When Lois Dare and Ray Luard came downstairs on the morning of August
7, they found the dark-panelled little salon of the ‘Golden Lion’ as
cheerfully bright as a blazing fire and a pale sunbeam could make it;
and outside, the upper alps of Urseren Thal were swathed with long
wreaths of mist, above which the white tops of the Spitzberge shone
like silver in the sunshine.
Freda came hastening in with the coffee and milk and a distressed face
on their account.
“But it is too bad for you,” she burst out. “They have just sent us
word on the telephone that there will be no diligence to-day, nor any
more at all. All the horses are wanted for the war,--ach!--the cursed
war! It will be the ruin of us all.”
“That’s all right, Freda,” said Lois cheerfully. “Don’t worry about it
on our account. We’ll manage quite well.”
“We walked here, you see,” said Ray. “And we’ll just walk on over the
Furka and down the valley till we get to Montreux--if there are no
trains running.”
“But, mon Dieu, what a walk! To Montreux! It will take you weeks!”
“Not a bit. We get along quicker than that. So get our bill made
out,--that’s a good girl, and we’ll start as soon as we’ve finished
breakfast.”
“Shall I put you up some lunch, monsieur and mademoiselle?”
“No,” said Ray, after a moment’s thought. “We’ll have a proper lunch
and a good rest at the Furkablick,--or the Belvédère, if we can get
that far, and then get on to Oberwald. I don’t want to stop at
Gletsch,” at which Freda smiled knowingly.
She added four different kinds of cheese to their menu, buzzed about
them to see that they laid in adequate supplies of honey and blaeberry
jam, and finally brought them a bill which surprised them by its
modesty and provided Ray with a pocketful of change out of a five-pound
note.
From the length of time Freda took to bring back the change he opined
that she had had some difficulty in obtaining it. But how much he never
knew.
For Madame of the hotel had, for the first time in her life, looked
dubiously at an English five-pound note.
“But, Freda,” she said, “Will that be all right if England is beaten in
the war, as they say she will be?”
“She won’t,” said Freda oracularly. “And in any case an English
five-pound note is always good.”
“I don’t know. It always has been, but----”
“I will change it myself then. I have no fear of England being beaten
by any pigs of Germans. It’s enough to make you sick just to hear them
eat,” and she took the note and climbed up to her own small room,
and opened her box, and got out the other box in which she kept her
savings, and came back with the change in her hands, much of it in
five-franc pieces.
“Là!” she chirped triumphantly. “There then is madame’s money, and here
is monsieur’s change. I would not have them think we doubt them,--no,
not for five francs,” and she went off with the receipted bill and the
change on a plate.
“Freda,” said Ray, as he added a lordly remembrance for herself, “I’d
like to stop here for a month.”
“Well--why not? Monsieur and mademoiselle will be very welcome indeed,”
and Freda’s beam was a thing to remember.
“Duty calls, my child. We’re going to Montreux to get married, you
know, and then we want to get home as soon as circumstances will
permit. Any news this morning?”
“By the telephone they say there is terrible fighting in Belgium. The
poor little country! I was there for a year, in Bruxelles. They are
such nice quiet people, but not great fighters, I would think. And the
Germans--they are strong. Oh, it is terrible to think of.”
Half an hour later, while the sun was still wrestling with the
mist-wreaths, they were climbing the long straight road to Realp.
Turning off there by the second bridge, they took the old road in
order to avoid the endless zig-zags of the new one, and following the
telegraph posts they mounted rapidly towards the little Galenstock
Hotel.
On the Ebneten Alp, below the hotel, they sat down on a glacier-scored
boulder for a last look over the Urseren-Thal and a rest before
tackling the Furka. It was a wonderful sight--the wide green sweep
of the valley right to the great white barracks at Andermatt and the
zig-zags of the Oberalp-road beyond;--on the one side, the sprawling
green and gray limbs of Spitzberge, still dappled with mist-wreaths but
shining like frosted silver up above;--on the other side Piz Lucendro,
with the Wyttenwasser-Thal and glacier below it;--and the upward road
which led to the Furka was all white with snow.
