that he went to exchange shots with the injured party, and I believe he did, but whether either of them winged his man I’ll be hanged if I know.”

On one of the benches in the forepart of the hurricane deck, gazing dreamily at the great wooded slopes sliding by as the steamer passed the storm-beaten walls of grim Chillon, revelling in the gorgeous magnificence of the flying scenery while keeping an ear for her companion’s remarks, sat Alma Wyatt.

“Do you know you answered me quite at random?” said Philip, with a laugh.

“Did I? Oh, how rude of me! But—you must make allowances. I find it quite impossible to take my attention entirely off these lovely shores and the mountains changing every minute as we go rushing through the water. Look at them—all green and gold in this exquisite sunlight! Look at the dazzling white of the Dent du Midi there, in sharp contrast to the vivid blue of the sky! And the lake—I have just counted no less than thirteen different shades on its surface where each tiny catspaw of wind sweeps it—thirteen, from the richest ultramarine to gold and plum colour and scarlet. There, I am very gushing—am I not?—and you may laugh at me accordingly.”

“I certainly shall do nothing of the sort,” he replied, eagerly. “Do you suppose I am such a boor, such a Vandal that I can’t enter into your ideas? Perhaps I was thinking just the same things, only could not for the life of me express myself so beautifully.”

She looked him steadily in the face for a moment as though to read his thoughts, as though to detect the slightest trace of make-believe about his reply. But his tones rang true and she was satisfied.

“Then I shall proceed with my gush, and really end in making you laugh,” she resumed. “But I do think that this eastern end of the Lake of Geneva must have been hewn out of a corner of Paradise.”

“And yet, there stands an eternal reminder to the contrary,” he replied, pointing to the grim towers of Chillon which lay mirrored in clear-cut reflection upon the sapphire waters. “Think of the numberless wretches racked and thumbscrewed and burnt within those walls in past centuries. Have you so soon forgotten that ghastly oubliette they were driven down under a fraudulent promise of liberty? It is said that remains occasionally come to light even to this day.”

“Ah, now you have drawn a sort of black line across my fair picture. You are upsetting my ideal just as Mr Fordham kept trying to do the other day when we were going over the castle. Do you remember he pronounced the torture stake a fraud of the first magnitude, declaring that it had been renewed since he visited Chillon five years ago, and that Byron’s name on the pillar in Bonivard’s dungeon was probably a despicable sham and the work of some latter-day ’Arry?”

“Yes, but we all agreed that even if it were genuine it was a rank act of ’Arrydom on the part of the bard, and by no means a thing to fall down in adoration before.”

“So we did. As to the other things I don’t like being disturbed in my illusions. But a visit to these old castles and prisons with their hideous and varied appliances of torture and mutilation and death invariably tempts me seriously to wonder whether the world was not for centuries under the sway of some malignant fiend instead of a beneficent Ruler. Just think a moment, as you were saying just now, over the unutterable horrors perpetrated in that castle alone, not to mention our own Tower of London and thousands of similar places scattered about the ‘civilised’ world. Why, it seems as if the one thought animating the mind of every one in authority was how to inflict the greatest and most ingenious forms of suffering upon his fellow-creatures. Does not that look as if the world was under Satanic sway? But there, you will be thinking me a very heterodox, not to say a wicked person.”

“I shall think you neither the one nor the other,” he protested, warmly. The sweet seriousness and depth of thought characterising this girl constituted by no means the least of her attractions, and with all his sunny spirits and light-hearted susceptibility Philip Orlebar was poles apart from the ruck of contemporaneous jeunesse dorée whose talk is of the green room and the daily habits of this or that star actress. He had ideas and a serious side, and could well appreciate the same in others. And if in others, how much more in this one who was now exhibiting them.

“But come,” she resumed, gaily, changing her tone and manner with a suddenness as of the sunlight breaking through a cloud, “we had better turn our backs on gloomy Chillon, and only look upon and remember my ‘corner hewn out of Paradise.’ There—that little idea is all my own.”

Remember it? thought Philip. Would he ever forget it? The radiant glories of the summer day, the swift gliding movement over the flashing water, the great mountains around soaring up to the eternal blue, the sense of exhilaration in the mere delight of living—and tingeing, gilding all, touching with the fire of the live coal this fairyland of entrancing glow and sunlight, the magic of a subtle presence here at his side. And the fire of that live coal was Love.

Yes, it had come to this with him. In spite of his friend’s cynical warnings and more or less envenomed banter; in the teeth of all prudential considerations, of future advantage, ways and means, and such; in the face of the awkward fact that his acquaintanceship with her was one of barely ten days, Philip had come to admit to himself that life apart from Alma Wyatt would be but a dead and empty pretence at living.

Barely ten days! Could it be? Less than one brief fortnight since his glance had first rested upon her, here on this very deck! It seemed incredible.

But she? Her splendid eyes met his in conversation fully and fearlessly, their heavy dark lashes never drooping for a moment beneath his ardent gaze. Never the faintest tinge of colour came into the warm paleness of the beautiful patrician face; never a tremor shook the sweetly modulated voice in response to his most eager efforts to please, in recognition of his most unmistakable “signs of distress.” Could she not guess?

“I think the idea is a very sweet one,” he rejoined, earnestly. “A little corner of Paradise—that’s just what it is.”

“Ahem! We shall be at Bouveret in five minutes,” struck in a drawling voice, not wholly guiltless of a cockney twang, recognisable as the property of Scott. “Do you feel prepared to mount Shanks’s mare, Miss Wyatt?”

Alma murmured a very frigid reply, while Philip was obliged to turn away to conceal the fury which blazed forth from his visage, and further to quell an overmastering impulse which moved him to take the speaker by the scruff of his neck and drop him there and then overboard—in front of the paddle-wheels. The free and easy patronising drawl of this insufferable cad made his blood surge again.

“By the way, Miss Wyatt,” went on the pachydermatous pastor, “I have a great mind to ask you to arbitrate. I must say Mr Fordham is a pretty cool hand. What do you think? Here am I with this huge knapsack full of things to carry, and he positively declines to take his share. That is—I’ve hinted to him pretty plainly that he ought to.”

“Fordham isn’t a man who deals largely in hints,” said Philip, facing round upon the speaker with a fierceness that almost made the latter recoil. “If he were, he would doubtless hint that one beast of burden is sufficient for the party.”

Scott looked affronted. Then his countenance suddenly cleared. “Oh! we are going to take a horse with us then?” he said, gleefully.

“No—an ass,” returned Philip, quickly.

Even the inflated layer of the other’s self-esteem was not proof against this shaft. It collapsed with its owner, who retired with a scowl to pour his grievance into haply more sympathising ears. And by that time the steamer had crossed the broad and turgid belt where the snow-waters of the Rhone cleft in a sharply defined pathway the blue surface of the lake, and was slowing down to half-speed as she approached Bouveret pier.

Chapter Seven.

The Storm on the Lake.

“Is there absolutely no way of getting on to St. Gingolph, Mr Fordham?” said the eldest Miss Ottley, ruefully.

“You may put it in that way,” was the tranquil reply. “Unless we walk.”

The party, gathered round Fordham on the wooden pier, were not a little disappointed. They had reckoned on changing steamers and going straight on without delay, for the Mont Blanc went no further than Bouveret. Now they discovered that there was no steamer to change on to.

“That’s what comes of missing the early boat,” resumed Fordham, mercilessly. “You will kindly remember that I warned you I doubted the accuracy of my horaire, and that we should probably not find any steamer on this side, when you elected to come on by the Mont Blanc.”

This was undeniable, but it didn’t seem to mend matters.

“And now two courses lie open to us,” he went on. “We can either walk to St. Gingolph along the high road, or take a short cut round the base of the Grammont for Novèl. I should recommend the latter. What do you say, General?”

“Oh, I’m entirely in your hands. What do the ladies think?”

But the ladies voting unanimously for this plan it was carried forthwith. Then suddenly it occurred to them that nobody knew the way. But they reckoned without Fordham. He had never been over that identical ground, but he undertook to act as guide, and fulfilled his undertaking with admirable accuracy. But they were not to reach their original destination, and it came about in this wise.

The day was hot, and the path winding upward round the mountain-side, though charming as it led through beech and oakwoods, affording many a glimpse of the blue lake below, was both steep and rugged. After about an hour the Miss Ottleys suggested a halt—and lunch.

“This is a very tiring way, Mr Fordham,” said one of them, “and it seems a very long one. Are you quite sure we are going right?”

“I see,” was the short reply. “You want me to say I am not quite sure. Well, what do you want to do—that’s the point?”

They looked at each other.

“I think we had almost better have our picnic here,” said the one who had first spoken.

“I believe we had,” said the other sister. “This is a lovely spot.”

“If we stop here now we sha’n’t get on to Novèl at all,” said Fordham.

“Oh, hang Novèl!” cut in Scott. “I’m for stopping here. What do you say, Miss Wyatt?”

“I am perfectly ready to do what every one else wishes,” answered Alma.

“Fordham, old man, I believe we none of us want to go any further,” said Philip. “It’s awfully hot, you know, and it’ll be no end of a grind. It’s a mistake, too, to make a toil of a pleasure. I propose that we bivouac here, feed, and poke a smipe, and drop down quietly on St. Jingo—or whatever you call it—afterwards. Let’s put it to the vote.”

“All right,” said Fordham, serenely. “It’s all one to me.”

Philip was right, the fact being that every one had had enough of it. So they ate their luncheon in the cool shade, and took their ease and were happy; and after a couple of hours or so started downward for the village, where they were to embark for the return voyage across the lake.

“We might have had some difficulty in getting a boat,” remarked Fordham. “As it happens, though, I saw my commissionaire, François Berthod, in Montreux, and he has a brother at St. Gingolph who owns one. So I made him wire him to look out for us.”

But when they reached St. Gingolph a fresh deadlock seemed likely to arise. There was not much demand for boatmen at the out-of-the-way, seldom-visited little village. Accordingly those amphibious worthies were, one and all, absent, following their other avocations, and among them Jules Berthod. To the whereabouts of the latter nobody seemed able to furnish a clue. The woman who managed the wineshop opined that he had gone over to Bouveret, and would not return till late; but in any case it didn’t matter, she being perfectly certain that neither Jules nor any other boat-owner would cross the lake that afternoon—an opinion abundantly backed up in unintelligible patois by more than one blue-bloused boozer lounging on the wooden seats.

But Fordham knew better, and he was right. For, as luck would have it, who should arrive at that very moment but the missing Jules—a cheery, copper-faced athlete, who, recognising Fordham, made no great difficulty about the undertaking. He glanced at the party, then at his boat; remarked dubiously that it was rather late in the day for crossing, and he should hardly get back that night; then shrugged his shoulders, ejaculated “Enfin,” and straightway set off to haul in his craft.

