Chapter Fifteen.
Kennedy’s Dishonour.
“I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine, to fix me to the place.
That way he used, ... Alas! one hour’s disgrace!”
Robert Browning. Childe Roland.
“I am very doubtful, after all, Julian, whether I shall be one of the Switzerland party,” said Kennedy, with a sigh, as he and Julian were walking round the Saint Werner’s gardens one bright evening of the May term. The limes and chestnuts were unfolding their tender sprays of spring-tide emerald, the willows shivered as their green buds made ripples in the water, and the soft light of sunset streamed over towers and colleges, giving a rich glow to the broad windows of the library, and bathing in its rosy tinge the white plumage of the swans upon the river. The friends were returning from a walk, during which they had thoroughly enjoyed the blue and golden weather. Up to this time Kennedy had seemed to be in the highest spirits, and Julian was astonished at the melancholy tone in which the words were spoken.
“Doubtful? Why?” said Julian, quickly.
“Because my father has made it conditional on my getting a first class in the May examination.”
“But, my dear fellow, there is not the ghost of a doubt of your doing that.”
“I don’t feel so sure.”
“Why, there are often thirty in the first class in the freshman’s year; and just as if you wouldn’t be among them!”
“All very well; I know that anybody can do it who works, but I am ashamed to say that I haven’t read one of the books yet.”
“Haven’t you, really? Well then, for goodness’ sake, lose no more time.”
“But there’s only a fortnight to the examination.”
“My dear Kennedy, what have you been doing to be so idle?”
“Somehow or other the time manages to slip away. Heigh ho!” said Kennedy, “my first year at college nearly over, and nothing done—nothing done! How quickly the time has gone!”
“Yes,” said Julian;
“ptezugas gaz epoomaduas phezai
Kampes bzadutezoi ta poteemena syllabein,
“as Theocritus prettily observes.”
Seized with the strong determination not only to pass the examination, but even to excel in it, Kennedy devoted the next fortnight to unremitted study for the first time since he had been an undergraduate. But the more he read the more painfully he became aware of his own deficiencies, and the more bitterly he deplored the waste of time. He seemed to be toiling in vain after the opportunities he had lost. He knew that the examination, though limited in subjects, was searching in character, and he found it impossible to acquire, by a sudden impulse, what he should have learned by continuous diligence. As the time drew nearer, he grew more and more nervous. He had set his heart on the Swiss tour, and it now seemed to him painfully probable that he would fail in fulfilling the condition which his father had exacted, and without which he well knew that Mr Kennedy would insist on his spending the vacation either at Camford or at home.
Of the three main subjects for examination he had succeeded by desperate effort, aided by natural ability, in very quickly mastering two sufficiently well to secure a creditable result; but the third subject, the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, remained nearly untouched, and Kennedy was too good and accurate a scholar not to be aware that the most careful and elaborate study was indispensable to an even tolerable understanding of that masterpiece of Grecian tragedy. Besides this, he had a hatred of slovenly and superficial work, and he therefore determined to leave the Aeschylus untouched, while, at the same time, he was quite conscious that if he did so, all chance of distinction, and even all chance of a first class were out of the question. With some shame he reflected over this proof, that, for all purposes of study, a third of his academical life had been utterly and wholly lost.
As he had decided on giving up the Aeschylus, it became more imperative to make sure of the Tacitus and Demosthenes, and he therefore went to Mr Grayson’s rooms to get a library order which should entitle him to take from the Saint Werner’s library any books that would be most likely to give him effectual help.
At the moment of his arrival, Mr Grayson was engaged, and he was shown into another room until he should be ready. This room was the tutor’s library, and like many of the rooms in Camford, it opened into an inner and smaller study, the door of which was partly open.
Kennedy sat down, and after a few minutes, as there seemed to be no signs that he would be summoned immediately, he began to grow very restless. He tried some of the books on the table, but they were all unspeakably dull; he looked at the pictures on the wall, but they were most of them the likenesses of Camford celebrities which he already knew by heart; he looked out of the window, but the court was empty, and there was nothing to see. Reflecting that the only thing which can really induce ennui in a sensible man, is to be kept waiting when he is very busy for an indefinite period, which may terminate at any moment, and may last for almost any length of time, Kennedy, vexed at the interruption of his work, chose the most comfortable armchair in the room, and settled himself in it with a yawn.
At this moment, as ill fate would have it, his eye caught sight of a book lying on Mr Grayson’s reading-desk. Lazily rising to see what it was, he found it to be an Aeschylus, and turned over the leaves with a feeling of listless indifference. Between two of the leaves lay a written paper, and suddenly, after reading two or three lines, he observed it to be a manuscript copy of the much-dreaded Agamemnon paper for the May examination.
Temptation had surprised him with sudden and unexpected violence. He little knew that on this idle weary moment rested the destiny of many years.
As when in a hostile country one has laid aside his armour, and from unregarded ambush the enemy leaps on him, and, though he be strong and noble, stabs him with a festering wound, so this temptation to a base act sprang on poor Kennedy when he was unarmed and unprepared. In the gaieties of life, and the brightnesses of hope, and the securities of unbroken enjoyment, he had long been trusting in himself only, in his own high principle, his own generous impulses, his own unstained honour. But these were never sufficient for any human being yet, and they snapped in an instant under this unhappy boy.
The only honourable thing to do, the thing which at another moment Kennedy might have done, and which any man would have done, whose right instincts and high character had the reliable support of higher principles than mere personal self-confidence and pride, would have been to shut the book instantly, inform Mr Grayson that he had accidentally read one of the questions, and beg him to change it before the examination. This Kennedy knew well; it flashed before him in an instant as the only proper course but at the same instant he passionately obliterated the suggestion from his mind, fiercely stifled the impulse to do right, choked the rebukes of honour and principle, and blindly willed to save his reputation as a scholar, and his chance of enjoyment for the vacation by reading through the entire number of the questions. This mental struggle did not last an instant, for the emotions of the spirit belong only to eternity, and the guilt of human actions is not commensurate with the length of time they occupy. But in the intense wish to see what the examination would be like, and to secure his first class, Kennedy repressed altogether by one blow the moral element of his being, and concentrated his whole intellect on the paper before him. To read it through was the work of a minute; when it was read through, it was too late to wish the act undone, and without suffering himself to dwell, or even to recur in thought to the nature of his proceedings, Kennedy deliberately read through the whole paper a second time.