It made the walking more difficult, but the air was crisp and clear up
there and the very fact of walking on snow was exhilarating. In places
it was over their shoe-tops and the drifts by the road side, when they
plunged their poles into them, were many feet deep.
Far away below them in the Garschen-Thal they could see the cuttings
and bridges for the new railway from Brigue to Disentis and Ilanz, but
there was no work going on. The men had all gone to the front, and the
unnatural offence of their blastings and delvings was for the time
being suspended, though the scars and wounds of their previous efforts
remained in painful evidence.
Presently they walked up into a mist-wreath and had the novel
experience of plodding along an invisible road smothered in
close-packed glimmering whiteness. The sun outside was evidently
shining brilliantly on the thick bank of mist, but, so far, its
rays failed to disperse it and penetrated only in a weird luminous
diffusion, which had a most curious effect on the senses.
It made Lois’s head spin till she reeled dizzily along and at last
clung to Ray’s arm for safety.
“I believe I’m drunk,” she laughed mazedly. “Have we had anything
stronger than coffee this morning?”
“Not that I remember,” laughed Ray, in the same high-strung way.
“Unless you slipped into one of the hotels we passed unbeknown to me.
It’s queer, isn’t it? I feel absolutely light-headed. In fact I think
the top front of my head is coming off. Hel-lo! Who’s this now?”
This was a burly overcoated sentry, who loomed suddenly large in front
of them and courteously informed them that they must keep to the lower
road as this one led only to the barracks. So they stumbled back till
they came on the main road again, and feeling their way by the granite
posts, set up along the side of the road to keep the diligence from
tumbling over into the valley, they came at last to the Furkablick
Hotel, and were glad to grope into the hall and warm themselves at the
blazing stove.
“We can’t possibly go on if it keeps like this,” said Ray. “It’s
neither safe nor wholesome. We can see nothing and might find ourselves
walking over the edge into the valley.”
“Suppose we have lunch and a good rest, and perhaps it will draw off.
How far is it to the place we were to stop for the night?”
“It’s about six miles to the Gletsch,--a bit less by the short cuts,
and four miles or so on to Oberwald.”
“Say three hours. We can give it a couple of hours to clear off, or
even more if necessary.”
So they fared sumptuously, and both fell fast asleep in big arm chairs
near the stove in the salon afterwards, and when Ray yawned and woke it
was close on three o’clock, and the sun had won and the mountains all
round were shining white against the clear deep blue.
There was no one else in the salon. There seemed, in fact, no one else
in the hotel except a few officers who kept to the smoking-room. So he
kissed Lois awake, and in five minutes they were footing it gaily up
the Furka road, with the Bernese giants towering in front and dwarfing
all the lesser wonders closer at hand.
“That must be Finsteraarhorn,” said Ray, pointing to the highest and
sharpest peak. “And that one further on is probably Jungfrau, but I
know her better from the other side.”
Then they passed the fortifications and turned a corner, and the
great Rhone glacier lay below them, dappled here and there, where the
sun got into the hollows, with the most wonderful flecks of fairy
colour--tenderly vivid and lucently diaphanous blues and greens so
magically blended that Lois caught her breath at the sight.
“How beautiful! How beautiful!” she murmured. “It is a dream-colour,
but I never dreamed anything half so lovely.”
He could hardly get her along. She wanted to stop at every second step
to gloat on some fresh wonder. But they came at last, by slow degrees,
to the point, just below the Belvédère, where sturdy pedestrians can
drop from the main road into the valley and so avoid the tedious
winding-ways.
“We’ll get down here, if you think you can manage it,” said Ray. “Then
we can get right up to the glacier-foot where the Rhone comes out. It’s
worth seeing, but it’s a bit of a scramble down unless they’ve improved
the path.”
