Chapter V: Part 5

She had spoken of the freedom of her life as giving zest to existence, but too great freedom may pall; it had palled on the girl, and she had put up her hands, pleading to be fitted with light but strong manacles. What a contrast was to be found between his life and hers! He had been cramped and hedged about with restrictions: she had enjoyed an excess of liberty. Virtue, says Aristotle, is to be found in a happy medium, and not virtue only, but the plenitude and manifoldness of life can only unfurl itself in a happy medium between excess of freedom and oppressive restriction. Philip was and ever had been conscious that his abilities had not been allowed due expansion in the career into which he had been squeezed; and this American girl, with doubtless splendid capabilities of mind and heart, had allowed them to run riot and dissipate their fragrance in untutored independence. When she fixed her great dark eyes on him, what a thrill passed through him! and when she took his hand, fire ran up his veins, and broke into a blaze in his heart.

What could he do for her? How was it possible for him to assist her? to be to her the wise friend she desired? If he had made her acquaintance two years ago it would have been another matter, he would have thrown himself at her feet--metaphorically, of course--and asked her to take him as her guide, protector, and friend, to tie up her future with his, and so each would have contributed something to the other to make up what each lacked. Then what a different sort of life his would have been! His present mode of existence was similar, only better in quality, to that he had led before; one had been a sordid drudgery, the present was a gilded drudgery. The difference was in the adjective that qualified, not in the substance of which the stuff of his life was made up. He had now to devote the same attention to figures and technicalities and details as before. The figures, technicalities, details, were formerly relative to conveyancing, they now concerned linen manufacture. Such acquaintances as he had formed at Nottingham had not been interested in much beyond their business, and the acquaintances he had formed at Mergatroyd had their interests concentrated on their business. Art, literature, science, had been to those he knew at Nottingham, and were to those he knew at Mergatroyd, names, not ideas. Was life worth living in such surroundings, tied to such a routine? It is said that man as he gets older fossilizes, the currents of his blood choke the arteries, veins, vessels of heart and brain, till like furred waterpipes and crusted boilers they can no longer act. But was not the life to which he was condemned, with its monotony, its constraint, its isolation from the current of intellectual life--a mechanizing of man? Philip knew that he was losing, had lost, much of his individuality, almost all the spontaneity that had been lodged in him by the Creator, and was growing more and more into a machine, like his spinning-jennies and steam looms. He thought of Salome. Had she many ideas outside the round of ordinary life? Was she not an ennobled, sweeter lodging-house keeper? She had been well educated, but her mind did not naturally soar into the ideal world. It went up, spasmodically, like the grasshoppers, a little way, and was down on its feet again directly. She was interested in her baby, anxious to have her house neat, the cobwebs all away, the linen in perfect order, all the towels marked and numbered, the servants in thorough activity, the quotients for the cake and pudding measured in scales, not guessed. She was devoted to her flowers also--he recollected the hyacinths, and certainly they had filled his room with fragrance and anticipations of spring. But he had sent her to sleep by reading aloud Addison's 'Spectator,' and when he tried Shakespeare he found that she had no insight into the characters, and accepted the beauties rather than seized on them.

What, Philip asked with a tremor--what if he had never met Salome, and had met Artemisia? Then indeed he would have been transported on strong wings out of the world of common-place, and the sound of common talk, and the murky atmosphere of vulgar interests, into a region where he would have shaken off his half-acquired habits of formality, his shyness, his cumbrousness and angularity, and become light-hearted, easy, and independent.

In dreams we sometimes imagine ourselves to be flying; we rise from the ground and labour indefatigably with our arms as wings; and Philip was now dreaming, though not asleep, fancying that he could part with some of his gravity and by an effort maintain himself in another sphere. He had missed his way in life; he was never designed to become a piece of clockwork, but to enjoy life, seize it with both hands, and hold it fast, and drink the mingled cup to the dregs, crowned with roses. Hitherto he had not suspected that the blood in his arteries was an effervescing wine; he had supposed it very still.

What was to be done for Artemisia? It would be inhuman, not to be reconciled with conscience, to turn away, to cast her off, when she entreated him to be her friend and help her with counsel. But how could he assist her? A drowning, despairing girl cried out for help. Could he suffer her to sink? Had he not promised her his assistance?

'I am positively determined,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, next day, 'that we shall go to-morrow to the hospice. I want to see it, and the dogs, and the scenery. So I have ordered carriages; and what is more, we will stay there a day or two; then, such as like, can descend the Val Tremola, and such as like can climb the Pizzo Centrale.'

'I have no objection.' answered Salome. 'We must not leave Andermatt until we have been over the pass and seen the beauties or terrors of the further side. What do you say, Philip?'

'I shall be glad.'

He stood up from table.

'Where are you going, Philip?'

'To Miss Durham, to invite her to join us.'

'Of course,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'Let me see, we are eight. Oh! it won't matter, one of the girls can sit outside. The drivers always walk going up hill, so that there will be five in one carriage, and five in the other. And Miss Durham will pay her share. Besides, if there is any climbing and excursioning to be done, she will pay half of a guide.'

