button of her glove with a hair-pin, there was just the faintest
glimmer of humor in the eyes that looked up into the young man's face.
He was being read, and he knew it; his dark intentions in regard to
that waterfall were probably as legible to her as if they had been
printed in great-primer type on his forehead. On two or three occasions
at Geneva she had wrested his unworded thought from him with the same
effortless sorcery. Lynde evaded her look, and studied a spire-like
peak on his left. "I shall have an air of detected villainy now, when I
ask her," he mused. "That's the first shade of coquetry I ever saw in
her. If she accepts my invitation without the aunt, she means either to
flirt with me or give me the chance to speak to her seriously. Which is
it to be, Miss Ruth? I wonder if she is afraid of Mrs. Denham.
Sometimes it seems to me she would be a different girl if it were not
for the presence of the aunt."
By and by, at a bend of the road after passing Magland, the waterfall
became visible in the distance. The cascade of Nant d'Arpenaz is one of
the highest falls in Savoy, and if it is not the most beautiful, one
can still well afford, having seen that, not to see the others. It is
not a large volume of water, except when swollen by rains, as it
happened to be this day, but its plunge from the dizzy brown cliff is
the gracefulest thing in the world. The curiously stratified face of
the precipice is concave, and the water has a fall of several hundred
feet to reach the slope, which, indeed, it seems never to reach; for
before the stream has accomplished half the descent it is broken into
fine spray, and flaunts loosely in the wind like a veil of the most
delicate lace, or, when the sunlight drifts through it, a wondrously
wrought Persian scarf. There it appears to hang, miraculously suspended
in mid-air, while in fact it descends in imperceptible vapors to the
slope, where it re-forms and becomes a furious little torrent that
dashes across the road under a bridge and empties itself into the Arve.
The carriage-road skirts the base of the mountain and offers numberless
fine views of the cascade as you approach or leave it. It was directly
in front of the fall, half a mile distant, though it did not look so
far, that the driver, in obedience to previous instruction from Lynde,
drew up the horses and halted. At that instant the sunshine slanted
across the fall and dashed it with prismatic colors.
"It is almost too exquisite to look at," said Mrs. Denham. "It makes
one doubt one's own eyes."
"I saw it once," Lynde said, "when I thought the effect even finer. I
was induced by some pleasant English tourists to stop over night at
Magland, and we walked up here in the moonrise. You can't imagine
anything so lovely as that long strip of gossamer unfolding itself to
the moonlight. There was an English artist with us, who made a sketch
of the fall; but he said a prettier thing about it than his picture."
"What was that?" inquired Miss Ruth.
"He called it Penelope's web, because it is always being unravelled and
reknitted."
"That artist mistook his profession."
"Folks often do," said Lynde. "I know painters who ought to be poets,
and poets who ought to be bricklayers."
"Why bricklayers?"
"Because I fancy that bricklaying makes as slight drain on the
imagination as almost any pursuit in life. Speaking of poets and
waterfalls, do you remember Byron's daring simile in Manfred? He
compares a certain waterfall at the foot of the Jungfrau to the tail of
the pale horse ridden by Death in the Apocalypse. Mrs. Denham," said
Lynde abruptly, "the marquis tells me there's a delightful short cut,
through the rocks here, which strikes into the road a mile further on."
"Let us take it then," answered Mrs. Denham, settling herself
comfortably in the cushions.
"It is a foot-path," explained Lynde.
"Oh!"
"Our reputation as great American travellers will suffer, Mrs. Denham,
if we fail to do a bit of Switzerland on foot. Rather than have that
happen I would undertake the expedition alone. It would be mere
martyrdom, though, without company." As Lynde turned the handle of the
carriage door and planted his foot on the first step, he ventured a
glance at Miss Ruth, who was sitting there with a face as impenetrable
as that of the Memphian Sphinx.
"Certainly, if our reputation is at stake," exclaimed Mrs. Denham,
rising with alacrity. Lynde could not help his clouded countenance.
"No," she added, slowly sinking back into the seat, "I've no ambition
as an explorer. I really have not."
"And Miss Denham?" said Lynde, drawing a scarcely repressed breath of
relief.
"Oh, Ruth can go if she likes," replied Mrs. Denham, "provided it is
not too far."