But this imperious effort of the will was not exercised without visible effects. Absorbed as he was in seizing every prominent subject in the questions, his forehead contracted, his hand shook, his knees trembled, and his heart palpitated with violence. He observed nothing; he did not notice the shadow that chequered the sunlight streaming from the door of the inner room; he did not hear the light step which passed over the carpet; he did not feel the breath of a man who stood behind him, looked over his shoulder, watched his eager determination to secure the unfair advantage, smiled at his agitation, and then slipped back again into the inner room, unnoticed as before.
It was done. Not a question but was printed indelibly on Kennedy’s memory. Quickly, fearfully, he shut the book, and glided back to the armchair, in the vain attempt to look and feel at ease.
At ease! No, now the tumult broke. Now Kennedy hated himself; called himself mean, vile, contemptible, a reptile, a cheat. Now his insulted honour began to vindicate its rights, and his trampled sense of truth to spring up with a menacing bound, and his conscience to speak out calmly and clearly the language of self-condemnation and contempt. Good heavens! how could he have sunk so low; fancy if Julian had seen him, or could know his meanness. Fancy if anybody had seen him. Hazlet, or Fitzurse, or Brogten himself, could hardly have been guilty of a more dishonourable act.
You miserable souls, that do not know what honour is, or what torments rend a truly noble heart, if ever it be led to commit an act which to your seared consciences and muddy intelligence appears a trivial sin, or even no sin at all; you, the mean men to whom an offence like this is so common, that, unless it were discovered, it would not trouble your recollections with a feather’s weight of remorse,—for you, I scorn to write, and I scorn from my inmost being the sneer with which you will regard the agony that Kennedy suffered from his fall. But to the high and the generous, who have erred and have bewailed their error in secret,—to them I appeal to imagine the anguish of self-reproach, the bitterness of humiliation, which stung him in those few moments after his first dishonour. It is the lofty tower that falls with the heaviest crash; it is the stately soul that suffers the deepest abasement; it is the white scutcheon on which the dark stain seems to wear its darkest hue.
He had not sat there for many minutes—though to him they seemed like hours—when a step on the stairs told him that his tutor’s visitor had departed, and the gyp blandly entering, observed—
“Now, sir, Mr Grayson can see you.”
“Oh! very well,” said Kennedy, rising and assuming, with a painful effort, his most indifferent look and tone.
“Pardon me, Mr Kennedy, my turn first; I have been waiting longest,” said a harsh voice behind him, that sounded mockingly to his excited ear. He turned sharply round, and with a low bow and a curl on the protruding lip, and a little guttural laugh, Brogten came from the inner room, and passed before him into Mr Grayson’s presence.
If a thunderbolt had suddenly fallen before Kennedy’s feet and cloven its sulphurous passage into the abyss, he could hardly have been more startled or more alarmed. Without a word he sat down half stupefied. Was any one else in the inner room? For very shame he dare not look. Had Brogten seen him? If so, would he at once tell Mr Grayson? What would be done in that case? Dare he deny the fact? Passionately he spurned the hateful suggestion. Would Brogten tell all the Saint Werner’s men? Brogten of all others, whom he had publicly insulted and branded with dishonour! Ah me, there is no anguish so keen, so deadly, as the anguish of awakened shame!
With unspeakable anxiety Kennedy awaited Brogten’s departure. Why should he be so long? Surely he must be telling Mr Grayson.
At last the heavy step was heard, the door opened, and the gyp once more announced that Mr Grayson was disengaged.
Pale and almost breathless, Kennedy went into the room.
“Good morning, Mr Kennedy.”
“Good morning, sir.”
He quite expected that Mr Grayson was about at once to address him on the subject of the paper, and, expecting this, totally forgot the purpose for which he had come. The tutor’s cold eye was upon him, and after a pause he said—
“Well, Mr Kennedy?”
“Well, sir?” he replied, with a start.
“Do you want anything?”
“Oh, I came for— Really, sir, I must beg your pardon, but I have forgotten what it was.”
“To look at an examination-paper,” were the words which, in his embarrassment, sprang to his lips, but he checked them just in time.
“Really, Mr Kennedy, you appear to be strangely absent this morning,” said Mr Grayson, in a tone the reverse of encouraging.
“Oh, I remember now,” he replied, desperately; “it was a library order I wanted.”
Mr Grayson wrote him the order. Kennedy took it, and, without even shaking the cold hand which the tutor proffered, hurried out of the room, relieved at least by the conviction that Brogten, if he had seen him look at the paper, had not, as yet at any rate, revealed it to the examiner.
“After all,” he reflected, “he was hardly likely to do that. But had he told the men?”
Kennedy did not go to the library; he could not bear to meet anybody, and hastened to bury himself in his own rooms. His walk, usually so erect and gay as he went across the court—the tune he used to hum so merrily in the sunshine—and the bright open glance of recognition with which he passed his acquaintances and friends, were gone to-day. He shuffled silently along the cloisters with downcast eyes.
Hall-time would be the time to know whether Brogten had seen him and betrayed him. And if he had seen him, surely there could be no doubt he would tell of him. What a sweet revenge it would be for that malicious heart! How completely it would turn the tables on Kennedy for the day when he had sarcastically alluded to Brogten’s bets! How amply it would fulfil the promise of which that parting scowl of hatred had been full.
He went to hall rather late on purpose; and instead of sitting in his usual place near Julian, he chose a vacant place at another table. Half a minute sufficed to show him that there was no difference in his reception; the same frequent nods and smiles from all sides still gave him the frank greeting of which, as a popular man, he was always sure. He looked round for Brogten, but could make nothing of his face; it simply wore a somewhat slight smile when their eyes met, and Kennedy’s fell. Kennedy began to convince himself that Brogten could not have seen what he had done in Mr Grayson’s room.
