Part 5

“Possibly. But the danger is that it may spread. If Russia takes umbrage, then Germany will join in, and Italy and France.”

“And your country? What will you do?” asked Stecher.

“I do not know. We certainly don’t want war, but if it comes to a general struggle we may be in it too. It is horrible to think of. In these days--all Europe at one another’s throats! It is almost inconceivable.”

“Du meine Güte!” said Anna, clasping her hands tightly together. “It is too terrible. What will happen to me if you get killed, my Karl?” and she could hardly see him for the tears that filled her large blue eyes.

“I don’t feel a bit like getting killed, my little one, I assure you.”

“That won’t stop those horrid bullets, all the same.”

“Ach, my Nanna, don’t weep for me before it begins anyway! Let us talk of something else.... And you, Herr and Frau?--Fräulein?--you are married?--yes?--no?--or have you this same pleasant custom with you?”

“Like you,” said Ray, “we are to be married very soon, and we are having our honeymoon in advance. You see, the Fräulein was in Leipsic, studying, when we heard this ill rumour of war. And her mother gave me permission to go and bring her home. And as they are mobilising in Germany----”

“Ah--they are mobilising?” jerked Stecher with a nod.

“We were advised to get back through Switzerland, and here we are.”

“We also were in Switzerland,” sighed Anna, reminiscently.

“You came over Flüela?” asked Ray. “How’s the walking there? That’s how we are going.”

“It is a good enough road,” said Stecher, “but you will need a full day from this end. It is all up hill, you see, and pretty stiff. You must get as far as Süss to-morrow night and start early next day. We stayed at the Flüela. It is quite good and not dear. And you can rest and eat at the Hospice under the Weisshorn. Oh, it is all quite easy. I wish we were going that way too.”

“Ach Gott--yes!” sighed Fräulein Anna. And Lois’s heart was sore for her, for her future and Karl’s was bound to contain possibilities of sorrow and misfortune, and she would have liked everyone to be as happy as she was herself.

And next morning, in the strong fellow-feeling of somewhat similar circumstances, they shook hands and parted almost like old friends,--none of them knowing to what they were going.

The four-and-twenty uphill miles from Martinsbruck to Süss were somewhat of a tax on Lois. They were on the road soon after seven, however, as Karl and Anna also had to be off early, and with occasional halts they made Schuls before mid-day, had a good dinner there and a long rest on the terrace of the hotel, with all the noble peaks, from Piz Lad opposite Martinsbruck to Piz Nuna opposite Süss, spread wide before them. They were at Ardetz in time for an early cup of tea and another rest, and reached Süss before sunset.

But long as the way was they enjoyed every rough step of it. For one thing it was a brighter day of mixed cloud and sunshine, which wrought most wonderful atmospheric effects on the soaring peaks and sweeping mountain-sides. Their road wound along the flanks of the Silvretta. Below them the Inn foamed white among its gray boulders. Innumerable valleys, each with its thread of rushing white water, debouched on either side and gave them wonderful peeps at the monarchs behind--the Oetztalers, the Ortlers, and the Silvrettas. Running water was everywhere--gray glacier streams and sparkling falls, and every here and there, on spurs of hills and vantage points, were the grim ruins of castles that had played their parts in the days of the Grey Leaguers and the Ten Droitures.

But all this delectable outward circumstance was no more than exquisite setting for that which was within them, and each of these reacted on the other. Never had they found such charm in their surroundings before. Never before had surroundings so charming had such effect upon their spirits and feelings.

They went along hand in hand at times like country lovers, and more than once their hearts broke into song as spontaneous as the lark’s, from simple joy of living.

Lois’s voice, in the full rounded beauty of its two years’ careful cultivation at the Conservatorium, was a revelation to Ray and thrilled him to the depths.

“My dear,” he said deeply, one time, “You have a gift of the gods. It would be a sin against humanity to deprive the world of it.”

“Oh, you will let me sing even after we are married.”

“Let you!... Am I a traitor to my kind? Let you, indeed! You will lift men’s souls with that voice. The world has need of you, my child, and what am I to say it nay?”

