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 houses or standing alone perched on some dizzy eyrie among
their tiny patches of yellow cornland--all testify to the stupendous
vastness of Nature's scale. And at the head of the valley the forking
cone of the Besso, and beyond it, rising from its amphitheatre of snow,
the white crest of the Rothhorn soaring as it were to the very heavens
in its far-away altitude. And the air! It is impossible to exaggerate
its clear exhilaration. It is like drinking in the glow of sunshine
even as golden wine--it is like bathing in the entrancing blue of the
firmament above.
"Alma, you have treated me shockingly," Philip was saying, while they
two were seated by the roadside to rest and await the arrival of the
others, who might be seen toiling up the zig-zags aforesaid, but yet a
little way off. "Shockingly, do you hear. You never wrote me a line,
as you promised, and but that by great good luck we happened to be in
the same train I should never have known you were coming here at all."
"That's odd. Is the place we are going to of such enormous extent that
we could both be in it without knowing of each other's proximity?" she
said innocently, but with a mischievous gleam lurking in her eyes.
"No--er--why?"
Alma laughed--long and merrily. "You are a very poor schemer, Phil.
Your friend would have had his answer ready--but you have regularly--
er--`given yourself away'--isn't that the expression? Confess now--and
remember that it is only a full and unreserved confession that gains
forgiveness. You were not going to Zinal at all--and you have
hoodwinked my uncle shamefully?"
"What a magician you are!" was the somewhat vexed answer. And then he
joined in her laugh.
"Am I? Well I thought at first that the coincidence was too striking to
be a coincidence. Where were you going?"
"To Zermatt. But what a blessed piece of luck it was that I happened to
put my head out of the window at that poky little station. But for that
only think what we should have missed. Heavens! It's enough to make a
fellow drop over the cliff there to think of it."
"Is it! But only think what an unqualified--er--misstatement you have
committed yourself to. Doesn't that weigh on your conscience like
lead?"
"No," replied the sinner, unabashed. "It's a clear case of the end
justifying the means. And then--all's fair in love and war," he added,
with a gleeful laugh.
"You dear Phil. You are very frivolous, you know," she answered,
abandoning her inquisitorial tone for one that was very soft and
winsome. "Well, as we are here--thanks to your disgraceful stratagem--I
suppose we must make the best of it."
"Darling!" was the rapturous response--"Oh, hang it!"
The latter interpolation was evoked by the sudden appearance of the
others around a bend of the road, necessitating an equally sudden change
in the speaker's attitude and intentions. But the sting of the whole
thing lay in the fact that during that alteration he had caught
Fordham's glance, and the jeering satire which he read therein inspired
him with a wildly insane longing to knock that estimable misogynist over
the cliff then and there.
"Well, young people. You've got the start of us and kept it," said the
General, as they came up. His wife was mounted on a mule, which
quadruped was towed along by the bridle by a ragged and unshaven
Valaisan.
"Alma dear, why didn't you wait for us at that last place--Niouc, isn't
it, Mr Fordham?" said the old lady, reproachfully. "We had some coffee
there."
"Which was so abominably muddy we couldn't drink it--ha--ha!" put in the
General. "But it's a long way on to the next place--isn't it, Fordham?"
"Never mind, auntie. I don't want anything, really," replied Alma. "I
never felt so fit in my life. Oh!" she broke off, in an ecstatic tone.
"What a grand bit of scenery!"
"Rather too grand to be safe just here?" returned Mrs Wyatt, "I'm
afraid. I shall get down and walk."
The road--known at this point as "Les Pontis"--here formed a mere ledge
as it wound round a lateral ravine--lying at right angles to the gorge--
a mere shelf scooped along the face of the rock. On the inner side the
cliff shot up to a great height overhead on the outer side--space.
Looking out over the somewhat rickety rail the tops of the highest trees
seemed a long way beneath. Twelve feet of roadway and the mule
persisting in walking near the edge. No wonder the old lady preferred
her feet to the saddle.
