SNOW AND MIST AND SUNLIGHT
The desolation of that next morning! A wonder of snow outside the
windows--the large dark flakes slowly, noiselessly passing the panes;
snow on the open space fronting the great, gaunt hostelry; snow on the
small spire of the church; and snow on the far reaches of the hills,
retreating up there into the gray mists, where every pine-tree was a
sharp black thing on the broad expanse of white. The girls were
greatly downcast. They had their breakfast brought to them in the big
cold room; they took it hurriedly, with scarcely a word. They saw
Parsons rushing across the square; when she came in there were flakes
of snow in her hair, and her fingers were blue with cold.
'The English go abroad for pleasure,' said Edith, with sarcasm.
By and by they heard the jingle of the bells outside, and on going
below they found Frank King in the doorway, encased from head to foot
in an ulster.
'This is indeed luck--this is great luck,' said he, blithely.
'Luck do you call it?' said Edith Beresford.
'Certainly,' said he; 'the first snow of the year! Most opportune. Of
course you must see the Splugen Pass in snow.'
'We shan't see anything,' said Edith in gloom.
'Never mind,' said Miss Beresford, good-naturedly; 'we shall have
crossed the Alps in a snowstorm, and that sounds well. And I daresay
we shall amuse ourselves somehow. Do you feel inclined to give up your
carriage to-day again?'
She had turned to Frank King. There was a smile on her face, for she
guessed that it was no great sacrifice on his part. Moreover, she had
enjoyed that drive the day before; the presence of a fourth person
broke the monotony of the talking of three girls together. It is
needless to add that Frank King eagerly welcomed her proposal, and in
due course the two carriages drove away from the big, bare hostelry to
enter the unknown mountain-world.
A strange world they found it, when once they had left the level of the
little valley and begun to climb the steep and twisting road cut on the
face of the mountain. The aspect of things changed every few minutes,
as the rolling mists slowly blotted out this or that portion of the
landscape, or settled down so close that they could see nothing but the
wet snow in the road, and the black-stemmed pines beyond, with their
green branches stretching out towards them through the pall of cloud.
Then sometimes they would look down into extraordinary gulfs of
mist--extraordinary because, far below them, they would find the top of
a fir-tree, the branches laden with snow, the tree itself apparently
resting on nothing--floating in mid air. It was a phantasmal world
altogether, the most cheerful feature of it being that at last the snow
had ceased to fall.
This decided Nan to get out for a walk.
'You will be wet through,' her elder sister exclaimed.
'My boots are thick,' said Nan, 'and Parsons has my waterproof.'
When she had got down, and disappeared, Miss Beresford said,
'She is a strange girl; she always wants to be alone.'
'She seems to think a great deal, and she always thinks in her own
way,' said Frank King. 'No doubt she prefers to be alone; but--but
don't you think I ought to get out and see that she is all right?'
'There are no brigands in these mountains, are there?' said Miss
Beresford, laughing.
'And she can't lose her way,' said the more serious Edith, 'unless she
were to fall over the side.'
'I think I will get out,' he said, and he called to the driver.
He found that Nan was already some way ahead, or rather overhead; but
he soon overtook her. She was startled when she saw him, for the snow
had deadened the sound of his approach.
'I believe it will clear soon,' he said at a venture.
'It is altogether very strange,' Nan said in something of a lower
voice. 'The fir-trees laden with snow like that, the cold, the gloom:
it looks like some bygone Christmas come back suddenly. It is strange
to find yourself in another part of the year: yesterday, summer;
to-day, winter. I should not be surprised to meet a cart filled with
holly, or to hear the bells ringing for morning service.'
'You know there are people who never see winter,' said he; 'I wonder
what it feels like when you move from place to place so as to live in a
perpetual spring and summer.'
'I don't think it can be the real spring,' she said, after a second.
'The summer, I suppose, is the same anywhere; it hasn't the newness and
the strangeness of the spring. Wouldn't it be a nice thing now to be
able to take some poor English lady who has been compelled to live all
the early months of each year in the south, among hot-house sort of
things, and just to show her for a minute a little English village in
the real spring time, such as she must have known when she was a girl,
with the daffodils in the cottage gardens, and the young leaves on the
elm and the hawthorn. And perhaps a lark would be singing high up; and
there might be a scent of wallflower; and the children coming home with
daisy wreaths. She would cry, perhaps; but she would like it better
than the hot-house flowers and the Riviera. There are some things that
have a wonderful way of bringing back old memories--the first smell of
wallflower in the spring is one, and the first fall of snow in the
winter. And there's an old-fashioned kind of musky smell, too, that
always means Sunday clothes, and a tall pew, and a village choir.'
'But you seem to have a strong faculty of association,' said young
Frank King, who was far more interested in Nan than in musk.
'I don't know,' she said carelessly. 'I don't study myself much. But
I know I have a strong bump of locality--isn't that what they call it?
I wish I had been born in a splendid place. I wish I had been born
among great mountains, or amongst remote sea islands, or even beautiful
lake scenery; and I know I should have loved my native place
passionately and yearned for it; and I should have thought it was the
most beautiful place in the world--especially when I was away from
it--for that's the usual way. But when you are born in London and live
in Brighton, you can't make much out of that.'
Then she added with some compunction,
'Not but that I am very fond of the south coast. I know it so well;
and of course you get fond of anything that you are very intimate with,
especially if other people don't know much about it. And there is far
more solitariness about the south coast than the people imagine who
come down to the Bedford Hotel for a week.'