But--strange caprice in Salome, she put her hand on Philip's arm, and said, in a low tone:

'No! Philip; no!'

Philip looked at her with surprise. Why should she not wish the American lady to join the party? She was her friend. She had been so desirous that he and Miss Durham should conclude peace, and now that peace was agreed upon, Salome said, 'No! Philip; no!' when he proposed to invite the Chicago girl to join them. How capricious! How unreasonable Salome was! She forms a wish, he hastens to accord it, and lo! she hangs back and is dissatisfied.

His aunt's favourite expression, 'Fiddlestick-ends!' rose to his lips. He was not the man to be turned about by the wayward, unreasoned fancies of his wife.

'Why not?' he asked.

But Salome gave him no answer. She had formed no motive in her heart for asking him not to invite Miss Durham; she had not considered a reason. She reddened to the roots of her hair, but neither gave a reason nor repeated her request.

There lingered all that day a little something, a dissonance of mood between Philip and Salome; neither could account for it, and neither attempted to account for it. He was silent; he wandered about the hotel and the grounds with a hope to light on Miss Durham He did not go into the _salle_ or on the terrace, into the reading-room, or about the garden searching for her. He did not ask the waiters where she was, but he looked about wherever he went, expecting to see her, and when he found her not in the reading-room or _salle_, on the terrace or in the garden, he felt that the place was uninteresting, and he must perforce go elsewhere.

Salome was gentle as usual, spending much time with her baby, showing it to those guests who were so gracious as to notice it, and smiling with pleasure when it was admired; but she was not herself, not as happy as she had been. Hitherto the only jar to her content was her husband's prejudice against Artemisia; now the jar arose--she did not explain to herself how it arose, but she wished that Philip had not gone so far in his change of sentiment. Yet with her natural modesty and shrinking from casting blame, she reproached herself for grudging to her friend that friendship which she had herself invited Philip to bestow.

The next day was lovely, with a cloudless sky, and the carriages departed. Some grumbling ensued and had to be resisted, on the part of the drivers, because five persons were crammed into one carriage. Mrs. Sidebottom pointed out that the driver would walk. That was true, was the reply, but not till Hospenthal was reached; moreover the horses could not draw more than four up the St. Gothard road to the hospice. There was still snow over a considerable tract; however, at length the difference was overcome by the promise of a small extra payment--two and a half francs extra--which threw such energy into the horses, and so increased their power of traction, that they consented for that price to draw five instead of four persons up the ascent from Hospenthal to the hospice. In one carriage, that in front, sat Mrs. Sidebottom, Janet and the captain, and one of the girls, the youngest. In the other carriage were Salome and Miss Durham, Philip, and the two other Labarte girls.

But Philip did not remain long in it; at the steep ascent above the little picturesque cluster of houses, church, and castle that constitute Hospenthal, he got out and walked. The banks were overgrown with the Alpine rhododendron, as flames bursting out of the low olive-green bushes, and Philip hastened to pick bunches for the ladies. By a singular chance the best flowers and those best arranged went to Miss Durham.

'See dere?' said the driver, taking off his hat. 'Vot ish dat? Dat is edelweiss. You shee?'

He held his dirty brown cap to Philip and showed him a tuft of white flowers as though made out of wool. Philip had never seen the like before.

'Are these found here, in these mountains?'

'Jawohl! round here. Up high! Shee!' The man pointed with his whip to the rocky heights. 'She grow up very high, dat vlower you give to your loaf!'

'Loaf?'

'Jawohl!' The man winked, put his hand to his heart. 'To your loaf--shatz! You undershtand.'

Philip flushed dark. He was hot with walking.

'Let me have some of that flower. You shall have it back. No, thank you, not your hat.'

The man pulled the blossoms out from the dirty ribbon that retained them. 'Dey is dry. But you should shee when dey fresh.'

Philip took the little flowers to the side of the carriage.

'Look at these,' he said. 'The man calls them--no, I cannot say the name.'

'Edelweiss,' said Salome; 'I have seen it dried in the shop windows. It is rare.'

'Edelweiss means the noble white flower,' said Miss Durham. 'It grows far from human habitation, and is much sought after. I have never found it myself, and never had any fresh picked given to me.'

'Would you like some?' asked Philip.

'Very much indeed,' answered Artemisia.

'If it be possible to get any, you shall have it,' he said. Then he walked on.

The fore carriage was stopped, and Mrs. Sidebottom was descending with Claudine Labarte, whom she had persuaded to get out with her and pick flowers, thus leaving the captain and Janet by themselves.

'Before long,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'we shall be beyond the line where flowers grow, so we must make the best of our opportunity now, Miss Labarte.'

Then Mrs. Sidebottom fell back to where Philip was and took his arm, and pressed it, looked up at him humorously and said, 'I have a bit of news to tell you. He is going to propose. That is why I have got Felicite out of the carriage.'

'Who? Lambert?'

'Lambert, of course. Not the driver. And to Janet. Have you not seen it coming?'

'But perhaps she will not have him.'

