Part 6

The Colonel, indeed,--whose youth lay away back amid the mists of antiquity, and whose years had discovered to him the existence of a heart that pumped on up-gradients, and a certain stiffness in the legs which filled him with wrath,--called them to many a halt to view the scenery. His hearty good-will was so obvious, however, that they complied with his necessities and accommodated their pace to his without regret; and the girls buzzed about Lois with outspoken envy of her happy lot, and vehemently regretted that they could not go and do likewise in every particular.

At the restaurant on top they drank a parting cup of coffee together, and then Ray and Lois set their faces towards the long ascent of the Strela, and the others stood and waved to them till they were out of sight.

“Do you know what the old boy was saying, Lois?” Ray broke out as soon as they were quite alone.

“No. What?”

“He’s quite certain that England will have to go into the scrap, and that she’ll need every man she can put into the fighting-line. And I’m one of them, you see.”

“Oh!--Ray!” and she stopped in her tracks, and stood gazing at him with sudden woe in her face.

“It brings it close home to one, doesn’t it, dear?” he said quietly, pressing her arm tight to his heart. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. It will be hard on us, but if the call comes I must go.”

“Yes ...” she said, slowly and reluctantly; sense of duty prevailing, with obvious difficulty, over her heart’s desire. “You must go.... But, oh,--it will be hard to let you go ... just when we’ve come to know one another, and life is at its brightest.... Oh, my dear! Suppose....”

“We won’t suppose anything of the kind,” he said cheerfully. “Life is not long enough at its longest to waste one minute of it on forebodings. But I named this, dear, because it seems to me that it settles for us the question I raised the other day. Unless you say no, we’ll get married as soon as we get to Montreux.”

“Yes!” she said simply, and the matter was settled.

And, in the feeling of still warmer and closer companionship that thereby came upon them, they climbed on up the Strela, and down the steep zig-zags on the other side to the Haupter Alp, and down and down past Schmitten and Dörfli, first this side of the river, then the other, till they came to the Schanfiggthal and Langwies, where they stopped for lunch and a long rest.

It was as they were coming down the hillside to Castiel that Lois had a quaint experience which Ray laughingly hoped would teach her a lesson.

They came suddenly on an immense herd of goats, whose bells they had heard tinkling far away below them for half an hour or more. Captivated by the graceful activities of a black and white kid, which sprang up a high rock at the side of the road and posed there like a little Rodin, with its glassy eyes fixed vaguely on them, Lois produced a biscuit from her pocket and proffered it to the youngster. He sniffed doubtfully, nibbled eagerly, and leaped down for more. And in an instant she was the centre of a writhing mass of goats, who pushed and reared themselves against her and would take no denial.

At first she laughed and pushed them off with her hands. Then it got beyond a joke. She gave them all she had, but they wanted more. Like the Danes and Ethelred, payment to go only drew them in larger numbers. Ray did his best to drag them back and get her clear, but they pushed and struggled and reared, with weirdest determination in their strange eyes and curving horns, till Lois grew somewhat startled.

“Stupid beasts! Don’t you understand? You’ve had it all,” and she shook her empty hands in their stolid straining faces. They pushed all the harder. She grew frightened, especially when she saw the futility of Ray’s efforts.

It was his angry shouts, as he laid about on their bony ribs and backs with his alpenstock, that at last drew a small boy in velveteens and a slouch hat round the corner, and at a shrill whistle from him the beasts came to their senses and left their victim hot and dishevelled and very much put out.

“Why don’t you keep your ugly beasts in order?” shouted Ray.

“Grüss Gott!” said the small boy with a vacant grin, and with stones and blows sent his flock jangling down into the lower woods.

“That’s the most forcible argument I’ve ever come across against promiscuous charity,” laughed Ray, as Lois shook herself clear of the sense and smell of them and did up her hair.

“The hideous beasts! Their stony eyes and stupid faces were awful,--a perfect nightmare! I shall dream of them for ages.”

They stopped that night at Chur, and Lois duly dreamed of a never-ending struggle with multitudinous stony-eyed goats, and had a fairly bad night of it.

