given scarcely a thought to Lynde's dismal suspicions. Once or twice
they had come into Flemming's mind, but he had promptly dismissed them.
The girl's inquiry concerning a locality in New Hampshire suddenly
recalled them, and recalled the motive with which Lynde had planned the
dinner. Flemming flushed with vexation to think he had lent himself to
the arrangement.
"I have spent parts of two summers at the Isles of Shoals," he said.
"Then you must have observed the singular changes that seem to take
place on the mainland, seen from Appledore. The mirage on the Rye and
Newcastle coasts--is it Newcastle?--sometimes does wonderful things.
Frequently you see great cities stretching along the beach, some of the
houses rising out of the water, as in Venice, only they are gloomy,
foggy cities, like London, and not like Venice. Another time you see
ships sailing by upside down; then it is a chain of hills, with peaks
and projections that melt away under your eyes, leaving only the flat
coast-line."
Flemming had seen all this, and seemed again to see it through the
clear medium of the young girl's words. He had witnessed similar
optical illusions in the deserts, also, which he described to her. Then
he remembered a curious trick of refracted light he had once seen in
the sunrise on Mount Washington, and suddenly he found himself asking
Miss Denham if she were acquainted with the interior of New Hampshire.
Flemming had put the interrogation without a shadow of design; he could
have bitten his tongue off an instant after.
Lynde, who had been discussing with Mrs. Denham the details of the next
day's journey, looked up quickly and sent Flemming a rapid scowl.
"I have never been inland," was Miss Denham's answer. "My acquaintance
with New Hampshire is limited to the Shoals and the beaches at Rye and
Hampton. In visiting the Alps first I have, I know, been very impolite
to the mountains and hills of my own land."
"Ruth, dear, Mr. Lynde and I have been speaking of the conveyance for
to-morrow; shall it be an open or a close carriage?"
"An open carriage, by all means, aunt."
"That would have its inconvenience in case of showers," said Lynde;
"when April takes her departure from the Alps, she is said to leave all
her capriciousness behind her. I suggest a partially closed vehicle;
you will find a covering comfortable in either rain or shine."
"Mr. Lynde thinks of everything," remarked Mrs. Denham. "He should not
allow himself to be dictated to by unforeseeing woman."
"In strict confidence, Mrs. Denham, I will confess that I have
arbitrarily taken this business in hand. For nearly a week, now, I have
had my eye on a vehicle that must have been built expressly for us; it
is driven by a tall, distinguished person, frosty of mustache and
affable of manner--evidently a French marquis in disguise."
"What an adroit fellow Ned is!" Flemming said to himself. "I wonder
that with all his cleverness he could have got such a foolish notion
into his head about this girl."
"We must have the French marquis at any cost," said Miss Denham.
"The truth is," remarked Lynde, "I have secured him."
"We are to start at eight, Ruth."
"Which means breakfast at seven. Is Mr. Lynde equal to a feat like
that, aunt?"
"As I intend to have watchers and sit up all night," said Lynde, "I
think I can promise to be on hand."
This matter decided, the conversation, which had been carried on mostly
in duets, became general. Flemming soon recovered from the remorse of
his inadvertent question, or rather from his annoyance at the thought
that possibly it had struck Lynde as having an ulterior motive.
As to Lynde, he was in the highest humor. Miss Denham had been
thoroughly charming to his friend, with her serious and candid
manner--a manner as far removed from reserve as from the thin vivacity
of the average young woman of the period. Her rare smile had been finer
than another's laugh. Flemming himself went as near to falling in love
with her and the aunt as his loyalty to Lynde and the supposed
existence of a Mr. Denham permitted.
After a while the window curtains were drawn, though it was scarcely
dusk without, and candles brought; then the ices were served, and then
the coffee; and then the clock on the mantelpiece, as if it took
malicious satisfaction in the fleetness with which Time (wreathed in
flowers) slips away from mortals, set up a silvery chime--it sounded
like the angelus rung from some cathedral in the distance--to tell
Flemming that his hour was come. He had still to return to the hotel to
change his dress-suit before taking the train. Mrs. Denham insisted on
Lynde accompanying his friend to the station, though Flemming had
begged that he might be allowed to withdraw without disturbing the
party, and even without saying farewell. "I don't recognize good-bys,"
said he; "there are too many sorrowful partings in the world already. I
never give them the slightest encouragement." But the ladies persisted
in considering the dinner at an end; then the two friends conducted the
Denhams to the door of their own parlor and there took leave of them.