"It is hardly an eighth of a mile across," said Lynde. "You will find
us waiting for you at the opposite end of the cut, unless you drive
rapidly. It is more than a mile by the road."
"Do you wish to go, Ruth?"
Miss Denham hesitated an instant, and then answered by rising
impulsively and giving her hand to Lynde. Evidently, her first
intention had been to refuse. In a moment more she was standing beside
him, and the carriage was lazily crawling up the hill with Mrs. Denham
looking back through her glass at the cascade.
A dozen rude steps, partly artificial and partly formed by the strata
of the limestone bank, led from the roadside up to the opening of the
foot-way. For thirty or forty yards the fern-fringed path was too
narrow to admit of two persons walking abreast. Miss Denham, with her
skirts gathered in one hand, went first, picking her way over the small
loose stones rendered slippery by the moss, and Lynde followed on in
silence, hardly able to realize the success of the ruse which had come
so near being a failure. His companion was equally preoccupied. Once
she stopped for Lynde to detach her dress from a grasping twig, and
once to pluck one of those pallid waxen flowers which sometimes
dauntlessly find a footing even among the snowdrifts of the higher
Alps. The air was full of the resinous breath of the pines, whose
boughs, meeting and interlacing overhead, formed an arabesqued roof,
through the openings of which the afternoon sunshine sifted, as if
through stained glass. With the slender stems of the trees rising on
each side in the semi-twilight, the grove was like the transept of a
cathedral. It seemed a profanation to speak in such a place. Lynde
could have wandered on forever in contented silence, with that tall,
pliant figure in its severely cut drapery moving before him. As he
watched the pure outline defining itself against the subdued light, he
was reminded of a colored bas-relief he had seen on a certain Egyptian
vase in the Museum at Naples. Presently the path widened, a brook
babbled somewhere ahead among the rocks, and the grove abruptly ended.
As Lynde stepped to Miss Denham's side he heaved a deep, involuntary
sigh.
"What a sigh, Mr. Lynde!" she cried, swiftly turning upon him with a
surprised smile. "It was scarcely complimentary."
"It was not exactly a compliment; it was an unpremeditated monody on
the death of this day, which has flown too soon."
"You are very ready with your monody; it yet lacks three or four hours
of sunset, when one might probably begin to lament. I am enjoying it
all too much to have a regret."
"Do you know, I thought you were not enjoying it--the journey, I mean?
You have not spoken a hundred words since we left Geneva."
"That was a proof of my perfect enjoyment, as you would know if you
knew me better. Fine scenery always affects me like music, and, with
Jessica, 'I am never merry when I hear sweet music.' Besides, Mr.
Lynde, I was forming a plan."
"A plan?"
"A dark conspiracy"--
"Is the spirit of Lucretia Borgia present?"
--"in which you are to be chief conspirator, Mr. Lynde."
"Miss Denham, the person is dead, either by steel or poison; it is all
one to me--I am equally familiar with both methods."
As the girl lifted up her eyes in a half-serious, half-amused way, and
gave him a look in which gentleness and a certain shadow of hauteur
were oddly blended, Lynde started in spite of himself. It was the very
look of the poor little Queen of Sheba.
"With your bowl and dagger and monody," said Miss Denham, breaking into
one of her rare laughs, "you are in full tragedy this afternoon. I am
afraid my innocent plot will seem very tame to you in the face of such
dreadful things."
"I promise beforehand to regard it as the one important matter in the
world. What is it?"
"Nothing more than this: I want you to insist that aunt Gertrude and I
ought to make the ascent of Montanvert and visit the Mer de
Glace--before uncle Denham arrives."
"Why, would he object?"
"I do not think anything would induce him to trust either of us on one
of those narrow mule-paths."
"But everybody goes up Montanvert as a matter of course. The bridle-way
is perfectly safe."
"Uncle Denham once witnessed a painful accident on the
Wetterhorn--indeed, he himself barely escaped death; and any suggestion
of mountain climbing that cannot be done on wheels always meets a
negative from him. I suspect my aunt will not strongly favor the
proposal, but when I make it I shall depend on you to sustain me."
"I shall surely do so, Miss Denham. I have had this same excursion in
my mind all along."