The thought rolled away a great load—a heavy, intolerable load from his heart. It was not that with him, as with so many thousands, the fear of discovery constituted the sense of sin, but young as he was, and high as his character had stood hitherto in man’s estimation, he prayed for any chastisement rather than that of detection, any stroke in preference to open shame. This was the one thing which he felt he could not bear.
Even now, as conscience strongly suggested, he might make, by private confession to his tutor, or at any rate by not using the knowledge he had thus acquired, the only reparation which was still in his power. But it was a hard thing for conscience to ask—too hard for poor Kennedy’s weakness. Much of the paper, as he saw at once, he could very easily have answered from his previous general knowledge and scholarship; so easily, that he now felt convinced that he might have done quite enough of it to secure his first class. His sin then had been useless, quite useless, worse than useless to him. Was he obliged also to make it positively injurious? was he to put himself in a worse position than if he had never committed it? After all the punishment which the sin had brought with it, was he also to lose, in consequence of it, the very advantage, the very enjoyment, for the sake of which he had harboured the temptation? It was too much—too much to expect.
The night before the Aeschylus examination he began to read up the general information on the subject, and he intended to do it quite as if he were unaware of what the actual questions were to be. But it was the merest self-deception. Each question was branded in fiery letters on his recollection, and he found that, as he read, he was skipping involuntarily every topic which he knew had not been touched on in Mr Grayson’s paper.
Oh, the sense of hypocrisy with which he eagerly seized the paper next morning, and read it over as though unaware of its contents.
Julian could not help observing that, during the last few days, Kennedy’s spirits had suffered a change. His old mirth came only in fitful bursts, and he was often moody and silent; but Julian attributed it to anxiety for the result of the examination, and doubt whether he should be allowed by his father to make one of the long-anticipated party in the foreign tour.
Kennedy dared not admit any one into his confidence, but the last evening, before they went down, he turned the conversation, as he sat at tea in Owen’s room, to the topic of character, and the faults of great men, and the aberrations of the good.
“Tell me, Owen,” he said, “as you’re a philosopher—tell me what difference the faults of good men make in our estimate of them?”
“In our real estimate,” said Owen, “I fancy we often adopt, half unconsciously, the maxim, that ‘the king can do no wrong’—that the true hero is all heroic.”
“Yes,” said Kennedy; “but when some one calls your attention to the fact of their failings, and makes you look at them—what then?”
“Why, in nine cases out of ten the faults are grossly exaggerated and misrepresented, and I should try to prove that such is the fact; and for the rest,—why, no man is perfect.”
“You shirk the question, though,” said Lillyston; “for you have to make very tremendous allowance indeed for some of the very best of men.”
As, for instance?
“As, for instance, king David.”
“Oh, don’t take Scripture instances,” said Suton, an excellent fellow whom they all liked, though he took very different views of things from their own.
“Why not, in heaven’s name?” said Kennedy; “if they suit, they are good because so thoroughly familiar.”
“Yes, but somehow one judges them differently.”
“I daresay you do,—in fact I know you do; but you’ve no business to. I maintain that even according to Moses, king David deserved a felon’s death. Murder and adultery were crimes every bit as heinous then as they are now. Yet David, this most human of heroes, was the man after God’s own heart. Solve me the problem.”
“Practically,” said Lillyston; “I believe one follows a genuine instinct in determining not to look at the spots, however wide or dark they are, upon the sun.”
“And in accepting theoretically old Strabo’s grand dictum, ouch oion agathon genesthai poieeteen mee pzotezon geneethenta anoza agathon. Eh?”
“As Coleridge was so fond of doing,” said Julian.
“Ay, he needed the theory,” said Suton.
“Hush!” said Julian, “I can’t stand any such Philadelphus hints about Coleridge. By the bye, Owen, you might have quoted a still more apt illustration from Seneca, who criticises Livy for saying ‘Vir ingenii magni magis quam boni’ with the remark, ‘Non potest illud separari; aut et bonum erit aut nec magnum.’”
Mr Admer, who was one of the circle, chuckled inwardly at the discussion. “I was once,” he said, “at a party where a lady sang one of Byron’s Hebrew melodies. At the close of it a young clergyman sighed deeply, and with an air of intense self-satisfaction, observed, ‘Ah! I was wondering where poor Byron is now!’ What should you have all said to that?”
“Detesting Byron’s personal character, I should have said that the very wonder was a piece of idle and meddling presumption,” said Owen.
“And I should have answered that the Judge will do right,” said Suton reverently.
“Or if he wanted a text, ‘Who art thou that judgest another?’” said Lillyston contemptuously.
“And I,” said Julian, should have said,—
“Let feeble hands iniquitously just,
Rake up the relics of the sinful dust,
Let Ignorance mock the pang it cannot heal,
And Malice brand what Mercy would conceal;—
It matters not!”
“And I,” said Kennedy, “should have been vehemently inclined to tweak the man’s nose.”
“But what did you say, Mr Admer?” asked Lillyston.
“I answered a fool according to his folly. I threw up my eyes and said, ‘Ah, where, indeed! What a good thing it is that you and I, sir, are not as that publican.’”
“I should think he skewered you with a glance, didn’t he?” said Kennedy.
“No, he was going to bore me with an argument, which I declined.”
“But you’ve all cut the question: tell me now, supposing you had known king David, should you have thought worse of him, should you have been cool to him—in a word, should you have cut him after his fall?”
“I think not—I mean, I shouldn’t have cut him,” said Owen.
“And yet you would have treated so any ordinary friend.”
“Not necessarily. But remember that the two best things happened to David which could possibly happen to a man who has committed a crime.”
“Namely?”
“Speedy detection,” said Lillyston.
“And prompt punishment,” added Julian; “but for these there’s no knowing what would have become of him.”