'Fiddlestick-ends! Of course she will. Don't you see that she likes him, and has been drawing him on? Besides, I have sounded her. The only difficulty is about Salome.'

'How can she be a difficulty?'

'Oh, she may think it too soon for them to get married when Mrs. Cusworth died so recently.'

'Then they can postpone the marriage.'

'Fiddle-faddle! Of course not. Always strike whilst the iron is hot. That is edelweiss in your hand, is it? Oh, could you manage to find or get a man to find some quite fresh, for Lambert to present to Janet. It is the correct thing in the Alps. The graceful accompaniment of a declaration.'

'I will try to get some,' said Philip.

'Lambert, you see, will be too much engaged with Janet to go far himself; besides, he is not able to take great exertion. Climbing has a deteriorating effect on the trouser-knees, it makes them baggy. You will get him some?'

'I will go searching for edelweiss when we reach the hospice,' said Philip. To himself he muttered, 'But not for Lambert and Janet.'

*CHAPTER XLVIII.*

*TRAPPED.*

For the last hour of the ascent the carriages passed through snow, not continuous, but between walls cut in the avalanches and drifts that had formed in the basins. The air was cold. The ground was so wet through melted snow that Philip and Mrs. Sidebottom and Mdlle. Labarte were obliged to ride. The walls of snow had fallen in here and there, so that the horses were obliged to flounder through. The scenery was bleak and wintry. The ladies shivered. At length the lake was reached in which the Reuss has its source, and a little beyond it the roofs of the hospice and the inn were visible. In ten minutes the shivering party was assembled in the _salle-a-manger_, which was heated, and was ordering dinner.

The monks had been banished for many years, and the hospice let by the Canton of Tessin to an inn-keeper of Airolo, who with his worthy wife and family have been in no way inferior in hospitality, in care for the poor travellers, and in providing for the comforts of the rich than were the brothers of old.

Signora Lombardi, stout, hale, and smiling, was in the hospice, exerting all her energies to get food ready for the large party that had come in. Wines--the best of North Italy, were to be had, and veal in various forms--but always veal, call it what you will.

'Oh! my goodness, gracious me!' cried Mrs. Sidebottom, 'there is a dog--a Mount St. Bernard dog! Oh! the size! the beauty! It must become the rage. Why--I have heard of more than two hundred pounds being given for a tulip, and what would not be given for such a dog as this--and with pulmonary complaint too, that develops on the plains.'

'You do not mean to say, aunt, that you are going to invest in shares in the Beaple Yeo dog-breeding establishment?' said Philip satirically.

'Colonel Yeo are you speaking about?' interrupted Miss Durham eagerly. 'Do tell me--do you think he will establish his claims to the title of Schofield?'

'He can establish his title to that name whenever he pleases,' said Philip, 'and--once more, if you have any regard for our feelings, you will not mention that person again in our hearing. Oh! here--in this glass on the table--are some draggled specimens of the white fluffy flower you call edelweiss. Perhaps our landlady, Signora Lombardi, will tell us if it grew near this inn.'

'Oh, signor,' answered the stout woman, 'it is to be found by the searchers, but I have never discovered it. I am too fat to climb, and, besides, my day for edelweiss is over.' She laughed and shook her sides as though she had made a good joke. 'I leave the edelweiss to the young people.' Her eye rested with a sly twinkle, first on the captain and Janet, about whom there could be no doubt, and then on Philip and--her eye hesitated a moment between Salome and Artemisia, and then rested on the latter. Philip looked uneasily out of the little window at the bleak outer world.

When dinner was finished the afternoon was advanced. Philip went out in front of the inn, on the platform of rock upon which it is built. Some of the ladies talked of taking a stroll to the head of the Val Tremola, but determined not to go far, they would reserve their strength for the ensuing day. He did not volunteer to accompany them. He had another scheme in his head. Outside the inn was a guide lounging about, smoking and calling to such as passed in the road.

Philip signed to him that he desired to speak to him, and the man came to him with alacrity, but shook his head, and pointed to one of the snowpeaks. He could speak only Italian, and Philip only English. They were obliged to converse in dumb show. Philip showed him the flower of edelweiss he had brought from the glass on the table inside. The man nodded his head. Philip raised his eyebrows in note of query and pointed to the rocks around.

'Si! si!' answered the man, shaking his head like a poised China mandarin.

'All about there? anywhere?' asked Philip, speaking very loud, as though by loudness he could make the man comprehend.

'Oh! if it is anywhere I can find it easily.'

The man shook his head and again pointed to a snow-peak over which a film of cloud was forming, then being blown away, then forming again.

'Do you mean that it is not out there?' asked Philip. 'I knew that as well as you. There are only ice and snow yonder. Bless my soul, what idiots these men are!'

Then he went back into the inn to equip himself with gaiters and strong boots, and to fetch his stick, with a chamois horn for a handle, that he had bought. Whilst he was engaged fastening his leggings, he heard the voices of the young ladies outside the house. They were starting for a walk. Presently he descended from his room and studied the map of the district, suspended in the _salle_, till he thought he had it well impressed on his brain, after which he sallied forth. The guide was no longer outside. The afternoon was verging to a close, and no one would be likely to require his services, he supposed; consequently he had retired to the lower room of the hospice on a level with the road, where the drivers and carriers, the guides and peasants were regaled with sour wine.