She seemed, indeed, so unrefreshed in the morning that Ray decided to make an easy day’s work by taking train to Ilanz, and the diligence, if it was still running, for such further distance as it would take them.

And so it was half-past six in the evening when they reached Ruēras, where the diligence stopped for the night and they perforce stopped also. The accommodation was somewhat primitive, but the freedom of the simple life condoned everything. They ate well and slept well, and started off next morning in the best of spirits, with no cloud upon their horizon but the nebulous possibilities of the unknown future; and quite unconscious of the fact that, at eleven o’clock the night before, the mightiest die in the world’s history had been cast. Great Britain had declared war on Germany.

They crossed a brook and a torrent, and in a deep ravine below the fragment of a ruined castle, Ray pointed out to her the little stream which he told her was the Baby Rhine in its cradle.

“It’s always interesting to get back right to the beginning of a thing which in the end becomes a very big thing. We know what the Rhine is at its best and there’s where it begins.”

“I shall never forget it,” said Lois, hanging on to his arm.

“And if the old Colonel is right, away over yonder it will soon be running red,” said Ray thoughtfully.

“We’ll try and not think about it till we have to.... But whatever comes, Ray, life has been very good to us.”

“Yes, thank God! We have tasted the joy of it, whatever follows.”

And away over yonder, the German hordes had, days ago, surged over the Rhine, and now they had burst into Belgium and were hammering at Liége, and the Meuse was running red and pouring its flood into the Rhine on its way to the sea.

They climbed steadily, with wonderful views over Rheintal and up into Vorder Rheintal, crossed the summit of Pass da Tiarms, and came down again to the old high-road at the eastern end of the gloomy little Oberalp-See.

“There lies the highway to happiness,” said Ray, pointing away in front where, in the dim distance, a white thread of a road wound along a lofty mountain-side. “That’s the Furka. Once we’re over that we’re in the Rhone Valley and almost at Montreux,” and he pressed her arm tight again as a reminder of all that Montreux would mean for them.

They took the short cut down to Andermatt, got shaken almost to pieces with its stony steepness, and went to the Bellevue to recuperate with a well-earned lunch, and in hopes of getting some recent news from the outside world. But the Berne papers had not yet arrived and the foreign ones were many days old, and a chat with the manager furnished only disquieting war-like rumours, gathered by him from the officers of the big artillery-camp who sometimes came into the hotel for a meal or a smoke.

Ray was obviously restless under this lack of news, and Lois was quick to perceive and understand it.

“Let us get on,” she said.

“Can you? Sure you’re not done up?”

“Not a bit of it. It is delightful rambling along like this, but I’ve always the feeling that dreadful things may be going on outside, and if they are, the sooner we know the better.”

“Yes. It’s the not knowing that’s so worrying. It’s like wandering about in a fog with collisions and smashes going on all about one and no chance of seeing what’s up. I’d sooner know the worst than nothing at all. I wanted to stop at the jolly little Golden Lion at Hospenthal. I stopped three days there once and I’ve always wanted to go back. But if we can get as far as Realp it will shorten to-morrow’s walk over the Furka. The hotels at Gletsch are only for millionaires, not for tramps like us.”

So they started off, determined to push along to Realp, or even to Tiefenbach if they could manage it, but Fate had arranged for them to stop at Hospenthal after all.

While they sat at lunch the sky darkened. The rain began before they had gone half a mile, and it came down in such sheets that Ray considered the advisability of turning back. But Lois would not hear of it, so with their Loden cloaks outside their rucksacs, they plodded on up the stony road which very soon became a river, while the mountain tops all round took on new white coats of snow.

“We’ll have a rough time on the Furka to-morrow,” said Ray. “I know what it’s like in snow.”

“I think I’d sooner have snow than cataracts like this. Will these cloaks keep the wet out?”

“They will, my child. The wetter they get outside, the less gets through.”

“Then it’s all right. We’ll stop at your little hotel as soon as we come to it and get dry stockings on.”

“And a jolly big fire and a first-rate supper. We’ll be as cosy as cats.”

“Who are all these men in front?”

“Weary ploughmen plodding their homeward way. But they look to me like Italian navvies--about the unpleasantest class of person you can meet in Switzerland. The rain’s too much for them, I suppose, so they’re knocking off for the day.”