"I was wondering how I should get the chance to ask the favor of you,
when that special Providence, which your friend Mr. Flemming pretends
not to believe in, managed it for me."
"It wasn't I, then, but Providence, that invited you to walk?"
"It looks like it, Mr. Lynde."
"But at first you were disposed to reject the providential aid."
"I hesitated about leaving aunt Gertrude alone."
"If you had refused me, there would have been no end to my
disappointment. This walk, though it is sixty or seventy miles too
short, is the choicest thing in the whole journey."
"Come, Mr. Lynde, that is an improvement on your sigh."
"Does it occur to you that this is the first time we have chanced to be
alone together, in all these weeks?"
"Yes," said Miss Ruth simply, "it is the first time."
"I am a great admirer of Mrs. Denham"--
"I do not see how you can help being; she is charming, and she likes
you."
"But sometimes I have wished that--that Mr. Denham was here."
"Why?" asked Miss Ruth, regarding him full in the face.
"Because then, may be, she would have been less devoted to you."
Miss Denham did not reply for a moment.
"My aunt is very fond of me," she said gravely. "She never likes to
have me absent an hour from her side."
"I can understand that," said Lynde, with an innocent air.
The girl glanced at him quickly, and went on: "She adopted me when I
was only three years old; we have never been separated since. She lived
in Paris all the time I was at school there, though she did not like
Paris as a residence. She would make any sacrifice for me that a mother
would make for a daughter. She has been mother and sister to me. I
cannot overpay her devotion by any unselfishness of mine."
As she spoke, Lynde caught a hateful glimpse of the road through the
stubby pine-trees beyond. It appeared to him only two minutes ago that
he was assisting Miss Denham to mount the stone steps at the other
extremity of the foot-path; and now he was to lose her again. She was
with him alone for perhaps the last time.
"Miss Ruth!" said Lynde, with sudden earnestness in his voice. He had
never before addressed her as Miss Ruth. She raised her eyes furtively
to his face. "Miss Ruth"--
"Oh, there's the carriage, Mr. Lynde!" exclaimed Miss Denham, releasing
the arm she had accepted a few paces back, and hurrying down the path,
which here narrowed again as at the entrance to the grove. "And there
is aunt Gertrude," she added, half turning to Lynde, with a rich bloom
on her cheeks, "looking as distressed as if we had slipped over some
precipice. But we have not, have we, Mr. Lynde?"
"No, we haven't slipped over any precipices," answered Lynde, with a
curt laugh. "I wish we had," he muttered to himself. "She has dragged
me through that grove and over those stones, and, without preventing
me, has not permitted me to breathe the least word of love to her. I
don't know how she did it. That girl's the most consummate coquette I
ever saw. I am a child in her hands. I believe I'm beginning to be
afraid of her."
Miss Ruth was already in the carriage, pinning the Alpine flower to the
corsage of her aunt's dress, when Lynde reached the steps. Mrs.
Denham's features expressed no very deep anxiety that he could
discover. That was clearly a fiction of Miss Ruth's. Lynde resumed his
place on the front seat, and the horses started forward. He was amused
and vexed at the inconsequence of his interview with Miss Denham, and
did not know whether to be wholly vexed or wholly amused. He had, at
least, broken the ice, and it would be easier for him to speak when
another opportunity offered. She had understood, and had not repulsed
him; she had merely evaded him. Perhaps he had been guilty of a mismove
in attempting to take her at a disadvantage. He was too discreet to
dream of proposing any more walks. A short cut was plainly not the most
direct way to reach Miss Denham.
She was in livelier spirits now than she had been in at any time during
the day. "The exercise has done you good, Ruth," remarked Mrs. Denham;
"I am sorry I did not accept Mr. Lynde's invitation myself." Mr. Lynde
was also politely sorry, and Miss Ruth contributed her regrets with an
emphasis that struck Lynde as malicious and overdone.