“You’re the world to me. I’m glad it pleases you.”

And maybe the menacing war-cloud, which could not be entirely excluded from their minds, but served to brighten their radiant enjoyment of that perfect day. Stars shine brightest in a winter-black sky.

VIII

They took the road very early again next morning, and turning their backs on the ruined castle of Süss and the triple peaks of Piz Mezdi, climbed steadily up past the long snow-galleries till they came to the mouth of the dreary Grialetsch Valley, with ragged Piz Vadret at its head; and there, with their backs against the road-mender’s hut, they sat for a long half-hour’s rest and the chance of passing a few words, for the road had claimed their breath as they climbed.

It was all so lonely, so peaceful, so aloof from the storm and stress of life, and so altogether delightful, that it was only now and again that the appalling reason for their being there obtruded itself upon them. And whenever it did so it came with something of a shock.

They had in themselves endless gardens of delight to ramble through, and it was, “--Do you remember that day at ----, Ray?” and “--I tell you, old girl, you gave me some rotten quarters-of-an-hour while that stuck-up little ramrod of a lieutenant was buzzing about you!”--and so on and so on,--every recollection rosy now with the joy of complete understanding, though at the time one and another had been anything but joyful.

The old road-mender came trudging up from his work while they still sat there. He nodded benevolently with something of a twinkle in his eye, as though he could still recall similar times of his own, and gave them a cordial “Grüss Gott!”

“We’re doing our best to hold your house up for you,” said Ray.

“So I see, Herr and Fräulein, and it is quite at your service. Everybody puts their backs against it after climbing from below. You are from Süss this morning?”

“From Süss this morning, and yesterday from Martinsbruck, and the day before that from Ried, and the day before that from Innsbruck,” said Ray.

“It is a long walk. But when one is young---- I also have been to Innsbruck. It is a great city. But there are too many people. They fall over one another in the streets. I like my mountains better and just one or two people a day. Thanks, Herr!”--at Ray’s offer of a cigar--“With permission I will smoke it later. I am going to eat now,” and he put it carefully away into his waistcoat pocket and got out bread and cheese from his little house, and sat and ate and talked.

“I had a Herr and a Fräulein here, yesterday,” he said reminiscently. “No, it was the day before----”

“We met them at Martinsbruck.”

“They were hastening home in fear of some war. But I did not clearly make out what it was all about. Is there going to be war, Herr?”

“I’m afraid it looks rather like it. That is why we are hastening home also.”

“But what is it all about, Herr? And why, in the name of God, do men want to fight in these times?”

“Ah! Now that is a big question, my friend, and it would take a lot of answering. But, so far as we know at present, it is only Austria that wants to fight. You heard of the Archduke and his wife being shot, down in Bosnia?”

“I heard of that. I was sorry. I have had them here. They sat with their backs against the house just as you are doing. They seemed nice enough people. He gave me five kroner for sitting against my house----”

“Ah!--he was an archduke and rolling in money.”

“I did not mean it that way, Herr. I do not want anything for people sitting against my house. It is a pleasure to me to have a word with them. There are not too many, you see.”

“It is not like Innsbruck where they fall over one another in the streets,” smiled Lois.

“No, it is not like Innsbruck, Fräulein, and I am glad of that. But why should their being shot make the rest want to fight?”

“That is only the pretext,” said Ray. “Austria wants to stretch herself down south. In fact, I suppose, what she really wants is to get to the sea, and Servia lies in her way.”

“If all men lived among the mountains they would learn a great many things you never learn down below there. I think one is nearer God up here, Herr and Fräulein.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Lois.

“But even the mountains have heard the sound of fighting,” said Ray, to draw him on.

“If the men from below wanted to take our rights from us we would fight again of course. But they are not likely to come up here, are they, Herr?”

“Not up here, I should say. The trouble is, you see, that if Austria attacks Servia, Russia will probably intervene, and then Germany will come in, and so France, and possibly Great Britain. We hope not, but one can never tell.”