The latter, though roomy, was somewhat narrow of beam, and not so heavy as it looked. There were seats for three rowers, each pulling a pair of sculls.

“I’ll take stroke, if it’s all the same to everybody,” said Philip.

Fordham was about to demur, Philip being the heaviest man of the party, except perhaps the boatman, and there was abundance of weight in the stem; but remembering that Alma had been voted coxswain, he refrained. So Berthod was constituted bow, and Scott, eager to distinguish himself, took the remaining pair.

It was five o’clock when they pushed off. From St. Gingolph to Vevey the distance is about eight miles; therefore they reckoned upon barely two hours of easy pulling. Another two hours’ walk in the cool of the evening would bring them back to Les Avants almost before it was dark.

“I don’t think much of this sort of rowing,” grumbled Scott, for about the third time as, with a final effort to scrape down some of the stars of heaven, he violently fouled Philip’s oar. “They don’t seem to know what it is in this country. Fancy having your oars hitched on to an iron peg, instead of running free in rowlocks. Why, you can’t even feather.”

“I suppose you went in for boating a good deal when you were at the ’Varsity, Mr Scott?” remarked Fordham, innocently. It was rather cruel, Scott being one of that rapidly increasing class of parson who has never kept terms at any university.

“Er—not a very great deal—a little, that is,” was the somewhat confused reply.

“Didn’t aspire to your college boat, eh?” said Philip, who ever since they started had been mentally anathematising this cockney ’Arry, whose alternate star-scraping and crab-catching efforts had kept him in a lively state of irritation and bad time.

“Won’t some of you young ladies favour us with a song?” suggested the General. “Nothing like melody on the water.”

“Rather,” said Philip. “It’ll send us along at twice the pace—inspire us, don’t you know. Make us keep time—if anything will,” he added, significantly.

There was some little demur among the girls, who were shy of singing without accompaniment. Then they started the Canadian boat-song, and the effect of the clear voices floating out over the mirror-like water was pretty enough, for the said voices certainly did “keep tune,” even though the oars—thanks to the star-scraping proclivities of the maladroit Scott—failed with exasperating frequency to “keep time.” And the scene was a lovely and a peaceful one, inspiring, too, if you came to contrast the utter insignificance of that cockleshell boat floating there on the blue expanse of lake, with the sombre grandeur of the great mountains—many a jagged and fantastic peak starting into view above and behind the abrupt forest-clad slopes sheering up from the water’s edge as the distance widened between them and the Savoy shore. Then, dominating the flat Rhone Valley, the towering Dent de Morcles, and further in the background the snowy head of the Mont Velan peeping round the volcano-like crest of the pyramid-shaped Mont Catogne, and above the green slopes around Les Avants, the rocky hump of the Naye shone red in the beams of the westering sun.

But in spite of the calm and peaceful stillness lying alike upon the water and the encircling mountains, Jules Berthod seemed not altogether at ease. There was a heavy loom of cloud over the purple Jura, which to the mind of the experienced boatman had no business to be there. At the same time a kind of lurid opacity crept over the hitherto radiant sun.

“Crr-rré nom! Si on allait nous flanquer un coup de vent, par exemple!” he muttered between his teeth as he sent more than one uneasy glance to the westward.

There was one upon whom that glance was not lost—who had also begun to read the face of the sky. That one was Fordham.

“What do you say to my taking your place, Mr Scott?” he said. “We must be nearly half-way across by now. If anything, rather more.”

Scott, who had had enough of it, jumped at this proposal, and sank down with a sigh of relief into the cushioned seat among the ladies.

“When are we to take our turn?” asked the youngest Miss Ottley.

“Better wait until we have broken the back of the work,” answered Fordham, who knew, however, that no feminine hand was destined to handle the oar that day.

“Bless my soul, but how chilly it has turned,” said General Wyatt.

It had—and more. The boat no longer slid smoothly over the glassy water. Something of a swell had arisen.

“By Jove! If only we had a sail we should slip along sweetly. There’s quite a little breeze getting up,” said Philip, resting a moment on his oars. “Well, we haven’t, so it’s of no use wishing. But how about another song? We want invigorating. Does any one know the Eton fourth of June song?”

It happened that nobody did, and Philip remarking that that inspiriting chorus was a thin affair if rendered as a solo, was urgently assured that he never was more mistaken in his life and as urgently pressed to give practical proof of the same. Then the disputants abruptly paused. For Jules Berthod was resting on his oars, and seemed deep in a hurried consultation with Fordham, who, it will be remembered, now occupied the middle seat.

“Nom de nom!” he growled. “Ça arrive—ça arrive. Je l’attendais bien—allez!”

“What is the matter?” exclaimed Marian Ottley, with a shade of alarm. “Is it going to be rough, or what?”

A heavy lumping swell was now running, into which the boat rose and fell with a plash and an angry hiss, as each well-timed, powerful stroke forced her through. But a marvellous and magical change had come over the whole scene. The great curtain of cloud seemed now to spread over half the lake, and was gliding on, on. It stole up over the Savoy mountains, and each hitherto shining summit now reared itself dark and threatening against the inky veil. It had thrown out an advance guard of flying scud, which already partially enshrouded the peaks and ridges dominating the Rhone Valley to the eastward, and still it crept on. The air was stirred in fitful puffs, moaning and chill, and the sun had disappeared. The sudden metamorphosis from golden unclouded afternoon to the brooding lurid gloom of half day was inexpressibly awesome—almost appalling.

“Do you mind taking a ‘trick at the wheel,’ General Wyatt?” said Fordham. “We shall want some masterly steering directly.”

“No, uncle. I can do it better than you,” objected Alma, firmly. “That’s one advantage my riverside dwelling has left me—handiness with the tiller ropes.”

“But you’ll have to keep us head to a tolerably heavy sea,” said Fordham. “That is, not straight at it, but as nearly so as possible. You must not let her fall away on any account.”

“I thoroughly understand boats—in smooth water or rough,” answered the girl, calmly.

“Hurrah!” cried Phil. “Three cheers for our coxswain!”

She spoke no more than the truth. There was strength in those supple young wrists and judgment within that well-shaped head, and all there realised that the General at his age would make the more indifferent helmsman of the two.

A whirring vibrating hum seemed to fill the air. Over the water not half a mile distant stretched a dark line. Nearer, nearer it came, and as it swept steadily on, those in the boat had no difficulty in making out a jagged, serrated ridge of leaping wave crests, banked up white and gleaming against the inky scud which seemed urging it on. On, on—nearer, nearer. It was a critical moment. Most of those in the boat held their breath. Could that cockleshell live a moment against that creaming surging wall of water rolling on to engulf it?

Nearer—nearer! The fearful roar of the advancing waves became stunning, deafening. It was a terrible moment, and to those awaiting the shock it seemed as hours. Philip, grasping his oars rigidly in the intensity of the crisis, cast one look over his shoulder at the advancing terror, then at the group in the stern-sheets. The two Ottley girls had buried their faces in their hands. Scott was livid, his eyes starting from his head. Even the old General’s face looked rigidly nerved for a desperate emergency. But she who sat holding the tiller ropes—not a quiver was in her countenance. There was the keenness of steel in her grey eyes, and the little hands seemed to conceal the strength of a vice, as the boat’s head swept round to meet the advancing shock.

It came. With a mighty roar the huge wall of water struck them. The little craft seemed literally flung into the air, then plashed down again, and those within her thought she had buried herself in the waves for good and all. She reeled and rocked, and but for those firm hands that held the tiller ropes would have spun round and sunk headlong. Several great seas swept beneath her, leaving her half full of water, and the terrified shrieks of the two thoroughly frightened girls, the million bellowing voices of the gale, the roaring, hissing tongues of the leaping billows, the weird darkness of the lowering scud out of which leapt each succession of towering curling seas thundering down upon the tiny craft like ravenous monsters sure of their prey, constituted a scene and surroundings well calculated to try the boldest nerves.

For awhile nobody spoke. Those in charge of the boat knew exactly what to do, and did it—fortunately so, or the fate of every soul there was sealed. In the teeth of the fierce tornado it was all the three strong men could do to keep steerage way on her, and well they knew that should she fall away for one instant the next would witness her capsize. And ever the huge waves flung her from crest to crest, drenching her occupants, while the air was filled with clouds of spray torn from the breaking summits and hurled away high overhead.

“Oh, my God!” shrieked Scott, his eyes starting from his wet and livid countenance, as a sudden volume of water struck him full on the neck, nearly knocking him overboard. “Oh, my God! We shall never see land again?”

“Shut your mouth, you snivelling sneak?” said Philip, exasperated beyond all patience. “Look at Miss Wyatt there and then heave your pitiful cowardly carcase overboard.” At which remark Fordham laughed aloud, his short, dry guffaw more sardonic than ever.

But the wretched chaplain was impervious even to this humiliation, so abject, so overmastering was his terror. He cowered in the bottom of the boat, his face hidden in his hands, moaning.

“Get up, will you!” cried Fordham, savagely. “You’re in Miss Wyatt’s way. And make yourself useful if you can. Take that hat of yours and bale like the devil.”

The peremptory tone had some effect, and the wretched man made an effort to obey. But a fresh sea dashed the hat from his hands and carried it away.

“This’ll never do,” muttered Fordham, in a tone only audible to Philip. “Why can’t those two damned women rouse themselves and bear a hand, instead of screeching there like stuck pigs?”

The General had been baling away manfully, but it was terribly uphill work, for every wave that struck the boat sent a pouring, hissing stream right into her.

But if her two girl friends were cowering and trembling under the terror of death, no weakness of the kind had impaired the calm resolution of Alma Wyatt. With head bent slightly forward and brows knitted, she never removed her steadfast glance from the work before her. Her eyes full of blinding spray, her wrists stiff and aching with the terrible strain upon them, she watched the advance of each crushing billow, appalling, unnerving in its towering height, and the boat’s head was held true, though her whole frame would tremble with the fearful exertion involved. Philip, tugging manfully at his oars, noted all this. Even though they should go down he did not care greatly, in the excitement and ecstasy of the moment. They would die together, at any rate.

The flying wrack was so thick that they could not see fifty yards around on either side. Already it seemed darkening as with the closing in of twilight. To lie tossing about on the angry surging expanse all night would be a serious matter. Still, Fordham felt sure that the waves had somewhat abated in fierceness. But the muttered remark of Jules Berthod behind him shattered this hope just as he was on the point of expressing it.

“Nom de Dieu! Cochon de veni! Voilà que ça va nous accrocher de nouveau. Cette fois on va chavirer. Oui, cette fois on coulera—nom de nom!”

Again that terrible vibrating hum was in the air. A fresh gust was upon them. The boat half full of water, all hands nearly played out after their abnormal exertions—how could they live out a fresh tornado?