Shortly before arriving at St. Martin, Miss Ruth broached her
Montanvert project, which, as she had prophesied, was coldly received
by the aunt. Lynde hastened to assure Mrs. Denham that the ascent was
neither dangerous nor difficult. Even guides were not necessary, though
it was convenient to have them to lead the animals. On the way up there
were excellent views of the Flegere and the Brevent. There was a
capital inn at the summit, where they could lunch, and from the cliff
behind the inn one could look directly down on the Mer de Glace. Then
Lynde fell back upon his Murray and Baedeker. It was here that
Professor Tyndall spent many weeks, at different times, investigating
the theory of glacier motion; and the Englishman's hut, which Goethe
mentions in his visit to the scene in 1779, was still standing. Miss
Ruth begged with both eyes; the aunt wavered, and finally yielded. As a
continuance of fine weather could not be depended on, it was agreed
that they should undertake the ascent the following morning immediately
after daybreak. Then the conversation drooped.
The magnificent scenery through which their route now wound began to
absorb them. Here they crossed a bridge, spanning a purple chasm whose
snake-like thread of water could be heard hissing among the sharp
flints a hundred feet below; now they rattled through the street of a
sleepy village that seemed to have no reason for being except its
picturesqueness; now they were creeping up a tortuous steep gloomed by
menacing crags; and now their way lingered for miles along a precipice,
over the edge of which they could see the spear-like tips of the tall
pines reaching up from the valley.
At the bridge between St. Martin and Sallanches the dazzling silver
peaks of Mont Blanc, rising above the green pasturage of the Forclaz,
abruptly revealed themselves to the travellers, who fancied for the
moment that they were close upon the mountain. It was twelve miles away
in a bee-line. From this point one never loses sight of those vast
cones and tapering aiguilles. A bloom as delicate as that of the
ungathered peach was gradually settling on all the fairy heights.
As the travellers drew nearer to the termination of their journey, they
were less and less inclined to converse. At every turn of the sinuous
road fresh splendors broke upon them. By slow degrees the glaciers
became visible: first those of Gria and Taconay; then the Glacier des
Boissons, thrusting a crook of steel-blue ice far into the valley; and
then--faintly discernible in the distance, and seemingly a hand's
breadth of snow framed by the sombre gorge--the Glacier des Bois, a
frozen estuary of the Mer de Glace.
The twilight was now falling. For the last hour or more the three
inmates of the carriage had scarcely spoken. They had unresistingly
given themselves over to the glamour of the time and place. Along the
ravines and in the lower gorges and chasms the gray dusk was gathering;
high overhead the domes and pinnacles were each instant taking deeper
tinges of rose and violet. It seemed as if a word loudly or carelessly
uttered would break the spell of the alpgluhen. It was all like a
dream, and it was in his quality of spectral figure in a dream that the
driver suddenly turned on the box, and, pointing over his shoulder with
the handle of his whip said--
"Chamouni!"
IX
MONTANVERT
The mist was still lingering in the valleys, though the remote peaks
had been kindled more than an hour by the touch of sunrise. As Lynde
paced up and down the trottoir in front of the Couronne hotel, he drew
out his watch from time to time and glanced expectantly towards the
hotel entrance. In the middle of the street stood a couple of guides,
idly holding the bridles of three mules, two of which were furnished
with side-saddles. It was nearly half an hour past the appointment, and
the Denhams, who had retired at eight o'clock the night before in order
to be fresh for an early start up the mountain, had made no sign. Lynde
himself had set the lark an example that morning by breakfasting by
candle-light. Here were thirty minutes lost. He quickened his pace up
and down in front of the hotel, as if his own rapidity of movement
would possibly exert some occult influence in hastening the loiterers;
but another quarter of an hour dragged on without bringing them.
Lynde was impatiently consulting his watch for the twentieth time when
Miss Denham's troubled face showed itself in the doorway.
"Isn't it too bad, Mr. Lynde? Aunt Gertrude can't go!"
"Can't go!" faltered Lynde.
"She has a headache from yesterday's ride. She got up, and dressed, but
was obliged to lie down again."
"Then that's the end of it, I suppose," said Lynde despondently. He
beckoned to one of the guides.
"I don't know," said Miss Denham, standing in an attitude of
irresolution on the upper step, with her curved eyebrows drawn together
like a couple of blackbirds touching bills. "I don't know what to
do...she insists on our going. I shall never forgive myself for letting
her see that I was disappointed. She added my concern for her illness
to my regret about the excursion, and thought me more disappointed than
I really was. Then she declared she would go in spite of her
headache... unless I went."
