Fordham's Feud Part 17

Looking out over the somewhat rickety rail the tops of the highest trees seemed a long way beneath. Twelve feet of roadway and the mule persisting in walking near the edge. No wonder the old lady preferred her feet to the saddle.

Mere pigmies they looked, wending their way along the soaring face of the huge cliffs. Now and then the road would dive into a gallery or short tunnel, lighted here and there by a rough loophole--by putting one's head out of which a glance at the unbroken sweep of the cliff above and below conveyed some idea as to the magnitude of the undertaking.

"A marvellous piece of engineering," p.r.o.nounced the General, looking about him critically. "Bless my soul! this bit of road alone is worth coming any distance to see."

Philip and Alma had managed to get on ahead again.

"Oh, look!" cried the latter, excitedly. "Look--look! There's a bunch of edelweiss, I declare!"

He followed her glance. Some twelve feet overhead grew a few mud-coloured blossoms. The rock sloped here, and the plant had found root in a cranny filled up with dust.

"No; don't try it! It's too risky, you may hurt yourself," went on Alma, in a disappointed tone. "We must give them up, I suppose."

But this was not Philip's idea. He went at the steep rock bank as though storming a breach. There was nothing to hold on to; but the impetus of his spring and the height of his stature combined carried him within reach of the edelweiss. Then he slid back amid a cloud of dust and shale, barking his shins excruciatingly, but grasping in his fist four of the mud-coloured blossoms.

"Are you hurt?" cried Alma, her eyes dilating. "You should not have tried it. I told you not to try it."

"Hurt? Not a bit! Here are the edelweiss flowers though." And in the delighted look which came into Alma's eyes as she took them, he felt that he would have been amply rewarded for a dozen similar troubles.

But just then a whimsical a.s.sociation of ideas brought back to his mind the absurd postscript to that letter which had so sorely perturbed him.

"Be sure you send me a big bunch of 'adleweis' from the top of the Matterhorn"; and the recollection jarred horribly as he contrasted the writer of that execrable epistle, and the glorious refined beauty of this girl who stood here alone with him, so appropriately framed in this entrancing scene of Nature's grandeur.

"That is delightful," said Alma, gleefully, as she arranged the blossoms in her dress. "Now I have got some edelweiss at last. When we get to Zinal I shall be the envied of all beholders, except that every one there will have hats full of it, I suppose."

"I don't know about that Fordham says it's getting mighty scarce everywhere. But it's poor looking stuff. As far as I can make out, its beauty, like that of a show bulldog, lies in its ugliness."

"Shall I ever forget this sweet walk!" she said, gazing around as though to photograph upon her mind every detail of the surroundings. "You think me of a gushing disposition. In a minute you will think me of a complaining and discontented one. But just contrast this with a commonplace, and wholly uninteresting c.o.c.kneyfied suburb such as that wherein my delectable lot is cast, and then think of the difference."

"Dearest, you know I don't think you--er--discontented or anything of the sort," he rejoined, fervently. "But--I thought Surbiton was rather a pretty place. The river--and all that--"

"A mere romping ground for 'Arry and 'Arriet to indulge their horseplay.

Philip, I--hate the place. There!"

"Then, darling, why go back to it? or anyhow, only to get ready to leave it as soon as possible," he answered quickly.

"Phil, you are breaking our compact, and I won't answer that question.

No. What I mean is that it is lamentable to think how soon I shall be back in that flat, stale, and unprofitable place. Why this will seem like a different state of existence, looked back upon then--indeed, it is hard to believe that the same world can comprise the two."

The road had now left its rocky windings and here entered the cool shade of feathery pine woods, the latter in no wise unwelcome, for the sun was now high enough to make himself felt. It might be that neither of them were destined to forget that walk in the early morning through an enchanted land. The soaring symmetry of the mighty peaks; the great slopes and the jagged cliffs; the fragrance of the pine needles and moist, moss-covered rocks; the golden network of sunlight through the trees, and the groups of picturesque _chalets_ perched here and there upon the spurs; the sweet and exhilarating air, and the hoa.r.s.e thunder of the torrent far below in its rocky prison--sights and sounds of fairyland all. And to these two wandering side by side there was nothing lacking to complete the spell. It was such a day as might well remain stamped upon their memory--such a day as in the time to come they might often and often recall. But--would it be with joy, or would it be with pain?

