ON THE SUMMIT._Fordham's Feud

A narrow apex of solid rock, surrounded by a little cairn of stones and

four human figures. And around--what a panorama! Everywhere rolling

billowy summits, snowy and hump-like, or rearing up sharp and defined in

craggy pinnacles--everywhere they rise--north, south, east, or west, the

eye wanders confused over a vast sea of them. Below, a mighty array of

snowfields, great ice rivers flowing silently down between their

rock-bound walls--divided, separated from each other by stupendous

ramparts of cliff and snow. Further down still--far, far beneath the

region of ice and snow--a confused labyrinth of tortuous valleys, green,

and sprinkled here and there with clusters of brown specks, haply

representing a town or village, the faintly glittering star above which

resolves itself under the lens of the telescope into the metal-sheathed

cupola of a church tower. The very immensity of the panorama is

overwhelming in its bewildering vastness. The eye, the senses, are

burdened with it--can hardly take it in. The whole world seems to lie

spread out around and beneath, for this apex of rock soaring up in

mid-air seems in very truth to tower above the rest of the world. It is

the summit of the Rothhorn.

The two guides--good representatives of their class--with their

thoughtful bronzed faces and horny hands, their quasi-uniform attire of

grey frieze, and black-cock feather adorned hat--are busily engaged in

examining the contents of a bottle, which they have extracted from its

snug hiding-place in the heart of the cairn aforesaid--not in the hope

of finding it to contain liquid refreshment, let us hasten to explain--

nor are the contents precisely of a solid nature. They are calculated

to appeal to the mind rather than the body, for they happen to consist,

for the most part, of an assortment of visiting cards, bearing the names

of such climbers as have hitherto gained this altitude, together with

those of their guides, and any other remarks their owners may have seen

fit to pencil thereon by way of record.

"Well, Phil? Think my prescription was good enough, eh?" says Fordham,

cheerfully. "Worth while undergoing something to get such a view as

this?"

But there is no cheerfulness about Philip Orlebar to-day, nor does he

seem to take any interest in the view. Sprawling on his back, on the

hard rock, with his hands behind his head, he is staring up at the sky--

a phase of observation equally well undertaken at the bottom of a

valley, thinks his companion. He merely growls in reply, and relapses

into his abstraction.

It is the second day after the somewhat stormily concluding interview

between Fordham and old Glover, but poor Philip's prospects had in no

wise been improved thereby--indeed, he could not but realise that they

were hopelessly ruined. The only result achieved was that of, so to

say, drawing the teeth of the aggrieved but scheming parent. That

crafty plutocrat had been left, in a manner of speaking, on his back.

He had been met with a crisp, healthy decisiveness, which had left

nothing to be inferred, whereas had Philip himself constituted the other

party to the interview, we fear that a tendency to temporise might have

wedged him into the morass firmer and deeper than ever. So far Fordham

had rendered him yeoman's service.

But while released from one horn of the dilemma there was another upon

which he remained firmly impaled, and whence it was beyond the power of

any friend to extricate him, and that was a woman's outraged pride.

Alma Wyatt's self-contained nature was a fearfully proud one, and it had

been wounded to the quick. She, to allow herself to be deceived,

fooled, made a plaything of, a mere pastime to add zest to a summer

holiday--while all the time this man who had been whispering undying

love to her was plighted to some one else! Her face fairly blanched

with fierce wrath at the thought. And the insult, the publicity of the

insult which he had put upon her--for his attentions were, of course,

thoroughly understood by those around! No, she would never forgive him;

never as long as he lived--or even on his deathbed!

Even then the natural fairness of her mind moved her to do him what

justice she could. Her own heart told her that in his love for herself

there was, at any rate, no make-believe. That, at any rate, was

genuine. So much the worse. It argued weakness in her eyes, an

unpardonable fault in a man. And, again--that he had dared to offer her

a mere place in his affections--to suppose that she would _share_ them

with anybody, let alone the overdressed, underbred creature to whom he

was already plighted, and who had come there and claimed him--publicly

claimed him--under her eyes! It was an outrage which she could not

bring herself so much as to think of condoning.

The only consolation was that she had all this time steadfastly refused

to give him a definite answer--to allow him to give anybody to

understand in definite terms that she was engaged to him. But what

then? Had she not more than justified by implication such a conclusion

on the part of those around her! Even now she was conscious of the

exchanged glance, the hastily-stifled smile which her appearance evoked

amid this or that group she happened to be passing, but this she could

afford to treat with unconcern. Still the sting penetrated--penetrated

and rankled. Her bitterness towards the chief offender hardened to

white heat.