Philip was relieved to see that the fellow was no longer there. He might have wanted to come with him and show him the way, and it would have been irksome to trudge beside a man with whom it was not possible to converse; besides, edelweiss was to be found everywhere, Madame Lombardi had said, if looked for on the rocks. Those guides made difficulties about finding it, so as to induce the uninitiated and easily persuaded to engage them to direct them to spots where it grew. Philip resolved to go by himself. He would not go far; he could not lose his way; there were no yawning chasms down which he might tumble that he could see, and avalanches, he was told; fell in the early spring. He must do some climbing, of course, because the tourists would have picked all the edelweiss within reach on both sides of the road, and he must scramble to places they had not ransacked, but he would not go into any danger; he would keep his eye on the hospice, or at least, the road. Along the road he trudged in his heavy boots till he came to a great weather-beaten crucifix, that marked the beginning of the descent on the Italian side. The cross was painted dull red, but the paint had peeled away in patches, blistered by frost or sun. Philip looked up wonderingly at it. How out of place it seemed there, in that wilderness of bare rock and pure snow! He seemed to be in the midst of a primeval world, which had not yet begun to produce green trees and herbs, the fowl and living beasts--all around was utter silence, the world around was lifeless. The sun was behind the great wall of snowy glacier mountains, and the vapour that was collected like smoke on its head, so that the prospect seemed to be that of a world such as existed when there was light but the sun was uncreate. And, in the centre of this inchoate, unvitalized world, stood the crucifix. The mountains looked down on it, the glaciers frowned on it, as a thing of to-day, as though they said, 'We were before ever you were dreamed of, and we shall be long after mankind has ceased to believe in self-devotion, and has come to laugh at every creed save the idolatry of self.'

Then Philip diverged from the road, and began to climb. There was a valley opening here from the highest peaks, down which a little rill fell; and on the flank of the mountain which faced the south there was comparatively little snow, and Philip saw tracts of moss and herbage. That would be the garden of the edelweiss; there he must search, and he would find the desired flower without serious trouble.

He was surprised to find the distances greater than they appeared. In that highly-rarefied and clear air things far off appeared close, and dimensions as well as distances were deceptive. He found green carpets of dwarf campion, studded with pink flower, dense as moss; and in the bogs soldanella shaking their delicately fringed purple bells--but no edelweiss. Disappointed in his search on the slope which had promised, he crossed the brook and crept along the flank of the opposite mountain; he would turn its shoulder and get to the side well exposed to the sun; that which he had just explored was, he now perceived, shut off from all but vertical rays by the mountain-ridge south of it. He groped and scrambled, turned back, went higher, had long lost sight of the hospice, had not, indeed, remembered to look for it, when suddenly he was enveloped in dense white fog. He could, however, see the sun through it like a copper ball, but only for a minute, and then it sank behind a ridge, at least so he supposed, for it was extinguished gradually. He must now retrace his steps. He dare not advance; he thought he could find his way back. He remembered several landmarks--a rock, on the top of which was some dwarf shrub, like a wig worn by an old fellow he knew at Nottingham, and a furrow which, if he followed it, must lead him to the brook. But he soon found that he had lost all sense of direction; the disappearance of the sun had taken from him the only clue as to the points of the compass.

He was hot. He sat down for a moment and wiped his face; the water was streaming off it. He was not as yet alarmed, only vexed--vexed especially at his having made this expedition in vain. He would have to return without the edelweiss.

'That is old Jarvis's head with the wig thrust back!' he said, as a nodule of rolled rock appeared through the mist. But when he took a second look at it he doubted.

'I wish I had brought a whisky-flask with me,' he muttered; 'I am beginning to feel an ache in my muscles.'

He stumbled on, and now, to his alarm, saw that the darkness was closing in rapidly. He had not considered, when he started, that in the South of Europe there is no twilight, and that night comes after day without hours of grace.

Now it flashed upon him that what the guide had meant when indicating the mountain-top wreathed in vapour was--not that edelweiss grew there, but that the weather was going to change, or the fog to descend. He hurried on, but did not know in which direction he was going. He was on a steep slope of snow that stretched before him apparently interminably, lost itself in vapour and curled over and enveloped him as in an apple-pie bed, a cold sheet of white below, before, above, behind. And, at that moment, he saw on the rock above him, almost within reach, the white, starry, nodding head of an edelweiss; the woolly flower was burdened with the moisture that had condensed on it from the fog, and was hanging over the stone to shake itself free.

With an exclamation of satisfaction Philip sprang up the slope, caught the rock with the hook of his stick, and tore the edelweiss away.