“All up, Phil. Stand clear for a swim directly,” he said, in an undertone.

Philip could hardly repress a start. Well he knew the other would not so have spoken without good reason. Besides, the hideous symptoms of renewed tempest were now manifest even to his ear. He looked hard at Alma, and his plans were laid. The instant the boat went over he would seize her and drag her clear of the struggling crowd. If possible he would secure an oar, which would help to keep them up. He was a strong swimmer and felt that they might stand a chance. At the same time he realised that it would be a very poor one.

On it came, the howling of the hurricane, the livid line of boiling seas. But this time not in that mountainous wall, for the windows of heaven were opened and a mighty rain descended with such violence as to beat down the heads of the waves, which, flattened beneath the terrific force of the downpour, had lost much of their power for peril. For a quarter of an hour this continued, then a red straggling glow stole athwart the livid scud.

“Bon!” muttered Jules. “Cette fois on ne coulera pas. Mais non!”

The red glow brightened. Suddenly as the parting of curtains, the dark wrack opened out, revealing a patch of blue sky. Then a golden sun-ray shot through, and lo! the whole ridge of the purple Jura, lying beyond the great heaving, tumbling mass of blue water dotted with myriads of white foamy crests.

“Hurrah!” roared Philip. “We’ve weathered it this time. Fordham, old chap, isn’t that our haven?” as a grey town about three miles distant stood disclosed by the retreating scud.

“Yes, that’s Vevey all right,” was the answer. “Give way. We shall be there in half an hour or so. I needn’t tell you how to steer now, Miss Wyatt. Hold up for a little while longer, Mr Scott. This company does not carry a steward.” For the unfortunate chaplain, relieved of his fears as to mortal extinction, began to show symptoms of falling a prey to the agonies of sea sickness.

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.

“No, I shall certainly not take the trouble to move,” replied the offended matron. “Smoking-carriage or not, those two men are most unmannerly. Suppose, Augustus, you go over to them and ask them to put out their cigars? Remind them that it is not usual in England to smoke in the presence of ladies.”

But the Rev. Augustus was not quite such a fool as that.

“Not a bit of use, my dear,” he said wearily. “They’d certainly retort that we are not in England—probably request us to step into the non-smoking compartment.”

Fordham, who at the first remonstrance had rapidly signalled his friend not to talk and thus betray their nationality, was leaning back enjoying the situation thoroughly.

“Que diable allait elle faire dans cette galère?” he murmured, rightly judging the other travellers’ command of modern languages to be of the limited order. Phil for his part was obliged to put his head out of the window in order to laugh undetected. Meanwhile the aggrieved British matron in her corner continued to fume and sniff and inveigh against the abominable manners of those foreigners, and otherwise behave after the manner of her kind when, by virtue of honouring it with their presence, they have taken some continental country under their august wing. Then the crawl of the train settled down to an imperceptible creep as it drew nearer and nearer to the old-world and picturesque capital of the Valais.

There was whispering between the pair. Then, in obedience to a conjugal mandate, the mild parson diffidently approached our two friends.

“Pardong, mossoor. Ais-ker-say See-ong?”

The last word came out with a jerk of relief.

“Sion? I believe it is,” replied Fordham, blandly. “We shall have a quarter of an hour to wait, if not longer.”

If ever a man looked a thorough fool, it was the first speaker. The faultless and polished English of the reply! Here had they—his wife rather—been abusing these two men in their own tongue and in her usually loud key for upwards of half an hour. He turned red and began to stammer.

But the poor man’s confusion was by no means shared by his spouse. That imposing matron came bustling across the carriage as if nothing had happened.

“Perhaps you can tell us,” she said, “which is the best way of getting to Evolena? There is a diligence, is there not?”

Philip, who had all a young man’s aversion for a fussy and domineering matron, would have returned a very short and evasive reply. The woman had been abusing them like pickpockets all the way, and now had the cheek to come and ask for information. But to Fordham her sublime impudence was diverting in the extreme.

“There is a diligence,” he answered, “and I should say you’ll still be in time for it. But I should strongly recommend you to charter a private conveyance. Coach passengers are apt to beguile the tedium of the road with tobacco.”

This was said so equably and with such an utter absence of resentment that the lady with all her assertiveness was dumbfoundered. Then, glaring at the speaker, she flounced away without a word, though, amid the bustle and flurry attendant upon the collecting of wraps and bundles, the offenders could catch such jerked-out phrases as “Abominable rudeness?”

“Most insulting fellow!” and so forth.

“Great Scott! What do you think of that for a zoological specimen, Phil?” said Fordham, as the train steamed slowly away from the platform where their late fellow-passengers still stood bustling around a pile of boxes and bundles. “The harridan deliberately and of her own free will gets into a tobacco cart—out of sheer cussedness, in fact, for there stands the non-smoker stark empty—and then has the unparalleled face to try and boss us out of it. And there are idiots with whom she would have succeeded too.”

“Well, you know, it’s beastly awkward when a woman keeps on swearing she can’t stand smoke, even though you know she has no business there. What the deuce are you to do?”

“Politely ask her to step into the next compartment, whose door stands yearningly open to receive her. Even the parson had wit enough to see that.”

“Yes, that’s so. But, I say, what an infernally slow train this is?”

“This little incident,” went on Fordham, “which has served to break the monotony of our journey, reminds me of a somewhat similar joke which occurred last year on my way back to England. We fetched Pontarlier pretty late at night, and of course had to turn out and undergo the Customs ordeal. Well, I was sharp about the business, and got back into my carriage and old corner first. It was an ordinary compartment—five a side—not like this. Almost immediately after in comes a large and assertive female with an eighteen-year-old son, a weedy, unlicked cub as ever you saw in your life, and both calmly took the other end seats. Now I knew that one of these seats belonged to a Frenchman who was going through, so sat snug in my corner waiting to enjoy the fun. It came in the shape of the Frenchman. Would madame be so kind, but—the seat was his? No, madame would not be so kind—not if she knew it. Possibly if madame had been young and pretty the outraged Gaul might have subsided more gracefully, for subside he had to—but her aggressiveness about equalled her unattractiveness, which is saying much. So a wordy war ensued, in the course of which the door was banged and the deposed traveller shot with more vehemence than grace half-way across the compartment, and the train started. He was mad, I can tell you. Instead of his snug corner for the night, there the poor devil was, propped up on end, lurching over every time he began to nod.

“Well, we’d finished our feed—we’d got a chicken and some first-rate Burgundy on board—and were looking forward to a comfortable smoke. In fact, we’d each got a cigar in our teeth, and the chap who was with me—whom we’ll call Smith—was in the act of lighting up, when—

“‘I object to smoke. This isn’t a smoking-carriage, and I won’t have it.’

“We looked at the aggressive female, then at each other. Her right was unassailable. It was not a tobacco cart, but on French lines they are not generally too particular. Still, in the face of that protest we were floored.

“Smith was awfully mad. He cursed like a trooper under his breath—swore he’d be even with the harridan yet—and I believed him.

“Some twenty minutes went by in this way, Smith licking his unlit cigar and cursing roundly to himself. Presently she beckoned him over. He had half a mind not to go; however, he went.

“‘I don’t mind your smoking,’ says she—‘out of the window.’

“‘Oh, thanks,’ he says. ‘It’s rather too cold to stand outside on the footboard. Besides, it’s risky.’

“‘Well, I mean I don’t mind if you have part of the window open. But I can’t stand the place full of smoke and no outlet. And’—she hurries up to add—‘I hope you won’t mind if I draw the curtain over the lamp so that my boy can go to sleep.’

“Smith was on the point of answering that he preferred not to smoke, but intended to read the night through, and could on no account consent to the lamp being veiled, when it occurred to him that it was of no use cutting off his nose to spite his face. He was just dying for a smoke. So the bargain was struck, and we were soon puffing away like traction engines.

“Now the Frenchman who had been turned out of his seat was no fool of a Gaul. Whether suggested by the settling of our little difference or originating with himself, the idea seemed to strike him that he too might just as well obtain terms from the enemy to his own advantage. The unlicked cub aforesaid was slumbering peacefully in his corner, his long legs straight across the compartment, for we were three on that side, and there was no room to put them on the seat. The first station we stop at, up gets the Frenchman, flings open the door, letting in a sort of young hurricane, and of course stumbling over the sleeper’s legs. Aggressive female looks daggers. But when this had happened several times—for the stoppages were pretty frequent, and even though but for a minute the Frenchman took good care to tumble out—she began to expostulate.

“‘It was cruel to disturb her poor boy’s slumbers continually like that. Surely there was no necessity to get out at every station.’

“That Frenchman’s grin was something to see. He was désolé; but enfin! What would madame? He had been turned out of his corner seat, and could not sleep sitting bolt upright. It was absolutely necessary for him to get a mouthful of fresh air and stretch his legs at every opportunity. But the remedy was in madame’s hands. Let monsieur change places with him. Monsieur was young, whereas he was—well, not so young as he used to be. Otherwise he was sorry to say it, but his restlessness would compel him to take exercise at every station they stopped at.

“Heavens! that old termagant looked sick. But she was thoroughly bested. If she refused the enemy would be as good as his word, and her whelp might make up his mind to stay awake all night. So she caved in, sulkily enough, and with much bland bowing and smiling the Frenchman got back his corner seat, or one as good, and the cub snored on his dam’s shoulder. Thus we all regained our rights again, and everybody was happy.”

“Devilish good yarn, Fordham,” said Phil. “But you be hanged with your Smith, old man. Why, that was you—you all over.”

“Was it? I said it was Smith. But the point is immaterial, especially at this time of day. And now, Phil, own up, as you contemplate this howling, hungry crowd of the alpenstock contingent, that you bless my foresight which coerced you into posting on every stick and stone you possess, bar your trusty knapsack. If you don’t now, you will when we get to Visp and tranquilly make our way through a frantic mob all shouting for its luggage at once. Here we are at Sierre. Sure to be a wait. I wonder if there’s a buffet. Hallo! What now?”

For his companion, whose head was half through the window, suddenly withdrew it with a wild ejaculation, then rushed from the carriage like a lunatic, vouchsafing no word of explanation as to the phenomenon—or apology for having stamped Fordham’s pet corn as flat as though a steam roller had passed over it. The latter, scowling, looked cautiously forth, and then the disturbing element became apparent. There, on the platform, in a state of more than all his former exuberance, stood Philip, talking—with all his eyes—to Alma Wyatt, and with all his might to her uncle and aunt, who had just stepped out of the train to join her. And at the sight Fordham dropped back into his seat with a saturnine guffaw.

But the next words uttered by his volatile friend caused him to sit up and attend.

“This is a most unexpected pleasure, General,” Philip was saying. “Why I thought you were a fixture at the Grindelwald for the rest of your time.”

“Couldn’t stand it. Far too much bustle and noise. No. Some one told us of a place called Zinal, and we are going there now.”

