Part 10

“Not at the loss of it, though the stupidity of losing anything always annoys me. It’s the possible consequences I’m thinking of. It came on me all in a heap in the night that it’s just possible we may have difficulty in communicating with them at home if things are really bad. I wish to goodness we could get some definite news. I wanted very much to take you up the Eggishorn--it’s just close here, and it seems a shame to pass right under it without going up. You don’t really know what a glacier’s like till you’ve seen the Aletsch. But....”

“I think we’d better go right on. We can come back some other time and see all these things. Suppose they shouldn’t have got your telegram from Leipsic! They’ll be getting frightfully anxious about us. Let us get on as quickly as possible.”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing else for it,” he said regretfully. “Let’s see now--it would take us at least four days to walk down the valley to Montreux.... How much money did you say you have with you?”

“I’ve got three pounds, five shillings. I’ll get it for you.”

“No. Better keep it safe. I might lose it, you know. Well, four days’ tramping at the lowest possible rate means at least forty francs. It will pay us to take the train from Brigue. There’s a quick train about mid-day, I remember ... that is, if it’s still running. They may have taken the trains off also. It comes from Milan, you see, through the Simplon.”

“Third class?”

“Rather. I’ve come home by it more than once, and it’s generally packed with Italians, who are not the pleasantest of travelling companions. But needs must when you’re such a fool as to lose your purse,--and they’re probably all being kept at home just now anyway. We had a tough day yesterday, so to-day we’ll just jog along to Fiesch. That’s another place I wanted you to stop at. Most fascinating country, all the hillsides covered with little irrigation channels about a foot wide, and the natives spend most of their time turning them on and off. That’s where you strike up for the Eggishorn ... and the Märjelen See ... and then there’s Binn.... It’s a mighty pity to pass them all ...” and he rattled the few coins in his pocket thoughtfully.

But--“Needs must!” said Lois firmly, anxious to get into touch with the outer world again and especially with the folks at home.

“Wait a bit!” said Ray thoughtfully, and got down the map from its peg in the hall, and began figuring with his pencil on the back of the bill the landlady had just brought him, which came to 9.50 francs for the two of them. “Just ... you ... wait ... a bit ... my child!” and he measured and figured away with immense energy and growing enjoyment.

“We can do it all right,” he burst out at last. “See here!--We’ve got 160 francs left after settling up here. We’ll get Madame here to put us up the usual trampers’ lunch,--that’s one franc each. We’ll walk on to Fiesch and then up to the little Firnegarten Inn--small but clean--on the Fiescher Alp, and stop the night there. That’ll be, say, 10 francs. It would cost us more down below. To-morrow we’ll make an early start and climb up to the Märjelen See and the Eggishorn, taking our lunch with us again. Then we’ll come down by the big hotel,--we can only afford to look at the outside of it this time,--and walk along the ridge to Rieder Alp. It’s wonderful,--worth coming all the way from England for,--that and the Aletsch. Stop the night at Rieder Alp. That will be say 12 francs, if I haggle well. And next day we’ll walk down to Brigue and Oberried and Bitsch and the Massa, and get the mid-day train there for Montreux,----”

“If it’s running.”

“If not we’ll just toddle on.”

“But can we afford it?”

“Including fares and all it will come to just about as much as four days’ tramping along the road. And two days up aloft here are worth forty days on that road. The road’s fine but it’s not to be compared with the bridle path along Rieder-Alp.”

He was so obviously set on it that, in spite of her anxiety to get on, she had not the heart to raise any objection, and five minutes later they were on the road, with the dew-drenched green slopes above and below them shimmering like diamond-dust in the early sunshine, and Ray’s spirits at their highest again at this getting the better of the misfortune that would have done them out of the best bit of the journey.

As to the fact that they would arrive in Montreux with only 120 francs between them, that did not trouble him in the slightest now that they were going up aloft.

“I’ll wire Uncle Tony the very first thing when we get there. It’ll be quite all right, you’ll see, my child. ‘The year’s at the Spring----’”

“Ninth of August!”