Had the crook of his stick been what it professed to be--a chamois' horn, he would have been safe, it would have sustained his weight; but as it was only bone, and the curve came across the grain, it snapped, and Philip shot down the snowy declivity. He still grasped the tuft of edelweiss; he thrust his stick into the snow to arrest his descent; he tore up the snow, twisted the stick in his hand, and shot further down--shot instantaneously out of the fog into dusk, in which everything was distinct, and below he saw a great sweep of snow like a sheet. He looked into it as Sancho Panza into that in which he was being tossed. He drove his heels into the snow, his elbows, his stick, to retard his descent, and suddenly dropped. Then found himself on rubble, still sliding, and brought up with a jerk by a rock. For a few minutes Philip was unconscious. He was aware of a shock, a slide, darkness and noise, that was all. But--where was he? He had vanished from the face of the earth, gone through the surface of snow into a depth beneath. A field of snow had filled the bottom of a valley, and the river ran beneath in a ravine. Nothing could be seen of the cleft, nothing of the river, the smooth sheet of snow hid both; but the force of Philip's descent had broken through that portion of the covering where it was thinnest, near the rock and rubble; he had gone through, and was buried alive. Beneath him, about him, was darkness--pitch darkness; only above could he see the hole through which he had fallen, looking like a silver-gray disc. The air about him was filled with thunder, the pulsating thunder such as he had heard at the fall of the Reuss at the Devil's Bridge, such as he had heard that very day where the river plunged over a wall of rock in the gorge above Hospenthal. The air moreover was as full of water here beneath as it had been above in the fog, but the particles here were much larger. This was the spray cast up by the raging, leaping, headlong water in the abyss.

How far down was it to that torrent? Eye could not penetrate, ear could not tell. The vault of snow overhead reverberated with the boom of the water, and cast it back into the gulf as it cast back the up-thrown spray. He could see no water, he could see nothing save the gap overhead.

What was he to do? His arms were heavy and numbed with cold. He cautiously lifted one and found that the snow had been driven, even rammed, hard up the sleeve by his descent. He was safe where he lodged, on rock, and he shook out the snow from one sleeve and then the other. In doing this he found the bunch of edelweiss. He did not see it; he felt it up his sleeve; it had been carried there by the snow. He did not throw it away; he left it where it was. What was he to do? His situation was precarious. He might turn giddy and fall over. That terrible fascination there is in an abyss might lay hold of him and draw him down. Artemisia had spoken of that fascination, the fascination of despair. Now he felt it.

He tried to scramble up, but the shale slipped away beneath his feet, and he was fain, in an agony of terror to recover his former place on firm rock. It was not practicable to ascend. He leaned back against the stones, that dripped and ran with water, the melting of the snow overhead, the condensation of the foam from the river beneath. The water condensed also on his forehead and ran off his brows--water cold as ice. Where his fingers worked hollows in the loose soil, the water settled, and soaked his fingers and turned them dead with cold.

Was it that there was rhythm in the fall of the water, or was it that his pulses beat in his ear and gave rhythm to the continuous thunder? He could not tell. He heard the throb of sound, or it seemed to him to be the rattle of the machinery of his mill at Mergatroyd multiplied to infinity.

His feet had glowed with the exercise, but now they began gradually to lose heat, and turn stone-cold. In time, they would cease to have feeling in them, then in numbness and weariness his knees would buckle under him, and he would shoot head-long, like a diver into the black void. How far down was it to the water--to death--he wondered. Would he feel--be conscious of the shock over the edge before he went into the water, or crash with his head against a rock? He had heard a fellow clerk say that as he was drowning the whole of his past life rushed before his eyes and spread itself out as a panorama, a succession of scenes, in a moment of time, twenty years unfolded leisurely in one second, displaying every incident, not crowded but in sequence, and all articulate. Would it be so as he went over the edge, in the span of time between the rocks on which he stood and the clash and extinction below? His heart grew faint; and he felt in him the qualm that a bad sailor knows as the vessel plunges into a deep sea-trough.

But--surely he would be sought by the people at the inn. Certainly he would be sought, but in what direction would they look for him? How trace him in the mist? How suppose he was below the surface of the smooth quilt of snow in the Val Tremola, sunk out of sight, hanging over a boiling torrent? And now down past Philip ran a thread of silver; it startled him, and he looked up the line to see a glimpse of the moon appear above the hole through which he had fallen. The fog must have cleared away, or be clinging partially to certain mountain-tops. If the moon were clear, then the search for him could be prosecuted with some chance of success. But Philip was not over-confident. His powers of endurance were ebbing. He raised his feet and stamped on the rock; he could feel the shock in his joints, but not in his feet--they were dead. His hands were stiff. He put his fingers into his mouth, but this only momentarily restored vitality. After the feeling had gone the muscular power would become paralyzed. He was not hungry, but squeamish. He looked again at the moon, and continued watching it eagerly; it slid forward and shone full through the window of his dungeon. The light fell on rocky point and rill of leaping water, but could not illumine the abyss below, out of which rose the voices and thunderings--the voices of death, the thunderings preceding judgment.

And now the white ray of the moon smote down into the gulf below his feet and disclosed a shoot of the purest, most sparkling silver, the leaping torrent as it danced over a ledge into utter darkness, into which no moon-ray could dive.