The gloom which had overspread Lynde's countenance vanished.
"It is not one of her severest turns," continued Miss Ruth, ceasing to
be a statue on a pedestal and slowly descending the hotel steps with
her waterproof trailing from her left arm, "and she is quite capable of
executing her threat. What shall we do, Mr. Lynde?"
"I think we had better try the mountain--for her sake," answered Lynde.
"We need not attempt the Mer de Glace, you know; that can be left for
another day. The ascent takes only two hours, the descent half an hour
less; we can easily be back in time for lunch."
"Then let us do that."
Lynde selected the more amiable-looking of the two mules with
side-saddles, dismissed one of the guides after a brief consultation,
and helped Miss Denham to mount. In attending to these preliminaries
Lynde had sufficient mastery over himself not to make any indecorous
betrayal of his intense satisfaction at the turn affairs had taken.
Fortune had given her into his hands for five hours! She should listen
this time to what he had to say, though the mountain should fall.
At a signal from Lynde the remaining guide led the way at a brisk pace
through the bustling town. In front of the various hotels were noisy
groups of tourists about to set forth on pilgrimages, some bound for
the neighboring glaciers and cascades, and others preparing for more
distant and more hardy enterprises. It was a perfect Babel of
voices--French, Scotch, German, Italian, and English; with notes of
every sort of patois--above which the strident bass of the mules soared
triumphantly at intervals. There are not many busier spots than
Chamouni at early morning in the height of the season.
Our friends soon left the tumult and confusion behind them, and were
skirting the pleasant meadows outside of the town. Passing by the way
of the English church, they crossed to the opposite bank of the Arve,
and in a few minutes gained the hamlet lying at the foot of Montanvert.
Then the guide took the bridle of Miss Ruth's mule and the ascent
began. The road stretches up the mountain in a succession of zigzags
with sharp turns. Here and there the path is quarried out of the
begrudging solid rock; in places the terrace is several yards wide and
well wooded, but for the most part it is a barren shelf with a shaggy
wall rising abruptly on one hand and a steep slope descending on the
other. Higher up, these slopes become quite respectable precipices. A
dozen turns, which were accomplished in unbroken silence, brought the
party to an altitude of several hundred feet above the level.
"I--I don't know that I wholly like it," said Miss Ruth, holding on to
the pommel of her saddle and looking down into the valley, checkered
with fields and criss-crossed with shining rivulets. "Why do the mules
persist in walking on the very edge?"
"That is a trick they get from carrying panniers. You are supposed to
be a pannier, and the careful animal doesn't want to brush you off
against the rocks. See this creature of mine; he has that hind hoof
slipping over the precipice all the while. But he'll not slip; he's as
sure-footed as a chamois, and has no more taste for tumbling off the
cliff than you have. These mules are wonderfully intelligent. Observe
how cautiously they will put foot on a loose stone, feeling all around
it."
"I wish they were intelligent enough to be led in the middle of the
path," said Miss Ruth, "but I suppose the guide knows."
"You may trust to him; he is a person of varied accomplishments, the
chief of which is he doesn't understand a word of English. So you can
scold, or say anything you like, without the least reserve. I picked
him out for that," added Lynde, with a bland smile. "His comrade was a
linguist."
"If I have anything disagreeable to say," replied Miss Ruth, with
another bland smile, "I shall say it in French."
The guide, who spoke four languages, including English, never changed a
muscle. Lynde, just before starting, had closely examined the two
guides on their lingual acquirements--and retained the wrong man.
"I trust you will have no occasion, Miss Denham, to be anything but
amiable, and that you will begin by granting me a favor. Will you?"
"Cela depend."
"There you go into French! I haven't offended you?"
"Oh, no. What is the favor?--in English."
"That you will let me call you Miss Ruth, instead of Miss Denham."
"I haven't the slightest objection, Mr. Lynde."
"And now I want you"--
"What, another favor?"
"Of course. Who ever heard of one favor?"
"To be sure! What is the second?"
"I want that you should be a little sorry when all this comes to an
end."
"You mean when we leave Chamouni?"
"Yes."
"I shall be sorry then," said Miss Ruth frankly, "but I am not going to
be sorry beforehand."