“That’s nothing. It’s our year I’m talking of, and it’s only a week or so after New Year’s Day.... ‘The day’s at the morn. Morning’s at seven;’----”

“Nearer eight,”--with a glance at her wrist-watch.

“‘The hillside’s dew-pearled,’----”

“Undoubtedly,”--with a comprehensive wave of the hand uphill and down.

“‘The lark’s on the wing;’----”

“Maybe--somewhere.”

“‘The snail’s on the thorn; God’s in His Heaven; All’s right with the world!’”

“With your and my little world. But, oh, I wonder what’s going on outside there, Ray! It’s terrible to think of war at any time, even though we none of us really know what it means. But for all the Great Powers to be flying at one another’s throats,--and England too! I can’t realise it.”

“Don’t try, child. Rhenius may have caught some flying nightmare by the tail. I haven’t much faith in Italian newspapers. Anyway we’ll make the most of these few days of grace and be thankful for them.... You see, if things really are as bad as he said, we may be stuck for some time in Switzerland, and an extra day up here in heaven will make no difference in the end and is all to the good now. Learn to gather your roses while you may, my child,” and his determined enjoyment carried the day.

They made Fiesch about noon, and Ray marched her right through the little town to the house he had stopped at more than once--the cosy-looking little Hotel des Alpes, near where the rushing Fieschbach flung its gray waters into those of the Rhone.

They knew him there and were much hurt that he had not come to stop with them again, and were greatly interested in Lois. He had to explain matters very fully before they were pacified sufficiently to permit him to have a bottle of Asti, with a small table and two chairs outside in the sunshine, and the mistress and the two comely maids hung about them all the time they ate their Oberwald lunch of bread and sausage and cheese and biscuits, and insisted on supplementing it with apples and pears and grapes, grumbling good-humouredly at him and chattering and giving such news as they had.

“You’d do much better to stop with us. Firnegarten cannot keep very much of a table up there, you know. Most people go right on to the Jungfrau Hotel for the night----”

“I know. But we’re pauper-tramps, you see, till we get to Montreux, and we have to look twice at every sou. You see, I was fool enough to lose my purse up at Gletsch there----”

“Ach! To lose your purse! That was foolishness. But if you had come to us we would have helped you.”

“It’s awfully good of you, and we’re going to come back here as soon as ever we can. There’s heaps of things I want to show mademoiselle,--Binn, and the Fiescher Glacier, and Ernen--oh, heaps. But now we’ve got to get on. We’re going to get married as soon as we reach Montreux, but I couldn’t bear to stump along the road down here when Aletsch and the Rieder-Alp called me. Mademoiselle is not at all sure we’re doing the right thing in not going straight on.”

“You will never regret it, mademoiselle,” they assured her.

“Though, of course, when one is hurrying along to get married,--” interjected one of the girls thoughtfully.

“The Great Aletsch is a thing to see before one dies,--” continued Madame.

“Or even before one gets married, when you have to pass right under it,” said Ray. “And the Märjelen----”

“Ach--the poor Märjelen! It is gone. It got a hole in it somewhere and all the water has run out, and so now there is nothing to see.”

“So! But the Aletsch is still there?”

“Och, yes! The Aletsch can never run away through a hole. There it is and there it will remain till the world comes to an end.”

“And the war? What news have you?”

“They are fighting terribly over there, it seems,--at some place called Liége. But we do not hear very much since the diligence stopped. And all our visitors went away at once. We were quite full and not one has come since. War is bad for everybody. For me, I cannot understand what people want to fight for. It will not come into Switzerland, do you think, monsieur?”

“I shouldn’t think so, but when war once starts you never know where it will stop. And I’ve no doubt Germany would be only too glad to get hold of Switzerland if she got half a chance.”

“Ach--those Germans! No, I do not like them. Whenever I see one come in here I say to myself, ‘Another trouble-maker!’ They are never satisfied, and they want everything--except to pay proper prices. No, I do not like them. If they all get killed in the fighting I shall not care one bit.”