Meanwhile, the first half of the journey was over, for the picturesque grouping of _chalets_ cl.u.s.tering around a ma.s.sive church which suddenly came into sight announced that they had reached Vissoye, the most considerable place in the valley. Here a long halt was to be made; and the old people indeed were glad of a rest, for it had grown more than warm. So after breakfast in the cheerful and well-ordered hotel, the General lit his pipe and strolled forth to find a shady corner of the garden where he could smoke and doze, while his wife, spying a convenient couch in the empty _salon_, was soon immersed in the shadowland attained through the medium of "forty winks."

Left to themselves, Alma and Philip strolled out into the village, gazing interestedly upon the quaint architecture and devices which ornamented the great brown _chalets_. Then they wandered into the church--a ma.s.sive parallelogram, with a green ash-tree springing from its belfry. Alma was delighted with the wealth of symbolism and rich colouring displayed alike upon wall and in window, roof and shrine; but Philip voted it crude and tawdry.

"There speaks the true John Bull abroad," she whispered. "As it happens, the very crudeness of it const.i.tutes its artistic merit, for it is thoroughly in keeping. And the heavy gilding of the vine device, creeping around the scarlet ground-colour of those pillars, is anything but tawdry. It is quaint, _bizarre_, if you will, but striking and thoroughly effective. I suppose you want nothing but that desolate grey stone and the frightful wall tablets which give to our English cathedrals the look of so many deserted railway stations."

"Oh, I don't care either way. That sort of thing isn't in my line. But look, Alma, what are they putting up those trestles for? I suppose they are going to bury somebody."

"Where? Oh, very likely," as she perceived a little old man, who, aided by a boy, was beginning to clear a s.p.a.ce in front of the choir steps, with a view to arranging a pile of trestles which they had brought in.

"We may as well go outside now."

They went out on to the terrace-like front of the graveyard, and sat down upon the low wall overhanging the deep green valley, which fell abruptly to the brawling Navigenze beneath. Gazing upon the blue arching heavens, and the emerald slopes sleeping in the golden sunshine, Alma heaved a deep sigh of happy, contented enjoyment.

"Ah, the contrasts of life!" she remarked. "At this moment I am trying to imagine that I am in the same world as that hateful suburb, with its prim villas and stucco gentility--its dull, flat, mediocre pretensions to 'prettiness.' Yes, indeed, life contains some marvellous contrasts."

"Here comes one of them, for instance," said Philip. "This must be the funeral they were getting ready for."

A sound of chanting--full, deep-throated, and melodious--mingled with the subdued crunch of many feet upon the gravelled walk as the head of a procession appeared, wending round the corner of the ma.s.sive building.

First came a little group of surpliced priests and acolytes, preceded by a tall silver crucifix and two burning tapers; then the coffin, borne by four men. Following on behind came a score of mourners--men, women, and children, hard-featured villagers all, but showing something very real, very subdued, in the aspect of their grief.

"_Requiem aeternam dona et, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat et_." The ma.s.sive plain-song chant wailed melodiously forth, swelling upon the sunlit air in a wave of sound. The two seated there had been discussing the contrasts of life. Here was a greater contrast still--the contrast of Death.

"_Exultabunt Domino ossa humiliata_" arose the chant again, as the _cortege_ defiled within the church. And through the open door the spectators could see the flash of the silver cross and the starry glitter of the carried lights moving up the centre above the heads of the mourners.

"So even in this paradise-like spot we are invaded by--death," said Alma, in a subdued voice, as having waited a moment or two they rose to leave. "Still, even death is rendered as bright as the living know how," she went on, with a glance around upon the flower-decked graves between which they were threading their way. "Confess now, you British Philistine, isn't all that more impressive than the black horses and plumes and hea.r.s.es of our inimitable England?"

