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Fordham's Feud

by Bertram Mitford · English · Gutenberg #36593 · 584,672 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Fordham's Feud

Author: Bertram Mitford


        
Release date: July 3, 2011 [eBook #36593]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36593

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FORDHAM'S FEUD ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Fordham's Feud
By Bertram Mitford
Published by Ward, Lock and Co Ltd, London.
This edition dated 1897.
Fordham's Feud, by Bertram Mitford.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
FORDHAM'S FEUD, BY BERTRAM MITFORD.



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 Leman, 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 `Liberte 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
_blase_ 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!  Depechez vous, s'il vous
plait.  Nous sommes deja 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 _role_ of escaped lunatic.  _Ah, bonjour, Francois!  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, Francois_," 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 la sur la poste
des Avants.  Faut qu'ils nous rejoignent 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 Francois 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 _cafe_, 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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'hote_.  "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-a-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'hote_ 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'hote_ 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-a-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 Novel?  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
Novel--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'hote_, 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 _role_ 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 _debarcadere_
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 doree_ 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 Novel.  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 Novel at all," said Fordham.

"Oh, hang Novel!" 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, Francois 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-rre 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.  "_Ca arrive--ca 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!  Voila que ca 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 _debarcadere_.

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
Hotel 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'hote_; 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
_a deux_, he, Fordham, being the second, Philip was never available.
The Misses This wanted to be taken up the Cape-au-Moine, or the Misses
That had organised a picnic to the Folli or the Cret 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 _role_ 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 Lutschinen 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 _arete_ 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
_arete_ 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 Chaine 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 _aretes_--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 _arete_ 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 _arete_ 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 _arete_.  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
aerial 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 _arete_ 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 Leman 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'hotes_, 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?--_aretes_ 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 _aretes_ 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 _aretes_ 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 _arete_, 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 _aretes_ 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 _arete_.
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 _arete_ 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 _arete_ 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 _arete_ 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 _arete_;
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
_aretes_, 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 _chalet_ 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 _chalet_ 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 _arete_, 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 _arete_ 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 _arete_ 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-etes joliment tire--Nom de nom_!" said the cowherd
oracularly.  "_Remplacer une montre c'est plus simple que de remplacer
ses membres broyes--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 Chalet 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 _chalet_ 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
_chalet_ 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 _arete_ 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 _arete_, 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 _arete_.

"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'hote_, "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 galere?" 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 _desole_; 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--_chalets_, too, in brown groups like
toy chocolate house

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