“What an extraordinary coincidence!” cried Phil, delightedly. “The fact is we are bound for that very place.”

“The devil we are!” growled Fordham to himself at this astounding piece of intelligence. “I have hitherto been under the impression, friend Phil, that we were bound for Visp—en route for Zermatt.”

“But—where’s Mr Fordham? Is he with you?” went on Mrs Wyatt.

“Rather. He’s—er—just kicking together our traps. I’ll go and see after him. Fordham, old chap, come along,” he cried, bursting into the carriage again.

“Eh?” was the provokingly cool reply.

“Don’t you see?” went on Phil, hurriedly. “Now be a good old chap, and tumble to my scheme. Let’s go to Zinal instead.”

“I don’t care. How about our traps though? They’re posted to t’other place.”

“Hang that. We can send for ’em. And er—I say, Fordham, don’t let on we weren’t going there all along. I sort of gave them to understand we were. You know?”

“I do. I overheard you imperil your immortal soul just now, Philip Orlebar. And you want me to abet you in the utter loss thereof? It is a scandalous proposal, but—Here, hurry up if you’re going to get out. The train is beginning to move on again.”

“Delighted to meet you again, Fordham,” said the old General, shaking the latter heartily by the hand. “What are your plans? They tell us we ought to sleep here, in Sierre, to-night and go on early in the morning.”

“That’s what we are going to do.”

“A good idea. We might all go on together. They tell me there’s a capital hotel here. Which is it,” he went on, glancing at the caps of two rival commissionaires.

“The ‘Belle Vue.’ But it’s only a step. Hardly worth while getting into the omnibus.”

Chapter Fifteen.

In the Val d’Anniviers.

There are few more beautiful and romantic scenes than the lower end of the Val d’Anniviers as, having after a long and tedious ascent by very abrupt zig-zags reached Niouc, you leave the Rhone Valley with its broad, snake-like river and numberless watch-towers, its villages and whitewashed churches, and Sion with its cathedral and dominated by its castled rock in the distance—you leave all this behind and turn your face mountainwards.

Far below, glimpsed like a thread from the road, the churning waters of the Navigenze course through their rocky channel with a sullen roar, their hoarse raving, now loud, now deadened, as a bend of the steep mountain-side opens or shuts out the view beneath, and with it the sound. From the river the slopes shoot skyward in one grand sweep—abrupt, unbroken, well-nigh precipitous. Pine forests, their dark-green featheriness looking at that height like a different growth of grass upon the lighter hue of the pastures—huge rocks and boulders lying in heaped-up profusion even as when first hurled from the mountain-side above, seeming mere pebble heaps—châlets, too, in brown groups like toy chocolate houses or standing alone perched on some dizzy eyrie among their tiny patches of yellow cornland—all testify to the stupendous vastness of Nature’s scale. And at the head of the valley the forking cone of the Besso, and beyond it, rising from its amphitheatre of snow, the white crest of the Rothhorn soaring as it were to the very heavens in its far-away altitude. And the air! It is impossible to exaggerate its clear exhilaration. It is like drinking in the glow of sunshine even as golden wine—it is like bathing in the entrancing blue of the firmament above.

“Alma, you have treated me shockingly,” Philip was saying, while they two were seated by the roadside to rest and await the arrival of the others, who might be seen toiling up the zig-zags aforesaid, but yet a little way off. “Shockingly, do you hear. You never wrote me a line, as you promised, and but that by great good luck we happened to be in the same train I should never have known you were coming here at all.”

“That’s odd. Is the place we are going to of such enormous extent that we could both be in it without knowing of each other’s proximity?” she said innocently, but with a mischievous gleam lurking in her eyes.

“No—er—why?”

Alma laughed—long and merrily. “You are a very poor schemer, Phil. Your friend would have had his answer ready—but you have regularly—er—‘given yourself away’—isn’t that the expression? Confess now—and remember that it is only a full and unreserved confession that gains forgiveness. You were not going to Zinal at all—and you have hoodwinked my uncle shamefully?”

“What a magician you are!” was the somewhat vexed answer. And then he joined in her laugh.

“Am I? Well I thought at first that the coincidence was too striking to be a coincidence. Where were you going?”

“To Zermatt. But what a blessed piece of luck it was that I happened to put my head out of the window at that poky little station. But for that only think what we should have missed. Heavens! It’s enough to make a fellow drop over the cliff there to think of it.”

“Is it! But only think what an unqualified—er—misstatement you have committed yourself to. Doesn’t that weigh on your conscience like lead?”

“No,” replied the sinner, unabashed. “It’s a clear case of the end justifying the means. And then—all’s fair in love and war,” he added, with a gleeful laugh.

“You dear Phil. You are very frivolous, you know,” she answered, abandoning her inquisitorial tone for one that was very soft and winsome. “Well, as we are here—thanks to your disgraceful stratagem—I suppose we must make the best of it.”

“Darling!” was the rapturous response—“Oh, hang it!”

The latter interpolation was evoked by the sudden appearance of the others around a bend of the road, necessitating an equally sudden change in the speaker’s attitude and intentions. But the sting of the whole thing lay in the fact that during that alteration he had caught Fordham’s glance, and the jeering satire which he read therein inspired him with a wildly insane longing to knock that estimable misogynist over the cliff then and there.

“Well, young people. You’ve got the start of us and kept it,” said the General, as they came up. His wife was mounted on a mule, which quadruped was towed along by the bridle by a ragged and unshaven Valaisan.

“Alma dear, why didn’t you wait for us at that last place—Niouc, isn’t it, Mr Fordham?” said the old lady, reproachfully. “We had some coffee there.”

“Which was so abominably muddy we couldn’t drink it—ha—ha!” put in the General. “But it’s a long way on to the next place—isn’t it, Fordham?”

“Never mind, auntie. I don’t want anything, really,” replied Alma. “I never felt so fit in my life. Oh!” she broke off, in an ecstatic tone. “What a grand bit of scenery!”

“Rather too grand to be safe just here?” returned Mrs Wyatt, “I’m afraid. I shall get down and walk.”

The road—known at this point as “Les Pontis”—here formed a mere ledge as it wound round a lateral ravine—lying at right angles to the gorge—a mere shelf scooped along the face of the rock. On the inner side the cliff shot up to a great height overhead on the outer side—space. Looking out over the somewhat rickety rail the tops of the highest trees seemed a long way beneath. Twelve feet of roadway and the mule persisting in walking near the edge. No wonder the old lady preferred her feet to the saddle.

Mere pigmies they looked, wending their way along the soaring face of the huge cliffs. Now and then the road would dive into a gallery or short tunnel, lighted here and there by a rough loophole—by putting one’s head out of which a glance at the unbroken sweep of the cliff above and below conveyed some idea as to the magnitude of the undertaking.

“A marvellous piece of engineering,” pronounced the General, looking about him critically. “Bless my soul! this bit of road alone is worth coming any distance to see.”

Philip and Alma had managed to get on ahead again.

“Oh, look!” cried the latter, excitedly. “Look—look! There’s a bunch of edelweiss, I declare!”

He followed her glance. Some twelve feet overhead grew a few mud-coloured blossoms. The rock sloped here, and the plant had found root in a cranny filled up with dust.

“No; don’t try it! It’s too risky, you may hurt yourself,” went on Alma, in a disappointed tone. “We must give them up, I suppose.”

But this was not Philip’s idea. He went at the steep rock bank as though storming a breach. There was nothing to hold on to; but the impetus of his spring and the height of his stature combined carried him within reach of the edelweiss. Then he slid back amid a cloud of dust and shale, barking his shins excruciatingly, but grasping in his fist four of the mud-coloured blossoms.

“Are you hurt?” cried Alma, her eyes dilating. “You should not have tried it. I told you not to try it.”

“Hurt? Not a bit! Here are the edelweiss flowers though.” And in the delighted look which came into Alma’s eyes as she took them, he felt that he would have been amply rewarded for a dozen similar troubles. But just then a whimsical association of ideas brought back to his mind the absurd postscript to that letter which had so sorely perturbed him. “Be sure you send me a big bunch of ‘adleweis’ from the top of the Matterhorn”; and the recollection jarred horribly as he contrasted the writer of that execrable epistle, and the glorious refined beauty of this girl who stood here alone with him, so appropriately framed in this entrancing scene of Nature’s grandeur.

“That is delightful,” said Alma, gleefully, as she arranged the blossoms in her dress. “Now I have got some edelweiss at last. When we get to Zinal I shall be the envied of all beholders, except that every one there will have hats full of it, I suppose.”

“I don’t know about that Fordham says it’s getting mighty scarce everywhere. But it’s poor looking stuff. As far as I can make out, its beauty, like that of a show bulldog, lies in its ugliness.”

“Shall I ever forget this sweet walk!” she said, gazing around as though to photograph upon her mind every detail of the surroundings. “You think me of a gushing disposition. In a minute you will think me of a complaining and discontented one. But just contrast this with a commonplace, and wholly uninteresting cockneyfied suburb such as that wherein my delectable lot is cast, and then think of the difference.”

“Dearest, you know I don’t think you—er—discontented or anything of the sort,” he rejoined, fervently. “But—I thought Surbiton was rather a pretty place. The river—and all that—”

“A mere romping ground for ’Arry and ’Arriet to indulge their horseplay. Philip, I—hate the place. There!”

“Then, darling, why go back to it? or anyhow, only to get ready to leave it as soon as possible,” he answered quickly.

“Phil, you are breaking our compact, and I won’t answer that question. No. What I mean is that it is lamentable to think how soon I shall be back in that flat, stale, and unprofitable place. Why this will seem like a different state of existence, looked back upon then—indeed, it is hard to believe that the same world can comprise the two.”

The road had now left its rocky windings and here entered the cool shade of feathery pine woods, the latter in no wise unwelcome, for the sun was now high enough to make himself felt. It might be that neither of them were destined to forget that walk in the early morning through an enchanted land. The soaring symmetry of the mighty peaks; the great slopes and the jagged cliffs; the fragrance of the pine needles and moist, moss-covered rocks; the golden network of sunlight through the trees, and the groups of picturesque châlets perched here and there upon the spurs; the sweet and exhilarating air, and the hoarse thunder of the torrent far below in its rocky prison—sights and sounds of fairyland all. And to these two wandering side by side there was nothing lacking to complete the spell. It was such a day as might well remain stamped upon their memory—such a day as in the time to come they might often and often recall. But—would it be with joy, or would it be with pain?

Meanwhile, the first half of the journey was over, for the picturesque grouping of châlets clustering around a massive church which suddenly came into sight announced that they had reached Vissoye, the most considerable place in the valley. Here a long halt was to be made; and the old people indeed were glad of a rest, for it had grown more than warm. So after breakfast in the cheerful and well-ordered hotel, the General lit his pipe and strolled forth to find a shady corner of the garden where he could smoke and doze, while his wife, spying a convenient couch in the empty salon, was soon immersed in the shadowland attained through the medium of “forty winks.”