“I’ll manage it all right if you’ll go first and show me the way.”
So they started on that somewhat precarious descent, and had gone but a
little way when Ray began to be sorry he had not stuck to the solider
footing of the road.
For the apology of a path had in places disappeared entirely under the
attrition of the wet season and many heavy boots. Whole lumps of it had
slipped away and left gaps and slides down which a rough-clad Switzer
might flounder with possible impunity, but which suggested serious
possibilities to the ordinary traveller.
He had gone on hoping it would improve, but it did not. Instead it grew
worse. But if falling down such awkward slides was no easy matter,
re-climbing them to gain the high road was next to impossible.
They bumped and slipped and floundered downwards as best they could.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said, as he helped her down one specially awkward
place. “It was nothing like this last time I came.”
“It’s all right,” she laughed. “It’s fun--all in the day’s work. Don’t
tumble right out of sight if you can help it.”
And then he did. A lump of rock to which he had trusted his foot came
squawking out of the wet bank, and he and it went down together a good
half-dozen yards.
He brought up with his rucksac over his head and turned at once to see
to her safety.
“All right,” he shouted. “No bones broken. But I don’t advise you to
try it. Strike to the right and try and find a better place. Throw me
down your rucksac and cloak, then you’ll be free-er.”
She dropped them down to him, with a startled look on her face, and he
scrambled round, as well as he could so laden, to meet her round the
corner. But she had to make quite a long détour before she came at last
on another and less precarious path and was at last able to join him.
“Sure you weren’t hurt?” she asked anxiously.
“Quite sure. Bit scraped, that’s all. I suppose it’s the rains that
have boggled the path so. Now, if we keep on round here we’ll be able
to get right up to the ice-cave where the stream comes out. Here’s
the rain on again. Better put that cloak on,” and they scrambled on
over the rough detritus from the glacier and the hillsides till they
reached the ice-foot, and stood looking into the weird blue-green
hollow out of which the gray glacier water came rushing as though in
haste to find a more congenial atmosphere.
“It’s the most wonderful colour I’ve ever seen,” she said, drinking
it in with wide appreciative eyes. “It hardly looks real and earthly.
It looks as though a breath would make it vanish. I suppose if we got
inside there it would simply be all white.”
But just then, in sullen warning, a solid lump of overhanging ice came
down with a crash, and a volley of stones came shooting at them mixed
with its splinters, and they turned and went on their way down the
stony valley.
The rain ceased again just as they arrived at the big hotel, and as Ray
swung off his cloak and shook it, Lois laughed and said,
“When we get to Oberwald you must hand me over your trousers and I’ll
stitch them up.”
“Why?--what?--” and he clapped his hands to his hips to feel the
damage, while Lois still stood laughing at the rents and tears which
his cloak had so far hidden.
“I should keep my cloak on if I were you,” she suggested, and then
asked quickly, “Why--Ray? What is it? Are you more hurt than you
thought?”--for the look on his face was one of concern if not of actual
consternation.
“I am,” he jerked, with a pinch on his face, and then he felt hastily
in his other pockets and the tension slackened somewhat. “But it’s not
in my person,--only in my pocket. Would you mind kicking me, dear?
Here,--we’ll go round the corner,” and he stepped back the way they had
come. “And--would you also mind telling me what money you have in your
pocket or your rucksac.”
“Not very much, I’m afraid. Two or three pounds, I think. Why?”
“Because,” he said, displaying the catastrophe. “That stupid slip of
mine has busted my hip-pocket and all our money’s gone. All except the
change out of this morning’s five-pounder. With that and yours we can
get to Montreux all right, and I can wire from there to Uncle Tony, but
it’s confoundedly stupid,----”
“Couldn’t we find it if we went back?”
“I’m going to try, but you’ll stop here and have some tea to pass the
time.”
