Part 9

“Really and truly,” laughed Alma. “I hope it isn’t objectionable to you in any way.”

“Lord, no! Quite the other way. If there’s two things I admire about old Con they’re his uniform and his jolly old cheek. Think of him going and getting you to marry him right away like that.”

“He’s off to-morrow morning, you see, so I thought it best to make sure of him.”

“He’s really going? I wish we were.”

“How do things stand with you now, Mac?” asked Con. “Any nearer bull’s-eye?”

“There’s rumours of a possible Second Battalion being formed, but nothing definite. We’ve put our names down, and meanwhile we’re getting ourselves into good shape. If they don’t buck up and do something soon we shall try elsewhere. But we’d sooner be London Scottish than anything else.”

“You see, the girls there think we’d look so well in kilts,” broke in Noel.

“What on earth gave you any such impression as that, my child?” asked Honor.

“Oh, we can see it in your eyes.”

“Ah,--little boys see what they want to see sometimes.”

“When we can. Can’t always, can we, Mac?”

“Come along, you hungry ones,” called Mrs Dare from the doorway, and they sped away for a very necessary wash before eating.

Alma’s short leave expired at ten o’clock, and as Con had promised to return her safely to the hospital by that hour, they had to set off in such time as would allow a margin for contingencies.

Their good-byes were outwardly cheerful enough, and as exuberant as high and hopeful spirits could make them. But, below all the surface confidence and fortitude, not one of their hearts but was saying to itself--“This is the beginning of partings,” and was asking itself--“Shall we ever all meet again?” And the necessity for smothering, as far as might be, the chill possibilities evoked by these importunate voices, made the younger folk but the more outwardly determined on most valiant gaiety.

“Meet you across there, maybe, old man,” said Noel.

“I’ll be on the look-out for you. Do my best for you in case of need.”

“Do be careful not to lose one another on the way home,” begged Vic, with an assumption of anxiety. “You are very young, you see, and naturally somewhat entêtés at the moment.”

“I’m inclined to think we really ought to go with them,” said Honor. “They may wander away hand-in-hand, and never be heard of again. Get your hat, Vic, and we’ll go.”

“Right-o!” said Noel. “We’re on. We’ll go along too to take care of you.”

“Then we’ll stop at home,” said Honor resignedly. “We couldn’t think of taking you out again after your hard day’s play.”

“To say nothing of the fact that your southern extremities are inches thick with mud,” said Vic. “Everybody we met would think we’d taken to walking out with the gardener’s boys----”

“Or the young butcherlings. Yes, we’re sorry, dears,”--to Con and Alma, “but under the circumstances I’m afraid you’ll have to find your way by yourselves.”

“We’ll manage somehow,” said Con, and in their good-byes to the older folk there were suspiciously shining eyes and lingering hand-grips and convulsive kissings which told their own tales.

“The beginning of partings!”... “Shall we ever all meet again?” ... and hearts were heavy though faces smiled.

“God bless you both and keep you from all harm!” was Mrs. Dare’s last word, and with that in their hearts they ran across to say good-bye to Auntie Mitt, who said exactly the same words and made no assumption of anything but gloomiest forebodings as to the future.

As to the Colonel, when they had actually gone, he blew his nose like a trumpet-blast, till his moustache bristled white against the dark-redness of his face, and he turned back into the room with a fervent,--“Damn the Kaiser and all his works!... I trust you will excuse me, best of friends!”

“I will excuse you,” said Mrs Dare. “It is terrible for one man to have such power for ill in his hands.”

XII

At the station Con got another taxi.

“We could not stand the train to-night,” he said, as they swept down into the high-road, and he slipped an arm round her and drew her close and kissed her. “This will be our last little spell together for some time probably.... You’ve not felt any qualms or regrets yet?”

“Do I feel as if I had?” and she nestled the closer inside his protecting arm. “I shall never feel anything but glad, Con, ... whatever comes. We belong to one another and nothing can take that from us.... But you will be very careful, dear, for my sake, won’t you?”