Left to themselves, Alma and Philip strolled out into the village, gazing interestedly upon the quaint architecture and devices which ornamented the great brown châlets. Then they wandered into the church—a massive parallelogram, with a green ash-tree springing from its belfry. Alma was delighted with the wealth of symbolism and rich colouring displayed alike upon wall and in window, roof and shrine; but Philip voted it crude and tawdry.

“There speaks the true John Bull abroad,” she whispered. “As it happens, the very crudeness of it constitutes its artistic merit, for it is thoroughly in keeping. And the heavy gilding of the vine device, creeping around the scarlet ground-colour of those pillars, is anything but tawdry. It is quaint, bizarre, if you will, but striking and thoroughly effective. I suppose you want nothing but that desolate grey stone and the frightful wall tablets which give to our English cathedrals the look of so many deserted railway stations.”

“Oh, I don’t care either way. That sort of thing isn’t in my line. But look, Alma, what are they putting up those trestles for? I suppose they are going to bury somebody.”

“Where? Oh, very likely,” as she perceived a little old man, who, aided by a boy, was beginning to clear a space in front of the choir steps, with a view to arranging a pile of trestles which they had brought in. “We may as well go outside now.”

They went out on to the terrace-like front of the graveyard, and sat down upon the low wall overhanging the deep green valley, which fell abruptly to the brawling Navigenze beneath. Gazing upon the blue arching heavens, and the emerald slopes sleeping in the golden sunshine, Alma heaved a deep sigh of happy, contented enjoyment.

“Ah, the contrasts of life!” she remarked. “At this moment I am trying to imagine that I am in the same world as that hateful suburb, with its prim villas and stucco gentility—its dull, flat, mediocre pretensions to ‘prettiness.’ Yes, indeed, life contains some marvellous contrasts.”

“Here comes one of them, for instance,” said Philip. “This must be the funeral they were getting ready for.”

A sound of chanting—full, deep-throated, and melodious—mingled with the subdued crunch of many feet upon the gravelled walk as the head of a procession appeared, wending round the corner of the massive building. First came a little group of surpliced priests and acolytes, preceded by a tall silver crucifix and two burning tapers; then the coffin, borne by four men. Following on behind came a score of mourners—men, women, and children, hard-featured villagers all, but showing something very real, very subdued, in the aspect of their grief.

“Requiem aeternam dona et, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat et.” The massive plain-song chant wailed melodiously forth, swelling upon the sunlit air in a wave of sound. The two seated there had been discussing the contrasts of life. Here was a greater contrast still—the contrast of Death.

“Exultabunt Domino ossa humiliata” arose the chant again, as the cortège defiled within the church. And through the open door the spectators could see the flash of the silver cross and the starry glitter of the carried lights moving up the centre above the heads of the mourners.

“So even in this paradise-like spot we are invaded by—death,” said Alma, in a subdued voice, as having waited a moment or two they rose to leave. “Still, even death is rendered as bright as the living know how,” she went on, with a glance around upon the flower-decked graves between which they were threading their way. “Confess now, you British Philistine, isn’t all that more impressive than the black horses and plumes and hearses of our inimitable England?”

“I daresay it might be if one understood it,” answered Philip, judiciously. “But I say, Alma, it isn’t cheerful whatever way you take it!”

Mrs Wyatt was already on her mule as they regained the hotel, and the General, leaning on his alpenstock, stood giving directions—with the aid of Fordham—to the men in charge of the pack mules bearing their luggage.

“Alma, child,” he said reprovingly, while Philip had dived indoors to get his knapsack, “you’re doing a very foolish thing, walking about all the time instead of resting. You’ll be tired to death before you get there.”

“No, no I won’t, uncle dear!” she answered, with a bright smile. “You forget this isn’t—Surbiton. Why I could walk for ever in this air. I feel as fresh now as when we left Sierre this morning.”

Certainly she gave no reason to imagine the contrary as they pursued their way in the glowing afternoon—on past little clusters of châlets, through pine woods and rocky landslips, crossing by shaky log bridges the rolling, milky torrent, which had roared at such a dizzy depth beneath their road earlier in the day. The snow peaks in front drew nearer and nearer, the bright glow of the setting sun spread in horizontal rays over the now broadening out valley, and there on the outskirts of a straggling village, surrounded by green meadows wherein the peasants were busy tossing their hay crops, stood the hotel—a large oblong house, partly of brick, partly of wood, burnt brown by exposure to the sun, like the residue of the châlets around.

As they arrived the first bell was ringing for table d’hôte dinner, and people were dropping in by twos and threes, or in parties, returning from expeditions to adjacent glaciers or elsewhere. Some were armed with ice-axes, and one or two with ropes and guides. Nearly all had red noses and peeled countenances, and this held good of both sexes, more especially of that which is ordinarily termed the fair. But this—at first startling—phenomenon Fordham explained to be neither the result of the cup that cheers and does inebriate nor of any organic disorder of the cuticle, but merely the action of the sun’s rays reflected from the surface of the snow or ice with the effect of a burning glass. Alma made a little grimace.

“I think I shall confine my wanderings to where there’s no snow or ice—and I do so want to go on a glacier—rather than become an object like that,” lowering her voice as a tall, angular being of uncertain age—with a fearfully peeled and roasted countenance, and with her skirts tucked up to show an amount of leg which should have brought her under the ban of the Lord Chamberlain—strode by with a mien and assurance as though she held first mortgage on the whole of the Alps, as Fordham graphically put it.

“You can patrol the glaciers for a week if you only cover your face with a veil,” answered the latter. “You may burn a little, but nothing near the horrible extent you would otherwise.”

“The house doesn’t seem crowded,” remarked Philip, when table d’hôte was half through. They had secured the end of the long table, and there was a hiatus of several empty chairs between them and their next neighbours. This and the stupendous clatter of knives and forks and tongues, enabled them to talk with no more restraint than a slight lowering of the voice.

“By Jove!” he went on, withdrawing his glance from an attentive scrutiny of the table, “it’s a mighty seedy crowd, anyhow. All British, too. Look at those half-dozen fellows sitting together there. Did any one ever see such an unshaven, collarless squad of bounders?”

The objects of the speaker’s somewhat outspoken scorn assuredly did their best to justify it. They answered exactly to his description as to their appearance. Moreover when they spoke it was in the dialect of Edgware Road rather than that of Pall Mall. Two or three gaudily-dressed females of like stamp seemed to belong to them. Beyond were other people in couples or in parties.

“Don’t you think you are rather hard on them, Philip?” objected Mrs Wyatt—for by virtue of the General’s former acquaintance with his father, and their now fast-growing intimacy with himself, the old people had taken to calling him by his Christian name.

Alma broke into a little laugh.

“Auntie, you remind us of ‘the Infliction’ at Les Avants. She always used to begin ‘Don’t you think.’”

“Mrs Wyatt used to sit opposite her,” said Phil, slily.

“You’re a naughty boy, Phil,” laughed the old lady, “and you’ve no business to poke fun at your grandmother. But I think you are too hard on those poor fellows. They may not have any luggage with them.”

“No more have we. Fordham and I will have to live in our knapsacks for the next week. And even if we had no clothes we’d manage by hook or by crook to beg, borrow, or steal a razor.”

“I don’t think much of the population, certainly,” put in the General. “There were a much better stamp of people at Les Avants.”

“Always are,” said Fordham. “It’s a place where people go to stay, and the same people go there again and again. Moreover, it isn’t enough of a show-place to attract the mere tourist. ’Arry itinerant patronises the higher resorts, where he can walk across a glacier and brag about it ever after. But this is an exceptionally weedy crowd, as Phil says,” he added, sticking up his eyeglass and taking stock of the same.

“Not all. I don’t think quite all,” objected Mrs Wyatt. “Those two ladies sitting next to the clergyman down there look rather nice. Don’t you think so, Mr Fordham?”

“Might discharge both barrels of a shot-gun down the table and not damage a social equal,” was the uncompromising reply.

But little it mattered to them in a general way what sort of a lot their fellow-countrymen there sojourning might or might not be. It was delightful to exchange the low stuffy salle-à-manger, with its inevitable reek of fleshpots, its clatter of knives and forks and its strife of tongues, for the sweet hay-scented evening air, with the afterglow reddening and fading on the double-horned Besso and the snowfields beyond, the stars twinkling forth one by one against the loom of the great mountain wall which seemed literally to overhang the valley. There was a lulling, soothing sense in the sequestered propinquity of the great mountains, in the dull roar of the ever-speaking torrent. Old General Wyatt, seated on a bench smoking his evening pipe, expressed unbounded satisfaction.

“It’s like a paradise after that abominably rackety Grindelwald,” he pronounced.

“Yes, dear,” assented his wife. “But what I want to know is,” she added in a low tone, “how is that going to end?”

“How is what?—Oh—ah—yes—um!” as he followed her glance.

The latter had lighted upon their niece and her now inseparable escort. They had returned from an evening stroll, and were standing looking about them as though loth to go in. Alma had thrown on a cloak, for there was a touch of sharpness in the air, and the soft fur seemed to cling caressingly round the lower part of her face, framing and throwing into greater prominence the luminous eyes and sweet, refined beauty. She was discoursing animatedly, but the old people were too far off for the burden of her ideas to reach them.

“It is going to end in the child completely knocking herself up,” said the General with a disapproving shake of the head. “She must have walked twenty miles to-day if she has walked one. Now mind, she must stay at home to-morrow and rest thoroughly.”

“That isn’t what I mean, and you know it isn’t,” urged the old lady in a vexed tone.

“Ha-ha! I know it isn’t,” he answered with a growl that was more than half a chuckle.

“Well, and what do you think of it?”

“Um! ah! I don’t know what to think. If the young people like each other, I don’t see why they shouldn’t see plenty of each other—in a place like this. If they decide they don’t—well, there’s no harm done.”

“But I’ve always heard you say that Sir Francis Orlebar was a poor man—a poor man with a second wife,” said Mrs Wyatt, tentatively.

“So is Alma. I don’t mean with a second wife—ha-ha! But she hasn’t a sixpence, and it would be a blessed day for her that on which she got away from that mother of hers for good and all.”

“But isn’t that all the more reason she should marry somebody who is well off?”

“Well, yes, I suppose it is. But then, you can’t have everything. It’s seldom enough you get cash and every other desirable endowment thrown in. Now I like Phil Orlebar. I don’t know when I’ve seen a young fellow I’ve liked more. It’s a thousand pities, though, that his father didn’t put him into some profession or give him something to do; but it isn’t too late now, and Alma might do worse. Here—hang it all!” he broke off with a growl.—“What a couple of mischief-making old match-makers we are becoming. It’s getting cold. Time to go in.”