Their leave-taking could hardly have been warmer if Madame had been jingling in her hand a whole month’s pension fees instead of the price of a modest bottle of Asti, and presently they were slowly and steadily climbing the steep and stony path to Firnegarten.

The maid in charge there was sister to one of those down below, and she also remembered Ray. She was much astonished at their intention of stopping the night there, and laughed merrily when Ray proceeded to hammer her price down to his level and then explained why he was, for once, acting like a German.

She made them very comfortable, however, in a simple way, and obviously enjoyed their company. They went early to bed, and were well on their way up the Fiescher Alp soon after seven next morning.

It was close on noon before they struggled up the tumbled débris of the top, and sank down on a flat rock, with that great glory of the Aletsch glacier sweeping down in front of them, from the great snow-basins of Jungfrau and Finsteraarhorn, till it curled out of sight behind the green ridges of Rieder-Alp away down below them on the left.

“The Chariots of the Lord!” came involuntarily to Lois’s lips as she sat gazing on it, and her eyes followed the strange dark parallel lines which ran throughout its length and looked exactly like gigantic wheel-tracks. “What makes them?”

“The continuous slow downward movement of the ice, I believe. It picks off earth and stones from the sidewalls and gradually throws them into exact lines like that. Curious, isn’t it? I remember it struck me in just the same way the first time I saw it.”

It was long before she could be got to look at anything else.

“I can’t help expecting it all the time to do something,” she explained.

“I know. But it never does. See!--that’s Jungfrau over there, and that one is Finsteraarhorn. And round this other side you can see the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc. Those big white lumps are the Mischabels.”

In time he got her to start on her lunch, though she asserted that it felt like eating in church,--desecration.

“I’m glad you insisted on coming,” she said softly. “It is a sight one could never forget,” and he was radiant.

“And to think,” she said again, presently, “that over yonder the guns are booming and men are doing everything they know to kill one another! Isn’t it dreadful to think of--in face of this great silent wonder which takes one’s thoughts right up to God?”

“It’s simply brutal.... I just hope whoever’s to blame for bringing it about will get whipped out of existence.”

He could hardly drag her away. She vowed she could never weary of that most wonderful sight, and was certain it would begin to move if they only waited long enough. And so it was a very tired but very well-satisfied pair that dropped into the first chairs they came to in the homely little Riederalp Hotel, with barely enough energy left to arrange terms on the German plan.

Next morning they came down the steep wooded ways by Oberried and Bitsch and the Massa gorge, and reached Brigue exactly fifteen minutes before a train started for Montreux.

The run down the Rhone Valley and up to Montreux was full of enjoyment, tempered only by their doubts as to being able to get any further than that.

Ray pointed out to her all the things he knew,--the new Lötschberg line away up on the opposite mountain-side,--the openings of Nicolai Thal, leading to Zermatt and Saas Fée,--the Val d’Anniviers leading to Zinal, and the Val d’Herens to Arolla, and promised to take her to them all when the times got re-jointed. Then they were at Martigny, and presently the flat delta and the upper end of the lake came into sight, and Chillon, and they were at Montreux.

Ray enquired at once from the station-master as to trains for Paris.

“Paris, mon Dieu?” jerked that much harassed official. “Ask again in a fortnight’s time, monsieur, and perhaps we shall know something then!” and Ray made at once for the Post Office and wrote out a telegram to Uncle Tony,--“Just arrived here. Both well. Lost purse. Send cash Poste Restante.”

The young man behind the official window looked at the address and said in excellent English, “We can send it from here, but we cannot make sure it will ever get there. You see it must go through France or Germany, and they are fighting and everything is disarranged.... It is very awkward,” as they looked at one another in dismay.

“Very awkward!” said Ray. “Please do your best. Are letters coming through?”

“Not from England for some days. Doubtless in time matters will arrange themselves.”

In time, doubtless! But the one thing about which there was no doubt whatever was the fact that they were in a strange land, cut off from communication with their own, and that the sum total of their united funds amounted to something under five pounds,--and there was no saying when they could procure more.