“I will, dear. Be sure of that.... For the rest, we are in God’s hands and we must just leave it at that.”

They did not talk very much. It was enough to feel one another so close in body and closer still in heart,--enough to lie back in the shadow, with arms and hands interwoven, while the taxi whirled in and out of the lamp-lights, and Alma’s face, sweet and strong in the restraint she was imposing on herself, swam up out of the darkness like a beautiful cameo growing under the unseen touch of a master-hand,--dim ... clear ... perfect, to his hungry eyes, as the face of an angel in its confident hope and trust ... then in a moment it was gone, and all he had was the feel of her as he watched for the first glimmer of her face again in the darkness.

They did not talk much, because there was so much to say--so little need to say it--so much that could never be put into words. Silence and nearness sufficed them,--the silence of overfull hearts, the nearness of souls about to part,--perhaps, as each well knew, for ever.

“Wife!” said Con one time, drawing her still closer, though that had seemed impossible.

“My husband!” murmured Alma, and drew his head down with her arm and kissed him passionately.

An unforgettable ride, and all too soon at an end.

Con stopped the cab a hundred yards this side of the hospital, and they walked slowly on towards the great gateway.

It was still one minute to ten as they stopped there in its shadow. There was little traffic at that time of night and few passers-by.

He took her face gently between his hands and held it before him. He could not see it but he knew the pure sweet eyes were looking straight up into his.

A big clock in the distance boomed the first stroke of ten. Their time was up. He kissed her fervently, a kiss for each stroke, and she kissed him back.

“May God in His great mercy have us both in His keeping!” he said, hoarse with the depth of his feeling.

“Dear ... He will!”

He turned and pressed the button of the bell. The door opened and, with one more look, full of confident hope, she was gone--and in tears before the door closed, but that he did not know.

With that last sweet sight of her--to him the fairest vision of Faith and Hope and Love Incarnate that ever was or could be--he turned and walked away along the dark empty street, slowly and heavily, and felt his life for the moment as dark and empty as the street.

XIII

When Lois Dare and Ray Luard came downstairs on the morning of August 7, they found the dark-panelled little salon of the ‘Golden Lion’ as cheerfully bright as a blazing fire and a pale sunbeam could make it; and outside, the upper alps of Urseren Thal were swathed with long wreaths of mist, above which the white tops of the Spitzberge shone like silver in the sunshine.

Freda came hastening in with the coffee and milk and a distressed face on their account.

“But it is too bad for you,” she burst out. “They have just sent us word on the telephone that there will be no diligence to-day, nor any more at all. All the horses are wanted for the war,--ach!--the cursed war! It will be the ruin of us all.”

“That’s all right, Freda,” said Lois cheerfully. “Don’t worry about it on our account. We’ll manage quite well.”

“We walked here, you see,” said Ray. “And we’ll just walk on over the Furka and down the valley till we get to Montreux--if there are no trains running.”

“But, mon Dieu, what a walk! To Montreux! It will take you weeks!”

“Not a bit. We get along quicker than that. So get our bill made out,--that’s a good girl, and we’ll start as soon as we’ve finished breakfast.”

“Shall I put you up some lunch, monsieur and mademoiselle?”

“No,” said Ray, after a moment’s thought. “We’ll have a proper lunch and a good rest at the Furkablick,--or the Belvédère, if we can get that far, and then get on to Oberwald. I don’t want to stop at Gletsch,” at which Freda smiled knowingly.

She added four different kinds of cheese to their menu, buzzed about them to see that they laid in adequate supplies of honey and blaeberry jam, and finally brought them a bill which surprised them by its modesty and provided Ray with a pocketful of change out of a five-pound note.

From the length of time Freda took to bring back the change he opined that she had had some difficulty in obtaining it. But how much he never knew.

For Madame of the hotel had, for the first time in her life, looked dubiously at an English five-pound note.

“But, Freda,” she said, “Will that be all right if England is beaten in the war, as they say she will be?”

“She won’t,” said Freda oracularly. “And in any case an English five-pound note is always good.”