"Well?" said Lynde as he seated himself beside Flemming in the
carriage. "What do you think of her?"
"An unusually agreeable woman," returned Flemming carelessly. "She is
thirty-eight, she looks twenty-six, and is as pleasant as nineteen."
"I mean Miss Denham!"
"Ned, I don't care to discuss Miss Denham. When I think of your
connecting that lovely lady with a crazy creature you met somewhere or
other, I am troubled touching your intellect."
"But I do not any longer connect her with that unfortunate girl. I told
you to put all that out of your mind."
"I don't find it easy to do, Ned; it is so monstrous. Was not this
dinner an arrangement for me to see Miss Denham and in some way judge
her?"
"No, Flemming; there was a moment yesterday evening when I had some
such wild idea. I had grown morbid by being alone all day and brooding
over a resemblance which I have not been able to prevent affecting me
disagreeably at intervals. This resemblance does not exist for you, and
you have not been subtile enough to put yourself in my place. However,
all that is past; it shall not disturb me in future. When I invited the
Denhams to this dinner it was solely that I might present you to the
woman I shall marry if she will have me."
"She is too good for you, Ned."
"I know it. That's one thing makes me love her. I admire superior
people; it is my single merit. I wouldn't stoop to marry my equal.
Flemming, what possessed you to question her about New Hampshire?"
"We were speaking of the White Hills, and the question asked itself. I
wasn't thinking of your puerilities; don't imagine it. I hope her reply
settled you. What are you going to do now?"
"I shall go with them to Chamouni."
"And afterwards?"
"My plan is to wait there until the uncle comes."
"That would be an excellent plan if you wanted to marry the uncle. If I
were you, Ned, I would go and speak with Miss Denham, and then with the
aunt, who will be worth a dozen uncles if you enlist her on your side.
She doesn't seem unfriendly to you."
"I will do that, Flemming," returned Lynde thoughtfully. "I am not sure
that Miss Denham would marry me. We are disposing of her as if she
could be had for the asking. I might lose everything by being
premature."
"Premature! I've a mind to stay over and fall in love with her myself.
I could do it in a day and a half, and you have been six weeks about
it."
"Six weeks! I sometimes think I have loved her all my life," said Lynde.
From the Schweizerhof the young men drove without speaking to the
railroad station, which they reached just in time for Flemming to catch
his train. With hurriedly exchanged promises to write each other, the
two parted on the platform. Then Lynde in a serenely happy frame of
mind caused himself to be driven to the Rue des Paquis, where he
stopped at the chateau of the French marquis, which looked remarkably
like a livery-stable, and arranged for a certain travelling-carriage to
be at the door of the hotel the next morning at eight.
VIII
FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI
If there is in all the world as lovely a day's ride as that from Geneva
to Chamouni, it must be the ride from Chamouni to Geneva. Lynde would
not have made even this concession the next morning, as a heavy-wheeled
carriage, containing three travellers and drawn by four stout Savoy
horses, rolled through the Grande Place, and, amid a salvo of whip-lash
and a cloud of dust, took the road to Bonneville.
"I did not think I cared very much for Geneva," said Miss Denham,
leaning from the carriage side to look back at the little Swiss capital
set so prettily on the blue edge of Lake Leman; "I did not think I
cared for it at all; yet I leave it with a kind of home-leaving regret."
"That is because you found complete repose there, I imagine," said
Lynde. "Geneva is blessed among foreign cities in having no rich
picture-galleries, or famous cathedrals, or mouldy ruins covered all
over with moss and history. In other places, you know, one is
distracted by the things which it is one's imperative duty to see, and
by the feeling that a lifetime is too short properly to see them.
Coming from the great Italian cities to Geneva is like falling asleep
after some prolonged mental strain. I do not object to waking up and
leaving it, however. I should not mind leaving Eden, in pleasant
company, on such a morning as this."
"The company, and I dare say the morning, are not insensible to your
handsome compliment, Mr. Lynde."