XIV

Alma at St Barnabas’s, and Mrs Dare at The Red House each received a brief note from Con, from Southampton, saying he was leaving immediately but was not permitted to say more.

He seemed in the best of spirits and said he had plenty to do. After that the vail of war fell between him and them, and to them was left the harder task of possessing their souls in hope, with such patient endurance as they could draw from higher hidden sources. Both, however,--Alma in her crowded ward, and Mrs Dare in the less strenuous and so the more meditative sphere of home,--went about their daily tasks with tranquil faces which permitted no sign to show of the fears that might be in them. It was their quiet part in the crisis to give of their best and suffer in silence, as it was the part of the millions of other women similarly circumstanced.

Mr Dare had perhaps the heaviest burden to bear at this time, and in spite of his attempts at cheerfulness the weight of it was apparent in him. His business at a deadlock, valued customers urgently claiming the fulfilment of contracts, the goods they wanted hermetically sealed within the flaming borders of Germany and Austria, accounts for goods sent to those countries falling due, and no money forthcoming from abroad to meet them. No wonder he looked harassed and aged, and at times grew somewhat irritable under the strain.

What his wife was to him in those days none but he knew,--not even Mrs Dare herself in full. In her own quiet fashion she would at times draw him gently on to unburden himself to her in a way that would have been impossible to anyone else, and her great good sense would seek out the hopeful possibilities and tone down the asperities of life. And when things were past speaking about she would show, by her silent sympathy and brave face, that she understood but still had faith in the future.

But for an unusually alert and active business man to find himself, without warning, plunged suddenly into a perfect morass of difficulties, for which no blame attached to anyone save to the blind precipitancy of untoward circumstance;--to find himself helplessly idle where his days had always been briskly over-full,--it was enough to drive any man off his balance, and in some cases it did.

He went down to St Mary Axe each morning and stopped there all day in gloomy exasperation. He explained his situation to irritated clamourers for goods till he grew sick of explaining. He was grateful when release came at night; and in the night he lay awake at times and hugged to himself the few precious hours which still intervened before he must shoulder his burden again. Sunday he looked forward to, all the week long, as a dies non when business matters ceased perforce from troubling and his weary soul could take its rest. He longed for weeks of Sundays. At times, in his utter weariness, the thought of the final unbroken rest made infinite appeal to him.

The complete lack of any word from Lois and Ray added not a little to their anxieties. The Colonel, indeed, never would admit any possibility of mischance in the matter.

“Don’t you worry, Mrs Mother,” he would adjure her. “They’re having the time of their lives somewhere or other, I’ll wager you a sovereign.”

“If they’re shut up in Germany it may be a very unpleasant time,” argued Mrs Dare.

“But they’re not. Ray’s no fool and he got out of that trap instanter. Of that I’m certain. Where to I can’t, of course, say. Tirol seems nearest, from the map----”

“That’s Austria,” said Mrs Dare quietly.

“Well then, Switzerland--Russia--Italy--anywhere,--I don’t know. But if he’s still in Germany he’s a much bigger fool than I ever thought him. They’re all right. Don’t you worry!”--which was all most excellent in intention but did not bring to the anxious mother-heart the comfort that one word from the missing ones would have done.

But the Colonel was too busy to waste time and energy in worrying, and, besides, he was not given that way. Immediately on the declaration of war, he had donned his uniform and gone down to Whitehall and tendered his services in any capacity whatever. His bluff, antique enthusiasm overcame even the natural repugnance of War-Office messengers to further the wishes of any but their own immediate chiefs, and he succeeded in seeing Lord Kitchener, whom he had not met since they toiled up Nile together in quest of Gordon.

The quiet, level-eyed man, who had gone so far and high since those days, gave him cordial greeting and expressed the hope that the younger generation would exhibit equal public spirit, in which case this belated creation of a sufficient fighting force would prosper to the extent of his wishes, which he acknowledged were great, though not more than the dire necessities of the case called for. He tactfully switched the Colonel’s enthusiasm on to the recruiting branch line, and the fiery little warrior had since then been devoting himself, heart and soul, to the business of presenting Kitchener’s Army to the youth of Willstead and neighbourhood as the one and only legitimate outlet for its duty to its King and Country.

