Chapter VI: Swiss Encounters

TWO girls sat in a tiny verandah, outside the third storey of a Swiss hotel, facing a horseshoe group of dazzling peaks. Or rather, one of the two faced it, while the other faced her.

She who gazed upon the mountains, a slender maiden, pale, with brown eyes and wavy hair and rather heavy dark brows, did nothing else. It was enough to be there, enough to look, enough to study and absorb Nature's glories.

But the second—a girl only by courtesy, being many years the older—a short plump vigorous person, snub-nosed, with insignificant light eyes and tow-coloured hair—seemed to find an occasional glance at lofty peaks sufficient. For each glance sent in that direction, half-a-dozen glances went towards her companion; and in addition, she busily darned a dilapidated stocking.

Despite the difference in age, a difference amounting to over twelve years, those two were intimate friends. Yet it was a friendship of sorts; not alike on both sides. The younger girl's love for her senior was gentle and sincere. The elder's love for her junior amounted to an absorbing passion. Amy Smith would have done anything, given anything, endured anything, for the sake of Beatrice Major.

"Amy—if you could only know what a delight this trip has been to me!—has been and is!"

"My dear, one couldn't watch your face and not know."

"But to think that it is all you!—that you have saved and scraped and denied yourself—and just for my sake! And I never dreaming all those months, when you said you could not afford this and that and the other—never dreaming what you had in your mind!"

"It has been one long joy to me. You wouldn't wish to deprive me of it."

"But that you should have given up so much—for me!"

"Nobody minds giving up a shilling for the sake of a guinea."

"If I could feel that I deserved it—but I don't."

"I know, my dear!"

"You don't—and I can't make you."

She looked up to meet the steadfast gaze; a gaze which she understood. It meant that if Amy had her, there was no need for aught beside. And she could not return this devotion in kind or in degree. She did want something else.

"C'est toujours l'un qui aime, et l'autre qui se laisse aimé." Was it always so? Not altogether; for she did love dear kind Amy, truly and faithfully. But with the same love!—ah, no. And this seemed cruel for Amy.

"How I shall miss you in Burwood!" she said, with an earnest wish to give pleasure. And, indeed, it was true! She could not but miss the constant outpouring of affection which she had had from childhood, even though at times she might have felt its expression a trifle burdensome. But she would not miss as she would be missed.

"Will you—really?" Amy was generally blunt in speech and manner; yet she could be wistful. The plump plain face softened; the little snub nose flushed with the flushing of her freckled brow and tanned cheeks; and the pale grey eyes grew moist. "Bee—will you want me?"

"Of course I shall, at every turn. Think how long I have had you always."

"You will have Magda Royston now."

"Yes." Bee forgot to say more. She looked away at the lofty peaks opposite, where a ruby gleam lay athwart the snows. Yes, she would have Magda. She remembered in a flash her letter to Magda, telling her so eagerly of the settled plans; and her own hurt feeling at receiving no response.

In a month the response came; but before the close of that month another personality had entered her life. The three weeks at "Aunt Belle's" meant much to her. She had been in close touch with one whom she could never forget, who could never in the future be to her as a stranger. An impress had been made upon her life, transforming her at one touch into a woman. And if her love for Amy had paled a little before her warmer love for Magda, as starlight pales before moonlight, her love for Magda paled before this fresh experience, as moonlight pales before sunlight. Not that in either case her affection actually waned or altered, but that the lesser light became of necessity dim by comparison with the greater.

Nobody knew or suspected what had happened. Her gentle self-control prevented any betrayal of feeling on her part. The two had indeed been a great deal together, during those three weeks, but intercourse came about so simply and naturally, that she never could decide how far it was purely accidental, how far as a result of effort on his part. He seemed to enjoy being with her; and they seemed to suit; but whether he would remember her, whether he had any strong desire to meet her again, were questions which she had no power to decide. Their paths might lie permanently apart.

When the expected letter at last came from Magda, though she was a little grieved at the manifest lack of real delight in the prospect of having her at Burwood, it could not mean the same that it would have meant before that visit. For one who has been in strong sunshine, the brightest moonlight must seem pale.

"Bee, what are you cogitating about? I don't understand your face."

Bee smiled. "I was thinking over—varieties. These mountains make one think. Yes, I shall have Magda. But one friend does not fill another's place. You will always be you to me."

"And she will be she, I suppose."

"Yes; but she can never be you. Don't you see?"

Amy sighed profoundly. "All I know is that London will be a desert without you. And I'm torn in half—do you know that sensation?—between two longings. I long for you to be happy in Burwood; and if you weren't happy, I should be miserable. And yet I long for you to miss me so desperately that you can't be happy without me. There!—it's out! Horrid and mean of me! But it's true."