The morning was without flaw, and the company, or at least that part of
it represented by Miss Ruth Denham, had more color in its cheeks than
usual, and its dark eyes looked very dark and melting under their long
fringes. Mrs. Denham was also of a high complexion, but, having a
practical turn of mind, she was wondering whether the trunks, which
rose like a monument from the footboard of the vehicle, were quite
secure. It was a lumbering, comfortable concern, with red and black
wheels, and a maroon body set upon complicated springs. The back seat,
occupied by the Denhams, was protected by a leather hood, leaving the
forward portion of the carriage open. The other seat was amicably
shared between Lynde and a pile of waterproofs and woollen wraps,
essentials in Switzerland, but which the ladies doubtless would have
provided themselves if they had been in the tropics. On the high box in
front sat the driver, speaking from time to time in low, confidential
tones to the four powerful black horses, whose harnesses were lavishly
hung with flaunting chamois-tails and made merry with innumerable
silver bells.
For the last two weeks Lynde had been impatiently looking forward to
this journey. The thought of having an entire day with Miss Denham, on
such terms of intimacy as tacitly establish themselves between persons
travelling together in the same carriage, had softened the prospect of
the final parting at Chamouni; though now he did not intend they should
separate there, unless she cruelly willed it. The nature of Miss
Denham's regard for him Lynde had not fathomed. She had been frank and
friendly with him, as she might have been with a cousin or a person
much older than herself. As he told Flemming, he had never had her a
minute alone. The aunt had always accompanied them on their brief walks
and excursions about Geneva; whenever she had been unable to do so, the
excursion or the walk had been abandoned. Lynde saw, among other
gracious things in this day's ride, a promising opportunity for a
tete-a-tete with Miss Denham. Here and there, along the winding
ascents, would be tempting foot-paths, short pine--shaded cuts across
the rocks, by which the carriage could be intercepted farther on. These
five or ten minutes' walks, always made enchanting by some unlooked-for
grove, or grotto, or cascade, were nearly certain to lure Miss Ruth to
her feet. Then he would have her to himself, for Mrs. Denham seldom
walked when she could avoid it. To make assurance doubly sure Lynde
could almost have wished her one of those distracting headaches from
which hitherto he had suffered so keenly.
For the first few miles the road lay through a succession of villas and
cultivated gardens; indeed, these gardens and villas extend all the way
to Chene, where a thin ribbon of a stream, the Foron, draws the
boundary line between the canton of Geneva and Savoy. At this point the
scenery begins, not too aggressively, to be picturesque; you catch some
neat views of the Voirons, and of the range of the Jura lying on your
right. Beyond is the village of Annemasse, and the Chateau of
Etrambiere, with its quartette of towers, rises from the foot of the
Petit-Saleve in the bluish-gray distance. You no longer see Mont Blanc,
except at intervals. Here and there a knot of hamlets clings to some
fir-dotted slope, or tries to hide itself away in the bosom of a
ravine. All these Alpine villages bear the same resemblance to one
another as so many button-moulds of different sizes. Each has its
quaint little church of stucco, surrounded by clusters of gray and
dingy-white head-stones and crosses--like a shepherd standing in the
midst of his flock; each has its bedrabbled main street, with a great
stone trough into which a stream of ice-cold water is forever flowing,
and where comely young women of substantial ankles, with their flaxen
hair braided down their backs, are forever washing linen; each has its
beggar, with a goitre or a wooden leg, lying in wait for you; and each,
in turn, with its purple and green and red tiled roofs, is charming to
approach and delightful to get away from.
After leaving Annemasse, the road runs up the valley of the Arve and
crosses a bridge over the Menoge. Then comes the village of Nangy, and
then Contamines, beyond which, on a bold height, stand the two
wrinkled, crumbling towers of the ancient castle of Faucigny, whence
the province takes its name. It was at Nangy that a pretty incident
befell our travellers. On the outskirts of the village they met fifty
or sixty school-children marching three abreast, the girls on one side
of the road and the boys on the other. The girls--each in a coarse blue
or yellow frock, with a snowy neckerchief pinned over her bosom and a
pig-tail of hair hanging down her shoulders--seemed for all the world
like little old women; and not one of the little men appeared to be
less than a hundred and five years old. They suggested a collection of
Shems and Japhets, with their wives, taken from a lot of toy Noah's
arks. As the carriage rolled between the two files, all the funny
little women bobbed a simultaneous courtesy, and all the little
old-fashioned men lifted their hats with the most irresistible gravity
conceivable. "Fancy such a thing happening in the United States!" said
Lynde. "If we were to meet such a crowd at home, half a dozen urchins
would immediately fasten themselves to the hind axle, and some of the
more playful spirits would probably favor us with a stone or two, or a
snowball, according to the season."