“Here’s another lot coming the other way.”

“Switzers these, by the look of them.”

The two bands of about a score each passed one another some distance ahead of them, just about where the road forked, and one part struck up to the left towards the stony desolations and frowning peaks of the Gothard.

“Hello!” cried Ray. “What on earth are they up to?”

For the dark clump of men now nearest them, the Switzers,--halted suddenly, and turned, and then, as though moved by one spring, these made a dash at the others and flung themselves on them with shouts and blows till they broke and fled up the stony way.

“Well, well!” said Ray, watching keenly. “That’s a little bit of racial feeling right under our noses, unless I’m mistaken. Symptomatic of the times. The Colonel said there was no love lost between them, and here’s the proof of it. War’s in the air, my child.”

The Switzers having chased their opponents well up the stony road came swinging along now with cheerful faces and martial tread.

“What was it?” asked Ray as they came up.

“Just a swarm of Italian rats, Herr,” said one jovially, while the rest gathered round grinning delightedly, and one or two wiped away smears of blood from their faces.

“They’re mobilising for the war, over there, you see, and we’re mobilising for the war, over here; and one of them showed his teeth at us as he passed, so we gave them a lesson in manners.”

“But you will have no war here.”

“Please God, no, Herr! But we’ve got to be ready, and if anyone sets foot on Swiss soil so much the worse for him. Those rascals would like to try it, we know, but if they do we’ll treat them as we did this little lot and kick them back into their own country. We do not like them,” and he spat disdainfully and all the others did the same.

“You are not thinking of going up Gothard way, Herr?” asked another meaningly.

“No, we stop at Hospenthal for the night, since it’s raining so, and cross the Furka to-morrow.”

“I wouldn’t like to cross the Gothard within arm’s length of that lot all by myself,” said a third. “They may be good men but they don’t look it. Have you any news of the war, Herr? Is France in it?”

“We’ve no news for days past. We’re hoping to get some over yonder. But I’m afraid there’s little hope of France keeping out.”

“It’ll be a big blaze,” said the leader. “What about you, Herr, in England? Will you be in it too?”

“I’m very much afraid so. We’re hurrying home as quick as we can.”

“Well, for me, I hope Germany will get her head broken. Frenchmen I like, and Englishmen and Americans still better. But Italians I do not like, and Germans still less. They are too big for their clothes, and they are pigs to have any dealings with,” and the others said “So!” and “Jawohl!”

“Well--grüss Gott, Herr and Frau! And may we all live to see better times!” and with a rumble of “grüss Gotts!” they went on their way, and Ray and Lois plodded on towards Hospenthal and a big fire and dry stockings and such defiance of the rigours of the road and the weather as a warm welcome could supply.

It was with a sigh of relief that Lois hastily felt over her rucksac, as the smiling maid drew off her dripping cloak, and found it sound and dry; and in spite of her soddened feet and streaming face and draggled hair the sight of a roaring fire in a room on the right induced a sense of coming comfort.

“You are wet, madame?--no?--not inside? That is goot. You will change your feet, and then hot tea, and all will be well,”--she had the cheerfullest face Lois had seen for months and she spoke English charmingly.

“That’s the ticket, Freda,” said Ray joyously. “The hottest tea you can make and a dash of cognac in it, and poke up that fire still more if you can do it without setting the place ablaze.”

“Ach!”--and then, running at him with outstretched hands. “Why it is the Herr who stopped with us two years ago, and I did not for the moment know him. And this is madame? And you will stop the night? Yes?--in such weather?”

“Oh, we’ll stop the night all right. Wild horses could not drag us away from that fire such a day as this.”

“I will show you to your room and the tea will be ready by the time you come down. This way, madame--iff you please!”

“Steady on, Freda! Two rooms--iff you please.”

“So?” in a tone of vast surprise, with a touch of disappointment in it.

“Mademoiselle is to become my wife as soon as we reach Montreux. I have been to deliver her from the hands of the Philistines--the Germans, I mean. She was in Leipsic----”

“Ach--those verdomte Germans! They are always making trouble. Then two rooms. This way, mademoiselle, iff you please!”

