Chapter Nineteen.
Mountaineering in General
A week passed away, during which Nita was confined to bed, and the Count waited on her with the most tender solicitude. As their meals were sent to their rooms, it was not necessary for the latter to appear in the salle-à-manger or the salon. He kept himself carefully out of sight, and intelligence of the invalid’s progress was carried to their friends by Susan Quick, who was allowed to remain as sick-nurse, and who rejoiced in filling that office to one so amiable and uncomplaining as Nita.
Of course, Lewis was almost irresistibly tempted to talk with Susan about her charge, but he felt the impropriety of such a proceeding, and refrained. Not so Gillie White. That sapient blue spider, sitting in his wonted chair, resplendent with brass buttons and brazen impudence, availed himself of every opportunity to perform an operation which he styled “pumping;” but Susan, although ready enough to converse freely on things in general, was judicious in regard to things particular. Whatever might have passed in the sick-room, the pumping only brought up such facts as that the Count was a splendid nurse as well as a loving father, and that he and his daughter were tenderly attached to each other.
“Well, Susan,” observed Gillie, with an approving nod, “I’m glad to hear wot you say, for it’s my b’lief that tender attachments is the right sort o’ thing. I’ve got one or two myself.”
“Indeed!” said Susan, “who for, I wonder?”
“W’y, for one,” replied the spider, “I’ve had a wery tender attachment to my mother ever since that blessed time w’en I was attached to her buzzum in the rampagin’ hunger of infancy. Then I’ve got another attachment—not quite so old, but wery strong, oh uncommon powerful—for a young lady named Susan Quick. D’you happen to know her?”
“Oh, Gillie, you’re a sad boy,” said Susan.
“Well, I make a pint never to contradict a ’ooman, believin’ it to be dangerous,” returned Gillie, “but I can’t say that I feel sad. I’m raither jolly than otherwise.”
A summons from the sick-room cut short the conversation.
During the week in question it had rained a good deal, compelling the visitors at Chamouni to pass the time in-doors with books, billiards, draughts, and chess. Towards the end of the week Lewis met the Count and discovered that he was absolutely destitute of funds—did not, in fact possess enough to defray the hotel expenses.
“Mother,” said Lewis, during a private audience in her bed-chamber the same evening, “I want twenty pounds from you.”
“Certainly, my boy; but why do you come to me? You know that Dr Lawrence has charge of and manages my money. How I wish there were no such thing as money, and no need for it!”
Mrs Stoutley finished her remark with her usual languid smile and pathetic sigh, but if her physician, Dr Tough, had been there, he would probably have noted that mountain-air had robbed the smile of half its languor, and the sigh of nearly all its pathos. There was something like seriousness, too, in the good lady’s eye. She had been impressed more than she chose to admit by the sudden death of Le Croix, whom she had frequently seen, and whose stalwart frame and grave countenance she had greatly admired. Besides this, one or two accidents had occurred since her arrival in the Swiss valley; for there never passes a season without the occurrence of accidents more or less serious in the Alps. On one occasion the news had been brought that a young lady, recently married, whose good looks had been the subject of remark more than once, was killed by falling rocks before her husband’s eyes. On another occasion the spirits of the tourists were clouded by the report that a guide had fallen into a crevasse, and, though not killed, was much injured. Mrs Stoutley chanced to meet the rescue-party returning slowly to the village, with the poor shattered frame of the fine young fellow on a stretcher. It is one thing to read of such events in the newspapers. It is another and a very different thing to be near or to witness them—to be in the actual presence of physical and mental agony. Antoine Grennon, too, had made a favourable impression on Mrs Stoutley; and when, in passing one day his extremely humble cottage, she was invited by Antoine’s exceedingly pretty wife to enter and partake of bread and milk largely impregnated with cream, which was handed to her by Antoine’s excessively sweet blue-eyed daughter, the lady who had hitherto spent her life among the bright ice-pinnacles of society, was forced to admit to Emma Gray that Dr Tough was right when he said there were some beautiful and precious stones to be found among the moraines of social life.
“I know that Lawrence keeps the purse,” said Lewis, “but I want your special permission to take this money, because I intend to give it away.”
“Twenty pounds is a pretty large gift, Lewis,” said his mother, raising her eyebrows. “Who is it that has touched the springs of your liberality? Not the family of poor Le Croix?”
“No; Le Croix happily leaves no family. He was an unmarried man. I must not tell you, just yet, mother. Trust me, it shall be well bestowed; besides, I ask it as a loan. It shall be refunded.”
“Don’t talk of refunding money to your mother, foolish boy. Go; you may have it.”