"I daresay it might be if one understood it," answered Philip, judiciously. "But I say, Alma, it isn't cheerful whatever way you take it!"

Mrs Wyatt was already on her mule as they regained the hotel, and the General, leaning on his alpenstock, stood giving directions--with the aid of Fordham--to the men in charge of the pack mules bearing their luggage.

"Alma, child," he said reprovingly, while Philip had dived indoors to get his knapsack, "you're doing a very foolish thing, walking about all the time instead of resting. You'll be tired to death before you get there."

"No, no I won't, uncle dear!" she answered, with a bright smile. "You forget this isn't--Surbiton. Why I could walk for ever in this air. I feel as fresh now as when we left Sierre this morning."

Certainly she gave no reason to imagine the contrary as they pursued their way in the glowing afternoon--on past little cl.u.s.ters of _chalets_, through pine woods and rocky landslips, crossing by shaky log bridges the rolling, milky torrent, which had roared at such a dizzy depth beneath their road earlier in the day. The snow peaks in front drew nearer and nearer, the bright glow of the setting sun spread in horizontal rays over the now broadening out valley, and there on the outskirts of a straggling village, surrounded by green meadows wherein the peasants were busy tossing their hay crops, stood the hotel--a large oblong house, partly of brick, partly of wood, burnt brown by exposure to the sun, like the residue of the _chalets_ around.

As they arrived the first bell was ringing for _table d'hote_ dinner, and people were dropping in by twos and threes, or in parties, returning from expeditions to adjacent glaciers or elsewhere. Some were armed with ice-axes, and one or two with ropes and guides. Nearly all had red noses and peeled countenances, and this held good of both s.e.xes, more especially of that which is ordinarily termed the fair. But this--at first startling--phenomenon Fordham explained to be neither the result of the cup that cheers and does inebriate nor of any organic disorder of the cuticle, but merely the action of the sun's rays reflected from the surface of the snow or ice with the effect of a burning gla.s.s. Alma made a little grimace.

"I think I shall confine my wanderings to where there's no snow or ice-- and I do so want to go on a glacier--rather than become an object like that," lowering her voice as a tall, angular being of uncertain age-- with a fearfully peeled and roasted countenance, and with her skirts tucked up to show an amount of leg which should have brought her under the ban of the Lord Chamberlain--strode by with a mien and a.s.surance as though she held first mortgage on the whole of the Alps, as Fordham graphically put it.

"You can patrol the glaciers for a week if you only cover your face with a veil," answered the latter. "You may burn a little, but nothing near the horrible extent you would otherwise."

"The house doesn't seem crowded," remarked Philip, when _table d'hote_ was half through. They had secured the end of the long table, and there was a hiatus of several empty chairs between them and their next neighbours. This and the stupendous clatter of knives and forks and tongues, enabled them to talk with no more restraint than a slight lowering of the voice.

"By Jove!" he went on, withdrawing his glance from an attentive scrutiny of the table, "it's a mighty seedy crowd, anyhow. All British, too.

Look at those half-dozen fellows sitting together there. Did any one ever see such an unshaven, collarless squad of bounders?"

The objects of the speaker's somewhat outspoken scorn a.s.suredly did their best to justify it. They answered exactly to his description as to their appearance. Moreover when they spoke it was in the dialect of Edgware Road rather than that of Pall Mall. Two or three gaudily-dressed females of like stamp seemed to belong to them. Beyond were other people in couples or in parties.

"Don't you think you are rather hard on them, Philip?" objected Mrs Wyatt--for by virtue of the General's former acquaintance with his father, and their now fast-growing intimacy with himself, the old people had taken to calling him by his Christian name.

Alma broke into a little laugh.

"Auntie, you remind us of 'the Infliction' at Les Avants. She always used to begin 'Don't you think.'"

"Mrs Wyatt used to sit opposite her," said Phil, slily.