Hail and rain thrashed wildly on the window-panes as Lois refitted herself, but a quarter of an hour later, when they came down the stair together, and entered the cosy room whose dark wood panelling reflected the dancing flames all round, there was their tea-table drawn up close to the blazing hearth with two easy chairs alongside, and she felt a sense of home-iness greater than she had enjoyed during the last two years.

At a table not far away a burly, broad-backed man was busily writing letters with a big cigar in his mouth.

At sight of them he jumped up in vast surprise and came at them.

“Why--Ray Luard!--and Miss Lois?... Now what in the name of--what is it?--Mrs Ghrundy--are you two wandering round here for?”

“Hello? Why!--if it isn’t Dr Rhenius! How are you, sir? We’re as right as trivets--whatever they are, though we _have_ walked from Ruēras to-day.”

“Ah--you come from Ruēras? And before that?”

“Lois was in Leipsic, as you know. Mrs Dare sent me to fetch her home. We couldn’t get direct so we came round. What news have you? We’ve heard nothing but rumours for days. Let’s have tea, Lois. I’m sure you’re only half warmed yet. Have a cup of tea, Doctor?”

“I thank you, no. But I will smoke--if I may,” with an appealing look at Lois.

“Oh do, please! I like it.”

“Well now--where are _you_ from, Doctor, and what’s the latest facts?” asked Ray, as he laced his hot tea with cognac and insisted on doing the same with Lois’s in spite of her protesting hand. “It’s good for her under these circumstances. Now isn’t it, Doctor?”

“I do not prescribe stimulants as a rule, as you know,” said Dr Rhenius weightily. “But to anyone who has been out in that”--as the hail dashed against the windows again--“a moderate dose is undoubtedly indicated.”

“That’s better,” said Ray, passing up his cup again. “Now, sir,--where are we?”

“At war,” said the Doctor gravely. “Great Britain declared war against Germany last night.”

“That’s bad,” said Ray, and he and Lois both sat staring aghast at the massive face lit up by the dancing flames.

They had known Dr Rhenius for ten years or more. He was established in Willstead before any of them came there. He had a good practice and private means of his own, and was generally esteemed and trusted. He was a bachelor, of five-and-forty or so, and in spite of his German-sounding name claimed Polish descent. His father, Casimir Rienkiwicz, had, he had told them, fled from Russian domination in Warsaw to the freedom of London, where his son was born. The father had adopted the less cumbrous name of Rhenius, and prospered in business. The son studied medicine in Edinburgh, in London, in Munich and in Paris, spoke German, French, and English with equal fluency, kept in close touch with the most advanced medical thought of all three countries, and employed their latest curative discoveries while his English confrères were still sniffing suspiciously at their outer wrappers.

The one thing that ever disturbed his equanimity was to be referred to as a German. At times the younger folk with humorous malice would drop an innocent, “Of course, you Germans,” etc. etc., when the Doctor would lose his placidity and repudiate the innuendo with scorn and indignation. Victoria Luard was especially good at baiting him and enjoyed his outbursts to the full.

Such spare time as his patients allowed him he devoted to research into the subject of mental diseases. Whereby he and Connal Dare had become great friends. He had encouraged Con in the choice of his special line, and had helped him freely out of his own well-filled stores of knowledge and experience. When they met, which was rarely now, they went at it hammer and tongs, and in the intervals corresponded vigorously concerning any unusual cases Con came across, and the newest methods of treating them, and the results.

“Yes,” said Dr Rhenius soberly. “It looks like being a general flare up, and that will mean--it will mean more than any of us can imagine.”

“Where did you hear it?” asked Ray. “We have been aching for some definite word of what was going on, but no one seemed to know anything and no letters or papers were coming through.”

“I was at Piora, near Airolo. The news came there this morning, and I packed up and started at once for home. I came through the tunnel to Göschenen, booked a seat in the diligence for to-morrow morning, and walked on here, because I know this little place of old and always enjoy it. It may be the last time some of us will enjoy it for a long time to come.”

“You think it will be a long business, Doctor?” asked Lois anxiously.