Lewis kissed his mother’s cheek and thanked her. He quickly found the Count, but experienced considerable difficulty in persuading him to accept the money. However, by delicacy of management and by assuming, as a matter of course, that it was a loan, to be repaid when convenient, he prevailed. The Count made an entry of the loan in his notebook, with Lewis’s London address, and they parted with a kindly shake of the hand, little imagining that they had seen each other on earth for the last time.
On the Monday following, a superb day opened on the vale of Chamouni, such a day as, through the medium of sight and scent, is calculated to gladden the heart of man and beast. That the beasts enjoyed it was manifest from the pleasant sounds that they sent, gushing, like a hymn of thanksgiving—and who shall say it was not!—into the bright blue sky.
Birds carolled on the shrubs and in the air; cats ventured abroad with hair erect and backs curved, to exchange greetings with each other in wary defiance of dogs; kittens sprawled in the sunshine, and made frantic efforts to achieve the impossible feat of catching their own shadows, varying the pastime with more successful, though arduous, attempts at their own tails; dogs bounded and danced, chiefly on their hind legs, round their loved companion man (including woman); juvenile dogs chased, tumbled over, barked at, and gnawed each other with amiable fury, wagging their various tails with a vigour that suggested a desire to shake them off; tourist men and boys moved about with a decision that indicated the having of particular business on hand; tourist women and girls were busily engaged with baskets and botanical boxes, or flitted hither and thither in climbing costume with obtrusive alpenstocks, as though a general attack on Mont Blanc and all his satellite aiguilles were meditated.
Among these were our friends the Professor, Captain Wopper, Emma Gray, Slingsby, Lewis, and Lawrence, under the guidance of Antoine Grennon.
Strange to say they were all a little dull, notwithstanding the beauty of the weather, and the pleasant anticipation of a day on the hills—not a hard, toilsome day, with some awful Alpine summit as its aim, but what Lewis termed a jolly day, a picnicky day, to be extended into night, and to include any place, or to be cut short or extended according to whim.
The Professor was dull, because, having to leave, this was to be his last excursion; Captain Wopper was dull, because his cherished matrimonial hopes were being gradually dissipated. He could not perceive that Lawrence was falling in love with Emma, or Emma with Lawrence. The utmost exertion of sly diplomacy of which he was capable, short of straightforward advice, had failed to accomplish anything towards the desirable end. Emma was dull, because her friend Nita, although recovering, was still far from well. Slingsby was dull for the same reason, and also because he felt his passion to be hopeless. Lewis was dull because he knew Nita’s circumstances to be so very sad; and Lawrence was dull because—well, we are not quite sure why he was dull. He was rather a self-contained fellow, and couldn’t be easily understood. Of the whole party, Antoine alone was not dull. Nothing could put him in that condition, but, seeing that the others were so, he was grave, quiet attentive.
Some of the excursionists had left at a much earlier hour. Four strapping youths, with guides, had set out for the summit of Mont Blanc; a mingled party of ladies, gentlemen, guides, and mules, were on the point of starting to visit the Mer de Glace; a delicate student, unable for long excursions, was preparing to visit with his sister, the Glacier des Bossons. Others were going, or had gone, to the source of the Arveiron, and to the Brévent, while the British peer, having previously been conducted by a new and needlessly difficult path to the top of Monte Rosa, was led off by his persecutor to attempt, by an impossible route, to scale the Matterhorn—to reach the main-truck, as Captain Wopper put it, by going down the stern-post along the keel, over the bobstay, up the flyin’ jib, across the foretopmast-stay, and up the maintop-gallant halyards. This at least was Lewis Stoutley’s report of the Captain’s remark. We cannot answer for its correctness.
But nothing can withstand the sweet influences of fresh mountain-air and sunshine. In a short time “dull care” was put to flight and when our party—Emma being on a mule—reached the neighbouring heights, past and future were largely forgotten in the enjoyment of the present.
Besides being sunny and bright, the day was rather cool, so that, after dismissing the mule, and taking to the glaciers and ice-slope, the air was found to be eminently suitable for walking.
“It’s a bad look-out,” murmured Captain Wopper, when he observed that Dr Lawrence turned deliberately to converse with the Professor, leaving Lewis to assist Emma to alight, even although he, the Captain, had, by means of laboured contrivance and vast sagacity, brought the Doctor and the mule into close juxtaposition at the right time. However, the Captain’s temperament was sanguine. He soon forgot his troubles in observing the curious position assumed by Slingsby on the first steep slope of rocky ground they had to descend, for descents as well as ascents were frequent at first.