"Amy, you never could be mean. You are only too good—too unselfish."

"It's all selfishness. You don't understand. I love doing anything in the world for you, purely as a matter of self-gratification. Real unselfishness would only want you to be perfectly happy—apart from myself. And what I do want is that I should make you happy. Which means that, if I can't, I'd rather nobody else should. Isn't it disgusting?"

"But you have made me happy. I can't tell you half or a quarter of the joy this trip has been to me. I have so longed all my life to see Swiss mountains. And you have given me the joy! I do believe there is going to be an afterglow, and we shall miss it! Just time for table d'hôte."

Once before the glow had occurred when they were all engaged in what Amy disdainfully described as "gormandizing."

"We've got to be in bed early to-night, mind, Bee. I want you to get well rested for to-morrow's exertions. Sure you are fit for it?"

"I never was more fit in my life. It will be splendid."

"And to-morrow night we sleep at the Hut."

"Delightful! Such an experience! I don't believe I shall sleep a wink to-night, thinking about all we are going to see."

"You must, or you won't be up to the walking."

After two weeks of lesser practice, and divers small climbs, they were going on a real expedition—their first ascent, worthy of the name—under charge of Peter Steimathen, than whom they could have found no more dependable guide, and his son, Abraham. Both girls were of slight physique; both were by nature sure of foot; and both dearly loved climbing. Since both were Londoners, their opportunities hitherto had not been great in that line; but they had taken to it like ducklings to water. Peter Steimathen, after some consultation, pronounced that they might safely, under his guidance, make the attempt.

At table d'hôte Beatrice found a stranger by her side; a reticent young English clergyman, slim in make, with quiet observant eyes. She had never met him before; yet something once and again in his look seemed familiar, and she vainly tried to "locate" the resemblance. He and she fell easily into talk—strictly on the surface of things.

"Yes, we are going for a climb to-morrow," she said soon. "Nothing big, of course. We are only beginners. It is called the Rothstock—a lesser peak of the Blümlisalp group."

"You will want a guide for that, if you are beginners."

"We would not venture without Peter Steimathen."

"I know him. You couldn't do better."

"Are you going up somewhere too?"

"The Blümlisalphorn."

"Not alone! You have a guide."

"No, I have a friend. Not here—he has a room in a châlet close by. We are both well used to the mountains. No need for a guide."

"People say that is not safe."

"Depends!" And he smiled. "We've done a good deal together that way."

"Without guides?"

"Without guides."

"I hope you won't come to grief some day."

"I hope not!"

"You think it is wise?" dubiously.

"Extremely wise. But you must be careful—excuse me! There are traps for beginners that don't affect old hands."

"Peter Steimathen!" she suggested.

"He is excellent. But you must do as he tells you."

"Oh, I've learnt to obey," laughed Bee.

Then she saw that his attention was distracted; and her own became distracted also. Two new arrivals had just come in; a middle-aged lady, stout and handsomely dressed; and a girl, young, and quite lovely. She had one of those picture-faces which are seen two or three times in a half-century. Not Bee's gaze alone suffered distraction. The whole room gazed; and the object of all this attention received it calmly, without a change of colour or the flicker of an eyelid.

"She's used to it," Bee remarked to herself.

But it was impossible not to go on gazing. The face was one that nobody could glance at once and not glance again. Soft curly fair hair clustered about a fair brow; and the delicately tinted complexion made one think of snowflakes and rose-buds, or of early dawn in June. A slender figure, full of grace, shell-white arms and hands, features pretty enough not to detract from the exquisite colouring, helped to make up the tout-ensemble; and the forget-me-not blue eyes smiled graciously at the elder lady, at the waiters, at the table-cloth, at anything and everything that they happened to encounter.

Beatrice cast an involuntary side-glance towards her neighbour. He too was gazing; and in the quiet eyes she detected a subdued intensity, of which she would not have thought them capable.

"Isn't she sweet?" breathed Bee.

The remark was not even heard, and no reply came. Their broken talk was not renewed; and he disposed of eatables with the air of one who hardly knew what was before him. Dinner ended, the vision disappeared, and so did Bee's neighbour; but an hour later she was amused to see him at the further end of the saloon, in close talk with the pretty new arrival.

Meeting him still later in a passage, she paused and made some slight reference to the girl.

"I wonder who she is," Bee said.

"A friend of my sister's," he replied. "Singular, our meeting here. I have heard of her before."

Bee noted again a suppressed gleam in his eyes.