Mere pigmies they looked, wending their way along the soaring face of
the huge cliffs. Now and then the road would dive into a gallery or
short tunnel, lighted here and there by a rough loophole--by putting
one's head out of which a glance at the unbroken sweep of the cliff
above and below conveyed some idea as to the magnitude of the
undertaking.
"A marvellous piece of engineering," pronounced the General, looking
about him critically. "Bless my soul! this bit of road alone is worth
coming any distance to see."
Philip and Alma had managed to get on ahead again.
"Oh, look!" cried the latter, excitedly. "Look--look! There's a bunch
of edelweiss, I declare!"
He followed her glance. Some twelve feet overhead grew a few
mud-coloured blossoms. The rock sloped here, and the plant had found
root in a cranny filled up with dust.
"No; don't try it! It's too risky, you may hurt yourself," went on
Alma, in a disappointed tone. "We must give them up, I suppose."
But this was not Philip's idea. He went at the steep rock bank as
though storming a breach. There was nothing to hold on to; but the
impetus of his spring and the height of his stature combined carried him
within reach of the edelweiss. Then he slid back amid a cloud of dust
and shale, barking his shins excruciatingly, but grasping in his fist
four of the mud-coloured blossoms.
"Are you hurt?" cried Alma, her eyes dilating. "You should not have
tried it. I told you not to try it."
"Hurt? Not a bit! Here are the edelweiss flowers though." And in the
delighted look which came into Alma's eyes as she took them, he felt
that he would have been amply rewarded for a dozen similar troubles.
But just then a whimsical association of ideas brought back to his mind
the absurd postscript to that letter which had so sorely perturbed him.
"Be sure you send me a big bunch of `adleweis' from the top of the
Matterhorn"; and the recollection jarred horribly as he contrasted the
writer of that execrable epistle, and the glorious refined beauty of
this girl who stood here alone with him, so appropriately framed in this
entrancing scene of Nature's grandeur.
"That is delightful," said Alma, gleefully, as she arranged the blossoms
in her dress. "Now I have got some edelweiss at last. When we get to
Zinal I shall be the envied of all beholders, except that every one
there will have hats full of it, I suppose."
"I don't know about that Fordham says it's getting mighty scarce
everywhere. But it's poor looking stuff. As far as I can make out, its
beauty, like that of a show bulldog, lies in its ugliness."
"Shall I ever forget this sweet walk!" she said, gazing around as though
to photograph upon her mind every detail of the surroundings. "You
think me of a gushing disposition. In a minute you will think me of a
complaining and discontented one. But just contrast this with a
commonplace, and wholly uninteresting cockneyfied suburb such as that
wherein my delectable lot is cast, and then think of the difference."
"Dearest, you know I don't think you--er--discontented or anything of
the sort," he rejoined, fervently. "But--I thought Surbiton was rather
a pretty place. The river--and all that--"
"A mere romping ground for 'Arry and 'Arriet to indulge their horseplay.
Philip, I--hate the place. There!"
"Then, darling, why go back to it? or anyhow, only to get ready to leave
it as soon as possible," he answered quickly.
"Phil, you are breaking our compact, and I won't answer that question.
No. What I mean is that it is lamentable to think how soon I shall be
back in that flat, stale, and unprofitable place. Why this will seem
like a different state of existence, looked back upon then--indeed, it
is hard to believe that the same world can comprise the two."