“Oh no, I won’t. It’s share and share alike. Aren’t we almost man and
wife? Come along! We’ll have a hunt for our money anyway,” and she led
the way back towards the glacier.
They searched for an hour, but looking for a flat leather purse in
that stony land was like searching for the proverbial needle in the
haystack. They found the exact spot where Ray took his sudden slide,
but search below it discovered nothing. They followed step by step the
way he had taken till he met Lois and then, as well as they could,
the path they had taken to the ice-foot. But there was no sign of the
purse and he came to the conclusion that his pocket was probably torn
by the slide and the purse fell out of it later on,--anywhere down the
two-mile stretch of stony valley between them and the hotel.
They paced it with meticulous care, searching cautiously, but found
nothing, and at last gave it up and went on,--soberly as regards Ray,
amusedly as regards Lois, who persisted in looking only at the humorous
side of the matter.
“We’ll walk all the way,” she laughed, “and pick out the
cheapest-looking hotels, and you’ll have to haggle like a German about
terms.”
“I’m awfully sick of myself for being such an ass,” he said gloomily.
“It’s hateful to be short of cash in a strange land. I often used to
run it pretty close. I remember once reaching home from this very place
with only a halfpenny in my pocket. I remember I wanted a cup of tea
on the train, more than I’d ever wanted one before, and I had to go
without.”
“Had you lost your purse then also?” asked Lois mischievously.
“No,--just stopped longer than I’d planned and ran it a bit too fine.”
They plodded into Oberwald just before dark, and stumped heavily up
the steep wooden steps that led from the stony road to the door of
the little Furka Hotel, fairly tired out with the day’s walk, which
their diversion in search of Ray’s purse had extended, he reckoned, to
close on five-and-twenty miles, and he proceeded to haggle with the
depressed-looking landlady like any German of them all.
She was glad enough to have them, however, even on their own terms, and
gave them a quite sufficient supper, in which three different kinds
of sausage, and veal in several guises, figured principally; and her
bed-rooms, if somewhat meagrely furnished, were at all events clean.
And they went up early to bed, tired with their long tramp and still
tireder,--as Ray expressed it, concerning himself--of playing the fool
with his money and throwing it about for some wiser man to pick up.
The landlady knew nothing about the war, except that the diligences
had stopped running because the horses were wanted, and most of the
men had gone--to Thun, or Berne, she was not quite sure where, but it
was all because of the talk of war, and she did not hold with any of
it,--stopping business and upsetting everybody and everything.
Oberwald, they decided, could not at the best of times be a very
inspiring place. Under the shadow of the war-cloud it was dismal. They
had early breakfast on the wooden platform outside the front door,
while the deserted village below and about them roused itself, lazily
and obviously against the grain, to its day’s work.
But Ray was obviously not up to his usual standard, even though Lois
had borrowed needle and thread from the landlady and had patched up his
rents with deft fingers and visible enjoyment at being of service to
him.
“You’re not letting that old purse worry you, are you?” she had asked,
as they sat over their coffee and cheese and honey on the wooden
platform.
“Not at the loss of it, though the stupidity of losing anything always
annoys me. It’s the possible consequences I’m thinking of. It came
on me all in a heap in the night that it’s just possible we may have
difficulty in communicating with them at home if things are really
bad. I wish to goodness we could get some definite news. I wanted very
much to take you up the Eggishorn--it’s just close here, and it seems
a shame to pass right under it without going up. You don’t really know
what a glacier’s like till you’ve seen the Aletsch. But....”
“I think we’d better go right on. We can come back some other time and
see all these things. Suppose they shouldn’t have got your telegram
from Leipsic! They’ll be getting frightfully anxious about us. Let us
get on as quickly as possible.”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing else for it,” he said regretfully. “Let’s
see now--it would take us at least four days to walk down the valley to
Montreux.... How much money did you say you have with you?”