Unsatisfactory as the discussion had been, yet those words rang hauntingly in Kennedy’s ears; he could not forget them. During all those first days of happy travel they were with him; with him as they strolled down the gay and lighted Boulevards of Paris; with him beside the quaint fountains of Berne; and the green rushing of the Rhine at Basle; with him amid the scent of pine-cones, and under the dark green umbrage of forest boughs; with him when he caught his first glimpse of the everlasting mountains, and plunged into the clear brightness of the sapphire lake—the thought of speedy detection and prompt punishment. It was no small pleasure to partake in Violet’s happiness, and mark the ever fresh delight that lent such a bright look to Cyril’s face; but before Kennedy in the midst of enjoyment, the memory of a dishonourable act started like a spectre, and threw a sudden shadow on his brow. He felt its presence when he saw the sun rise from Rigi; it stood by him amid the wreathing mists of Pilatus; it even checked his enthusiasm as they gazed together on the unequalled glories spread beneath the green summit of Monterone, and as their graceful boat made ripples on the moonlit waves of Orta and Lugans. In a word, the conviction of weakness was the only alloying influence to the pleasure of his tour, the one absinthe-drop that lent bitterness to the honeyed wine. It was not only the consciousness of the wrong act and its possible results, but horror at the instability of moral principle which it showed, and a deep fear lest the same weakness should prove a snare and a ruin to him in the course of future life.
Chapter Sixteen.
A Day of Wonder.
“Flowers are lovely. Love is flowerlike,
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O the joys that came down showerlike
With virtue, truth, and liberty,
When I was young.”—Coleridge.
“To-morrow, then, we are all to ascend the Schilthorn,” said Mr Kennedy, as he bade good-night to the merry party assembled in the salle à manger of the chalet inn at Mürrem.
“Or as high as we ladies can get,” said Mrs Dudley.
“Oh, we’ll get you up, aunt,” said Kennedy; “if Julian and my father and I can’t get you and Miss Home and Eva up, we’re not worth much.”
“To say nothing of me” said Cyril, putting his arms akimbo, with a look of immense importance.
“Breakfast, then, at five to-morrow morning, young people,” said Mr Kennedy, retiring; and full of happy anticipations they went off to bed.
Punctually at five they were all seated round the breakfast-table, eagerly discussing the prospects of the day.
“I say, did any of you see the first sunbeam tip the Jungfrau this morning?” said Kennedy. “It looked like—like—what did it look like, Miss Home?”
“Like the golden rim of a crown of pearls,” said Violet, smiling. “And did you see the morning star, shining above the orange-coloured line of morning light, over the hills behind us, Eva? What did that remind you of?”
“Oh, I can’t invent poetic similes,” answered Eva. “I must take refuge in Wordsworth’s—
“‘Sweet as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.’”
“Yes,” said Julian; “or Browning’s—
“‘One star—the chrysolite!’”
“Hum!” said Cyril, who had been standing impatiently at the door during the colloquy; “when you young ladies and people have done poetising, etcetera, the guide’s quite ready.”
“Come along, then; we’re soon equipped,” said Violet, adjusting at the looking-glass her pretty straw hat, with its drooping feather, and the blue veil tied round it.
“I say, Miss Kennedy—bother take it though, I can’t always be saying Miss Kennedy—it’s too long. I shall call you Eva—may I?” said Cyril.
“By all means, if you like.”
“Well, then, Eva, the guide is such a rum fellow; he looks like a revived mummy out of—out of Palmyra,” said he, blundering a little in his geography.
“Mummy or no,” said Julian, “he’ll carry all our provisions and plaids to-day up to the top, which is more than most of your A Cs would do.”
“A C—what does that mean?” asked Violet. “One sees it constantly in the visitors’ books.”
“Don’t you know, Vi?” said Cyril. “It stands for athletic climber.”
“Alpine Club, you little monkey,” said Kennedy, throwing a fir-cone at him. “You’ll be qualified for the Alpine Club, Miss Home, before the day’s over, I’ve no doubt.”
“No,” said Julian, “they want 13,000 feet, I believe, and the Schilthorn is only 9,000.”
“Nearly three times higher than Snowdon; only fancy!” said Cyril.
Meanwhile the party had started with fair weather, and in high spirits. The guide, with the gentlemen’s plaids strapped together, led the way cheerily, occasionally talking his vile patois with Julian and Mr Kennedy, or laughing heartily at Cyril’s “bad language”—for Cyril, not being strong in German, exercised a delightful ingenuity in making a very few words go a very long way. Kennedy walked generally with Eva and Violet, while Julian often joined them, and Cyril, always with some new scheme in hand, or some new fancy darting through his brain, ran chattering, from one group to another, plucking bilberries and wild strawberries in handfuls, and trying the merits of his alpenstock as a leaping-pole.
The light of morning flowed down in an ever-broadening river, and peak after peak flashed first into rose, then into crimson, and then into golden light, as the sun fell on their fields of snow; high overhead rose Alp after Alp of snow-white and luminous cloud, but the flowing curves of the hills themselves stood unveiled, with their crests cut clearly on the pale, divine, lustrous blue of heaven, and our happy band of travellers gazed untired on that glorious panorama of glistering heights from the towering cones of the Eiger and the Moench to the crowding precipices of the Ebenen-fluen and the Silberhorn. Deep below them, in the valley, “like handfuls of pearl in a goblet of emerald,” the quiet châlets clustered over their pastures of vivid grass, and gave that touch of human interest which alone was wanting to complete the loveliness of the scene.
Every step brought them some new object to gaze upon with loving admiration; now the gaunt spurs of some noble pine that had thrust his gnarled roots into the crevices of rock to look down in safety on the torrent roaring far below him, and now the track of a chamois, or the bright black eyes of some little marmot peering from his burrow on the side of a sunny bank, and whistling a quick alarm to his comrades at their play.
“What an extraordinary howl,” said Cyril, laughing, as the guide whooped back a sort of jodel in answer to a salute from the other side of the valley.
“It’s very harmonious—is it not?” said Violet.
“Yes, that’s one of the varieties of the Ranz des Vaches,” said Kennedy.