“Herrgott! That sounds bad,” and the rough hand and big clasp-knife, which had been mechanically feeding the slow-munching jaws, stopped in mid-air and he sat staring at them. “Servians I do not know,” he said presently. “Russians I have had here, and Frenchmen, and Austrians, and many English, and all those I have found good. But Germans, of whom I have had still more, I do not like.... And yet I hardly know why,” he mused. “Their manners are not good, it is true; but it is something more than that. Well, I don’t know--it is just that I do not like them and perhaps they perceive it.”

“It is a very general feeling,” said Ray.

“Is it now? Well, that is strange, but it shows it is they who are somehow in the wrong.”

“They don’t think so,” laughed Ray, as he drew Lois to her feet by both hands. “We must be jogging on or we won’t reach Davos to-night.”

The old man firmly but politely declined Ray’s offer of a mark, saying, “I thank you, Herr, but there is no need. It has been a great pleasure to talk with you and the Fräulein,” and, not to tarnish so bright and unusual a trait, Ray did not press the matter, but offered him instead another cigar which was accepted at once as between man and man, and they all shook hands and parted.

They crossed the river and threaded their way through a rock-strewn valley, and up and on, with the Weisshorn towering white on the right and the Schwarzhorn on the left. Then they passed two little lakes, the one on the right clear as crystal, the one on the left greenish-white and opaque, which Ray told her was glacier-water while the other was probably fed by hidden springs.

They had lunch and another long rest at the Hospice, and then began the easy ten-mile stretch to Davos, through long stretches of pine-woods, dropping with the stream till it joined the Landwasser at Davos-Dorf, where they took the omnibus for Davos-Platz.

“We’ll go to the Grand,” said Ray,--“clothes or no clothes. We’re sure to find English people there and we’ll learn what’s going on in the world outside.”

So to the Grand, and sumptuous rooms and meals, though the very trim young gentleman in the office and the pompous head-waiter did look somewhat superciliously at their lack in the matter of wedding-garments.

But breeding tells where uttermost perfection in attire without it makes no headway at all, and by the time dinner was over they were on the best of terms with their nearest neighbours, who were delighted to find someone who had had no news of the world’s doings for several days and were therefore eager and receptive listeners. And afterwards they sat in the lounge while a Canon, and a Doctor, and a Barrister, and a Colonel on the retired list,--who knew Uncle Tony very well by repute and asked Ray at once if he were related to Sir Anthony Luard as soon as he heard his name,--and several of their wives and daughters, fed them volubly with fairy-tales and fictions, some of which had some small substratum of fact, but mostly they were snowball legends which had grown out of all knowledge as they passed from mouth to mouth.

Their latest English papers were three days old. Swiss and German papers they had as late as July 30, but the news in them was for the most part vague and unsatisfying to souls that craved simple actual fact as to what was going on behind the veiled frontiers. Local letters were arriving, but none from England since July 28.

Lois and Ray sat and listened but got little from all the talk that went on. The general opinion--to which the Colonel stoutly refused to conform--was that things looked decidedly unpleasant but that, somehow or other, Great Britain would manage not to be drawn into any such awful mess as a European war. Sir Edward Grey had handled the Balkan affair admirably, and though they were all on the opposite side in politics, they one and all,--not excepting even the Colonel--acknowledged that he was the very best possible man for his difficult and delicate post.

The Colonel however dogmatically prophesied war all round.

“We can no more get out of it,” he said warmly, “than we can any of us get home for some months to come.”

“Do you really think we can’t get home?” asked Lois anxiously.

“Think--my dear young lady?--I’m as sure of it as I am that I’m sitting here and expect to be still sitting here, or somewhere in this neighbourhood, two months hence. You see,”--and he proceeded to prove, beyond any possibility of doubt, that--granted the general war he was so certain of--every outlet--north, east, west, and south,--would be already blocked by the urgencies of mobilisation, and that until all the troops of the various nations were massed along the frontiers traffic across the denuded countries behind would be out of the question.

“Martial law everywhere,” said he, “and thank God we’re not in Germany!”