The artist walked on all-fours, but with his back to the hill instead of his face, his feet thus being in advance.
“What sort of an outside-in fashion is that, Slingsby?” asked the Captain, when they had reached the bottom.
“It’s a way I have of relieving my knees,” said Slingsby; “try it.”
“Thank ’ee; no,” returned the Captain. “It don’t suit my pecooliar build; it would throw too much of my weight amidships.”
“You’ve no idea,” said Slingsby, “what a comfort it is to a man whose knees suffer in descending. I’d rather go up twenty mountains than descend one. This plan answers only on steep places, and is but a temporary relief. Still that is something at the end of a long day.”
The artist exemplified his plan at the next slope. The Captain tried it, but, as he expressed it, broke in two at the waist and rolled down the slope, to the unspeakable delight of his friends.
“I fear you will find this rather severe?” said the Professor to Emma, during a pause in a steep ascent.
“Oh no; I am remarkably strong,” replied Emma, smiling. “I was in Switzerland two years ago, and am quite accustomed to mountaineering.”
“Yes,” remarked Lawrence, “and Miss Gray on that occasion, I am told, ascended to the top of the Dent du Midi, which you know is between ten and eleven thousand feet high; and she also, during the same season, walked from Champéry to Sixt which is a good day’s journey, so we need have no anxiety on her account.”
Although the Doctor smiled as he spoke, he also glanced at Emma with a look of admiration. Captain Wopper noted the glance and was comforted. At luncheon, however, the Doctor seated himself so that the Professor’s bulky person came between him and Emma. The Captain noted that also, and was depressed. What between elation and depression, mingled with fatigue and victuals, the Captain ultimately became recklessly jovial.
“What are yonder curious things?” asked Emma, pointing to so me gigantic objects which looked at a distance like rude pillars carved by man.
“These,” said the Professor, “are Nature’s handiwork. You will observe that on each pillar rests a rugged capital. The capital is the cause of the pillar. It is a hard rock which originally rested on a softer bed of friable stone. The weather has worn away the soft bed, except where it has been protected by the hard stone, and thus a natural pillar has arisen—just like the ice-pillars, which are protected from the sun in the same way; only the latter are more evanescent.”
Further on, the Professor drew the attention of his friends to the beautiful blue colour of the holes which their alpenstocks made in the snow. “Once,” said he, “while walking on the heights of Monte Rosa, I observed this effect with great interest, and, while engaged in the investigation of the cause, got a surprise which was not altogether agreeable. Some of the paths there are on very narrow ridges, and the snow on these ridges often overhangs them. I chanced to be walking in advance of my guide at the time to which I refer, and amused myself as I went along by driving my alpenstock deep into the snow, when suddenly, to my amazement I sent the end of the staff right through the snow, and, on withdrawing it, looked down into space! I had actually walked over the ridge altogether, and was standing above an abyss some thousands of feet deep!”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Emma. “You jumped off pretty quickly, I dare say.”
“Nay, I walked off with extreme caution; but I confess to having felt a sort of cold shudder with which my frame had not been acquainted previously.”
While they were thus conversing, a cloud passed overhead and sent down a slight shower of snow. To most of the party this was a matter of indifference, but the man of science soon changed their feelings by drawing attention to the form of the flakes. He carried a magnifying glass with him, which enabled him to show their wonders more distinctly. It was like a shower of frozen flowers of the most delicate and exquisite kind. Each flake was a flower with six leaves. Some of the leaves threw out lateral spines or points, like ferns, some were rounded, others arrowy, reticulated, and serrated; but, although varied in many respects, there was no variation in the number of leaves.
“What amazin’ beauty in a snowflake,” exclaimed the Captain, “many a one I’ve seen without knowin’ how splendid it was.”
“The works of God are indeed wonderful,” said the Professor, “but they must be ‘sought out’—examined with care—to be fully understood and appreciated.”
“Yet there are certain philosophers,” observed Lewis, “who hold that the evidence of design here and elsewhere does not at all prove the existence of God. They say that the crystals of these snow-flakes are drawn together and arrange themselves by means of natural forces.”
“They say truly,” replied the Professor, “but they seem to me to stop short in their reasoning. They appear to ignore the fact that this elemental original force of which they speak must have had a Creator. However far they may go back into mysterious and incomprehensible elements, which they choose to call ‘blind forces,’ they do not escape the fact that matter cannot have created itself; that behind their utmost conceptions there must still be One non-created, eternal, living Being who created all, who upholds all, and whom we call God.”