“And why do they shout at each other in that way?”
“Because the mountains are lonely, Cyril, and the shepherds don’t see human faces too often; so men begin to feel like brothers, and are glad to greet each other in these silent hills.”
“Did you hear how the mountain echoed back his cry?” said Eva; “it sounded like a band of elves mocking at him.”
“Yes, you’ll hear something finer directly; the guide told me he was going to borrow an alpen-horn at one of these châlets, and then you’ll discover for the first time what echo can do.”
In a few minutes the guide appeared with the horn, and blew. Heavens! what a melody of replications! How in the hollows of the hills every harsh tone died away, and all the softer notes flowed to and fro in tenderest music, and fainted in distant reverberations more and more exquisite, more and more exquisitely low. Can it be a mere echo of those rude blasts? It seemed as though some choir of spirits had caught each tone as it came from the peasant’s horn, and had deified it there among the clouds, and had repeated it over and over with divinest variations, to show man how crabbed were the sounds which he produced, and yet how ravishing they might one day become, when to the symphony of silver strings they rang out amid the seraph harps and choral harmonies of heaven. All the party stood still in rapturous attention, and even Cyril forgot for ten minutes his frolicsome and noisy mirth.
Reader, have you ever seen an Alpine pasture in warm July at early morning? If not, you can hardly conceive the glorious carpet over which the feet of the wanderer in Switzerland press during summer tours. Around them as they passed the soft mosses glowed with gold and crimson, and the edges of the lady’s-mantle shimmered with such diamonds and pearls as never adorned a lady’s mantle yet. Everywhere the grass was vivid with a many-coloured tissue of dew-dropped flowers: pale crocuses, and the bright crimson-lake carnation, and monk’s-hood, and crane’s-bill, and aster alpinus, and the lovely myosotis, and thousands of yellow and purple flowers, nameless or lovelier than their names, were the tapestry on which they trod; and it was interwoven through warp and woof with the blue gleam of a myriad harebells. At last they came to the cold region of those delicate nurslings of the hills, the gentianellas and gentians. Kennedy, who had been keenly on the look out, was the first of the party to find the true Alpine gentian, and instantly recognising it, ran with it to Violet and his sister.
“There,” he said, “the first Alpine gentian you ever saw. Did you ever know real blue in a flower before? Doesn’t it actually seem to shed a blue radiation round it?”
“How perfectly beautiful!” said Violet; “see, Eva, how intense blue and green seem to be shot into each other, or to play together like the waters of a shoaling sea.”
“Shall I take a root or two?” said Kennedy.
“Not the slightest use,” said Julian; “they only grow at certain elevations, and would be dead before you got down.”
“Isn’t it strange, Violet, that Nature should fling such a tender and exquisite gem so high up among these awful hills, where so few eyes see them?”
“Just look,” said Julian, “how the moss and the grass seem to be illuminated with them, as though the heavens were golden, and stars in it were of blue.”
While they talked, Cyril dashed past them with all the ardour of a young entomologist in full chase of a little mountain-ringlet, which he soon caught and pinned on the top of his straw hat. In a few minutes more he had added a great fritillery to his collection, and it gave him no trouble to pick out the finest of the superb lazy-flying Apollos, which quickly shared the same fate.
“Here’s another for you, Cyril,” said Eva, pointing to a gorgeous peacock-butterfly which had settled amicably by a bee on the pink-and-downy coronet of a great thistle.
“Oh, I don’t want that; one can get it any day in England; here though, look at this lovely burnet-moth,” he cried, as the blue-and-red-winged little creature settled on the same thistle-head.
“What a shame to disturb that beautiful Psyche,” said Julian, as Cyril dashed his cap over the prey, and the peacock fluttered off; “it was enjoying itself so intensely in the sunshine, opening and shutting its wings in unmitigated contentment.” But Cyril had secured his moth without heeding the remark, and was now twenty yards ahead.
A sudden roar of sound stopped him, and he waited to ask the rest, “if they had heard the thunder?”
“It wasn’t thunder, but the rush of an avalanche,” said Kennedy; “there, you may see it still on the side of the Jungfrau.”
“What, those little white streaks, which look like a mountain torrent?”
“Yes.”
“And can those threads of snow make all that row?”
“You must remember that the threads of snow are five miles off, and are perhaps thousands of tons in weight.”
By this time they had reached the part of the mountain where the climb became really toilsome, and they settled down into the steady pace, which the Swiss guides always adopt because they know that it is the quickest in the long run. And at this point Mr Kennedy and Mrs Dudley left them, preferring, like sensible old people, to stroll back in quiet, and avoid an exertion which they found too fatiguing. They knew that they could safely entrust the party to the care of Julian and the guide. The ladies often needed help, and there seemed to be something very pleasant to Kennedy in the light touch of Violet’s hand, for he lent her his arm or his alpenstock oftener than was absolutely required. They only stopped once more to quench their thirst at a streamlet which was rushing impetuously down the rocks, and a little below them foamed over the precipice into a white and noisy cataract.
“I never noticed water before falling from such a height,” said Julian; “it looks exactly like a succession of white comets plunging through the sky in a crowd.”
“Or a throng of white-sheeted ghosts hurrying deliriously through the one too-narrow entrance of the lower world,” said Kennedy. “Doesn’t it remind one of Schiller’s line—
“‘Und es wallet und liedet und brauset und Pikcht?’”
“I admire the rainbow most, which over-arches the fall, and plays into light, or dies away as the sunbeams touch the foam,” said Violet.
“Doesn’t it remind you of Al-Sirat’s arch, Miss Home?” asked Kennedy.
“Haven’t the pleasure of that gentleman’s acquaintance,” observed Cyril.
“Nor I,” said Kennedy; “but Al-Sirat’s arch is the bridge—narrow as the edge of a razor, or the thread of an attenuated spider—which is supposed to span the fiery abyss, over which the good skate into Paradise, while the bad topple over it. Don’t you remember Byron’s lines about it in the Giaour?