“I’ve got three pounds, five shillings. I’ll get it for you.”
“No. Better keep it safe. I might lose it, you know. Well, four days’
tramping at the lowest possible rate means at least forty francs. It
will pay us to take the train from Brigue. There’s a quick train about
mid-day, I remember ... that is, if it’s still running. They may have
taken the trains off also. It comes from Milan, you see, through the
Simplon.”
“Third class?”
“Rather. I’ve come home by it more than once, and it’s generally packed
with Italians, who are not the pleasantest of travelling companions.
But needs must when you’re such a fool as to lose your purse,--and
they’re probably all being kept at home just now anyway. We had a
tough day yesterday, so to-day we’ll just jog along to Fiesch. That’s
another place I wanted you to stop at. Most fascinating country, all
the hillsides covered with little irrigation channels about a foot
wide, and the natives spend most of their time turning them on and off.
That’s where you strike up for the Eggishorn ... and the Märjelen See
... and then there’s Binn.... It’s a mighty pity to pass them all ...”
and he rattled the few coins in his pocket thoughtfully.
But--“Needs must!” said Lois firmly, anxious to get into touch with the
outer world again and especially with the folks at home.
“Wait a bit!” said Ray thoughtfully, and got down the map from its peg
in the hall, and began figuring with his pencil on the back of the bill
the landlady had just brought him, which came to 9.50 francs for the
two of them. “Just ... you ... wait ... a bit ... my child!” and he
measured and figured away with immense energy and growing enjoyment.
“We can do it all right,” he burst out at last. “See here!--We’ve got
160 francs left after settling up here. We’ll get Madame here to put us
up the usual trampers’ lunch,--that’s one franc each. We’ll walk on to
Fiesch and then up to the little Firnegarten Inn--small but clean--on
the Fiescher Alp, and stop the night there. That’ll be, say, 10 francs.
It would cost us more down below. To-morrow we’ll make an early start
and climb up to the Märjelen See and the Eggishorn, taking our lunch
with us again. Then we’ll come down by the big hotel,--we can only
afford to look at the outside of it this time,--and walk along the
ridge to Rieder Alp. It’s wonderful,--worth coming all the way from
England for,--that and the Aletsch. Stop the night at Rieder Alp. That
will be say 12 francs, if I haggle well. And next day we’ll walk down
to Brigue and Oberried and Bitsch and the Massa, and get the mid-day
train there for Montreux,----”
“If it’s running.”
“If not we’ll just toddle on.”
“But can we afford it?”
“Including fares and all it will come to just about as much as four
days’ tramping along the road. And two days up aloft here are worth
forty days on that road. The road’s fine but it’s not to be compared
with the bridle path along Rieder-Alp.”
He was so obviously set on it that, in spite of her anxiety to get on,
she had not the heart to raise any objection, and five minutes later
they were on the road, with the dew-drenched green slopes above and
below them shimmering like diamond-dust in the early sunshine, and
Ray’s spirits at their highest again at this getting the better of the
misfortune that would have done them out of the best bit of the journey.
As to the fact that they would arrive in Montreux with only 120 francs
between them, that did not trouble him in the slightest now that they
were going up aloft.
“I’ll wire Uncle Tony the very first thing when we get there. It’ll be
quite all right, you’ll see, my child. ‘The year’s at the Spring----’”
“Ninth of August!”
“That’s nothing. It’s our year I’m talking of, and it’s only a week
or so after New Year’s Day.... ‘The day’s at the morn. Morning’s at
seven;’----”
“Nearer eight,”--with a glance at her wrist-watch.
“‘The hillside’s dew-pearled,’----”
“Undoubtedly,”--with a comprehensive wave of the hand uphill and down.
“‘The lark’s on the wing;’----”
“Maybe--somewhere.”
“‘The snail’s on the thorn; God’s in His Heaven; All’s right with the
world!’”