Chapter Sixteen.

“All in the Blue Unclouded Weather.”

“When are we going to begin some real climbing—eh, Phil?”

“Oh, I don’t know. By the way, Fordham, I’m not sure that real high climbing isn’t a mistake. It seems rather a thin thing to put oneself to any amount of unmitigated fag, and go sleeping out under rocks or in huts and in all sorts of beastly places chock full of fleas, and turn out at ungodly hours in the morning—in the middle of the night, rather—merely for the sake of shinning up to the top of some confounded rock that scores of other fellows have shinned up already, and thousands more will. No; I believe there’s far more sense in this sort of thing, and I’m certain it’s far more fun.”

“This sort of thing” being a long day’s expedition of the nature of a picnic, a walk for the most part over the glacier to some point of interest or scenic advantage, which in the present instance was a trip to the Mountet Cabin, a structure erected by the Alpine Club high up among the rocks at the base of the Besso, for the convenience of parties ascending the Rothhorn or traversing one of the several difficult, and more or less dangerous, glacier passes leading into the next valley. The hour was early—before sunrise in fact—and our two friends were threading their way rapidly between the rows of brown châlets which constitute the picturesque hamlet of Zinal, intent on overtaking the rest of their party, who had “just strolled quietly on,” a process which in nineteen cases out of twenty may be taken to mean that if the overtaker comes up with the advance guard within a couple of hours, he or she has progressed at a rate by no means pleasant or advisable as the start for a long day’s walk or climb. This instance, however, was the twentieth, for whereas those in advance consisted of General Wyatt and his niece, two learned young ladies with short-cropped hair and spectacles, and a young clergyman, also in spectacles, the athletic pair had no difficulty in overhauling them in a very short time, and that with no inordinate effort.

“Well, Mr Fordham. It isn’t always we poor women who keep everybody waiting,” said Alma, mischievously, as they came up, with a glance at Phil, to whose reluctance to leave his snug couch until the very last moment was due the fact that the party had not started together.

“That’s what comes of doing a good action—one always gets abused for it,” replied Fordham. “If I hadn’t acted as whipper-in you’d never have seen this lazy dog until you were half-way home again.”

“Oh, the poor men! They never can bring themselves to leave their beds. And yet they call themselves the stronger sex,” put in one of the shock-headed young women, who, by virtue of being students at one of the seats of learning recently founded for their sex, looked down as from a lofty pedestal and with sublime pity upon the world at large. “The strong-minded sex, I should have said.”

“Not much use, are they, Miss Severn?” said the parson in playful banter.

“Except when the midnight mouse in the wainscotting suggests burglars, or the booming of the wind in the chimney, bogies,” rejoined Fordham, tranquilly. “In a thunderstorm, too, their presence is apt to be highly reassuring.”

To this the shock-headed one deigned no rejoinder. She and her sister had formed some slight acquaintance with the Wyatts, and had joined them in expeditions similar to the present one; in fact, were rather more glad to do so than the others were that they should. Like too many of their kind they imagined that disagreeable, not to say rude, remarks at the expense of the opposite sex demonstrated the superiority of their own in general, and such representatives of it as devoted their minds to conic sections in particular.

Nothing, as a rule, is more depressing to the poor creatures of an effete civilisation than an early morning start. Than the hour of summer sunrise in the Alps, however, nothing is more exhilarating. The cool, fresh, bracing air, the statuesque grandeur of the great mountains, the dash and sparkle of the swirling stream, the mingling aromatic fragrances distilling from opening wild flowers and resinous pines—it is a glimpse of fairyland, a very tonic to heart and brain, a reservoir of nerve power to limb and system.

And now beyond the huge projecting shoulder of the Alpe d’Arpitetta the rays of the newly-risen sun were flooding the snowfields with a golden radiancy. No more shade directly. But the air was crisp, and the sky of cloudless beauty. To two of those present it was but the beginning of a glowing halcyon day—one among many. Nearly a fortnight had gone by since their arrival, a fortnight spent in similar fashion—one day succeeding another, spent from dawn to dark amid the sublimest scenes of Nature on her most inspiring scale.

Philip Orlebar, the mercurial, the careless, had undergone a marked change. And it was a change which affected him for the better, was that brought about by this crisis of his life, in that it seemed to impart a not wholly unneeded ballast to his otherwise line character, a dignity to his demeanour which became him well, the more so that there was the stamp of a great and settled happiness upon his face, and in the straight, sunny glance of the clear eyes, that was goodly to look upon. The Fire of the Live Coal burnt bright and clear.

“Alma, darling, why not let me say something to your uncle now instead of waiting until you go home again?” he said one day, when they were scrambling about among the rocks in search of the coveted edelweiss. “Then I shall feel that you do really belong to me.”

She looked at him for a moment—looked at him standing over her in his straight youthful strength and patrician beauty, and hesitated. She was growing very fond of him, and, more important still, very proud of him, which with a woman of Alma’s stamp means that her surrender is already a thing to be ranked among certainties. But the circumstances of her home life had been such as to impart to her character a vein of wisdom, of caution, which was considerably beyond her years.

“No, Phil—not yet,” she answered, with a little shake of her head; but beneath all the decision of her tone there lay a hidden caress. “This is a summer idyll—a mere holiday. Wait until it is over and life—real life—begins again. No, stop—I won’t have that—here,” she broke off suddenly, springing away from him with a laugh and a blush. “Remember how many people at the hotel have telescopes, not to mention the big one planted out in front of the door. We may constitute an object of special attention at the present moment, for all we know.”

Return we to our party now bound for the Mountet hut, viâ the Durand glacier. This was not the first time they had made this expedition, consequently they were able to dispense with a guide—and Fordham, at any rate, had had sufficient previous Alpine experience. The great silent ice river locked within the vast depths of its rock-bound bed rippled in a succession of frozen billows between its lofty mountain walls, the human figures traversing it looking the merest pigmies among the awful vastness of the Alpine solitude. Myriad threads of clear water gurgled with musical murmur through the blue smooth funnels they had worn for themselves in the surface of the ice, which glistened and sparkled in the sunlight in a sea of diamond-like facets. “Tables,” viz, stones of all shapes and sizes heaved up, by the action of the glacier, upon smooth round ice-pedestals—sometimes perfectly wonderful in their resemblance to the real article of furniture—abounded, and here and there the dull hollow roar of some heavier stream plunging between the vertical blue sides of a straight chimney-like shaft, which it had worn to an incredible depth by its action.

“What an extremely good-looking fellow that young Orlebar is,” remarked the clergyman, who had been observing the pair some little distance in front.

“I can’t say that handsome men are at all to my taste,” replied the elder of the two learned sisters, loyal to a recollection of evenings spent at meetings of various scientific societies in the company of an undersized, round-shouldered professor with a huge head of unkempt hair and a very dandruffy coat-collar. “There is never anything in them. They are invariably empty-headed to a degree.”

“And desperately conceited,” put in the younger, acidly.

“And this young Orlebar is the most empty-headed and conceited of them all,” rejoined the elder. “I consider him a perfectly odious young man.”

“Really? Now, do you know—I—er—I thought him rather a nice fellow,” said the clergyman timidly. “Very pleasant and taking manners, and a perfect gentleman.”

“There is no accounting for tastes, of course,” was the severely frigid reply; and the poor parson’s heart sank within him as he wondered whether this sort of thing was to be his lot all day, and whether it would be practicable to cut adrift from his present convoy and effect a juncture with Fordham and the General, now some few score yards in the rear.

“Alma dear, who on earth cut those awful Severns into our crowd to-day?” Philip was saying, moved doubtless by that extraordinary coincidence which inspires two people simultaneously with the same idea, though that idea be entirely irrelevant to any subject then under consideration or discussion.

Alma laughed.

“I think they more than three parts cut themselves in, and having done so, cut in Mr Massiter,” she answered.

“Oh, I don’t mind the parson! He’s an inoffensive chap, you know, and a good sort, I think. But those two fearful girls, with their ‘terms’ and their ‘triposes’ and the ‘dear Principal,’ and their shock heads, and ‘quite too-too’ get-up! Faugh! They never open their mouths without saying something tart and disagreeable. I suppose they think it a sign of erudition.”

“We mustn’t abuse other people, especially on a day like this—it’s a bad habit to get into. I agree with you though—they might make themselves a little more pleasant. However, they have their use. Didn’t it ever occur to you, you dear, foolish boy, that I may not always care to be the only girl in the party? Though it amounts almost to the same thing, for you never will let any one else come near me.”

“No, I won’t,” he assented, cheerfully. “I want you all to myself. It may not last much longer. And—what a time we have had. I would willingly go back and go through it all again.”

“But we are not going away to-morrow, or the next day either,” she replied, with a sunny laugh. “We shall have many more such days as this.”

“It is perfect!” he continued, now in a low tone. “Almost too perfect to last. When shall we be ever again together like this?”

The remark was made without a shadow of arrière pensée, yet it sounded almost prophetic. Why should it, however? No cloud was in their sky any more than in the firmament of deep blue spreading overhead. No shadow was across their path any more than upon the dazzling snowfields lying aloft in pure and unbroken stretches. The morrow would be but a reproduction of to-day—a heaven of youth and its warm pulsations, of sunny freedom from care, and—of love.

And now Fordham’s voice was heard behind.

“Hallo, Phil?” it shouted, characteristically addressing the stronger and, in its owner’s opinion, more important and only responsible member of the pair in advance. “Better hold on till we come up. We are getting among the séracs.”

They were. Great masses of ice, by the side of which a five-storey house would look puny, were heaving up to the sky. The glacier here made a steep and abrupt drop, falling abroad into wide, lateral chasms—not the black and grim crevasses of bottomless depth into which an army might disappear and leave no trace, such as the smooth, treacherous surface of the upper névés are seamed with, but awkward rifts for all that, deep enough to break a limb or even a neck. A labyrinthian course along the sharp ice-ridges overhanging these became necessary, and although Philip was armed with the requisite ice-axe and by this time knew how to wield it, Fordham satirically reflected that the mind of a man in the parlous state of his friend was not hung upon a sufficiently even balance to ensure the necessary equilibrium from a material and physical point of view. So he chose to rally his party.

A little ordinary caution was necessary, that was all. A little step-cutting now and then, a helping hand for the benefit of the ladies, and they threaded their way in perfect safety among the yawning rifts, the great blue séracs towering up overhead, piled in titanic confusion—here in huge blocks, there standing apart in tall needle-like shafts. One of these suddenly collapsed close to them, falling with an appalling roar, filling the air with a shower of glittering fragments, causing the hard surface to vibrate beneath them with the grinding crash of hundreds of tons of solid ice.