“‘Yea, Soul, and should our prophet say
That form was nought but breathing clay,
By Alla! I would answer nay;
Though on Al-Sirat’s arch I stood,
That topples o’er the fiery flood,
With Paradise within my view,
And all its Houris beckoning through.’
“Pretty nearly the only lines of Byron I know.” Somehow Kennedy was looking at Violet while he repeated the lines.
A few minutes more brought them on to the great field of snow, through which they toiled along laboriously, treading as much as possible in the footsteps of the guide.
“This isn’t a glacier, is it?” asked Cyril.
“Oh dear, no! If it were, you wouldn’t find it such easy walking, for it would be full of hidden crevasses, and we should have to march much more carefully, occasionally poking our feet through the snow that lightly covers a fathomless depth.”
“Yes, you must have read in Murray that eerie story of the guide that actually tumbled, though not very deep, into the centre of the glacier, and found his way back to light down the bed of a sub-glacial torrent, with no worse result than a broken arm.”
“There is a still eerier story, though, of two brothers,” said Kennedy, “of whom one fell into a crevasse, and was caught on a ledge some fifty feet down, where he could be actually seen and heard.”
“Did he ever get out?” asked Violet.
“Yes; the guide went back four hours’ walk, and brought ropes and assistance just before dark, and meanwhile the other brother waited anxiously by the side of the crevasse, talking, and letting down brandy and other things to keep the poor fellow alive. He did escape, but not without considerable risk of being frozen to death.”
Beguiling the way with talk, they at last got over the tedious climb, and reached the summit. Eva and Violet were very tired, but the difficult and eager air of the icy mountain-top was exhilarating as new wine, and the provisions they had brought with them reinvigorated them completely. To hungry and thirsty climbers black bread and vin ordinaire taste like nectar and ambrosia. The day was cloudless, the view unspeakably magnificent, and Cyril’s high spirits were contagious. They lingered long before they began the descent, and laughingly pooh-poohed the guide’s repeated suggestion that it was getting late.
“I bet you Kennedy has been writing poetry,” said Cyril; “do make him read it, Julian.”
“Hear, hear!” said all in chorus, and Julian with playful force possessed himself of the pocket-book, while Kennedy, only asseverating that the verses were addressed to nobody in particular, fled from the sound of his own lyrics, which Julian proceeded to read.
“Rose-opals of the sunlit hills
Are flashing round my lonely way,
And cataracts dash the rushing rills
To plumes of glimmering spray.
But mountain-streams and sunny gleams
Are not so dear to me,
As dawning of the golden love
My spirit feels for thee!
“Their diamond crowns and giant forms,
The lordly hills upraise;
Nor rushing winds nor shattering storms
Can shake their solid base:
Though Europe rests beneath their crests,
And empires sleep secure,
Less firm their bases than my love,
Their snow less brightly pure.”
“There, rubbish enough,” said Kennedy, returning and snatching away the pocket-book before Julian could read another verse. “‘Like coffee made without trouble, drunk without regret,’ as the Monday Oracle, with its usual exquisite urbanity, observed of a recent poet.”
“Of course addressed quite to an imaginary object, Eddy,” said Eva, while Violet looked towards the hills, and hoped that the glow which covered her fair face might be taken for a reflection of the faint tinge that already began to fall over the distant ridges of pale snow.
“We really must come away,” said Julian; “it’ll be sunset very soon, and then we shall have to climb down nearly in the dark.”
So they left the ridge, and while Kennedy and Cyril, amid shouts of laughter, glissaded gallantly over the slopes of snow, Julian and the guide conducted the girls by a method less rapid, but more secure. Arrived at the rocks, Cyril went forward with the guide, Julian followed with Eva, and Kennedy with Violet led up the rear.
Why did they linger so long? Violet was tired, no doubt, but could she not have walked as fast as Eva, or was Kennedy’s arm less stout than Julian’s? She lingered, it seemed, with something of a conscious pleasure, now to pluck a flower or a fern, now to look at some yellow lichens on the purple crags; and once, when Julian looked back, the two were some way behind the rest of the party. They were standing on a rock gazing on the fading splendour of the mountains in front of them, while the light wind that had risen during the sunset, flung back his hair from his forehead, and played with one golden tress which had strayed down Violet’s neck. He shouted to them to make haste, and they waved their hands to him with a gay salute. Thinking that they would soon overtake him, he pressed forward with Eva, and did not look back again.
While Kennedy walked on with Violet in silence more sweet than speech, they fell into a dreamy mood, and wandered on half-oblivious of things around them, while deeper and deeper the shades of twilight began to cast their gloom over the hills.
“Look, Violet, I mean Miss Home; the moon is in crescent, and we shall have a pleasant night to walk in; won’t it be delightful?”
“Yes,” she murmured; but neither of them observed that the clouds were gathering thick and fast, and obscured all except a few struggling glimpses of scattered stars.
They came to a sort of stile formed by two logs of wood laid across the gap in a stone wall, and Kennedy vaulting over it, gave her his hand.
“Surely,” she said, stopping timidly for a moment, “we did not pass over this in coming, did we?”
Kennedy looked back. “No,” he said, “I don’t remember it; but no doubt it has been put up merely for the night to prevent the cattle from going astray.”
They went forward, but a deeper and deeper misgiving filled Violet’s mind that they had chosen a wrong road.
“I think,” she said with a fluttered voice, “that the path looks much narrower than it did this morning. Do you see the others?”
They both strained their eyes through the gloom, now rendered more thick than ever by the dark driving clouds, but they could see no trace of their companions, and though they listened intently, not the faintest sound of voices reached their eager ears.
They spoke no word, but a few steps farther brought them to a towering rock around the base of which the path turned, and then seemed to cease abruptly in a mass of loose shale. It was too clear now. They had lost their road and turned, whilst they were indulging those golden fancies, into a mere cattle-path worn by the numerous herds of goats and oxen, the music of whose jangling bells still came to them now and then in low sweet snatches from the pastures of the valley and hill.