“I don’t know. It always has been, but----”

“I will change it myself then. I have no fear of England being beaten by any pigs of Germans. It’s enough to make you sick just to hear them eat,” and she took the note and climbed up to her own small room, and opened her box, and got out the other box in which she kept her savings, and came back with the change in her hands, much of it in five-franc pieces.

“Là!” she chirped triumphantly. “There then is madame’s money, and here is monsieur’s change. I would not have them think we doubt them,--no, not for five francs,” and she went off with the receipted bill and the change on a plate.

“Freda,” said Ray, as he added a lordly remembrance for herself, “I’d like to stop here for a month.”

“Well--why not? Monsieur and mademoiselle will be very welcome indeed,” and Freda’s beam was a thing to remember.

“Duty calls, my child. We’re going to Montreux to get married, you know, and then we want to get home as soon as circumstances will permit. Any news this morning?”

“By the telephone they say there is terrible fighting in Belgium. The poor little country! I was there for a year, in Bruxelles. They are such nice quiet people, but not great fighters, I would think. And the Germans--they are strong. Oh, it is terrible to think of.”

Half an hour later, while the sun was still wrestling with the mist-wreaths, they were climbing the long straight road to Realp. Turning off there by the second bridge, they took the old road in order to avoid the endless zig-zags of the new one, and following the telegraph posts they mounted rapidly towards the little Galenstock Hotel.

On the Ebneten Alp, below the hotel, they sat down on a glacier-scored boulder for a last look over the Urseren-Thal and a rest before tackling the Furka. It was a wonderful sight--the wide green sweep of the valley right to the great white barracks at Andermatt and the zig-zags of the Oberalp-road beyond;--on the one side, the sprawling green and gray limbs of Spitzberge, still dappled with mist-wreaths but shining like frosted silver up above;--on the other side Piz Lucendro, with the Wyttenwasser-Thal and glacier below it;--and the upward road which led to the Furka was all white with snow.

It made the walking more difficult, but the air was crisp and clear up there and the very fact of walking on snow was exhilarating. In places it was over their shoe-tops and the drifts by the road side, when they plunged their poles into them, were many feet deep.

Far away below them in the Garschen-Thal they could see the cuttings and bridges for the new railway from Brigue to Disentis and Ilanz, but there was no work going on. The men had all gone to the front, and the unnatural offence of their blastings and delvings was for the time being suspended, though the scars and wounds of their previous efforts remained in painful evidence.

Presently they walked up into a mist-wreath and had the novel experience of plodding along an invisible road smothered in close-packed glimmering whiteness. The sun outside was evidently shining brilliantly on the thick bank of mist, but, so far, its rays failed to disperse it and penetrated only in a weird luminous diffusion, which had a most curious effect on the senses.

It made Lois’s head spin till she reeled dizzily along and at last clung to Ray’s arm for safety.

“I believe I’m drunk,” she laughed mazedly. “Have we had anything stronger than coffee this morning?”

“Not that I remember,” laughed Ray, in the same high-strung way. “Unless you slipped into one of the hotels we passed unbeknown to me. It’s queer, isn’t it? I feel absolutely light-headed. In fact I think the top front of my head is coming off. Hel-lo! Who’s this now?”

This was a burly overcoated sentry, who loomed suddenly large in front of them and courteously informed them that they must keep to the lower road as this one led only to the barracks. So they stumbled back till they came on the main road again, and feeling their way by the granite posts, set up along the side of the road to keep the diligence from tumbling over into the valley, they came at last to the Furkablick Hotel, and were glad to grope into the hall and warm themselves at the blazing stove.

“We can’t possibly go on if it keeps like this,” said Ray. “It’s neither safe nor wholesome. We can see nothing and might find ourselves walking over the edge into the valley.”

“Suppose we have lunch and a good rest, and perhaps it will draw off. How far is it to the place we were to stop for the night?”

“It’s about six miles to the Gletsch,--a bit less by the short cuts, and four miles or so on to Oberwald.”

“Say three hours. We can give it a couple of hours to clear off, or even more if necessary.”