Descending again from the heights in order to cross a valley and gain the opposite mountain, our ramblers quitted the glacier, and, about noon, found themselves close to a lovely pine-clad knoll, the shaded slopes of which commanded an unusually fine view of rocky cliff and fringing wood, with a background of glacier and snow-flecked pinnacles.
Halting, accidentally in a row, before this spot they looked at it with interest. Suddenly the Professor stepped in front of the others, and, pointing to the knoll, said, with twinkling eyes—
“What does it suggest? Come, dux (to Slingsby, who happened to stand at the head of the line), tell me, sir, what does it suggest?”
“I know, sir!” exclaimed the Captain, who stood at the dunce’s extremity of the line, holding out his fist with true schoolboy eagerness.
“It suggests,” said the artist, rolling his eyes, “‘a thing of beauty;’ and—”
“Next!” interrupted the Professor, pointing to Lawrence.
“I know, sir,” shouted the Captain.
“Hold your tongue, sir!”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“It is suggestive,” said Lawrence, “of an oasis in the desert.”
“Very poor, sir,” said the Professor, severely. “Next.”
“It suggests a cool shade on a hot day,” said Emma.
“Better, but not right. Next.”
“Please, sir, I’d rather not answer,” said Lewis, putting his forefinger in his mouth.
“You must, sir.”
“I know, sir,” interrupted Captain Wopper, shaking his fist eagerly.
“Silence, you booby!—Well, boy, what does it suggest to you?”
“Please, sir,” answered Lewis, “it suggests the mole on your professorial cheek.”
“Sir,” cried the Professor, sternly, “remind me to give you a severe caning to-night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, booby, what have you got to say to it?”
“Wittles!” shouted the Captain.
“Right,” cried the Professor, “only it would have been better expressed had you said—Luncheon. Go up, sir; put yourself at the head of the class, and lead it to a scene of glorious festivity.”
Thus instructed, the Captain put himself at the head of the line.
“Now, then, Captain,” said Lewis, “let’s have a true-blue nautical word of command—hoist yer main tops’l sky-scrapers abaft the cleat o’ the spanker boom, heave the main deck overboard and let go the painter—or something o’ that sort.”
“Hold on to the painter, you mean,” said Slingsby.
“You’re both wrong,” cried the Captain, “my orders are those of the immortal Nelson—‘Close action, my lads—England expects every man to’—hooray!”
With a wild cheer, and waving his hat, the seaman rushed up the side of the knoll, followed by his obedient and willing crew.
In order to render the feast more complete, several members of the party had brought small private supplies to supplement the cold mutton, ham, bread, and light claret which Antoine and two porters had carried in their knapsacks. Captain Wopper had brought a supply of variously coloured abominations known in England by the name of comfits, in Scotland as sweeties. These, mixed with snow and water, he styled “iced-lemonade.” Emma tried the mixture and declared it excellent, which caused someone to remark that the expression of her face contradicted her tongue. Lewis produced a small flask full of a rich dark port-winey liquid, which he said he had brought because it had formerly been one of the most delightful beverages of his childish years. It was tasted with interest and rejected with horror, being liquorice water! Emma produced a bottle of milk, in the consumption of which she was ably assisted by the Professor, who declared that his natural spirits required no artificial stimulants. The Professor himself had not been forgetful of the general good. He had brought with him a complex copper implement, which his friends had supposed was a new species of theodolite, but which turned out to be a scientific coffee-pot, in the development of which and its purposes, as the man of science carefully explained, there was called into play some of the principles involved in the sciences of hydraulics and pneumatics, to which list Lewis added, in an under-tone, those of aquatics, ecstatics, and rheumatics. The machine was perfect, but the Professor’s natural turn for practical mechanics not being equal to his knowledge of other branches of science, he failed properly to adjust a screw. This resulted in an explosion of the pot which blew its lid, as Lewis expressed it, into the north of Italy, and its contents into the fire. A second effort, using the remains of the scientific pot as an ordinary kettle, was more successful.
“You see, my friends,” said the Professor, apologetically, “it is one of the prerogatives of science that her progress cannot be hindered. Her resources and appliances are inexhaustible. When one style of experiment fails we turn at once to another and obtain our result, as I now prove to you by handing this cup of coffee to Miss Gray. You had better not sweeten it, Mademoiselle. It is quite unnecessary to make the very trite observation that in your case no sugar is required. Yes, the progress of science is slow, but it is sure. Everything must fall before it in time.”
“Ah, just so—‘one down, another come on,’—that’s your motto, ain’t it?” said Captain Wopper, who invariably, during the meal, delivered his remarks from a cavern filled with a compound of mutton, bread, and ham. “But I say, Professor, are you spliced?”
“Spliced?” echoed the man of science.