Nothing had been said between them. She took care to allow him no

opportunity for that. No explanations were needed. The situation would

admit of none--absolutely none. She made no external difference in her

manner towards him--did not even change her place beside him at table.

She was too proud to give him or the lookers-on to suppose that she was

sorely wounded. But there was a steeliness in her tone when she

addressed him or answered any remark of his, which conveyed as severe a

punishment as even she could have wished. He was miserable.

Then he wrote to her--a piteous and heartbroken letter--explaining,

protesting, and, above all, entreating. To ensure her receipt of this

he slipped it himself beneath her door at a time when it could not

escape her observation. As a result she did afford him an opportunity

of speaking with her alone--an interview of just sufficient duration to

allow her deliberately to tear his letter into small fragments before

his face, carefully letting him see that it was unopened. Not a word

did she speak. She could not trust herself. Her great eyes blazing

forth such scorn from her pale face seemed to sear and burn into his.

Then she turned and left him.

After that he was desperate. Poor Phil, soft-hearted and sensitive,

felt that he had wrecked his whole life. He wished he could get up a

corresponding indignation. But he could not, not even the fraction of a

semblance of it. His heart seemed turned to water--his brain was

ablaze. He would relieve his feelings by undertaking some desperate

feat--thank Heaven, it was always easy to break one's neck. And on this

object intent he bounded upstairs three steps at a time in quest of his

ice-axe.

But Providence, or his own forgetfulness, stood him in good stead that

time, for the implement he sought was not in his room. He must have

left it in Fordham's. Thither he repaired.

"What's the row, Phil?" said the latter, looking up quickly, taking in

at the same time the obvious fact that things were not merely wrong with

his unlucky friend, but very much more so than ever.

"Got my axe here? I'm just going for a--er--walk."

"Well, you can put it off then, for I've just been scheming out a

promising climb. Got two first-rate Zermatt guides, who turned up last

night and want to go back there. Everything is ready. What do you say

to doing the Rothhorn? We can start for the Mountet cabin soon after

lunch; sleep there, get to the top any time by midday, and go down the

other side to Zermatt. What do you say?"

"I'm your man, Fordham. Just the very thing I should like. And, I

say--while we are about it--we might stay at Zermatt a few days and do

the Matterhorn and two or three others, eh?"

Fordham looked at him curiously.

"Just the very thing I was going to suggest," he said, "only I doubted

whether you'd cotton. A smart shaking up and a change will do you all

the good in the world, just now, Phil. We'll start half an hour after

lunch--there goes the second bell!--and go up to the hut quietly."

This they had done, and now after an excruciatingly early start from

that convenient tarrying-place, and about six hours of really difficult

climbing, of scrambling from rock to rock, worming round "corners"

overhanging dizzy heights--work that called into full play every muscle

and braced every nerve--here they were on the summit with the world at

their feet.

During the actual process of ascent Philip's spirits seemed to return.

The hard, and, in places, really hazardous, nature of the undertaking

demanded all his attention, and whether clinging spreadeagled against

the face of the cliff with no real hold to speak of, or balancing with

one foot upon a rock projection about the size of a walnut, the other

dangling over nothing, what time the next man above should secure a

footing, or skirting gingerly the treacherous line of a curling snow

cornice, where the thrust of the handle of an ice-axe left a hole

through which lay viewed the awful depth of space which it overhung--all

this constituted such a strain upon his faculties as to leave room for

no other thought. Though strong and active, and in good training all

round, Philip, be it remembered, was a novice at this sort of thing,

consequently he found enough to do in ensuring his own safety, and,

relatively, that of his companions. At one point of their progress a

cloud had come over the mountain, rendering the rocks rimy and slippery,

throwing out the ridge of ice crowning a sharp _arete_ spectral and

drear against the misty murk, magnifying the cliffs to gigantic

proportions in their uncertain and ill-defined outlines. Gazing down

upon the snow-flecked rocks far, far beneath, losing themselves in the

swirling vortex of vapour, Philip felt rather small as he remembered his

reckless intentions of the day before. Life, strange to say, seemed

still worth having; at any rate such a way of ending it as a sudden dash

through space on to those hideous black and white rocks struck him as

grim and horrible in the extreme.

But the excitement and physical exertion over, and the summit attained,

his depression returned. More over he was tired, for he had hardly

slept the night before, was, in fact, just dropping off, when roused by

his indefatigable friend at 2 a.m. to make a pretence at devouring the

breakfast which the guides were preparing over the weather-beaten stove.

