Cold, cold, ‘tis a chilly clime
That the youth in his journey hath reached;
And he is aweary now,
And faint for lack of food.
Cold! cold! there is no sun in heaven.
Southey.
Very merry was the party which arrived at the roughly-built hotel of
Schwarenbach which serves as a half-way house to the Altels.
Never had expedition been more enjoyed than that of Mrs. Brownlow
and her three boys. They had taken a week by the sea to recruit their
forces, and then began their journey in earnest, since it was too late
for a return to Eton, although so early in the season that to the Swiss
they were like the first swallows of the spring, and they came in for
some of the wondrous glory of the spring flowers, so often missed by
tourists.
In her mountain dress, all state and ceremony cast aside, Caroline rode,
walked, and climbed like the jolly Mother Carey she was, to use her
son’s favourite expression, and the boys, full of health and recovery,
gambolled about her, feeling her companionship the very crown of their
enjoyment.
Johnny, to whom all was more absolutely new than to the others, was the
quietest of the three. He was a year older than Lucas, as Jock was now
called to formal outsiders, while Friar John, a reversal of his cousin’s
two Christian names, was a school title that sometimes passed into
home use. Friar John then had reached an age open to the influences of
beautiful and sublime scenery, and when the younger ones only felt the
exhilaration of mountain air, and longings to get as high as possible,
his soul began to expand, and fresh revelations of glory and majesty to
take possession of him. He was a very different person from the rough,
awkward lad of eight years back. He still had the somewhat loutish
figure which, in his mother’s family, was the shell of fine-looking
men, and he was shy and bashful, but Eton polish had taken away the rude
gruffness, and made his manners and bearing gentlemanly. His face was
honest and intelligent, and he had a thoroughly good, conscientious
disposition; his character stood high, and he was the only Brownlow of
them all who knew the sweets of being “sent up for good.” His aunt could
almost watch expression deepening on his open face, and he was enjoying
with soul and mind even more than with body. Having had the illness
later and more severely than the other two, his strength had not so
fully returned, and he was often glad to rest, admire, and study the
subject with his aunt, to whose service he was specially devoted, while
the other two climbed and explored. For even Armine had been invigorated
with a sudden overflow of animal health and energy, which made him far
more enterprising and less contemplative than he had ever been before.
They four had walked up the mountain after breakfast from Kandersteg,
bringing their bags for a couple of nights, the boys being anxious to go
up the Altels the next day, as their time was nearly over and they were
to be in school in ten days’ time again. After luncheon and a good rest
on the wooden bench outside the door, they began to stroll towards the
Daubensee, along a path between desolate boulders, without vegetation,
except a small kind of monkshood.
“I call this dreary,” said the mother. “We don’t seem to get a bit
nearer the lake. I shall go home and write to Babie.”
“I’ll come back with you,” said Johnny. “My mother will be looking for a
letter.”
“Not giving in already, Johnny,” said Armine. “I can tell you I mean to
get to the lake.”
“The Friar is the slave of his note-book,” said Jock. “When are we to
have it--‘Crags and Cousins,’ or ‘From Measles to Mountains’?”
“I don’t want to forget everything,” said Johnny, with true Kencroft
doggedness.
“Do you expect ever to look at that precious diurnal again?”
“He will leave it as an heirloom to his grandchildren!”
“And they will say how slow people were in the nineteenth century.”
“There will have been a reaction by that time, and they will only wonder
how anybody cared to go up into such dreary places.”
“Or perhaps they will have stripped them all, and eaten the glaciers up
as ices and ice-creams!”
“I think I’ll set up that as my pet anxiety,” said their mother,
laughing; “just as some people suffer from perplexity as to what is to
become of the world when all the coal is used up! You are not turning on
my account, are you, Johnny? I am quite happy to go back alone.”
“No, indeed. I want to write my letter, and I have had enough,” said
John.
“Tired!” said Armine. “Poor old monk! Swiss air always makes me feel
like a balloon full of gas. I could go on, up and up, for ever!”
