"And, last of all,
Love, like an Alpine harebell, hung with tears,
By some cold morning glacier."
The Princess.
Violet's fluttered nerves and wearied frame rendered it necessary for
the party of English travellers to stay for a few days at Murrem, and
afterwards it was decided that they should all go down to Grindelwald,
and spend there the remainder of the time which they had set apart for
the Swiss tour. The landlord of the Jungfrau treated them with the
utmost consideration, and amused Kennedy by paying him as much deference
as if he had been Tell or Arnold himself. Leaving in his hands all
endeavours to discover the two scoundrels, who had entirely decamped,
Kennedy gave him one of the guns, while he carried with him the other to
keep as a trophy in his rooms at Camford.
There are few sights more pleasant than that of two families bound
together by the ties of friendship and affection, and living together as
though they were all brothers and sisters of a common home. For long
years afterwards the Homes and the Kennedys looked back on those days at
Grindelwald as among the happiest of their lives, and, indeed, they
glided by like a dream of unbroken pleasure. How is it that there can
be such a thing as ennui, or that people ever can be at a loss what to
do? In the morning they took short excursions to the glaciers or the
roots of the great mountains, and Cyril made adventurous expeditions
with his fishing-rod to the mountain-streams. And at evening they sat
in the long twilight in the balcony of their room, while Eva and Violet
sang them sweet, simple English songs, which rang so softly through the
air, that the crowd of guides and porters which always hang about a
Swiss hotel used to gather in the streets to listen, and the English
visitors collected in the garden to catch the familiar tones. Julian
and Kennedy always gave some hours every day to their books, and Cyril,
though he could be persuaded to do little else, spent some of his
unemployed time on his much-abused holiday task for the ensuing quarter
at Marlby.
And when the candles were lit, the girls would sketch or work, and
Julian or Kennedy would read or translate to them aloud. Sometimes they
spent what Mr Kennedy used to call "an evening with the immortals," and
taking some volume of the poets, would each choose a favourite passage
to read aloud in turn. This was Mr Kennedy's great delight, and he got
quite enthusiastic when the well-remembered lines came back to him with
fresh beauty, borne on the pleasant voices of Eva, Julian, or Cyril,
like an old jewel when new facets are cut on its lustrous surface.
"Stop there; that's an immortal, lad--an immortal," he would say to
Cyril, when the boy seemed to be passing over some flower of poetic
thought without sufficient admiration; and then he would repeat the
passage from memory with such just emphasis, that on these evenings all
felt that they were laying up precious thoughts for happy future hours.
"Now, Mrs Dudley, and you young ladies, we're going to translate you
part of a Greek novel to-night," said Julian.
"A Greek novel!" said Cyril, with a touch of incredulous suspicion.
"Those old creatures didn't write novels, did they?"
"Only the best novel that ever was written, Cyril."
"What's it called?"
"The Odyssey."
"Oh, what a chouse! You don't mean to call that a novel, do you?"
"Well, let the ladies decide."
So he read to them how Ulysses returned in the guise of a beggar, after
twenty years of war and wandering to his own palace-door, and saw the
haughty suitors revelling in his halls; and how, as he reached the door,
Argus, the hunting-dog, now old and neglected, and full of fleas,
recollected him, when all had forgotten him, and fawned upon him, and
licked his hand and died; and how the suitors insulted him, and one of
them threw a foot-stool at him, which by one quick move he avoided, and
said nothing, and another flung a shin-bone at his head, which he caught
in his hand, and said nothing, but only smiled grimly in his heart--ever
so little, a grim, sardonic smile and how the old nurse recognised him
by the scar of the boar's tusk on his leg, but he quickly repressed the
exclamation of wonderment which sprang to her lips; and how he sat,
ragged but princely, by the fire in his hall, and the red light
flickered over him, and he spake to the suitors words of solemn warning;
and how, when Agelaus warned them, a strange foreboding seized their
souls, and they looked at each other with great eyes, and smiled with
alien lips, and burst into quenchless laughter, though their eyes were
filled with tears; and how Ulysses drew his own mighty bow, which not
one of them could use, and how he handled it, and twanged the string
till it sang like a swallow in his ear, and sent the arrow flying with a
whiz through the twelve iron rings of the line of axes; and then,
lastly, how, like to a god, he leapt on his own threshold with a shout,
and gathered his rags about him, and aided by the young Telemachus and
the divine Swineherd, sent hurtling into the band of wine-stained
rioters the swift arrows of inevitable death.