“There won’t be any difficulty in getting about in Switzerland, I suppose,” said Ray.

“Not on your own two feet. The diligences may stop any day. They’ll want every horse they can lay hands on. They’re sure to mobilise at once, just as they did in 1870. Every man they have will be on the frontiers yonder, from Schaffhausen to Basel, and round the corner towards Pontarlier, and again in all the passes leading from Italy. It’s curious how they fear and detest the Italians. I met a young fellow the other day who went across to Tripoli solely to get a whack at the Italians, and got a bullet through the calf which he insisted on showing me. You see,” he said to Ray, “we can’t possibly keep out of it, for the simple reason that Germany will certainly try to get at France through Belgium----”

“That’s just what Uncle Tony says.”

“Of course. Every military man who has studied the question knows that is their game. Russia is slow, and Germany’s plan is to smash France into little bits right away, then go for Russia, and then of course for us. Oh, it’s all been mapped out to the last haystack for years, I warrant you, while we’ve been swallowing their bunkum and persuading ourselves they are really very decent quiet people something like ourselves, who only want to be let alone to go their own gentle way.”

“And what’s your idea of the prospects all round, Colonel?”

But at that the Colonel shook his head. “Germany is the principal factor in the case and I don’t know her well enough to express an opinion. If she’s really as strong and well-organised as she thinks she is, and as most people believe, it will be a red-hot business. Austria I don’t think much of from what I’ve seen. Italy I do not know well. But I’m sure they’re not hankering for the expense of a big war. France is better than some folks think. Adversity has taught her something.”

“And England?” asked Ray, as the oracle lapsed into silence.

“England is, as usual, not ready. And besides she is not anxious for continental adventure. If England had hearkened to some of us old croakers--Jingoes and firebrands and scaremongers, we’ve been called,--she would be a decisive factor in the game. As it is----”

“Oh come! What about our fleet, Colonel?” said the Canon, whose eldest boy was second lieutenant on the “Audacious,” and his youngest a middy on the “Queen Mary.”

“Our fleet’s all right, thanks to Churchill. But you can’t utilise a fleet, say at Belfort or Nancy or on the borders of Belgium.”

“What about Belgium?” asked Ray. “Has she any fight in her?”

“I have never imagined so. If old Leopold were alive the Germans would have a walk-over and the old boy’s coffers would be fuller than ever. This new man--of whom I know very little--may be of a different kidney. But what can he do against Germany? She would simply roll over him if he tried to stand up for his rights. It would be sheer madness on his part.”

“Divine madness!” said the Canon musingly. “Such things at times effect wonders beyond the understanding of man.”

“And with England and France to back her up, and Russia piling in on the other side----” said Ray.

“There you are,” said the Colonel, “--practically a European war.”

Mrs Canon had meanwhile been quietly and unobtrusively, but none the less pertinaciously, affording Lois opportunities of explaining the exact nature of her relationship to Ray. And two vivacious Misses Canon, with their sympathies already openly given to the victim, eagerly awaited developments.

But Lois saw no reason for any beating about the bush. She explained the matter in full, acknowledging somewhat of irregularity in their proceedings but smilingly suggesting that if the war gave no one grounds for greater complaint they would all be very well off.

“How ripping!” said the younger girl, with dancing eyes.

“Katharine, my _dear_!” said her mother reprovingly.

“Absolutely and perfectly delectable!” asserted her sister, quite unabashed by the maternal disapproval. “I just wish----”

“Madeleine!”

And Madeleine’s envious desires remained locked in the secrecy of her maiden heart until she and Katharine went upstairs to bed that night. But she and her sister could not make enough of Lois for the rest of the evening, and their eyes rested on her caressingly and longingly as though by much looking they might possibly absorb some of her obvious happiness.

“It must be delightful beyond words,” whispered Katharine.

“It is,” beamed Lois.

“Just like a honeymoon, only more so,” sighed Madeleine rapturously.

“Just all that.”

“And you were at the Conservatorium at Leipsic!” said Katharine.