“Well, keep to the path, and don’t do anything imprudent,” she said,
turning back, the boys saying, “We’ll only have a look down the pass!
Here, Chico! Chico! Chick! Chick!”
Chico, the little dog so disdainfully rejected by Elvira, had attached
himself from the first to Jock. He had been in the London house when
they spent a day there, and in rapture at the meeting had smuggled
himself, not without his master’s connivance, among the rugs and
wrappers, and had already been the cause of numerous scrapes with
officials and travellers, whence sometimes money, sometimes politeness,
sometimes audacity, bought off his friends as best they could.
There was a sort of grave fascination in the exceeding sternness of
the scene--the grey heaps of stone, the mountains raising their shining
white summits against the blue, the dark, fathomless, lifeless lake, and
the utter absence of all forms of life. Armine’s spirit fell under
the spell, and he moved dreamily on, hardly attending to Jock, who was
running on with Chico, and alarming him by feints of catching him and
throwing him into the water.
They came to the gap where they expected to look over the pass, but
it was blotted out by a mist, not in itself visible though hiding
everything, and they were turning to go home when, in the ravine near
at hand, the white ruggedness of the Wildstrube glacier gleamed on their
eyes.
“I didn’t know it was so near,” said Jock. “Come and have a look at it.”
“Not on it,” said Armine, who had somewhat more Swiss experience than
his brother. “There’s no going there without a guide.”
“There’s no reason we should not get on the moraine,” said Jock; and
they presently began to scramble about among the rocks and boulders,
trying to mount some larger one whence they might get a more general
view of the form of the glacier. Chico ran on before them, stimulated
by some reminiscence of the rabbit-holes of Belforest, and they were
looking after him and whistling him back; Armine heard a sudden cry and
fall--Jock had disappeared. “Never mind!” he called up the next instant.
“I’m all right. Only, come down here! I’ve twisted my foot somehow.”
Armine scrambled round the rock over which he had fallen, a loose stone
having turned with him. He had pulled himself up, but even with an arm
round Armine’s neck, he could not have walked a step on even ground,
far less on these rough debris, which were painful walking even for the
lightest, most springy tread.
“You must get to the inn and bring help,” he said, sinking down with a
sigh.
“I suppose there’s nothing else to be done,” said Armine, unwillingly.
“You’ll have a terrible time to wait, unless I meet some one first. I’ll
be as quick as I can.”
“Not too quick till you get off this place,” said Jock, “or you’ll be
down too, and here, help me off with this boot first.”
This was not done quickly or easily. Jock was almost sick with the pain
of the effort, and the bruise looked serious. Armine tried to make him
comfortable, and set out, as he thought, in the right direction, but he
had hardly gone twenty steps before he came to a sudden standstill with
an emphatic “I say!” then came back repeating “I say, Jock, we are close
upon the glacier; I was as near as possible going down into an awful
blue crack!”
“That’s why it’s getting so cold,” said Jock. “Here, Chick, come and
warm me. Well, Armie, why ain’t you off?”
“Yes,” said Armine, with a quiver in his voice, “if I keep down by the
side of the glacier, I suppose I must come to the Daubensee in time.”
“What! Have we lost the way?” said Jock, beginning to look alarmed.
“There’s no doubt of that,” said Armine, “and what’s worse, that fog
is coming up; but I’ve got my little compass here, and if I keep to the
south-west, and down, I must strike the lake somewhere. Goodbye, Jock.”
He looked white and braced up for the effort. Jock caught hold of him.
“Don’t leave me, Armie,” he said; “you can’t--you’ll fall into one of
those crevasses.”
“You’d better let me go before the fog gets worse,” said Armine.
“I say you can’t; it’s not fit for a little chap like you. If you fell
it would be ever so much worse for us both.”
“I know! But it is the less risk,” said Armine, gravely.