So they fared sumptuously, and both fell fast asleep in big arm chairs near the stove in the salon afterwards, and when Ray yawned and woke it was close on three o’clock, and the sun had won and the mountains all round were shining white against the clear deep blue.

There was no one else in the salon. There seemed, in fact, no one else in the hotel except a few officers who kept to the smoking-room. So he kissed Lois awake, and in five minutes they were footing it gaily up the Furka road, with the Bernese giants towering in front and dwarfing all the lesser wonders closer at hand.

“That must be Finsteraarhorn,” said Ray, pointing to the highest and sharpest peak. “And that one further on is probably Jungfrau, but I know her better from the other side.”

Then they passed the fortifications and turned a corner, and the great Rhone glacier lay below them, dappled here and there, where the sun got into the hollows, with the most wonderful flecks of fairy colour--tenderly vivid and lucently diaphanous blues and greens so magically blended that Lois caught her breath at the sight.

“How beautiful! How beautiful!” she murmured. “It is a dream-colour, but I never dreamed anything half so lovely.”

He could hardly get her along. She wanted to stop at every second step to gloat on some fresh wonder. But they came at last, by slow degrees, to the point, just below the Belvédère, where sturdy pedestrians can drop from the main road into the valley and so avoid the tedious winding-ways.

“We’ll get down here, if you think you can manage it,” said Ray. “Then we can get right up to the glacier-foot where the Rhone comes out. It’s worth seeing, but it’s a bit of a scramble down unless they’ve improved the path.”

“I’ll manage it all right if you’ll go first and show me the way.”

So they started on that somewhat precarious descent, and had gone but a little way when Ray began to be sorry he had not stuck to the solider footing of the road.

For the apology of a path had in places disappeared entirely under the attrition of the wet season and many heavy boots. Whole lumps of it had slipped away and left gaps and slides down which a rough-clad Switzer might flounder with possible impunity, but which suggested serious possibilities to the ordinary traveller.

He had gone on hoping it would improve, but it did not. Instead it grew worse. But if falling down such awkward slides was no easy matter, re-climbing them to gain the high road was next to impossible.

They bumped and slipped and floundered downwards as best they could.

“I’m truly sorry,” he said, as he helped her down one specially awkward place. “It was nothing like this last time I came.”

“It’s all right,” she laughed. “It’s fun--all in the day’s work. Don’t tumble right out of sight if you can help it.”

And then he did. A lump of rock to which he had trusted his foot came squawking out of the wet bank, and he and it went down together a good half-dozen yards.

He brought up with his rucksac over his head and turned at once to see to her safety.

“All right,” he shouted. “No bones broken. But I don’t advise you to try it. Strike to the right and try and find a better place. Throw me down your rucksac and cloak, then you’ll be free-er.”

She dropped them down to him, with a startled look on her face, and he scrambled round, as well as he could so laden, to meet her round the corner. But she had to make quite a long détour before she came at last on another and less precarious path and was at last able to join him.

“Sure you weren’t hurt?” she asked anxiously.

“Quite sure. Bit scraped, that’s all. I suppose it’s the rains that have boggled the path so. Now, if we keep on round here we’ll be able to get right up to the ice-cave where the stream comes out. Here’s the rain on again. Better put that cloak on,” and they scrambled on over the rough detritus from the glacier and the hillsides till they reached the ice-foot, and stood looking into the weird blue-green hollow out of which the gray glacier water came rushing as though in haste to find a more congenial atmosphere.

“It’s the most wonderful colour I’ve ever seen,” she said, drinking it in with wide appreciative eyes. “It hardly looks real and earthly. It looks as though a breath would make it vanish. I suppose if we got inside there it would simply be all white.”

But just then, in sullen warning, a solid lump of overhanging ice came down with a crash, and a volley of stones came shooting at them mixed with its splinters, and they turned and went on their way down the stony valley.

The rain ceased again just as they arrived at the big hotel, and as Ray swung off his cloak and shook it, Lois laughed and said,

“When we get to Oberwald you must hand me over your trousers and I’ll stitch them up.”