“I had nearly completed my two years there. It was a very jolly time. I enjoyed it every bit.”

“Do come and sing something for us. There’s a music-room over there and quite a decent piano.”

“I don’t mind. I love singing,” and they slipped quietly away to the music-room and shut themselves in.

But no doors made by man could contain the full rounded sweetness of that fresh young voice, and presently the handle was quietly turned from the outside and the door pushed noiselessly open so that the multitude beyond might share in the enjoyment of it.

She had no music with her, of course, and what lay about--the jetsam of the years--did not appeal to her. So she played and sang some of the old Scotch songs dear to her mother, and they went right home to the hearts of some of her listeners as perhaps the more stately productions of the greater masters would not have done.

Between times, on the expectant silence of the hall, there would trickle from the inner sanctuary a subdued murmur of talk and now and again a ripple of laughter, and then the chords would sound again and the full sweet voice would peal out gloriously, and hearts swelled large in sympathy with it.

She wound up with “Home, Sweet Home!” and before some of her listeners had finished using their handkerchiefs in various furtive and surreptitious ways, she was pealing out “God save the King!” like a trumpet-call, and “By Gad, sir! It went!”--as the Colonel said afterwards.

“My dear!” said the Canon, as he thanked her very warmly for the pleasure she had given them. “You have a God-given gift. You can touch the hearts of men and lift them to higher things. That is a wonderful power for good.”

“I love singing,” said Lois simply.

“Or you could not sing like that,” said the Canon. “Your joyous young heart is in your voice.”

As the following day was Sunday, and their next march would take them once more into the wilds--over the Strela and by Schanfiggthal to Chur and then up Rheinthal to Andermatt,--they decided to take a rest-day where they were, in the hope that further news from the outside world might arrive before Monday morning.

Nothing came, however, except the Berne newspapers, which hinted at mobilisation in Russia, and told of the murder of M. Jaurès in Paris. Even these scraps of news, however, afforded the Colonel ground for ample comment, and that of the gloomiest character, on the general outlook.

“Jaurès,” he said, “was a great leader and he worked hard for a better understanding between France and Germany. His removal, at this crisis and in this fashion, seems to point to a fanatical revulsion of feeling against his ideas. That means that the tinder is ready for the match. If Russia is mobilising, Germany will follow suit, if she has not done so already. The fat may be in the fire at any moment. For all we know the fire may have broken out now, even while we sit here discussing it.” Which made them all unusually thoughtful.

And as a matter of fact, with good reason. For Germany had declared war on Russia at 7.30 the previous night.

“Which way were you thinking of going?” the Colonel asked Ray, over their cigars in the lounge that night.

“First to Chur. Then up the valley to Andermatt, over the Furka, and down the Rhone Valley to Montreux.”

“That’s your best way. The East and North of France will certainly be closed. You may eventually get through by the Midi. But you’ll probably have to wait even for that. It’ll be a terrible upsetting all round. And I wish to God we could keep out of it, because we’re not ready. But we can’t. I’m as certain of that as that I’m sitting here.”

“It’ll be an awful business if it comes to a general scrap,” said Ray.

“Yes. I’ve seen fighting in several parts of the world and it’s grim business at best, but this will beat anything we’ve ever imagined, if I know anything about it. Germany is just a huge fighting-machine, and she’ll fight like the devil. If Russia is in, France is in, and that almost certainly means we’re in too. How do you stand yourself, Mr. Luard?”

“I’m in the London Scottish,--lieutenant. Do you think they’ll want us?”

“Pretty sure to,--sooner or later,--every man that’s available. How long have you had?”

“Four years.”

“You should know your business fairly well. I think you’ll have to reckon on a call. You’ll go if needed?”

“Of course.”

Which brought the possibilities very close home and made Ray Luard a very thoughtful man that night.

Next day they bade their friends good-bye, such of them as were up at so early an hour. And the Colonel and Katharine and Madeleine walked with them through the freshness of the morning by the winding forest-paths up Schatzalp, and were loth to part with them even on the top.