“I tell you, Armie, I can’t have you go. Mother will send out for us,
and we can make no end of a row together. There’s a much better chance
that way than alone. Don’t go, I say--”
“I was only looking out beyond the rock. I don’t think it would be
possible to get on now. I can’t see even the ridge of stones we climbed
over.”
“I wish it was I,” said Jock, “I’ll be bound I could manage it!” Then
impatiently--“Something must be done, you know, Armie. We can’t stay
here all night.”
Yet when Armine went a step or two to see whether there was any
practicability of moving, he instantly called out against his attempting
to go away. He was in a good deal of pain, and high-spirited boy as
he was, was thoroughly unnerved and appalled, and much less able to
consider than the usually quieter and more timid Armine. Suddenly
there was a frightful thunderous roar and crash, and with a cry of “An
avalanche,” the brothers clasped one another fast and shut their eyes,
but ere the words “Have mercy” were uttered all was still again, and
they found themselves alive!
“I don’t think it was an avalanche,” said Armine, recovering first. “It
was most likely to be a great mass of ice tumbling off the arch at the
bottom of the glacier. They do make a most awful row. I’ve heard one
before, only not so near. Anyway we can’t be far from the bottom of the
glacier, if I only could crawl there.”
“No, no;” cried Jock, holding him tight; “I tell you, you can’t do it.”
Jock could not have defined whether he was most actuated by fears
for his brother’s safety or by actual terror at being left alone and
helpless. At any rate Armine much preferred remaining, in all the
certain misery and danger, to losing sight of his brother, with the
great probability of only being further lost himself.
“I wonder whether Chico would find mother,” he said.
Jock brightened; Armine found an envelope in his pocket, and scribbled--
“On the moraine. Jock’s ankle sprained--Come.”
Then Jock produced a bit of string, wherewith it was fastened to the
dog’s collar, and then authoritatively bade Chico go to mother.
Alas! cleverness had never been Chico’s strong point, and the present
extremity did not inspire him with sagacity. He knew the way as little
as his masters did, and would only dance about in an unmeaning way, and
when ordered home crouch in abject entreaty. Jock grew impatient and
threatened him, but this only made him creep behind Armine, put his tail
between his legs, hold up his little paw, and look piteously imploring.
“There’s no use in the little brute,” sighed Jock at last, but the
attempt had done him good and recalled his nerve and good sense.
“We are in for a night of it,” he said, “unless they find us; and how
are they ever to do that in this beastly fog?”
“We must halloo,” said Armine, attempting it.
“Yes, and we don’t know when to begin! We can’t go on all night, you
know,” said Jock; “and if we begin too soon, we may have no voice left
just at the right time.”
“It is half-past seven now,” said Armine, looking at his watch. “The
food was to be at seven, so they must have missed us by this time.”
“They won’t think anything of it till it gets dark.”
“No. Give them till half-past eight. Somewhere about nine or half-past
it may be worth while to yodel.”
“And how awfully cold it will be by that time. And my foot is aching
like fun!”
Armine offered to rub it, and there was some occupation in this and in
watching the darkening of the evening, which was very gradual in the
dense white fog that shut them in with a damp, cold, moist curtain of
undeveloped snow.
The poor lads were thinly clad for a summer walk, Jock had left his
plaid behind him, and they were beginning to feel only too vividly that
it was past supper-time, when they could dimly see that it was
past nine, and began to shout, but they soon found this severe and
exhausting.
Armine suggested counting ten between each cry, which would husband
their powers and give them time to listen for an answer. Yet even
thus there was an empty, feeble sound about their cries, so that Jock
observed--
“It’s very odd that when there’s no good in making a row, one can make
it fast enough, and now when it would be of some use, one seems to have
no more voice than a little sick mouse.”
“Not so much, I think,” said Armine. “It is hunger partly.”
“Hark! That sounded like something.”