"There comes the curee, now," said Miss Denham. "It is some
Sunday-school fete."
As the curee, a florid, stout person, made an obeisance and passed on,
fanning himself leisurely with his shovel-hat, his simple round face
and white feathery hair put Lynde in mind of the hapless old gentleman
whom he mistook for the country parson that morning so long ago.
Instantly the whole scene rose before Lynde's vision. Perhaps the
character of the landscape through which they were passing helped to
make the recollection very vivid. There was not a cloud in the pale
arch; yonder were the far-reaching peaks with patches of snow on them,
and there stretched the same rugged, forlorn hills, covered with dwarf
bushes and sentinelled with phantom-like pines. An odd expression
drifted across Lynde's countenance.
"What are you smiling at, Mr. Lynde, in that supremely selfish manner?"
inquired Mrs. Denham, looking at him from under her tilted sun-umbrella.
"Was I smiling? It was at those droll little beggars. They bowed and
courtesied in an unconcerned, wooden way, as if they were moved by some
ingenious piece of Swiss clock-work. The stiff old curee, too, had an
air of having been wound up and set a-going. I could almost hear the
creak of his mainspring. I was smiling at that, perhaps, and thinking
how strongly the scenery of some portions of our own country resembles
this part of Switzerland."
"Do you think so? I had not remarked it."
"This is not the least like anything in the Adirondack region, for
example," observed Miss Ruth.
"It may be a mere fancy of mine," returned Lynde. "However, we have
similar geological formations in the mountainous sections of New
England; the same uncompromising Gothic sort of pines; the same wintry
bleakness that leaves its impress even on the midsummer. A body of
water tumbling through a gorge in New Hampshire must be much like a
body of water tumbling through a gorge anywhere else."
"Undoubtedly all mountain scenery has many features in common," Mrs.
Denham said; "but if I were dropped down on the White Hills, softly
from a balloon, let us say, I should know in a second I was not in
Switzerland."
"I should like to put you to the test in one spot I am familiar with,"
said Lynde.
"I should not like to be put to the test just at present," rejoined
Mrs. Denham. "I am very simple in my tastes, and I prefer the Alps."
"Where in New England will you see such a picture as that?" asked Miss
Ruth, pointing to a village which lay in the heart of the valley, shut
in on the right by the jagged limestone rocks of the Brezon and on the
left by the grassy slopes of the Mole.
"Our rural towns lack color and architecture," said Lynde. "They are
mostly collections of square or oblong boxes, painted white. I wish we
had just one village composed exclusively of rosy-tiled houses, with
staircases wantonly running up on the outside, and hooded windows, and
airy balconies hanging out here and there where you don't expect them.
I would almost overlook the total lack of drainage which seems to go
along with these carved eaves and gables, touched in with their blues
and browns and yellows. This must be Bonnevine we are coming to. We
change horses here."
In a few minutes they swept through an avenue of noble trees, and
stopped at the doorstep of an inn alive with passengers by the
diligence just arrived from Sallanches, on its way to Geneva.
Lynde was beginning to feel a trifle out of spirits. The journey thus
far had been very pleasant, but it had not wholly fulfilled his
expectations. The Denhams had occupied themselves with the scenery;
they had not been much inclined to talk; and Lynde had; found no
opportunity to make himself especially agreeable. They had spoken
several times of Flemming, in a vein of eulogy. Lynde loved Flemming;
but Flemming as a topic of conversation possessed no particular
advantage over landscape. Miss Denham had never looked so lovely to
Lynde as she did this day; he was glad to get her again in that closely
fitting drab travelling-dress, laced up to the shapely white throat. A
sense of great comfort had stolen over him the two or three times when
she had sunk back in the carriage cushions and let her eyes dwell upon
him contemplatively for a moment. He was beginning to hate Mrs. Denham,
and he thoroughly loathed Bonneville, where a polyglot crowd of
tourists came flocking into the small waiting-room just as Miss Ruth
was putting up her hair and unconsciously framing for Lynde a
never-to-be-forgotten picture in the little cracked inn-mirror.