“Why?--what?--” and he clapped his hands to his hips to feel the damage, while Lois still stood laughing at the rents and tears which his cloak had so far hidden.

“I should keep my cloak on if I were you,” she suggested, and then asked quickly, “Why--Ray? What is it? Are you more hurt than you thought?”--for the look on his face was one of concern if not of actual consternation.

“I am,” he jerked, with a pinch on his face, and then he felt hastily in his other pockets and the tension slackened somewhat. “But it’s not in my person,--only in my pocket. Would you mind kicking me, dear? Here,--we’ll go round the corner,” and he stepped back the way they had come. “And--would you also mind telling me what money you have in your pocket or your rucksac.”

“Not very much, I’m afraid. Two or three pounds, I think. Why?”

“Because,” he said, displaying the catastrophe. “That stupid slip of mine has busted my hip-pocket and all our money’s gone. All except the change out of this morning’s five-pounder. With that and yours we can get to Montreux all right, and I can wire from there to Uncle Tony, but it’s confoundedly stupid,----”

“Couldn’t we find it if we went back?”

“I’m going to try, but you’ll stop here and have some tea to pass the time.”

“Oh no, I won’t. It’s share and share alike. Aren’t we almost man and wife? Come along! We’ll have a hunt for our money anyway,” and she led the way back towards the glacier.

They searched for an hour, but looking for a flat leather purse in that stony land was like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. They found the exact spot where Ray took his sudden slide, but search below it discovered nothing. They followed step by step the way he had taken till he met Lois and then, as well as they could, the path they had taken to the ice-foot. But there was no sign of the purse and he came to the conclusion that his pocket was probably torn by the slide and the purse fell out of it later on,--anywhere down the two-mile stretch of stony valley between them and the hotel.

They paced it with meticulous care, searching cautiously, but found nothing, and at last gave it up and went on,--soberly as regards Ray, amusedly as regards Lois, who persisted in looking only at the humorous side of the matter.

“We’ll walk all the way,” she laughed, “and pick out the cheapest-looking hotels, and you’ll have to haggle like a German about terms.”

“I’m awfully sick of myself for being such an ass,” he said gloomily. “It’s hateful to be short of cash in a strange land. I often used to run it pretty close. I remember once reaching home from this very place with only a halfpenny in my pocket. I remember I wanted a cup of tea on the train, more than I’d ever wanted one before, and I had to go without.”

“Had you lost your purse then also?” asked Lois mischievously.

“No,--just stopped longer than I’d planned and ran it a bit too fine.”

They plodded into Oberwald just before dark, and stumped heavily up the steep wooden steps that led from the stony road to the door of the little Furka Hotel, fairly tired out with the day’s walk, which their diversion in search of Ray’s purse had extended, he reckoned, to close on five-and-twenty miles, and he proceeded to haggle with the depressed-looking landlady like any German of them all.

She was glad enough to have them, however, even on their own terms, and gave them a quite sufficient supper, in which three different kinds of sausage, and veal in several guises, figured principally; and her bed-rooms, if somewhat meagrely furnished, were at all events clean. And they went up early to bed, tired with their long tramp and still tireder,--as Ray expressed it, concerning himself--of playing the fool with his money and throwing it about for some wiser man to pick up.

The landlady knew nothing about the war, except that the diligences had stopped running because the horses were wanted, and most of the men had gone--to Thun, or Berne, she was not quite sure where, but it was all because of the talk of war, and she did not hold with any of it,--stopping business and upsetting everybody and everything.

Oberwald, they decided, could not at the best of times be a very inspiring place. Under the shadow of the war-cloud it was dismal. They had early breakfast on the wooden platform outside the front door, while the deserted village below and about them roused itself, lazily and obviously against the grain, to its day’s work.

But Ray was obviously not up to his usual standard, even though Lois had borrowed needle and thread from the landlady and had patched up his rents with deft fingers and visible enjoyment at being of service to him.

“You’re not letting that old purse worry you, are you?” she had asked, as they sat over their coffee and cheese and honey on the wooden platform.