“With your and my little world. But, oh, I wonder what’s going on
outside there, Ray! It’s terrible to think of war at any time, even
though we none of us really know what it means. But for all the Great
Powers to be flying at one another’s throats,--and England too! I can’t
realise it.”
“Don’t try, child. Rhenius may have caught some flying nightmare by
the tail. I haven’t much faith in Italian newspapers. Anyway we’ll make
the most of these few days of grace and be thankful for them.... You
see, if things really are as bad as he said, we may be stuck for some
time in Switzerland, and an extra day up here in heaven will make no
difference in the end and is all to the good now. Learn to gather your
roses while you may, my child,” and his determined enjoyment carried
the day.
They made Fiesch about noon, and Ray marched her right through the
little town to the house he had stopped at more than once--the
cosy-looking little Hotel des Alpes, near where the rushing Fieschbach
flung its gray waters into those of the Rhone.
They knew him there and were much hurt that he had not come to stop
with them again, and were greatly interested in Lois. He had to explain
matters very fully before they were pacified sufficiently to permit him
to have a bottle of Asti, with a small table and two chairs outside in
the sunshine, and the mistress and the two comely maids hung about them
all the time they ate their Oberwald lunch of bread and sausage and
cheese and biscuits, and insisted on supplementing it with apples and
pears and grapes, grumbling good-humouredly at him and chattering and
giving such news as they had.
“You’d do much better to stop with us. Firnegarten cannot keep very
much of a table up there, you know. Most people go right on to the
Jungfrau Hotel for the night----”
“I know. But we’re pauper-tramps, you see, till we get to Montreux, and
we have to look twice at every sou. You see, I was fool enough to lose
my purse up at Gletsch there----”
“Ach! To lose your purse! That was foolishness. But if you had come to
us we would have helped you.”
“It’s awfully good of you, and we’re going to come back here
as soon as ever we can. There’s heaps of things I want to show
mademoiselle,--Binn, and the Fiescher Glacier, and Ernen--oh, heaps.
But now we’ve got to get on. We’re going to get married as soon as we
reach Montreux, but I couldn’t bear to stump along the road down here
when Aletsch and the Rieder-Alp called me. Mademoiselle is not at all
sure we’re doing the right thing in not going straight on.”
“You will never regret it, mademoiselle,” they assured her.
“Though, of course, when one is hurrying along to get married,--”
interjected one of the girls thoughtfully.
“The Great Aletsch is a thing to see before one dies,--” continued
Madame.
“Or even before one gets married, when you have to pass right under
it,” said Ray. “And the Märjelen----”
“Ach--the poor Märjelen! It is gone. It got a hole in it somewhere and
all the water has run out, and so now there is nothing to see.”
“So! But the Aletsch is still there?”
“Och, yes! The Aletsch can never run away through a hole. There it is
and there it will remain till the world comes to an end.”
“And the war? What news have you?”
“They are fighting terribly over there, it seems,--at some place called
Liége. But we do not hear very much since the diligence stopped. And
all our visitors went away at once. We were quite full and not one has
come since. War is bad for everybody. For me, I cannot understand what
people want to fight for. It will not come into Switzerland, do you
think, monsieur?”
“I shouldn’t think so, but when war once starts you never know where it
will stop. And I’ve no doubt Germany would be only too glad to get hold
of Switzerland if she got half a chance.”
“Ach--those Germans! No, I do not like them. Whenever I see one come
in here I say to myself, ‘Another trouble-maker!’ They are never
satisfied, and they want everything--except to pay proper prices. No, I
do not like them. If they all get killed in the fighting I shall not
care one bit.”
Their leave-taking could hardly have been warmer if Madame had been
jingling in her hand a whole month’s pension fees instead of the price
of a modest bottle of Asti, and presently they were slowly and steadily
climbing the steep and stony path to Firnegarten.