Pleased with the tale, which the girls decided, in spite of Cyril's
veto, to be a genuine novel, they asked for a new Greek romance, and
Julian read to them from Herodotus about the rise and fall of empires,
and "Strange stories of the deaths of kings." One of his stories was
the famous one of Croesus, and the irony of his fate, and the warning
words of Solon, all of which, rendered into quaint rich English, struck
Cyril so much, that, mingling up the tale with reminiscences of
Longfellow's "Blind Bartimeus," he produced, with much modesty at the
breakfast-table next morning, the following very creditable boyish
imitation:--
"Speak Grecia's wisest, thou, 'tis said,
Full deeply in Life's page hast read,
And many a clime hath known my tread;
Tis pantoon olbiotatos?
"The monarch raised his eager eye,
Gazed on the sage exultingly,
And slow came forth the calm reply
Tellos ho Atheenaios.
"Upon his funeral pyre he lay
Crownless, his sceptre passed away,
The shade of Solon seem to say,
oudeis toon zoontoon holbios.
"How little thought that Grecian sage
Those words should live from aye to aye,
Tis pantoon olbiotatos?
Tellos ho Atheenaios,
oudeis toon zoontoon holbios."
[Note. These verses were really written by a boy of fourteen.]
In a manner such as this the summer hours glided happily away. But all
things, happy or mournful, must come to an end, lest we should forget
God in our prosperity, or curse Him in our despair. Too quickly for all
their wishes their last Sunday in Switzerland had come. Most of them
had spent the day in thoughtful retirement or quiet occupations, and
both morning and evening they assembled together in their pleasant
sitting-room for matins and evensong. Their thoughts were full of the
coming separation, and it gave a deep interest to these last services;
for the Homes, unwilling to leave their mother and Frank so long alone
at Ildown, were to start for England on the following day, and the
Kennedys intended to visit Chamounix for two weeks more.
On the Sunday evening they strolled down to the glacier to look once
again, for the last time, into its crevices, and wonder at its fairy
caverns, fringed with icicles, like rows of silver daggers, and ceiled
with translucent sapphire, beneath whose blue fretwork the stray
sunbeams lost their way amid ice-blocks of luminous green, and pillars
of lapis-lazuli and crystal. They sat on a huge boulder of granite,
which some avalanche had torn down, and tumbled from the mountain's
side, and there enjoyed the icy wind which tempered the warm evening
air, as it swept over the leaping waves of the glacier stream.
"What a mixture of terror and beauty these monstrous glaciers are," said
Julian; "crawling down the valleys, and shearing away the solid rocks
before them like gigantic ploughshares."
"Yes," said Eva. "When you look up at the tumbled pinnacles of those
seracs, does it not seem as if Summer had rent in anger with some great
ice-axe the huge enemy whom she could not quite destroy?"
"And see," said Mr Kennedy, "how Nature gets out of these terrible
heaps of shattered ice both use and beauty; and since she must leave
them as the eternal fountains of her rivers, see how she tinges them
with her loveliest blue."
They talked on until it was time to return, but Violet and Kennedy still
lingered, sitting on the vast boulder, under pretence of seeing the
sunset.
"Well, don't get lost again, that's all," said Cyril sagely.
"Oh no, we shall be back very soon," answered Violet, but she felt
instinctively that the "very soon" in time might measure an eternity of
emotion.