With his V.C. and his Crimean and Mutiny and African medals, he made a brave show on a platform, and his fervid exhortations persuaded many from the outer back rows to the plain deal tables where the recruiting forms awaited them.

He toured the neighbouring villages in a motor car, and until the muddle-headed mismanagement by the authorities of the earlier comers cast somewhat of a chill on their waiting fellows, the Colonel was a great success.

Noel and Gregor MacLean were still impatiently hanging on for the War Office to decide whether or not the London Scottish were to be permitted to form a Second Battalion. And Noel, with the impetuosity of youth, grew so restive under the strain at times that he stoutly urged Gregor to enrol with him in one of the regiments of Kitchener’s army.

“Man!” he would growl, after the usual ineffectual visit to Headquarters. “We’re going to get left. It’ll all be over and done with before we get a look in. Let’s join the Hussars!”

“I’m for the London Scottish, my boy, if it’s at all possible. They say they’ll know in a week or two for certain, and we can wait all right. I know such a lot of the fellows there and I’d sooner be among friends. It makes a mighty difference and they’re all good chaps in the Scottish. Besides I’ve a natural yearning for the kilt. If they shut down on us, then we’ll sign on wherever you like.”

“Hang it, man! The fun’ll all be over.”

“Don’t you believe it, my son. K of K isn’t raking in all these men just to amuse himself. He’s the squarest-headed chap we’ve got, and those eyes of his see a long long way past Tipperary, you bet. We’re up against a jolly tough job and he knows it.... Anyway we’ll be fitter than most when they do take us on. I bet you there aren’t many recruits can down ten out of twelve clays at two hundred yards.”

This was Noel’s top score so far. He was rather proud of it and judicious reference to it always had a soothing effect on his feelings. So they strenuously kept up their training, walking all the way in and back whenever they went up to Buckingham Gate for news, and spending much time and money at the shooting-grounds.

The girls missed them, of course, but consoled themselves as best they could with one another. They did a round of the links each day for health’s sake, but felt the lack of Noel’s outspoken jibes and Gregor’s curt criticisms and all the subtle excitation and enjoyment of the former times, and learned that golf for duty and golf for pleasure are greens of very different qualities.

Still they would not have had it otherwise. The boys were doing their duty as it appeared to them, and it was their portion to miss them and get along as best they could without them. For their sakes they heartily wished Headquarters would make up its mind what it was going to do, and get them settled down to actual work and disciplined courses.

For this waiting on and on, with no definite certainty as to the outcome, was wearing on Noel’s temper, and bits of it got out on the loose at home at times and disturbed the atmosphere somewhat.

Like most boys of his age, when things went his way he was as pleasant as could be. And they so generally had gone his way that when they did not he resented it and let people know it. Like nine boys out of every ten, whose chief concern in life had so far been themselves and their own troubles and enjoyments, there was a streak of natural selfishness in him, any implication of which he would have hotly resented. He could be generous enough of his superfluities, but so far had had to make no call on himself for the higher virtues of self-denial or self-restraint. In short he was just an ordinary boy merging into man, very full of himself and his own concerns and enjoyments, and at times a little careless of others.

This odd new friendliness which had sprung up of late between himself and Victoria Luard was all very much to the good. It came in between him and himself and made him feel ready, and even anxious, to do great things for her, and to consider her feelings even before his own. But, at the same time, his feeling of personal discrepancy with regard to her, drove him in the rebound to occasional little displays of bearishness and boyish arrogance, the springs of which Victoria understood perfectly and was vastly amused at.

Gregor MacLean, with the advantages of his extra five years and much shoulder-rubbing with his fellows, had grown out of these youthful discordances, and he sometimes took Noel humorously to task for his little lapses, and Noel would take more from him in that way than from anyone else.