What was to be done? They were alone amid the all but unbroken silence, and the eternal solitudes of the now terrible mountain. The darkness began to brood heavily above them; no one was in sight, and when Kennedy shouted there was no answer, but only an idle echo of his voice. Sheets of mist were sweeping round them, and at length the gusts of wind drove into their faces cold swirls of plashing rain.
“Oh, Mr Kennedy, what can we do? Do shout again.”
Once more Kennedy sent his voice ringing through the mist and darkness, and once more there was no answer, except that to their now excited senses it seemed as if a scream of mocking laughter was carried back to them upon the wind. And clinging tightly to his arm, as he wrapped her in his plaid to shelter her from the wet, she again cried, “Oh, Edward, what must we do?”
Even in that fearful situation—alone on the mountain, in the storm,—he felt within him a thrill of strength and pleasure that she called him Edward, and that she clung so confidingly upon his arm.
“Dare you stay here, Violet,” he asked, “while I run forward and try to catch some glimpse of a light?”
“Oh, I dare not, I dare not,” she cried; “you might miss your way in coming back to me, and I should be alone.”
He saw that she loved him; he had read the secret of her heart, and he was happy. Passionately he drew her towards him, and on her soft fragrant cheek—on which the pallor of dread had not yet extinguished the glow which had been kindled by the mountain wind—he printed a lover’s kiss; but in maidenly reserve she drew back, and was afraid to have revealed her secret, and once more she said, “Oh, Mr Kennedy, we shall die if we stay here unsheltered in this storm.”
As though to confirm her words, the thunder began to growl, and while the sounds of it were beaten back with long loud hollow buffetings from the rocks on every side, the blue and winged flash of lightning glittered before their eyes, cleaving a rift with dazzling and vivid intensity amid the purple gloom.
“Stay here but one instant, Violet—Miss Home,”—he said; “I will climb this rock to see if any light is near, and will be with you again in a moment.”
He bounded actively up the rock, reckless of danger, and gazed from the summit into the night. For a second, another flash of lightning half blinded him with its lurid glare, but when he was again accustomed to the darkness, he saw a dull glimmer in the distance, and supposing it to come from the hotel, sprang down the rock again to Violet’s side.
“This way,” he said, “dear Violet; I see a light, and from the direction of it I think it must be from our hotel. Keep up courage, and we shall soon reach it.”
Dangerous as it was to hurry over the wet and slippery shale, and down the steep sides of the rugged hill, Kennedy half drew, half-carried her along with swift steps towards the place from which the dim light still seemed to allure them by its wavering and uncertain flicker.
Chapter Seventeen.
A Night of Terror.
“For the strength of the hills we bless Thee,
Our God, our Father’s God;
Thou hast made our spirits mighty,
By the touch of the mountain sod!”
Hemans.
“Here you all are, then,” said the cheerful voice of Mr Kennedy, as Julian, Eva, and Cyril, followed by the guide, entered the little Mürrem Inn.
“Here are three of us,” answered Julian; “haven’t Edward and Violet arrived? Not having seen them for the last half-hour, I fancied they must have got before us by some short cut.”
“No, they’ve not come yet. Fortunately for you, Eva, Aunt Dudley is very tired and has gone to bed,” he said laughing, “otherwise you would have got a scolding for not taking better care of Violet.”
“Oh, then, they must be close behind somewhere for certain,” said Julian; “they could not have missed the path—it lay straight before us the whole way.”
“Well, I hope they’ll be in soon, for it begins to look lowering. I’ve ordered tea for you; make haste and come down to it. You’re ready for tea, Cyril, I have no doubt.”
“Rather!” said Cyril, reviving; for fatigue had made him very quiet during the last half-hour. And, indeed, the tempting-looking display on the table, the bright teapot, and substantial meal, and amber-coloured honey, would have allured a more fastidious appetite.
They ran up-stairs to make themselves comfortable before having tea and retiring to bed, and on re-entering the warm and glowing room, their first question was, “Have they come?”
“No,” said Mr Kennedy, anxiously, and even the boy’s face grew grave and thoughtful as Julian rose from the tea-table and said, “I must go and search for them.”
He seized his straw hat, put on his boots again, and ran out, calling on the guide to accompany him. They took out with them a lighted torch, but it was instantly extinguished by the streaming rain. Julian and the guide shouted at the top of their voices, but heard no sound in reply; and the darkness was now so intense, that it was madness to proceed farther amid that howling storm.
They ran back to the inn, where the rest sat round the table, pale and trembling with excessive fear. In reply to their hasty questions, Julian could only shake his head sorrowfully.
“The guide says that in all probability they must have been overtaken by the storm, and have run to some chalet for refuge. If so, they will be safe and well-treated till the morning.”
“You children had better go to bed,” said Mr Kennedy to Eva and Cyril, who reluctantly obeyed. “You cannot be of any help, and directly the storm begins to abate, Julian and I will go and find the others.”
“Oh, papa,” sobbed Eva; “poor Eddy and Violet! What will become of them? Perhaps they have been struck by the lightning.”
“They are in God’s hand, dearest,” he said, tenderly kissing her tearful face, “as we all are. In His hand they are as safe as we.”
“In God’s hand, dear Eva,” said Julian, as he bade her good-night. “Go to sleep, and no doubt they will be here safe before you awake.”
“I shall not sleep, Julian,” she whispered; “I shall go and pray for their safety. Dear, dear Eddy and Violet.”
Cyril lingered in the room.
“Do let me stay up with you, Julian. I couldn’t sleep—indeed, I couldn’t; and I might be of some use when morning comes, and when you go to look for them. Do let me stay, Julian.”
Julian could not resist his brother’s wish, though Mr Kennedy thought it best that the boy should go to bed.
So they compromised matters by getting him to lie down on the sofa, while they sat up, and stared out of the windows silently into the rain. How wearily the time goes by when you dread a danger which no action can avert.
Meanwhile the objects of their anxiety had hurried up to the light, and found that it came from the ragged windows of an old tumble-down tenement, built of pine-boards which the sun had dried and charred, until they looked black and stained and forbidding. Going up the rotten wooden steps to the door, and looking through the broken windows, Kennedy saw two men seated, smoking, with a flaring tallow candle between them.