The road had now left its rocky windings and here entered the cool shade
of feathery pine woods, the latter in no wise unwelcome, for the sun was
now high enough to make himself felt. It might be that neither of them
were destined to forget that walk in the early morning through an
enchanted land. The soaring symmetry of the mighty peaks; the great
slopes and the jagged cliffs; the fragrance of the pine needles and
moist, moss-covered rocks; the golden network of sunlight through the
trees, and the groups of picturesque _chalets_ perched here and there
upon the spurs; the sweet and exhilarating air, and the hoarse thunder
of the torrent far below in its rocky prison--sights and sounds of
fairyland all. And to these two wandering side by side there was
nothing lacking to complete the spell. It was such a day as might well
remain stamped upon their memory--such a day as in the time to come they
might often and often recall. But--would it be with joy, or would it be
with pain?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, the first half of the journey was over, for the picturesque
grouping of _chalets_ clustering around a massive church which suddenly
came into sight announced that they had reached Vissoye, the most
considerable place in the valley. Here a long halt was to be made; and
the old people indeed were glad of a rest, for it had grown more than
warm. So after breakfast in the cheerful and well-ordered hotel, the
General lit his pipe and strolled forth to find a shady corner of the
garden where he could smoke and doze, while his wife, spying a
convenient couch in the empty _salon_, was soon immersed in the
shadowland attained through the medium of "forty winks."
Left to themselves, Alma and Philip strolled out into the village,
gazing interestedly upon the quaint architecture and devices which
ornamented the great brown _chalets_. Then they wandered into the
church--a massive parallelogram, with a green ash-tree springing from
its belfry. Alma was delighted with the wealth of symbolism and rich
colouring displayed alike upon wall and in window, roof and shrine; but
Philip voted it crude and tawdry.
"There speaks the true John Bull abroad," she whispered. "As it
happens, the very crudeness of it constitutes its artistic merit, for it
is thoroughly in keeping. And the heavy gilding of the vine device,
creeping around the scarlet ground-colour of those pillars, is anything
but tawdry. It is quaint, _bizarre_, if you will, but striking and
thoroughly effective. I suppose you want nothing but that desolate grey
stone and the frightful wall tablets which give to our English
cathedrals the look of so many deserted railway stations."
"Oh, I don't care either way. That sort of thing isn't in my line. But
look, Alma, what are they putting up those trestles for? I suppose they
are going to bury somebody."
"Where? Oh, very likely," as she perceived a little old man, who, aided
by a boy, was beginning to clear a space in front of the choir steps,
with a view to arranging a pile of trestles which they had brought in.
"We may as well go outside now."
They went out on to the terrace-like front of the graveyard, and sat
down upon the low wall overhanging the deep green valley, which fell
abruptly to the brawling Navigenze beneath. Gazing upon the blue
arching heavens, and the emerald slopes sleeping in the golden sunshine,
Alma heaved a deep sigh of happy, contented enjoyment.
"Ah, the contrasts of life!" she remarked. "At this moment I am trying
to imagine that I am in the same world as that hateful suburb, with its
prim villas and stucco gentility--its dull, flat, mediocre pretensions
to `prettiness.' Yes, indeed, life contains some marvellous contrasts."
"Here comes one of them, for instance," said Philip. "This must be the
funeral they were getting ready for."
A sound of chanting--full, deep-throated, and melodious--mingled with
the subdued crunch of many feet upon the gravelled walk as the head of a
procession appeared, wending round the corner of the massive building.
First came a little group of surpliced priests and acolytes, preceded by
a tall silver crucifix and two burning tapers; then the coffin, borne by
four men. Following on behind came a score of mourners--men, women, and
children, hard-featured villagers all, but showing something very real,
very subdued, in the aspect of their grief.
"_Requiem aeternam dona et, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat et_." The
massive plain-song chant wailed melodiously forth, swelling upon the
sunlit air in a wave of sound. The two seated there had been discussing
the contrasts of life. Here was a greater contrast still--the contrast
of Death.
"_Exultabunt Domino ossa humiliata_" arose the chant again, as the
_cortege_ defiled within the church. And through the open door the
spectators could see the flash of the silver cross and the starry
glitter of the carried lights moving up the centre above the heads of
the mourners.
"So even in this paradise-like spot we are invaded by--death," said
Alma, in a subdued voice, as having waited a moment or two they rose to
leave. "Still, even death is rendered as bright as the living know
how," she went on, with a glance around upon the flower-decked graves
between which they were threading their way. "Confess now, you British
Philistine, isn't all that more impressive than the black horses and
plumes and hearses of our inimitable England?"