Now the magnificence and extent of the view was nothing to him. It

seemed to lie outside his gaze. In spirit he was back again at the

hotel at Zinal. Was Alma beginning to miss him--to think more kindly of

him, now that they would not see each other for some days? Would those

execrable Glovers have left by the time he returned? And would all come

right again? If only it might!

But if his younger friend's thoughts were far-away down in the valley

they had come up out of, Fordham's were not. That saturnine individual

was, for him, in high spirits. He had got out an excellent map--in the

production of such Switzerland stands in the foremost place--and with

the guides was busy verifying the topographical details of the

stupendous panorama lying beneath and around. The cloud which had

overshadowed them during their ascent had long since vanished, and now

the sky was blue and clear, and the air like an elixir of life. The

only clouds were those from three pipes, for the two guides and Fordham

were smoking like chimneys.

But they had been an hour on the summit, and the air, though

exhilarating, was uncommonly chill. It became time to start downwards.

The guides were beginning to repack the haversacks.

"Have a pull at this, Phil," said Fordham, handing him a flask. "And--I

tell you what it is, man. You don't know when you're well off."

"Oh, I don't?"

"Rather not. Look at this," with a comprehensive sweep of the hand.

"Think what a splendid climb we had to get up here. Think what a

splendid one we are going to have to get down, better, in fact, because

less of sheer fag, and then think how many poor devils there are who

would give their heads to be here to-day, instead of slaving their

hearts out all their lives to support some snarling, ungrateful female,

and a mob of more or less dirty and wholly detestable brats."

"Candidly, my dear chap," returned Philip, "you are becoming somewhat of

the nature of a bore. I seem to have heard something very like that

before--not once, nor yet twice. The salutary instructions of the

immortal Mr Barlow, of `Sandford and Merton' fame, shine forth as very

masterpieces of sparkling pungency when contrasted with your latter-day

harangues. I want to know what the devil all this has to do with me."

"You shall! The gist of the parable is this. You are thinking all this

time that Paradise lies at present in the Zinal valley in general, and

very particularly in the Hotel Durand; whereas in actual fact, so far as

any semblance of that institution may be said to exist, it lies around

and before you. For you are free at present, Phil, free as the air up

here which is making us shiver, your freedom is as boundless as this

rolling view of half a continent upon which we look down. You have the

world at your feet as literally as we have it before us now."

"Go on, Mr Barlow. Pray proceed."

"I will. At present you are thinking what a Paradise every moment of

life would be if coupled with the charmer down yonder. You are drawing

all manner of glowing mental pictures of the bliss of a home illumined

by her divine presence. All fustian, my dear fellow, all fustian!

These superstitions are encouraged by the women from obvious motives.

But they have no foundation in actual fact. Now what _I_ am thinking of

is this. I am thinking of you in two or three years' time, caged up

with your charmer in some shabby-genteel suburban semi-detached--for she

hasn't a shilling of her own, I believe--I am thinking of you, I say,

the proud possessor of two or three unruly brats--who may or may not be

kept clean--thus caged up, with a domineering, bad-tempered woman, who

has parted with her illusions, in proportion as she has contributed

towards populating this interesting orb. I am thinking of you toiling

the day through, week in week out, at some sordid and uncongenial

drudgery for a mere pittance. You can never be well off, my dear Phil,

for to do you justice, you lack the essential qualities of rascality and

sycophancy which are requisite to the manufacture of the `successful

man.' And while your scanty leisure is taken up policing a series of

ever-changing and refractory domestics, or carrying on epistolary war

with your landlord, _in re_ his inevitable refusal to observe the most

obvious provisions of his agreement, your much-needed slumbers will be

invaded by the piercing and colicky yells of the last overfed cherub,

and your night devoted to hospital duties in regard to that same. And

then when you look back to--this day, for instance--I am not far out in

asserting that you will catch yourself wondering whether such an

unparalleled ass is even worth the sixpenny-worth of laudanum which

should send him in search of the decisive change which may possibly be

for the better, but can hardly be for the worse. There--that's the

other side of the orange, and now you can't say it hasn't been shown

you."

"That all, Fordham?"

"Nearly. But think it over, think it over, my dear chap. The gift of

freedom is a grand and a glorious one. Don't throw it away for the

traditional mess of pottage--a comestible which may or may not be an

excellent thing, but cannot in my humble judgment maintain its savour if

subsisted on for the term of one's natural life to the exclusion of all