"It won't do, of course, to shirk any of it. I'll come. I want to
cultivate Miss Constancy, and improve my mind."
Cuthbert made no demur. He thought that the change, however painful,
had not come a moment too soon. He had never favoured the notion of a
definite task to be accomplished; a definite foe to be conquered. He
could not square such a view with any habit of his mind. But Guy had
certainly accomplished something. Was it given to man to do so much,
and yet to have more? Cuthbert knew well how sweet the outlook was into
"the level of every day," how natural and healthful were the hopes, and
even the fears, that had dawned on Guy's spirit. But could flowers grow
on such a field of battle?
Constancy and her friends intended to spend at least a week at
Zwei-brucken.
Guy said that it looked bad to ride when the ladies were walking, but he
was able in this way to share in mountain expeditions, and Cuthbert
hoped that he enjoyed them. Constancy had always liked him, and was
ready to plunge into all the new discussions for which her recent
studies had prepared her. She was well aware that he now and then said
things which enabled her to think as well as talk, and he argued with
her, and drew her out, feeling as if she were a clever and agreeable
child. When he cut out a square of tiny flowerets and still tinier
growths of leaf and blade, and packed it carefully in a sandwich box to
send it home, he felt as if he was laying an offering before a shrine.
When he studied the names of the flowers with Constancy, he felt that he
had a good comrade in a mountain ramble.
One day something happened to her. She went out alone by a little
craggy path behind the hotel, which led along the top of a steep descent
to the river. She pursued it thinking of nothing but of adding a new
specimen or two to her store of flowers, and presently saw a dog-rose of
a peculiarly bright pink, hanging over the edge, and bent to pick it;
the stone on which she stepped gave way, and she slid downwards, and
stopped herself by catching at the rose just on the edge of--nothing.
An inch further, and she would have fallen into the roaring torrent a
hundred feet below.
For one awful moment, she believed that she could not turn and save
herself; the next, strong, cool, and active, she had cautiously felt for
hand and foot hold, and began to climb up again, to find her hand, as
she neared the top, enclosed in a firm clasp, while Guy's voice said--
"Steady; you're all right. Hold on. I can't lift you, but I won't let
you go."
As he spoke, she was safe on the path again, but shaking from head to
foot. He drew her away from the edge of the precipice, and she sat down
on a bit of rock, and hid her face in her hands. She was mentally, as
well as physically, dizzy, and he did not speak to her till she dropped
her hands on her lap, and said, with an odd ring in her voice--
"Well! I was nearly killed!"
"Your nerve saved you. You were nearly safe when I came up, but it was
an awkward place. Remember, you can't be too careful on a mountain."
"Well!" she said again, "I thought I should be killed; I thought of
everything. I thought of the bit in the college magazine about me--
about my being found--and Florella--"
"Yes," said Guy, "one does think, in such moments, of the dearest."
Constancy was silent. A deep crimson blush burned over her face and
neck down to her very finger-tips.
Suddenly she turned, and looked up in his face.
"If I had been killed, there'd have been an end of me to all intents and
purposes. I don't care for anything that _could_ go on. Oh, I don't
mean anything about opinions; but there _couldn't_ be anything
afterwards that's real to _me_. There couldn't be anything that _I_
want."
"You have found that out," said Guy.
"I never thought about God at all," she said abruptly. "He never came
into my head!"
"Well, He has come now," said Guy.
She recognised his tone of conviction. Thoughts, speculations, flashed
into her mind, at last, not as words, but as facts.
"Well," she cried again, "if I didn't believe in Him, I'd have stood to
it, and not been afraid. But I do--I always have--and yet I just forgot
Him--then."
"But not now," said Guy. "I think I ought to take you back," he added;
"you ought to rest, and recover yourself."
"I'll go back," she said, standing up. "But I'm quite well."
She walked on slowly beside him; but presently broke out again.
"You've been very ill, I know. Did you think then that to die, and
leave off everything would be--horrid?"
"No," he answered. "For one thing, when I've been in danger, I've been
too bad to know it. But I do know what it is to face--destruction. And
certainly there is something beyond it."
She turned round to him as they came up to the hotel.
"I'm awfully obliged to you," she said, in girlish speech, but in a
deeply moved voice.
"You'll not tell any one, will you? I want to think about it quietly."
Guy promised, and they came back on to the verandah together.