“By Jove! What a magnificent sight?” cried the old General. “I wouldn’t have missed that for the world.”

“‘He casteth forth His ice like morsels,’” quoted the parson to himself, but not in so low a tone as not to be heard by Alma, becoming aware of which he was conscious of a nervous and guilty start, as of one who had allowed himself to be found preaching out of church. But he had in her no supercilious or scoffing critic.

“I think the vastness of this ice-world is the most wonderful thing in Nature, Mr Massiter,” she said.

“It is indeed, Miss Wyatt,” was the pleased reply.

And then, catching eagerly at this chance of relief from the somewhat depressing spell of the two learned ones, the good man attached himself to her side and engaged her in conversation, not altogether to the satisfaction of Philip, who, relinquishing the entrancing but somewhat boyish amusement of heaving boulders down the smooth, slippery slope of the ice, sprang forward to help her up the narrow, treacherous path of the loose moraine—for they had left the ice now for a short time. Virtue was its own reward, however—it and a stone—which, dislodged by Alma’s foot, came bounding down with a smart whack against the left ankle of the too eager cavalier, evoking from the latter a subdued if involuntary howl, instead of the mental “cuss-word” which we regret to say might have greeted the occurrence had it owned any other author.

Steep and toilsome as this little bit of the way was, the two strong-minded ones still found breath enough to discourse to the General—or, rather, through him at Fordham, upon the never-failing topic, the unqualified inferiority of the other sex, causing that genial veteran to vote them bores of the most virulent kind, and mentally to resolve to dispense with their company at whatever cost on all future expeditions which he might undertake.

“Why, you couldn’t get on for a day without us!” said Fordham, bluntly, coming to the rescue. “How would you have got along those séracs just now, for instance, if left to yourselves?”

“Life does not wholly consist in crossing glaciers, Mr Fordham,” was the majestic reply.

“It runs on a very good parallel with it though. And the fact remains, as I said before. You couldn’t be happy for a day without us.”

“Indeed?” said the elder and more acid of the two, with splendid contempt. “Indeed? Don’t you flatter yourself. We could be happy—perfectly happy—all our lives without you.”

“That’s fortunate, for I haven’t asked you to be happy all your lives with me,” answered Fordham, blandly.

The green eyes of the learned pair glared—both had green eyes—like those of cats in the dark. There was a suspicious shake in the shapely shoulders of Alma Wyatt, who, with the parson, was leading the way, and the General burst into such a frantic fit of coughing that he seemed in imminent peril of suffocation; while a series of extraordinary sounds, profuse in volume if subdued in tone, emanating from Philip’s broad chest, would have led a sudden arrival upon the scene to imagine that volatile youth to be afflicted with some hitherto undiscovered ailment, lying midway between whooping-cough and the strangles.

And now once more, the fall of the glacier surmounted, the great ice-field lay before them in smooth and even expanse. And what a scene of wild and stately grandeur was that vast amphitheatre now opening out. Not a tree, not a shrub in sight; nothing but rocks and ice—a great frozen plain, seamed and crevassed in innumerable cracks, shut in by towering mountains and grim rock-walls, the summits of which were crowned with layers of snow—the perilous “cornice” of the Alpine climber—curling over above the dizzy height—of dazzling whiteness against the deep blue of the heavens. In crescent formation they stood, those stately mountains encircling the glaciers, the snow-flecked hump of the Grand Cornier and the huge and redoubted Dent Blanche, whose ruddy ironstone precipices and grim ice-crowned arêtes glowed in the full midday sunlight with sheeny prismatic gleam; the towering Gabelhorn, and the knife-like point of the Rothhorn soaring away as if to meet the blue firmament itself. Gigantic ice-slopes, swept smooth by the driving gales, shone pearly and silver; and huge overhanging masses of blue ice, where the end of a high glacier had broken off, stood forth a wondrously beautiful contrast in vivid green. But this scene of marvellous grandeur and desolation was not given over to silence, for ever and anon the fall of a mighty sérac would boom forth with a thunderous roar. The ghostly rattle and echo of falling stones high up among those grim precipices was never entirely still, while the hoarse growling of streams cleaving their way far below in the heart of the glacier was as the voices of prisoned giants striving in agonised throes.

Chapter Seventeen.

The Writing on the Wall.

Not less imposing was the wild magnificence of this panorama as viewed from the Mountet cabin, which, from its eyrie-like position high up among the rocks, commanded the whole vast ice-amphitheatre. The last climb, after leaving the glacier, had been a steep and trying one, and to most of the party, at any rate, the first consideration on reaching their goal was a twofold one—rest and lunch.

“I suppose you don’t get much sleep in these places, eh, Fordham?” said the General, looking round upon the plank shelves which, plentifully covered with straw, constituted the sleeping places. From the beams above hung rugs of a heavy, coarse texture.

“It depends on a good many things—the absence of fleas, or of a crowd. When there are three or four parties, with their guides, going the same way or coinciding here for the night, a box like this is apt to get crowded and the air thick.”

“It is wonderfully ingenious,” said Alma, taking in the solidity of the building and its contrivances for safety and comfort—every stick of which had to be dragged up there by mules and porters. “Where did they sleep before these cabins were built?”

“Under the rocks. Picked out a sheltered corner and rolled in. A coldish sort of a bedroom too,” answered Fordham.

“And all for the sake of getting to the top of a peak that a hundred other fools have been up already, and a thousand more will go up afterwards,” struck in the flippant Phil. “Throw one of those hard-boiled eggs at me, Fordham. Thanks.”

“Is not that kind of reasoning—er—somewhat fatal to all enterprise?” said the parson.

“There is little enterprise, as such, in all this Alp climbing,” interrupted one of the learned young women before anybody could reply. “Not one in a hundred of all the men who spend summer after summer mountaineering ever thinks of benefiting his species by his experiences. No branch of science is the gainer by it, for the poor creature is lamentably ignorant of science in any branch—almost that such a thing exists, in fact. To him a mountain is—a mountain, and nothing more—”

“But—what in the world else should it be, Miss Severn?” said Philip.

”—Just so many thousand feet to go up,” continued the oracle, severely ignoring the flippant interruptor.

“Or so many thousand feet to come down—and then return home in a sack,” said the latter, wickedly.

“Just one more peak to add to the number he can already boast of having scaled. Nobody the gainer by it. Grand opportunities thrown away. The only end effected, the aggravation of one man’s already inflated conceit.”

“I don’t know about nobody being the gainer by it, Miss Severn,” said the General. “I am disposed to think this rage for mountaineering by no means a bad thing—in fact a distinctly good one, as anything that calls forth pluck, determination, and endurance is bound to be. Now, by the time a man has done two or three of these gentry there,” with a wave of the hand in the direction of the surrounding peaks, “his nerve is likely to be in pretty good order, and his training and condition not very deficient. No, I don’t agree with you at all, Miss Severn.”

“The guides are very considerably the gainers by it, too,” said Fordham—“the gainers by enough cash to tide them comfortably through the winter.”

“These are all very secondary considerations,” was the lofty rejoinder. “Nobody touches my point after all. General Wyatt thinks that the object of penetrating the wonders of these stupendous ice-worlds has been gained when a man has got himself into the hard muscular training of a mere brutal prize-fighter; while Mr Fordham thinks it quite sufficient if a few hundred francs find their way into the pockets of a few Swiss peasants. But what does science gain by it? Of course I except the researches of such men as Tyndall—but they are the rare exceptions.” And the speaker looked around as if challenging a reply. She was disappointed, however. Nobody seemed to think it worth their while to undertake one. Presently Fordham said—

“It has often been remarked that we are not a logical nation. Hardly a day passes without emphasising that fact to the ordinarily wide-awake observer.”

“How so? Please explain. I don’t quite follow you,” said Miss Severn, briskly, fiercely elate that her challenge had been taken up.

“Well, we British are perennially grumbling at our abominably cold climate—winter all the year round, and so forth; and yet during the few weeks of summer vouchsafed to us away we rush to places like this, and stow ourselves as close to the snow and ice as we possibly can.”

“I—I really don’t see the connection,” said the would-be debater, in tart mystification. “Isn’t that rather a pointless remark—not to say irrelevant?”

“Oh, no. If anything, the reverse,” answered Fordham, tranquilly. “The idea was suggested by seeing several of us shiver, and it naturally occurred to me that we had probably sat as long as was safe if we wanted to avoid catching cold. For present purposes it may be taken to mean that we should be wise to think of going down, still wiser to go down and take the thinking as thought. What do you say, General?”

“I agree with you, Fordham. It doesn’t do to sit too long in this sharp air, after getting heated coming up, too.”

So the wisdom of the elders prevailed, and the party started upon the homeward way. Philip having found a long, steep snow-shoot, preferred the risky delights of a glissade to the more sober and gradual descent of a series of zig-zags. But the snow was soft, with the result that when half-way the adventurous one went head over heels, convulsing with mirth those who witnessed his frantic flounderings from the security of the zig-zag footpath aforesaid. Meanwhile the two erudite damsels were confiding to the parson their rooted conviction that Fordham was the most abominably disagreeable man they had ever met—which view, however, being that of the bulk of their sex on the same subject, was neither original nor striking.

And then as they gained the level of the glacier once more, again the wily Phil managed to pair off—to straggle indeed considerably from the main body—to straggle away almost to the base of the huge cliffs of the Grand Cornier. Here crevasses began to open in all directions—real ones, yawning black in the glistening surface.

“By Jove! look at that!” cried Phil, as a huge rift came into view right across the way they were following. It was overhung by a wreath of frozen snow, and the “lip” thus formed was fringed and festooned with gleaming icicles. It was a lovely and at the same time forbidding spectacle, as the sunlight fell upon the myriad smooth needles of ice—catching the star-like facets in gleaming scintillation—playing upon the translucent walls of the chasm in many a prismatic ray—roseate and gold, and richest azure. Then, below, the black, cold depths, as of the bottomless pit.

“It is splendid, but gruesome,” said Alma, peering tentatively into the silent depths—a process which needed a steadying, not to say supporting, hand. “I wonder how deep it is.”

“It’s a pity, in the interests of science—but on that ground alone—that we haven’t got our two learned friends along,” said Philip, proceeding to roll a big stone, of which there were several on the surface of the glacier, to the brink. “They could locate the depth by the time it takes to fall. Now, listen!”

He rolled over the stone. It was a large one, and spoke volumes for his excellent condition that he was able to move it at all. There was a crash and a shatter like the breaking of glass, as it crushed through the fringe of icicles—then a long pause, followed by a far-away and hollow clang.

“What an awful depth,” said Alma, with a shudder, instinctively drawing back. “Wait!” warned Philip. “There it goes again!” Another clang—this time very faint, together with a ghostly rumbling roar as the prisoned echo strove to break free—told that the crevasse was of appalling depth, even if its bottom was yet reached. The listeners looked at each other.