Suddenly from above a mass of snow detached itself and fell past him, a mass so big that had it smitten him it would have carried him down with it.

The side of the hole in the snow-dome grazed the moon and ate more and still more out of it. Philip looked with fear--he felt that when the whole of the moon had passed beyond that opening, and not another ray fell into it, when again the darkness of that vault would become utter, hope would die away from his heart, and he must fall.

But as he stood looking up, watching the slipping away of the moon, he saw sharp cut against it a black something, and heard, above the roar of the water, the discordant sounds of a bark. He was found--found by one of the hospice dogs.

The first giddiness of renewed hope almost overcame him. He trembled as in a fit, and his knees bent so that only by a supreme effort of the will could he brace them again. He believed he heard shouts, but was uncertain.

What followed remained ever after confused in his memory. He heard some Italian words in his ear, saw or felt someone by him, was grasped, a rope fastened round him, he heard himself encouraged to make an effort, tried to scramble, helped by the rope, broke through the snow, was in the upper world again, was surrounded, had brandy poured down his throat.

Then he was seized by the hand and shaken.

'Old fellow! Phil! 'Pon my word, you have given us a turn. We have been hunting you everywhere.'

'Lambert!'

'Yes, Phil, and who'd have thought to find you trapped under the snow?'

The men of the party urged immediate movement to restore circulation. Philip's hand, when dropped by Lambert, was seized again and held tightly, but he had lost feeling in it. Nor could he see clearly; he was dazzled by the light--the brilliance of the moon and the glare of the snow--after the darkness below.

'Who is that laughing?' he asked suddenly.

'Oh--Miss Durham,' answered Lambert.

'And--who is that crying?'

A whisper in his ear--'It is I--Salome.'

*CHAPTER XLIX.*

*TETE-A-TETE.*

Philip passed a night of pain and fever. He was bruised and shaken. His hands had been scarified in the slide down the rubble, and when circulation returned in them they bled. The exposure to cold had affected him, and he ached in every joint; his skin was as though red-hot plates had been passed over it. He could not sleep, for if he dropped out of consciousness it was into mental fear that he was falling down a precipice into the vortex of an unseen torrent, and he woke with a start that sent a thrill of torture through his strained nerves. He could not get the roar of the water out of his ears; he had carried it away with him in his head. Salome, at his request, to dispel it played the jingling piano in the _salle_ underneath his room, but that was powerless to dissipate it. Then he sent his request to Miss Durham to sing. Perhaps her splendid voice might drive away the delusion. Her answer was that she had no voice. No voice! He knew that she had; she had boasted to him of it. He sent another message. Then came back the reply that she could not, and would not, sing to such a detestable little instrument as that in the _salle_.

Next day Philip was obliged to keep his bed. He was in discomfort and pain, and not the best of tempers.

'Salome,' said he, when his wife came to him with her fresh bright face full of sympathy and cheering? 'thank you for going on playing on the piano yesterday evening. Whilst you played I could forget the roar, but it returned directly that your fingers left the keys. I take it most unkind of Miss Durham that she would not sing.'

'Oh, Philip! don't you know that she has come to the high mountains to husband her voice, and it is possible that to sing at this great altitude--we are nearly seven thousand feet above the sea--might do it serious injury.'

'Why did she laugh when I was drawn out of the chasm?'

'Philip, dear, I cannot tell; but neither she nor I had any idea of the danger you had been in. The ravine was completely blocked up and sheeted over with snow, and we did not know anything of the horrible chasm down which the river plunged and through which it struggled. We only knew that you had gone through a crust of snow, and that you had to be drawn out.'

'But did you not hear the thunder of the torrent?'

'We did not particularly notice it--the roof of snow muffled it. You who were beneath heard it, but we--we may have heard something, but had no more idea of what there was beneath than you can have had when you slipped through.'

'It was very unfeeling of her to laugh.'

'Look here, Philip,' said Salome. 'In turning the sleeves of your coat inside out I have found these flowers--edelweiss, and fresh.'

'Yes, I found them.'

He considered for a moment, and then said: 'They are for you. Wear them, and let our party know that I did not encounter the risks I passed through without bringing back with me a prize.'

'Thank you, dear Philip;' she stooped over him and kissed his lips. 'Dear, dear Philip, I shall never part with them. It was most kind of you, and brave, too, to go in search of them for me.'

'Salome,' said he, 'don't let Lambert, and above all Mrs. Sidebottom, come and worry me to-day. I am in horrible pain, I cannot move, and I cannot bear to be bothered. You go down and take a little stroll; do not mind about me. I will try to doze. I had no sleep last night. I am turning all the colours of the rainbow, I was so bruised. I shall be right in a day or two. No bones are broken, but I cannot stir, and cannot endure to be worried; let me be quiet and a good deal to myself. I will sleep when I can.'

'May I sit by you a little?' she asked timidly. 'I will not speak--only hold your hand.'

She look his silence for consent. And he found comfort in her presence; a soothing feeling crept up his arm from her hands that clasped his, and spread over his heart.