'You are a great walker, are you not?' he said.
'Oh no; but I walk a good deal.'
'And always alone?'
'Generally. It is very seldom I have a companion. Do you know Singing
Sal?'
'Singing Sal? No. How should I? Who is she?'
'A kind of tramping musician,' said Nan, with a grave smile. 'She is a
friend of the fishermen and coastguardsmen and sailors down there; I
daresay some of your men must have heard of her. She is a good-looking
woman, and very pleasant in her manner, and quite intelligent. I have
seen her very often, but I never made her acquaintance till the week
before last.'
'Her acquaintance!'
'Yes,' said Nan, simply; 'and I mean to renew it when I get back, if
mamma will let me. Singing Sal knows far more about the coast than I
do, and I want to learn more. . . . Oh, look!'
Both of them had been for some time aware of a vague luminousness
surrounding them, as if the sun wanted to get through the masses of
vapour; but at this moment she, happening to turn her head, found that
the wind had in one direction swept away the mist, and behold, far away
in the valley beneath them, they could see the village of Splugen,
shining quite yellow in the sunlight. Then the clouds slowly closed
over the golden little picture, and they turned and walked on. But in
front of them, overhead, the wind was still at work, and there were
threads of keen blue now appearing over the twisting vapours. Things
began to be more cheerful. Both the carriages behind had been thrown
open. Nan's face looked pink, after one's eyes had got so used to the
whiteness of the snow.
'I suppose there are no people so warmly attached to their country as
the Swiss are, she said (she was not ordinarily a chatterbox, but the
cold, keen air seemed to have vivified her). 'I am very glad the big
thieves of the world left Switzerland alone. It would have been a
shame to steal this little bit from so brave a people. Do you know the
song of the Swiss soldier in the trenches at Strasburg? I think it is
one of the most pathetic songs in the world.'
'No, I don't,' he said. How delighted he was to let her ramble on in
this way, revealing the clear, beautiful soul, as Singing Sal might
have thought.
'He tells the story himself,' she continued. 'It is the sound of the
Alphorn that has brought this sorrow to him, he says. He was in the
trenches at night, and he heard the sound of the Alphorn far away, and
nothing would do but that he must try to escape and reach his
fatherland by swimming the river. Then he is taken, and brought before
the officers, and condemned to be shot; and he only asks his brother
soldiers to fire straight---- But I am not going to spoil it.'
She put her hand up furtively for a second to her eyes, and then she
said cheerfully--
'I have had enough walking. Suppose we wait for the carriage?'
'I think I ought to apologise to you, Miss Anne,' said he. 'You prefer
walking by yourself--I ought not to have come and bothered you.'
'It is of no consequence,' said Nan, looking back for the carriage, 'so
long as you haven't wet your feet.'
They got into the carriage and continued on their way; and very soon it
became apparent, from the flashes of sunlight and gleams of blue, that
they had worked their way up through the cloud-layers. In process of
time, indeed, they got clear of the mists altogether, and emerged on to
the higher valleys of the Alps--vast, sterile, the white snow-plains
glittering in the sun, except where the rocks showed through in points
of intense black. There were no longer any pines. They were in a
world of snow and barren rocks and brilliant sunlight, with a cold
luminous blue sky overhead; themselves the only living creatures
visible; their voices sounding strangely distinct in the silence.
When they were quite at the summit of the pass, a smurr, as we say in
Scotland, came over; but it did not last. By the time they had got the
drags on the wheels, the vast gorge before them--descending and winding
until it disappeared in a wall of mountains of the deepest blue--was
again filled with sunlight; and now they began to be a little bit
sheltered from the wind as the horses trotted and splashed through the
wet snow, carrying them away down into Italy.
They lunched at Campo Dolcino, still some thousands of feet above the
level of the sea. Then on again, swinging away at a rapid pace down
into a mighty valley; rattling through galleries cut in the solid rock;
then out again into the grateful sunlight; taking the sharp curves of
the road at the same breakneck speed; with always below them--and so
far below them that it was silent--a rushing river sweeping down
between fair pastures and dots of villages. As the evening fell, this
clatter of hoofs and wheels came to a sudden end; for they were
entering the town of Chiavenna, and there you must go at walking pace
through the narrow little thoroughfares. It was strange for them to
come down from the snow-world into this ordinary little town, and to
find in the hotel not only all sorts of products of a high
civilisation, but even people who were speaking the familiar English
tongue.
There was a telegram addressed 'Lieutenant F. H. King, R.N.,' in the
case in the bureau; when Frank King had got it out and read it he was
silent for a second or two.
'I hope there is no bad news,' said Miss Beresford, in a kindly way.
She was not a very sympathetic person; but Frank King had brightened up
their tour during these last two days, and she was in a measure
grateful to him.
'No,' he said, absently. 'Oh no, not bad news. The telegram is from
the officer I left in charge of the _Fly-by-Night_; I rather think that
I shall be setting out for home again in a couple of days.'
'Oh, I am sorry for that,' she said, quite naturally.
'You go on again to-morrow, Miss Beresford?'
'We were proposing to do so.'
'And where do you think of going to when you get to Lake Como?'
'Bellagio, most probably.'
'Oh, well, I will go with you as far as Bellagio, if I may,' he said,
somewhat thoughtfully.