Invigorated by hope they shouted again, but though several times they
did hear a distant yodel, the hope that it was in answer to themselves
soon faded, as the sound became more distant, and their own exertions
ended soon in an utter breakdown--into a hoarse squeak on Jock’s part
and a weak, hungry cry on Armine’s. Jock’s face was covered with tears,
as much from the strain as from despair.
“There!” he sighed, “there’s our last chance gone! We are in for a night
of it.”
“It can’t be a very long night,” Armine said, through chattering teeth.
“It’s only a week to the longest day.”
“Much that will matter to us,” said Jock, impatiently. “We shall be
frozen long before morning.”
“We must keep ourselves awake.”
“You little ass,” said poor Jock, in the petulant inconsistency of his
distress; “it is not come to that yet.”
Armine did not answer at once. He was kneeling against the rock, and a
strange thrill came over Jock, forbidding him again to say--“It was not
come to that,” but a shoot of aching pain in his ankle presently drew
forth an exclamation.
Armine again offered to rub it for him, and the two arranged themselves
for this purpose, the curtain of damp woolliness seeming to thicken on
them. There was a moon somewhere, and the darkness was not total, but
the dreariness and isolation were the more felt from the absence of all
outlines being manifest. They even lost sight of their own hands if they
stretched out their arms, and their light summer garments were already
saturated with damp and would soon freeze. No part of their bodies was
free from that deadly chill save where they could press against one
another.
They were brave boys. Jock had collected himself again, and for some
time they kept up a show of mirth in the shakings and buffetings they
bestowed on one another, but they began to grow too stiff and spent to
pursue this discipline. Armine thought that the night must be nearly
over, and Jock tried to see his watch, but decided that he could not,
because he could not bear to believe how far it was from day.
Armine was drowsily rubbing the ankle, mechanically murmuring something
to himself. Jock shook him, saying--
“Take care, don’t doze off. What are you mumbling about leisure?”
“O tarry thou the Lord’s leisure. Be strong and--Was I saying it aloud?”
he broke off with a start.
“Yes; go on.”
Armine finished the verse, and Jock commented--
“Comfort thine heart. Does the little chap mean it in a fix like this?”
“Jock,” said Armine, now fully awake, “I do want to say something.”
“Cut on.”
“If you get out of this and I don’t--”
“Stop that! We’ve got heat enough to last till morning.”
“Will they find us then? These fogs last for days and turn to snow.”
“Don’t croak, I say. I can’t face mother without you.”
“She’ll be glad enough to get you. Please listen, Jock, while I’m awake.
I want you to give her and all of them my love, and say I’m sorry for
all the times I’ve vexed them.”
“As if you had ever--”
“And please Jock, if I was nasty and conceited about the champagne--”
“Shut up, I can’t stand this,” cried Jock, chiefly from force of habit,
for it was a tacit agreement among the elder brothers that Armine
must not be suffered to “be cocky and humbug,” by which they meant
no implication on his sincerity, but that they did not choose to hear
remonstrances or appeals to higher motives, and this had made him very
reticent with all except his sister Barbara and Miss Ogilvie, but he now
persisted.
“Indeed I want you to forgive me, Jock. You don’t know how often I’ve
thought all sorts of horridness about you.”
Jock laughed, “Not more than I deserved, I’ll be bound. How can you be
so absurd! If anyone wants forgiveness, it is I. I say, Armie, this is
all nonsense. You don’t really think you are done for, or you would not
take it so coolly.”
“Of course I know Who can bring us through if He will,” said
Armine. “There’s the Rock. I’ve been asking Him all this time--every
moment--only I get so sleepy.”
“If He will; but if He won’t?”
“Then there’s Paradise. And Himself and father,” said Armine, still in a
dreamy tone.
“Oh, yes; that’s for you! But how about a mad fellow like me? It’s so
sneaking just to take to one’s prayers because one’s in a bad case.”
“Oh, Jock! He is always ready to hear! More ready than we to pray!”
“Now don’t begin to improve the occasion,” broke out Jock. “By all the
stories that ever were written, I’m the one to come to a bad end, not
you.”