The maid in charge there was sister to one of those down below, and
she also remembered Ray. She was much astonished at their intention of
stopping the night there, and laughed merrily when Ray proceeded to
hammer her price down to his level and then explained why he was, for
once, acting like a German.
She made them very comfortable, however, in a simple way, and obviously
enjoyed their company. They went early to bed, and were well on their
way up the Fiescher Alp soon after seven next morning.
It was close on noon before they struggled up the tumbled débris of the
top, and sank down on a flat rock, with that great glory of the Aletsch
glacier sweeping down in front of them, from the great snow-basins of
Jungfrau and Finsteraarhorn, till it curled out of sight behind the
green ridges of Rieder-Alp away down below them on the left.
“The Chariots of the Lord!” came involuntarily to Lois’s lips as she
sat gazing on it, and her eyes followed the strange dark parallel
lines which ran throughout its length and looked exactly like gigantic
wheel-tracks. “What makes them?”
“The continuous slow downward movement of the ice, I believe. It picks
off earth and stones from the sidewalls and gradually throws them into
exact lines like that. Curious, isn’t it? I remember it struck me in
just the same way the first time I saw it.”
It was long before she could be got to look at anything else.
“I can’t help expecting it all the time to do something,” she explained.
“I know. But it never does. See!--that’s Jungfrau over there, and
that one is Finsteraarhorn. And round this other side you can see the
Matterhorn and Mont Blanc. Those big white lumps are the Mischabels.”
In time he got her to start on her lunch, though she asserted that it
felt like eating in church,--desecration.
“I’m glad you insisted on coming,” she said softly. “It is a sight one
could never forget,” and he was radiant.
“And to think,” she said again, presently, “that over yonder the guns
are booming and men are doing everything they know to kill one another!
Isn’t it dreadful to think of--in face of this great silent wonder
which takes one’s thoughts right up to God?”
“It’s simply brutal.... I just hope whoever’s to blame for bringing it
about will get whipped out of existence.”
He could hardly drag her away. She vowed she could never weary of
that most wonderful sight, and was certain it would begin to move if
they only waited long enough. And so it was a very tired but very
well-satisfied pair that dropped into the first chairs they came to in
the homely little Riederalp Hotel, with barely enough energy left to
arrange terms on the German plan.
Next morning they came down the steep wooded ways by Oberried and
Bitsch and the Massa gorge, and reached Brigue exactly fifteen minutes
before a train started for Montreux.
The run down the Rhone Valley and up to Montreux was full of enjoyment,
tempered only by their doubts as to being able to get any further than
that.
Ray pointed out to her all the things he knew,--the new Lötschberg
line away up on the opposite mountain-side,--the openings of Nicolai
Thal, leading to Zermatt and Saas Fée,--the Val d’Anniviers leading
to Zinal, and the Val d’Herens to Arolla, and promised to take her to
them all when the times got re-jointed. Then they were at Martigny, and
presently the flat delta and the upper end of the lake came into sight,
and Chillon, and they were at Montreux.
Ray enquired at once from the station-master as to trains for Paris.
“Paris, mon Dieu?” jerked that much harassed official. “Ask again in a
fortnight’s time, monsieur, and perhaps we shall know something then!”
and Ray made at once for the Post Office and wrote out a telegram to
Uncle Tony,--“Just arrived here. Both well. Lost purse. Send cash Poste
Restante.”
The young man behind the official window looked at the address and
said in excellent English, “We can send it from here, but we cannot
make sure it will ever get there. You see it must go through France or
Germany, and they are fighting and everything is disarranged.... It is
very awkward,” as they looked at one another in dismay.
“Very awkward!” said Ray. “Please do your best. Are letters coming
through?”
“Not from England for some days. Doubtless in time matters will arrange
themselves.”
In time, doubtless! But the one thing about which there was no doubt
whatever was the fact that they were in a strange land, cut off from
communication with their own, and that the sum total of their united
funds amounted to something under five pounds,--and there was no saying
when they could procure more.