"I daresay it might be if one understood it," answered Philip,
judiciously. "But I say, Alma, it isn't cheerful whatever way you take
it!"
Mrs Wyatt was already on her mule as they regained the hotel, and the
General, leaning on his alpenstock, stood giving directions--with the
aid of Fordham--to the men in charge of the pack mules bearing their
luggage.
"Alma, child," he said reprovingly, while Philip had dived indoors to
get his knapsack, "you're doing a very foolish thing, walking about all
the time instead of resting. You'll be tired to death before you get
there."
"No, no I won't, uncle dear!" she answered, with a bright smile. "You
forget this isn't--Surbiton. Why I could walk for ever in this air. I
feel as fresh now as when we left Sierre this morning."
Certainly she gave no reason to imagine the contrary as they pursued
their way in the glowing afternoon--on past little clusters of
_chalets_, through pine woods and rocky landslips, crossing by shaky log
bridges the rolling, milky torrent, which had roared at such a dizzy
depth beneath their road earlier in the day. The snow peaks in front
drew nearer and nearer, the bright glow of the setting sun spread in
horizontal rays over the now broadening out valley, and there on the
outskirts of a straggling village, surrounded by green meadows wherein
the peasants were busy tossing their hay crops, stood the hotel--a large
oblong house, partly of brick, partly of wood, burnt brown by exposure
to the sun, like the residue of the _chalets_ around.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As they arrived the first bell was ringing for _table d'hote_ dinner,
and people were dropping in by twos and threes, or in parties, returning
from expeditions to adjacent glaciers or elsewhere. Some were armed
with ice-axes, and one or two with ropes and guides. Nearly all had red
noses and peeled countenances, and this held good of both sexes, more
especially of that which is ordinarily termed the fair. But this--at
first startling--phenomenon Fordham explained to be neither the result
of the cup that cheers and does inebriate nor of any organic disorder of
the cuticle, but merely the action of the sun's rays reflected from the
surface of the snow or ice with the effect of a burning glass. Alma
made a little grimace.
"I think I shall confine my wanderings to where there's no snow or ice--
and I do so want to go on a glacier--rather than become an object like
that," lowering her voice as a tall, angular being of uncertain age--
with a fearfully peeled and roasted countenance, and with her skirts
tucked up to show an amount of leg which should have brought her under
the ban of the Lord Chamberlain--strode by with a mien and assurance as
though she held first mortgage on the whole of the Alps, as Fordham
graphically put it.
"You can patrol the glaciers for a week if you only cover your face with
a veil," answered the latter. "You may burn a little, but nothing near
the horrible extent you would otherwise."
"The house doesn't seem crowded," remarked Philip, when _table d'hote_
was half through. They had secured the end of the long table, and there
was a hiatus of several empty chairs between them and their next
neighbours. This and the stupendous clatter of knives and forks and
tongues, enabled them to talk with no more restraint than a slight
lowering of the voice.
"By Jove!" he went on, withdrawing his glance from an attentive scrutiny
of the table, "it's a mighty seedy crowd, anyhow. All British, too.
Look at those half-dozen fellows sitting together there. Did any one
ever see such an unshaven, collarless squad of bounders?"
The objects of the speaker's somewhat outspoken scorn assuredly did
their best to justify it. They answered exactly to his description as
to their appearance. Moreover when they spoke it was in the dialect of
Edgware Road rather than that of Pall Mall. Two or three
gaudily-dressed females of like stamp seemed to belong to them. Beyond
were other people in couples or in parties.
"Don't you think you are rather hard on them, Philip?" objected Mrs
Wyatt--for by virtue of the General's former acquaintance with his
father, and their now fast-growing intimacy with himself, the old people
had taken to calling him by his Christian name.
Alma broke into a little laugh.
"Auntie, you remind us of `the Infliction' at Les Avants. She always
used to begin `Don't you think.'"
"Mrs Wyatt used to sit opposite her," said Phil, slily.