“Not much chance once over this little bit of crushed snow,” said Philip, breaking away the overhanging edge with the end of his ice-axe.

“Horrible!” rejoined Alma, with a shudder. “Now I think we had better go back to the others, for it seems to me we are getting more and more in among the crevasses, and it must be a trifle dangerous.”

It was even as she said. The whole surface of the glacier was seamed and criss-crossed with yawning rifts—many of them like the one before them—of unknown depth. To a fairly experienced man, and one of average gumption withal, the situation would have held no obstacle. To such the lay of the glacier would have been understood, and he could have threaded his way to safer ground without difficulty. But Philip was not experienced in Alpine features, and there was just a little too much of the bull-at-a-gate about his disposition for him to supplement this lack by ordinary prudence. So they got deeper and deeper into the labyrinth—and moreover the sun was already shut out behind the towering mountain walls rearing up immediately overhead.

Under these circumstances neither of the pair was sorry to hear a shout, and to make out a figure approaching at some distance over the ice.

“It’s Fordham,” cried Phil. “He’ll show us the right line. He’s about as good as a professional guide.”

Not the least lovable trait in Philip Orlebar’s character was his perfect readiness to yield to another’s superior knowledge, and this he was wont to do, not grudgingly or as one making a concession, but fully, frankly, and as a matter of course. It did not, for instance, occur to him that his fortnight of knocking about among the mountains and glaciers in the neighbourhood of Zinal—said knocking about being mostly in picnic fashion, as in the present case—had rendered his experience a trifle superior to that of Fordham, who had done a good deal of serious Alpine climbing in times past; and in stating this we are not dealing with so obvious a truism as the uninitiated would assume. For to many of his age and temperament that very thing would have occurred, and does occur, not infrequently to their own ultimate discomfiture if not disaster. We speak of that which we know.

Philip therefore hailed the advent of his friend with genuine pleasure, not to say relief. But the other in no wise reciprocated that warming sentiment. He didn’t see any fun in coming about two miles out of his way—and towards the end of the day, too—in order to benefit two people whom he had every reason to suppose would be wishing him in Halifax all the time.

“Tired of life already, Miss Wyatt?” he said sourly, as he came up, pointing to a great black crevasse the two were gingerly skirting. “Or do you want to anticipate death, and defeating his ravages and decay, ensure remaining beautiful for ever, although within the depths of a glacier?”

“What a weird style of compliment,” answered Alma, with a little laugh. “But any sort of compliment coming from Mr Fordham should be duly treasured.”

“Well, there’s a far weirder fact underlying it. Look here! If you knew there were half a dozen even indifferent shots posted behind yonder séracs practising at you with rifles, I believe you’d think your run of life was held on exceedingly frail and uncertain tenure. Well, left to yourselves here, the same tenure is a good deal more uncertain than it would be under the other contingency—you two poor greenhorns.”

“Oh, come; I say, Fordham?” exclaimed Philip, deprecatorily. But Alma broke into a ringing laugh.

“You think it a laughing matter, do you?” went on Fordham. “Now you wouldn’t think that a dozen steps further of the line you’re following would perform your own funerals? You’d never be seen again.”

“Now you’re cramming us, old chap,” said Philip, airily, surveying the white unbroken surface in front.

“Am I? Very well. Now, look.”

He counted exactly ten paces forward, then halted, advanced half a pace, and holding his ice-axe by the head, drove the point into the surface. In it went without resistance, as far as he allowed it to, which was almost to the head. Then working it round he made a hole about half a yard in diameter.

“Come, now, and look.” He went on cautiously knocking away more of the snow-crust.

They obeyed, and in a moment were peering through the hole into black depths. The sheeny surface of the opposite ice-wall glared at them through the aperture as with the disappointed glare of the eye of some evil beast baulked of its prey.

“By Jove!” cried Philip, aghast. “You never spoke a truer word, Fordham. There would have been an end of us, sure enough. But I say, old chap, how on earth did you know there was a crevasse there—a dev—, hum—I mean an awful one it is, too? There’s no sign or difference of colour in the surface.”

“I knew that there was bound to be one by the lay of the land. Now look,” he went on, pointing to the main crevasse, which yawned broadly parallel to the line they were pursuing, and out of which a lateral one sprung, and seeming to change its mind, had abruptly terminated—apparently so, at any rate. “I knew that this other crack wasn’t going to end there, although it seems to; it was too deep to start with. Consequently I knew that it was bound to run a considerable way under the surface, and so it does. A dozen more steps, I repeat, and one or both of you would have disappeared for ever.”

“By Jove!” ejaculated Phil again, in mingled admiration and dismay, while Alma shuddered, as she gazed into the ghastly death-trap with a horrible fascination.

“At the same time you’re wrong in saying there is no sign or difference of colour in the surface,” went on Fordham. “There is the last—faint I admit—but quite enough to catch a practised eye. And now, while we are prosing away here, the other people are waiting for us over on the moraine yonder. So keep close behind me, and let’s get out of this.”

Under such able and experienced pilotage they soon got clear of the more dangerous part of the glacier—doubling and zigzaging in the most labyrinthine fashion to avoid perils hidden or displayed.

“You can’t afford to go playing about among bottomless pits in any such careless way, Phil, still more among masked deathtraps like some of those we passed,” said Fordham, as they drew near their party. “So if you must go skylarking on dangerous ground, you’d better have some one with you who knows the ropes rather more than you do, and not rather less.”

But this recollection of peril past added something of a spice to the keen enjoyment of a delightful day as they took their way homeward. And then, as they left the wild wilderness of rocks and ice behind, the great silent glaciers and piled masses of rugged moraine, the westering sunlight flushing upon the soaring peaks as with a glow of fire, to these two it meant one more day closing as it had begun—in a golden unearthly beauty—closing into a brief night, which in its turn should soon melt into another glowing day, even as this one which had just fled. But—would it?

“Two people have arrived, sir,” said the head waiter, meeting Philip in the hall. “Dey ask for you, sir, first thing. One gentleman and lady.”

“Gentleman and lady?” echoed Phil, in amazement. “Who the deuce can it be? Who are they, Franz?”

“I not know, sir. Dey ask first for you; then they ask if we cannot send messenger to find you. I tell them you away to the Mountet cabin—you come back quick as the messenger.”

“The deuce! Who can it be? By Jove—of course! The governor and her ladyship! It’ll be right good getting the old man out here. Don’t know about her ladyship though,” he parenthesised, dubiously. “Where are they, Franz?”

“Here we are, Philip,” cried a masculine voice, which was certainly not that of Sir Francis Orlebar, and a hand dropped upon his shoulder with would-be cordiality.

The recipient of this unceremonious salute started as if he had been shot. Then he turned—turned with what cordiality he could muster, to confront the speaker.

The latter was an elderly man of portentous aspect, ruddy of countenance, and keen of eye. A thick white beard hid the lower half of his face, and a crop of bristling white hair adorned his summit, which last, however, was now concealed by a large pith helmet and puggaree. He wore a great expanse of waistcoat, covering a redundancy of person which went far towards bearing out his sleek and aggressively prosperous appearance. He looked the sort of man who would be a law unto a roomful—the sort of man whose thumbs would oft seek the armholes of his waistcoat. He looked what he was—the prosperous, comfortable British merchant who had begun life a good deal lower down than that. But he did not look what he was not—viz, a gentleman.

“Why, how d’you do, Mr Glover?” blurted out Philip at last. “Who on earth would have thought of seeing you here?”

“Aha! who’d have thought it, indeed! But the little girl wouldn’t give me any peace. Said you hadn’t written to her for so long she didn’t know what had become of you, and we’d better go and see. So we left the rest of them at St. Swithins and started off, and here we are. Why, where is she? Edie—where have you got to?”

“All right, dad; here I am,” and the owner of the voice emerged from the bureau, where she had been arranging about rooms. “Why Phil, dear, this is nice!” she went on, advancing upon him with extended hand and a would-be effective blush.

“Ha ha!” chuckled the old man. “She wouldn’t give me any peace until I brought her here. Now you’ll find plenty to talk about, I’ll warrant.”

Heavens! this was fearful. The feelings of a wild bull in a net must be placidity itself compared with those of poor Philip on finding himself thus cornered and publicly taken possession of. Every soul in the hotel was getting the benefit of these effusive and affectionate greetings, for it was just that time before table d’hôte when everybody was coming in to change, and every head was more or less turned for a glance at the new-comers as its owner passed by. Why Alma herself, who was standing talking to some other ladies in the hall, was well within hearing! What would she think? What sort of construction would she put upon all the affection wherewith these people were bespattering him? Heavens! what would she think?

Ha! there was Fordham. Capital! He would plant the new arrivals upon him.

“Hullo, Fordham!” he sung out, as his friend at that moment passed through the hall. “I want to introduce you to Mr Glover here; just arrived, you know. Miss Glover—Mr Fordham. Knows the country like a book,” he went on, desperately.

But this manoeuvre, so far from helping him had precisely the opposite effect; for the old man, with effusive cordiality, at once buttonholed Fordham, leaving the girl free to take possession of Phil.

Well, what then? To all appearances the situation was the very reverse of an unenviable one—indeed, more than one man passing through the hall at the time looked upon the ill-starred Philip with eyes of downright envy as he grumbled to himself, “Is that conceited ass Orlebar going to monopolise every pretty girl who comes near the place?” Poor Phil! how willingly he would have yielded up this one to the attentions of each and all who might choose to offer them.

In one particular they were right. Edith Glover was a very pretty girl. She had large blue eyes, and profuse brown hair falling in a natural wavy fringe around her brows. She had a clear complexion, regular features, and a bright, laughing expression. She was of medium height, had a good figure, and dressed well. But with all these advantages she lacked one thing, in common with her father, and that was the hallmark of birth. There was no mistake about it. With all her engaging prettiness and tasteful attire there was this one thing painfully, obviously lacking. She would have looked far more in keeping—and therefore possibly more attractive—in the cap, apron, and print dress of a housemaid, and her speech would have agreed thereto.

It is an accepted saying that the letter “h” constitutes a crucial shibboleth to the individual of dubious birth and British nationality; but there is another letter to which this applies with almost equal force, and that is the letter “a”. Now the first letter of the alphabet as enunciated by Edith Glover sounded uncommonly like the ninth—to wit, the letter “i.”

“We will sit together at table, dear, of course,” she murmured, sweetly, with a killing glance into his eyes.

“Um—ah—er,” mumbled Philip. “Awful sorry, but afraid our end of the table’s full up—in fact, crowded.”

“Oh, but you can come down to ours.”

“Er—hardly. You see I’m with some people—very jolly party—came up here together. Can’t desert them, don’t you know.”

Edith Glover had a temper, but now she judiciously dropped her eyes so that he should not see the expression which had come into them.