Passengers by diligence usually dine at Bonneville, a fact which Lynde
had ascertained when he selected Cluses, nine miles beyond, as the
resting-place for his own party. They were soon on the road again, with
the black horses turned into roan, traversing the level meadow lands
between the Brezon and the Mole. With each mile, now, the landscape
took on new beauty and wildness. The superb mountains--some with cloudy
white turrets, some thrusting out huge snow-powdered prongs, and others
tapering to steely dagger-points--hemmed them in on every side.
Here they came more frequently on those sorrowful roadside cairns,
surmounted by a wooden cross with an obliterated inscription and a
shrivelled wreath, marking the spot where some peasant or mountaineer
had been crushed by a land-slide or smothered in the merciless winter
drift. As the carriage approached Cluses, the road crept along the lips
of precipices and was literally overhung by the dizzy walls of the
Brezon. Crossing the Arve--you are always crossing the Arve or some mad
torrent on your way from Geneva to Chamouni--the travellers entered the
town of Cluses and alighted at one of those small Swiss hotels which
continually astonish by their tidiness and excellence.
In spite of the intermittent breeze wandering down from the regions
above the snow-line, the latter part of the ride had been intensely
hot. The cool, shadowy room, with its table ready laid for dinner near
the latticed window, was a welcome change to the three dusty voyagers
as they were ushered into it by the German landlord, whose round head
thinly thatched with whitey-brown hair gave him the appearance of
having been left out over night in a hoar frost. It was a refreshment
in itself to look at him, so crisp and cool, with that blinding
afternoon glare lying on the heated mountain-slopes.
"I could be contented here a month," said Mrs. Denham, throwing off her
bonnet, and seating herself in the embrasure of the window.
"The marquis allows us only three quarters of an hour," Lynde observed.
"He says we cannot afford to lose much time if we want to reach
Chamouni before sundown."
"Chamouni will wait for us."
"But the sunset won't."
Lynde had a better reason than that for wishing to press on. It was
between there and Magland, or, rather, just beyond Magland, that he
proposed to invite Miss Denham to walk. The wonderful cascade of
Arpenaz, though it could be seen as well from the carriage, was to
serve as pretext. Of course he would be obliged to include Mrs. Denham
in his invitation, and he had sufficient faith in the inconsistency of
woman not to rely too confidently on her declining. "As she never
walks, she'll come along fast enough," was Lynde's grim reflection.
He had by no means resolved on what he should say to Miss Ruth, if he
got her alone. In the ten minutes' walk, which would be almost
equivalent to a first interview, he could not say much. He could tell
her how grieved he was at the thought of the approaching separation,
and tell her in such a manner as would leave her in no great doubt as
to the state of his feelings. But whether he went so far as that was a
problem which he intended to let chance solve for him.
Lynde was standing on the inn steps with his after-dinner cheroot,
meditatively blowing circles of smoke into the air, when the carriage
drove round from the stable and the Denhams appeared in the doorway.
The young woman gave Lynde an ungloved hand as he assisted her to the
seat. The slight pressure of her fingers and the touch of her rings
were possessions which he retained until long after the carriage had
passed that narrow defile near the stalactite cavern in the Balme,
where a couple of tiresome fellows insist on letting off a small cannon
for you, to awaken a very disobliging old Echo who refuses to repeat
anything more than twice. What a magic there is in hands--in some
hands! Lynde could have held Mrs. Denham's hand a fortnight without
getting anything so tangible as that fleeting touch of Miss Ruth's.
"Is the grotto worth seeing?" Mrs. Denham asked, with a speculative
glance up the mountain side.
"It is an hour's hard climb, and scarcely pays," replied Lynde,
appalled by this indication of Alpine enterprise. "I visited it the
first time I came over the road. You get a good look at the peaks of
Mont Douron on the other side of the valley, and that's all; the grotto
itself is not remarkable. But I think it will be worth while to halt a
moment when we come to the fall of Nant d'Arpenaz. That is really
marvellous. It is said to be nearly as fine as the Staubbach."