"You're a naughty boy, Phil," laughed the old lady, "and you've no
business to poke fun at your grandmother. But I think you are too hard
on those poor fellows. They may not have any luggage with them."
"No more have we. Fordham and I will have to live in our knapsacks for
the next week. And even if we had no clothes we'd manage by hook or by
crook to beg, borrow, or steal a razor."
"I don't think much of the population, certainly," put in the General.
"There were a much better stamp of people at Les Avants."
"Always are," said Fordham. "It's a place where people go to stay, and
the same people go there again and again. Moreover, it isn't enough of
a show-place to attract the mere tourist. 'Arry itinerant patronises
the higher resorts, where he can walk across a glacier and brag about it
ever after. But this is an exceptionally weedy crowd, as Phil says," he
added, sticking up his eyeglass and taking stock of the same.
"Not all. I don't think quite all," objected Mrs Wyatt. "Those two
ladies sitting next to the clergyman down there look rather nice. Don't
you think so, Mr Fordham?"
"Might discharge both barrels of a shot-gun down the table and not
damage a social equal," was the uncompromising reply.
But little it mattered to them in a general way what sort of a lot their
fellow-countrymen there sojourning might or might not be. It was
delightful to exchange the low stuffy _salle-a-manger_, with its
inevitable reek of fleshpots, its clatter of knives and forks and its
strife of tongues, for the sweet hay-scented evening air, with the
afterglow reddening and fading on the double-horned Besso and the
snowfields beyond, the stars twinkling forth one by one against the loom
of the great mountain wall which seemed literally to overhang the
valley. There was a lulling, soothing sense in the sequestered
propinquity of the great mountains, in the dull roar of the
ever-speaking torrent. Old General Wyatt, seated on a bench smoking his
evening pipe, expressed unbounded satisfaction.
"It's like a paradise after that abominably rackety Grindelwald," he
pronounced.
"Yes, dear," assented his wife. "But what I want to know is," she added
in a low tone, "how is that going to end?"
"How is what?--Oh--ah--yes--um!" as he followed her glance.
The latter had lighted upon their niece and her now inseparable escort.
They had returned from an evening stroll, and were standing looking
about them as though loth to go in. Alma had thrown on a cloak, for
there was a touch of sharpness in the air, and the soft fur seemed to
cling caressingly round the lower part of her face, framing and throwing
into greater prominence the luminous eyes and sweet, refined beauty.
She was discoursing animatedly, but the old people were too far off for
the burden of her ideas to reach them.
"It is going to end in the child completely knocking herself up," said
the General with a disapproving shake of the head. "She must have
walked twenty miles to-day if she has walked one. Now mind, she must
stay at home to-morrow and rest thoroughly."
"That isn't what I mean, and you know it isn't," urged the old lady in a
vexed tone.
"Ha-ha! I know it isn't," he answered with a growl that was more than
half a chuckle.
"Well, and what do you think of it?"
"Um! ah! I don't know what to think. If the young people like each
other, I don't see why they shouldn't see plenty of each other--in a
place like this. If they decide they don't--well, there's no harm
done."
"But I've always heard you say that Sir Francis Orlebar was a poor man--
a poor man with a second wife," said Mrs Wyatt, tentatively.
"So is Alma. I don't mean with a second wife--ha-ha! But she hasn't a
sixpence, and it would be a blessed day for her that on which she got
away from that mother of hers for good and all."
"But isn't that all the more reason she should marry somebody who is
well off?"
"Well, yes, I suppose it is. But then, you can't have everything. It's
seldom enough you get cash and every other desirable endowment thrown
in. Now I like Phil Orlebar. I don't know when I've seen a young
fellow I've liked more. It's a thousand pities, though, that his father
didn't put him into some profession or give him something to do; but it
isn't too late now, and Alma might do worse. Here--hang it all!" he
broke off with a growl.--"What a couple of mischief-making old
match-makers we are becoming. It's getting cold. Time to go in."