Need we say that Kennedy and Violet had, since that night of wild
adventure, loved each other, hour by hour, with deeper affection? He
was young, and brave, and light-hearted, and of a pleasant countenance;
and she was a young, and confiding, and graceful, and lovely girl, and
they were drawn to one another with a love which absorbed all other
thoughts, and overpowered all other considerations; and it was
unspeakable happiness for each to know how lovely were all their acts,
and how dear were all their words in the other's eyes. And now that the
time was come to declare the love in words, and ratify it by a plighted
troth, there was something in the act so solemn as almost to disturb
their dream of a lover's paradise.
They sat silent on the rock until the sun had set behind the peaks of
snow, and their eyes were filled with idle yet delicious tears. Ripples
of luminous sunshine, and banks of primrose-coloured cloud still
lingered on the path which the sun had traversed, and, when even these
began to fade, there stole along the hill crests above them a film of
tender colour, flinging a veil of the softest carnation over their cold
grey rocks, and untrodden fields of perpetual snow.
"Look, Violet, at that rose-colour on the hills; does it not seem as it
rests on those chill ledges, as though Nature had said that her last act
to-day should be a triumph of glory, and her last thought a thought of
love?"
Violet murmured an assent.
"Oh, Violet," he continued, "you know that I love you, and I know that
you love me;--is it not so, Violet?"
He hardly heard the "Yes," which came half like a sigh from her lips.
"Violet, dear Violet, we part to-morrow; let me hear you say `Yes' more
clearly still."
"You know I love you, Edward--did you not save my life?"
"I know you love me," he repeated slowly, "but, oh Violet, I am not
worthy of you--I am not all you think me." There passed over his fair
forehead the expression of humiliation and pain which she had seen there
with wonder once or twice before.
"You are good and noble, Edward," she answered; "I see you to be good
and noble, or I could not love you as I do."
"No," he said, "alas! not good, not noble, Violet--in no wise worthy of
one so pure, and bright, and beautiful as you are." He bent his face
over her hand, and his warm tears fell fast upon it. "But," he
continued, "I will strive to be so hereafter, Violet, for your sweet
sake. Oh, can you take me as I am? Will you make me good and noble,
Violet, as Julian is? Can you let the sunshine of your life fall on the
shadow of mine?"
She did not understand his passion as he raised to her his face, not
bright and laughing as it generally was, but stained with the traces of
many tears; she only knew that he had won her whole heart, and for one
moment she let her hand rest in the curls of the head which he had bent
once more.
"Oh, Violet," he said, looking up again, "I can be anything if you love
me." In an instant the cloud had passed away from his face, and the old
sunshine brightened his blue eyes. For one instant their eyes met with
that lustrous and dewy love-gleam that only lovers know, but during that
instant it seemed as if their souls had flowed together into a common
fount. With a happy look she suffered him to take her hand, and draw
off from her finger a sapphire ring; this he put on his own finger,
while on hers he replaced it by the gold-set ruby, his mother's gift,
which he usually wore.
The crescent moon had risen as they walked home, and they found the rest
of the party seated in the hotel garden, under her soft silver light;
but nobody seemed to be much in a mood for talking, until that little
monkey Cyril, who observed everything, exclaimed--
"Why, Julian, do look; Violet has got Kennedy's ring on, and--well, I
declare if he hasn't got hers."
"Let us all come up-stairs," said Kennedy hastily and then, before them
all, he drew Violet to his side, and said--
"Julian, Violet and I are betrothed to each other."
"As I thought," said Julian with a smile, as a rush of sudden emotion
made his eyes glisten, and he warmly grasped Kennedy's hand.
"And as I hoped, Julian," said Mr Kennedy, as he turned away to wipe
his spectacles, which somehow had grown dim.
The moonlight streamed over them as the two stood there together, young,
happy, hopeful, beautiful, and while Cyril held Kennedy's hand, Eva and
Violet exchanged a sister's kiss.
And Julian looked on with a glow of happiness--happiness that had one
drawback only--a passing shadow of sorrow for the possible feelings of
De Vayne.