He shook his big head discouragingly. “War is full of surprises, my dear. It is the very last thing I would care to prophesy about.”

“Italy will go in with Germany and Austria, of course,” said Ray.

The Doctor’s big moustache crinkled up as he compressed his lips. “Eventually, one would suppose so. But, truly, I could discover no enthusiasm, or even inclination, for warlike adventure in the few with whom I had the opportunity of conversing. They are still suffering from Tripoli, down there, you see.... Where are you making for?”

“Two big M’s, Doctor. Montreux and Marriage. We’re going to get married as soon as we get there.”

“So!”

“You see it’s hardly right and proper--as you suggested just now--to be gadding about in this fashion together. So we’re going to regularise the situation at the first possible moment.”

“I will chaperone you with pleasure.”

“Thanks awfully! But we’d sooner get married. We wouldn’t like to be a burden on anyone.”

“And how do you go?”

“We’ve walked mostly so far--all the way from Landeck, except one spell from Chur to Ruēras. We like it.”

“If you take my advice you will get them to telephone for seats in the diligence and come along with me. It will not be walking weather for some days now. And the Furka in snow is a tough job. We get to Brigue to-morrow evening and to Montreux next day. They are mobilising here but the trains are still running. I wired to ask.”

“I think we will. Lois is a splendid walker, but if it’s going to be like this the sooner we’re at Montreux the better,” and he went at once and got Freda to telephone to Göschenen for seats in the diligence for the following morning.

She came in presently with the information that every seat was booked both for the morning and afternoon service.

“And for the following day?” he asked.

“Two coupé-seats only are left, Herr.”

“Book them for us at once, Freda, and we will either stop here or walk on up the Furka and take our places when the diligence catches us up.”

“Jawohl, Herr!”

“I must get on,” said the Doctor, “or I would joyfully wait with you here.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t think of it. How about getting on from Montreux?”

The Doctor nodded musingly. “There one will have to be guided by circumstances. I shall go on to Geneva and endeavour to make my way through France. But it may not be an easy matter. Everything will be under military law and mere civilians will not be of much account just now. You may have to wait there for a time till the first rush to the frontiers is over.”

“We expected that. That’s why we’re going to get married as soon as we get there.”

“I will tell them all about it at home, if I succeed in getting there. They will be very suspicious of foreigners in France. They may lock me up. You have no passports, I suppose.”

“Not a scrap between us. I’ve never carried one in my life.”

“This has taken us all unawares. But I always carry one. It is useful at times, in procuring one’s registered letters and so on.... And money?--you have plenty?”

“Enough to go on with. If we don’t turn up you might ask Uncle Tony to send us some more--to Poste Restante, Montreux,” and the Doctor methodically made a note of it.

They talked much of matters connected with the coming war, all through supper and afterwards. They had the hotel to themselves. Freda told them that up to three days ago they were full; then, at once, everyone fled at news of the possibility of war.

But, except as to the broad facts of the case, the Doctor was very non-committal, and thinking over all their discursive talk afterwards, Ray found himself very little the wiser for it all. His own opinions he could remember expressing very fully and freely. But, though the Doctor had discoursed weightily at times on various points, Ray could not recall anything of any great importance that he had said or any new light that he had cast upon the complex situation. The matter visibly weighed upon him and even cast its shadow on him.

They saw him for a few minutes next morning, and then the diligence rolled up and he was gone.

It was a bleak day, cold slush under foot and a wind that held in it the chill of the snow-peaks. They delighted Freda by deciding to wait there for the diligence next morning, and enjoyed the warmth within the more for the cold without.

IX

At home, meanwhile, they were living in a whirl of conflicting rumours, fears, hopes, which changed their faces with every edition of the papers, but possessed one lowest common denominator in an intense and ever-increasing anxiety.

Mr Dare wore a very grave face in these days; and as his wife understood--to some extent at all events--the difficulties he had to wrestle with in consequence of the total cessation of business with the Continent, she found it no easy matter to keep as cheerful a heart as she would have wished, but bravely did her best that way.

One quick glance at her husband’s face, when he came in of a night, told her more than all the papers, and the news was never encouraging.