He was somewhat ashamed of himself. He had not made his expedition among the rocks, and met with his fall in searching for edelweiss for her, but for Artemisia. Salome had accepted the flower, and cherished it as if he had sought it for her, and he allowed her to remain in this delusion. Was this honourable? Was it in accordance with that strict rectitude on which he plumed himself? Yet he could not tell her the truth; it would wound her too deeply, and--humble himself too considerably.

Two days ago Artemisia Durham had taken his hand on the Ober-Alp, beside the lake, when he extended it to her in pledge that he would do great things for her; and now, in redemption of his pledge, he had tried to get her a bit of edelweiss, and had tumbled through the snow in his efforts. And what could he do for her? She had not asked for legal advice or for figured table-linen, the two things he could furnish her with without offence. It was as well that his hand was hurt--it served him right; he had no right to offer what he was unable to perform. How differently he had felt as Artemisia held his hand! Then an intoxicating current had set boiling through his veins, turning his head, maddening him. Now the cool hand of Salome conveyed balm to his aching joints, and what was a better medicine, though a bitter one, self-reproach to his conscience.

Now, also, for the first time since his walk with Miss Durham, some of his old suspicion oozed up through the joints of his thoughts. What was the reason of her laughter? Thrice it had occurred; first she had said something laughingly about him to Beaple Yeo at table, and provoked that odious creature to an explosion of laughter. Then, on the Ober-Alp Pass she had laughed for no particular reason that Philip could see, and had made Philip laugh with her. And, lastly, she had laughed mockingly, alone, when he was rescued from the very verge of a dreadful death.

He shut his eyes and lay still. Salome sat by him for an hour, and then, thinking he was asleep, released his hand, kissed him quietly, and stole from the room. Mrs. Sidebottom wanted to take a short walk; it was tedious in the inn, with only a few old and odd volumes of Tauchnitz novels about; and cold or inactivity was rendering the Labarte girls torpid, and they were clinging about Aunt Janet, or dropping upon her, at embarrassing times. Mrs. Sidebottom did not feel equal to managing all three unaided, and as Miss Durham declined to accompany her, she insisted on Salome lending her aid. Salome consented. Her husband had wished that she should go out, and he was asleep and could be left without anxiety. The girls had been shown at Andermatt beads and seals made of a sparkling stone, which was said to be found on the St. Gothard road, half-way down the Val Tremola, and when Mrs. Sidebottom proposed a walk they entreated to be allowed to search for this precious stone, of which they resolved to compose necklaces for themselves, or at least bracelets. It would create quite a sensation at Elboeuf; not one of the girls there had seen this beautiful stone--not one probably had heard the name of Tremoline, by which it was called.

There was another reason why Mrs. Sidebottom, on this occasion, particularly desired the companionship of Salome. She was commissioned to break to her the news that Janet and Lambert were engaged, and to use her endeavours to overcome any prejudice Salome might entertain against the marriage being solemnized shortly, at Berne, at the Embassy. And Mrs. Sidebottom was about to attack her on this point by representing that she, Salome, was not the person to make objections when she herself had married Philip within a very short time of the supposed death of Uncle Jeremiah, who, though he was not her father, had stood to her much in the light of a parent.

Salome had observed that Janet and the captain took much delight in each other's society, but she had not given their association a serious thought; she knew that her sister liked lively society, and the captain had exhibited, whilst at Andermatt, an amount of vivacity and humour which she had not given him the credit of possessing. They were both interested in things of which she knew nothing, and naturally, therefore, sought each other's society. They were also connections in a roundabout fashion. Through Philip, Lambert became her cousin, and as Janet was her sister, he must be some sort of cousin to Janet. Quite near enough relation to remove starchness of intercourse, and place them on easy terms of cousinly association, that excused a good deal which would be inadmissible were they unrelated.

Philip heard the voices of the party outside the house, the crisp laughter of the girls, and the sawing tones of Mrs. Sidebottom, and then the sounds became distant, and ceased. His meditations were interrupted about a quarter of an hour later by three raps against the wall by his head. The several rooms in the inn were small, and divided from each other and from the passage by wood--not very thick deal boarding, papered over, but which in places had warped and split the paper. Signora Lombardi, every spring, with a pot of paste and some strips of paper, went about the rooms pasting over the rifts, disguising them, and preventing the partitions from being as diaphanous as they were diaphonous. German, Swiss and Italian beds are wooden boxes, narrow and short; and in such a bed against such a wall lay Philip, unable to move without torture.

Again three loud raps.

'Who is that?' he called.

'You are awake, Mr. Pennycomequick?' asked the voice of Miss Durham, almost in his ear. 'We are in adjoining stalls. I want a word with you, because I leave this insufferable place to-morrow, I can endure the cold and tedium no longer; and before you return to the nether world, I may be away unless you descend in a _glissade_, and shoot through the roof of the Hotel Imperial upon us into the midst of the table at dinner.'

Philip felt the partition between them shake. She was laughing. She had her chair against it, and leaned against it--to speak to him and to laugh at him.