“Don’t,” said Armine, with an accent of pain that made Jock cry, hugging
him tighter. “There, never mind, Armie; I’ll let you say all you like.
I don’t know what made me stop you, except that I’m a beast, and always
have been one. I’d give anything not to have gone on playing the fool
all my life, so as to be able to mind this as little as you do.”
“I don’t seem awake enough to mind anything much,” said the little boy,
“or I should trouble more about Mother and Babie; but somehow I can’t.”
“Oh!” wailed Jock, “you must! You must get out of it, Armie. Come
closer. Shove in between me and the rock. Here, Chico, lie down on the
top of us! Mother must have you back any way, Armie.”
The little fellow was half-dozing, but words of prayer and faith kept
dropping from his tongue. Pain, and a stronger vitality alike, kept
Jock free from the torpor, and he used his utmost efforts to rouse
his brother; but every now and then a horrible conviction of the
hopelessness of their condition came over him.
“Oh!” he groaned out, “how is it to be if this is the end of it? What is
to become of a fellow that has been like me?”
Armine only spoke one word; the Name that is above every name.
“Yes, you always cared! But I never cared for anything but fun! Never
went to Communion at Easter. It is too late.”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Armine, rousing up, “not too late! Never! You are
His! You belong to Him! He cares for you!”
“If He does, it makes it all the worse. I never heeded; I thought it all
a bore. I never let myself think what it all meant. I’ve thrown it all
away.”
“Oh! I wish I wasn’t so stupid,” cried Armine, with a violent effort
against his exhaustion. “Mother loves us, however horrid we are! He is
like that; only let us tell Him all the bad we’ve done, and ask Him to
blot it out. I’ve been trying--trying--only I’m so dull; and let us
give ourselves more and more out and out to Him, whether it is here or
there.”
“That I must,” said Jock; “it would be shabby and sneaking not.”
“Oh, Jock,” cried Armine, joyfully, “then it will all be right any
way;” and he raised his face and kissed his brother. “You promise, Jock.
Please promise.”
“Promise what? That if He will save us out of this, I’ll take a new
line, and be as good as I know how, and--”
Armine took the word, whether consciously or not: “And manfully to fight
under His banner, and continue Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants
unto our lives’ end. Amen!”
“Amen,” Jock said, after him.
After that, Jock found that the child was repeating the Creed, and said
it after him, the meanings thrilling through him as they had never done
before. Next followed lines of “Rock of Ages,” and for some time longer
there was a drowsy murmur of sacred words, but there was no eliciting a
direct reply any more; and with dull consternation, Jock knew that the
fatal torpor could no longer be broken, and was almost irritated that
all the words he caught were such happy, peaceful ones. The very last
were, “Inside angels’ wings, all white down.”
The child seemed almost comfortable--certainly not suffering like
himself, bruised and strained, with sharp twinges rending his damaged
foot; his limbs cramped, and sensible of the acute misery of the cold,
and the full horror of their position; but as long as he could shake
even an unconscious murmur from his brother, it seemed like happiness
compared with the utter desolation after the last whisper had died away,
and he was left intolerably alone under the solid impenetrable shroud
that enveloped him, and the senseless form he held on his breast. And if
he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds
of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of
wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker
shades of a self-indulgent and audacious school-boy life!
It was a little lighter, as if dawn might be coming, but the cold was
bitterer, and benumbing more than paining him. His clothes were stiff,
his eyelashes white with frost, he did not feel equal to looking at his
watch, he _would_ not see Armine’s face, he found the fog depositing
itself in snow, but he heeded it no longer. Fear and hope had alike
faded out of his mind, his ankle seemed to belong to some one else far
away, he had left off wishing to see his mother, he wanted nothing but
to be let alone!
He did not hear when Chico, finding no comfort, no sign of life in his
masters, stood upon them as they lay clasped together in the drift of
fine small snow, and in the climax of misery he lifted up the long and
wretched wailing howlings of utter dog-wretchedness.