“Ay; married, I mean.”
“Yes, I am wed,” he replied, with enthusiasm. “I have a beautiful wife in Russia, and she is good as beautiful.”
“In Roosia—eh! Well, it’s a longish way off, but I’d advise you, as a friend, not to let her know that you pay such wallopin’ compliments to young English ladies. It might disagree with her, d’ye see?”
At this point the conversation and festivities were interrupted by Slingsby, who, having gone off to sketch, had seated himself on a mound within sight of his friends, in a position so doubled up and ridiculous as to call forth the remark from Lawrence, that few traits of character were more admirable and interesting than those which illustrated the utter disregard of personal appearance in true and enthusiastic devotees of art. To which Captain Wopper added that “he was a rum lot an’ no mistake.”
The devotee was seen by the revellers to start once or twice and clap his hands to various pockets, as though he had forgotten his india-rubber or pen-knife. Then he was observed to drop his sketching-book and hastily slap all his pockets, as if he had forgotten fifty pieces of india-rubber and innumerable pen-knives. Finally, he sprang up and slapped himself all over wildly, yelling at the same time as if he had been a maniac.
He had inadvertently selected an ant-hill as his seat, that was all; but that was sufficient to check his devotion to art, and necessitate his retirement to a rocky defile, where he devoted himself to the study of “the nude” in his own person, and whence he returned looking imbecile and hot.
Such contretemps, however, do not materially affect the health or spirits of the young and strong. Ere long Slingsby was following his companions with his wonted enthusiasm and devotee-like admiration of Nature in all her varying aspects.
His enthusiasm was, however, diverted from the study of vegetable and mineral, if we may so put it, to that of animal nature, for one of the porters, who had a tendency to go poking his staff into holes and crannies of the rocks, suddenly touched a marmot. He dropped his pack and began at once to dig up earth and stones as fast as possible, assisted by his comrades; but the little creature was too sagacious for them. They came to its bed at last, and found that, while they had been busy at one end of the hole, the marmot had quietly walked out at the other, and made off.
Having pushed over the valley, and once more ascended to the regions of perpetual ice, the ramblers determined to “attack”—as the phrase goes among Alpine climbers—a neighbouring summit. It was not a very high one, and Emma declared that she was not only quite able, but very anxious, to attempt it. The attempt was, therefore, made, and, after a couple of hours of pretty laborious work, accomplished. They found themselves on a pinnacle which overlooked a large portion of the ice-world around Mont Blanc. While standing there, one or two avalanches were observed, and the Professor pointed out that avalanches were not all of one character. Some, he said, were composed of rock, mud, and water; others entirely of ice; many of them were composed of these elements mixed, and others were entirely of snow.
“True, Monsieur,” observed the guide, “and the last kind is sometimes very fatal. There was one from which my wife and child had a narrow escape. They were visiting at the time a near relation who dwelt in a village in a valley not far distant from this spot. Behind the village there is a steep slope covered with pines; behind that the mountain rises still more steeply. The little forest stands between that village and destruction. But for it, avalanches would soon sweep the village away; but wood is not always a sure protector. Sometimes, when frost renders the snow crisp and dry, the trees fail to check its descent. It was so on the last night of my wife’s visit. A brother was about to set off with her from the door of our relative’s house, when the snow began to descend through the trees like water. It was like dry flour. There was not much noise, merely a hissing sound, but it came down in a deluge, filled all the houses, and suffocated nearly all the people in them. My brother-in-law saw it in time. He put his horse to full speed, and brought my dear wife and child away in safety, but his own father, mother, and sister were lost. We tried to reach their house the next day, but could advance through the soft snow only by taking two planks with us, and placing one before the other as we went along.”
Soon after the ramblers had begun their return journey, they came to a slope which they thought might be descended by sliding or “glissading.” It was the first time that Emma had seen such work, and she felt much inclined to try it, but was dissuaded by Antoine, who led her round by an easier way. At the foot of the slope they came to a couloir, or sloping gorge, so steep that snow could not lie on it. Its surface was, therefore, hard ice. Although passable, Antoine deemed it prudent not to cross, the more so that he observed some ominous obelisks of ice impending at the top of the slope.
“Why not cross and let Emma see how we manage by cutting steps in the ice?” said Lewis.
He received a conclusive though unexpected answer from one of the obelisks above-mentioned, which fell at the moment, broke into fragments, and swept the couloir from top to bottom with incredible violence.
It is wonderful what a deal of experience is required to make foolish people wise! Winthin the next ten minutes this warning was forgotten, and Lewis led his cousin into a danger which almost cost the lives of three of the party.