'I must ask your pardon,' she said presently with a twitter in her tones from suppressed merriment; 'I did not realize your danger, or rather the danger you had escaped, when pulled out of the snow. But my laughter was excusable; you can have no conception how infinitely comic an object you presented; and the whole affair was so ridiculous. You--going aloft after edelweiss without the smallest acquaintance with its habitat, and with no experience to teach you how to keep your footing in Alpine altitudes, and shooting down, pop! through a hole into the nether world. And then--to see the men about the hole extracting you--it was like Esquimaux fishing.'

Philip was not only vastly offended, but he was also greatly shocked, at the conduct of the young Chicago lady, holding a conversation with him through the wall when he was in bed. To show his sense of the indelicacy of her course, he said nothing in return.

She tapped again.

'Well, Mr. Pennycomequick! have I scandalized you? We are in the land of freedom; and I am a daughter of the Stars and Stripes, and we American girls are not so particular about trifles as are your English misses. Are you very much bruised and crumpled?'

'Very,' groaned Philip.

'Do you good; take some of the starch out of you. You had the temerity to browbeat and insult me, when first you came to Andermatt. Now I have served you out, and I may tell you this to your consolation, that it is a lucky thing for you that you had your fall and contusions. But for that I would have turned you inside out, and twisted your silly head off your shoulders. I intended to do it, for no man offends me and escapes stings. I am content to leave you as you are, black and blue, and disjointed, like a wretch on the rack.'

She was stretching his mind on the rack and disjointing that as well, sitting, leaning against the wall, and working the mechanism.

'Mr. Pennycomequick, I heard about you from your wife before you arrived; how different you proved to the idea I had formed, you have too much conceit to imagine. I found a wooden man, with his limbs affixed to his trunk by pegs, with a wooden face, wooden ideas, wooden manners--and when this wooden figure-head had the audacity to insult me----'

Philip exclaimed, 'What I said was true. You yourself admitted its truth, when you told me your story.'

'My dear dolt!' said Miss Durham, 'I admit it. But who likes to have the truth skewered on a bayonet, and rammed down his throat? And now--what I say would splutter about like Japanese fireworks and do no one any harm, were it not that it is true, true in every word, and this it is that turns each word into duck-shot, with which I pepper you--through the wall.'

It was a wonder that next day Signora Lombardi did not find the sheets of No. 18 singed, so hot did Philip become between them with offended modesty, with anger, anguish, and shame.

'The game is up, so I do not mind showing you my hand,' cried Artemisia. She had folded her arms over her breast, and leaned back, with her head against the wall, and talked hastily, passionately. 'That little wife of yours, who is a thousand times too good for you, and whom I pity, yoked to such a fellow as yourself, she told me that it was not possible for you to come to love me, because she was your wife. Not, she hastened to explain, that she esteemed herself irresistible, and very superior, but because she had such a towering opinion of your rectitude, equal to your own of yourself. That was as much as daring me to attempt the conquest; and your own absurd self-esteem was another provocation. When you threw down the glove I accepted the challenge, and you know how in an hour or two I had spun you round like a teetotum.'

She stayed talking to laugh. As she laughed she shook the wall, and the wall rattled Philip's bed, and the rattling bed rattled his aching joints; but he felt these pains no more in the intensity of the agony of shame that he endured in his racked mind.

'You were quite fetching!' she continued. 'When you held out your hand and offered to be my stay, I was obliged to jump up. With all my powers of self-control I could hardly keep from boxing your ears and sending you into the lake for your impudence. However, I had no wish that the transformation scene should come off too soon. I intended to lead you on through other follies till I had ruined your reputation and your self-respect. But the fates have been against me; I cannot wait longer here. I abandon you to yourself and to your good little wife. I cannot waste time over you. I have other matters to attend to; better game to pursue than such a wooden leaping frog as you.' She stood up from her chair, and went to the window; it commanded a bleak prospect. She could not see the returning party on it. The girls Labarte had perhaps found the desired minerals and would not desist from collecting till they had each enough to form a _parure_ of Tremoline.

Artemisia returned to her seat against the wall, and said, 'As for that romance I told you about myself, believe of it as much or as little as you please. When you tell your own story, with your autobiography, the little episode of Artemisia Durham will not be found in it. We only remember and write of ourselves as we would like others to know us, not as we are. Is it not so?'

Then suddenly she broke into a song, a popular Viennese opera air, which she had turned into rough English verse to enable her to sing it at concerts elsewhere than in Germany. She had a beautiful, a naturally flexible voice, and every note was like an articulate crystal drop.

'A little grain of falsehood
Is found in all that's said,
It penetrates as leaven
Whatever's uttered.
No man is what he seemeth.
No woman what appears.
There's falsehood oft in laughter,
And falsehood e'en in tears.
Both fact and fib together go
In everything we say or do.
To a peck of truth--a pinch of lie,
As the spice in the pudding, to qualify.'

*CHAPTER L.*

*IN THE HOSPICE.*

There is a toy, the delight of children, that consists in a manikin with his legs curled under him, weighted with lead in his globular nether parts. This manikin, however, persistently held down, or violently knocked over, always rights himself.