“Must we go in there?” asked Violet; and Kennedy observed how her arm and the tones of her voice were trembling with agitation.
“Isn’t it better than staying out in this dreadful storm?” said Kennedy. “The Swiss are an honest people, and I daresay these are herdsmen who will gladly give us food and shelter.”
Their voices had roused the inmates of the châlet, and both the men jumped up from their seats, while a large and fierce mastiff also shook himself from sleep, and gave a low deep growl.
Kennedy knocked at the door. A gruff voice bade him enter; and as he stepped over the threshold, the dog flew at him with an angry bark. Violet uttered a cry of fear, and Kennedy struck the dog a furious blow with the knobbed end of his alpenstock, which for the moment stunned the animal, while it drew down on the heads of the tired and fainting travellers a volley of brutal German oaths.
“Can you give us shelter?” said Kennedy, who spoke German with tolerable fluency. “We have lost our way, and cannot stay out in this storm.”
The man snarled an affirmative, and Violet observed with a shudder that he was an ill-looking, one-eyed fellow, with villainy stamped legibly on every feature. The other peasant looked merely stolid and dirty, and seemed to be little better than a cretin, as he sat heavily in his place without offering to stir.
“Can’t you give us some food, or at any rate some milk?—we have been to the top of the Schilthorn, and are very tired.”
The man brought out a huge coarse wooden bowl of goat’s milk, and some sour bread; and feeling in real need of food, they tried to eat and drink. While doing so, Kennedy noticed that Violet gave a perceptible start and looking up, observed the one eye of their grim entertainer intently fixed on the gold watch-chain which hung over his silk jersey. He stared the man full in the face, finished his meal, and then asked for a candle to show the lady to her room.
“No light but this,” said the Cyclops, as Kennedy mentally named him.
“Then you must lend me this.”
And taking it without more ado, he went first to the cupboard from which the milk had been produced, where seeing another dip, he coolly took it, lighted it, and pushed open the creaking door which opened on the close, damp closet which the man had indicated as the only place where Violet could sleep.
This room opened on another rather larger; and here, putting the candle on the floor, for the room, (if room it could be called), was destitute of all furniture, he spread his plaid on the ground over some straw, and said—
“Try to sleep here, Miss Home, till morning. I will keep watch in the outer room.”
He shut the door, went back to the two men, looked full at them both, and leaving them their candle, returned to the closet, where, fastening the door with his invaluable alpenstock, he sat on the ground by the entrance of Violet’s room. He heard her murmuring words of prayer, and knew well that she could not sleep in such a situation; but he himself determined to sit in perfect silence, to keep watch, and to commend himself and her, whom he now knew that he loved more than himself, in inward supplication to the merciful protection of their God and Father.
He felt a conviction that they had fallen into bad hands. The man’s anger had first been stirred by the severe wound which Kennedy had in self-defence inflicted on the dog, and now there was too much reason to dread that his cupidity had been excited by the sight of the gold chain, and by Violet’s ornaments, which gave promise that he might by this accident gain a wealthy prize.
After an interval of silence, during which he perceived that they listened at his door, and were deceived by his measured breathing into a notion that he was asleep, he noticed that they put out the candle, and continued to whisper in low thick voices. He was very very weary, his head nodded many times, and more than once he was afraid that sleep would overcome him, especially as he dared not stir or change his position; but the thought of Violet’s danger, and the blaze of the lightning mingled with the yell of the wind kept him watchful, and he spent the interminable moments in thinking how to act when the attack came.
At last, about an hour and a half after he had retired, he heard the men stir, and with a thrill of horror he detected the sound of guns being loaded. Violet’s candle was yet burning, as he perceived by the faint light under her door, so he wrote on a leaf of his pocket-book in the dark, “Don’t be afraid, Violet, whatever you may hear; trust in God,” and noiselessly pushed it under the crevice of the door into her room.
The muffled footsteps approached, but he never varied the sound of his regular breathing. At last came a push at the door, followed by silence, and then the whisper, “he has fastened it.” Still he did not stir, till he observed that they were both close against the door, and were preparing to force it open. Then guided by a swift instinctive resolution, he determined to trust to the effects of an unexpected alarm. Noiselessly moving his alpenstock, he suddenly and with all his force, dashed the door open, shouted aloud, and with his utmost violence swung round the heavy iron spike. A flash, the report of a gun, and a yell of anguish instantly followed; and as Violet in terror and excitement threw open her door, the light which streamed from it showed Kennedy in a moment that the foremost villain, startled by the sudden opposition, had accidentally fired off his gun, of which the whole contents had lodged themselves in the shoulder of his comrade.
This second man had also armed himself with a chamois-gun, which slipped out of his hands as he fell wounded to the ground. Springing forward Kennedy wrenched it out of his relaxing grasp, and presented it full at the head of the other, who, half-stunned with the blow he had received from the heavy iron-shod point of the ashen alpenstock, was crouching for concealment in the corner of the chalet.
“Violet,” he said, “all is now safe. These wretches are disarmed; if you like to take shelter here till the morning, I can secure you from any further attack. If you stir but an inch,” he continued, addressing the unwounded man, “I will shoot you dead. Lay down your gun.”
The man’s one eye glared with rage and hatred, but Kennedy still held the loaded gun at his head, and he was forced sullenly to obey. Kennedy put his foot upon the gun, and was in perplexity what to do next, fearing that the wounded murderer, who was moaning heavily, might nevertheless spring at him from behind, and also momentarily dreading an attack from the mastiff, who kept up a sullen growl.
“Let us leave this dreadful place,” said Violet, who, pale but undaunted at the horrors of the scene, had taken refuge by Kennedy’s side.
“Dare you pick up and carry the gun?” he asked. “It would be dangerous to leave it in their hands.”
Violet picked it up, where it lay under his feet, and then glided rapidly out of the châlet, while Kennedy slowly followed, never once taking his eye from his crouching antagonist. Before he stepped into the open air, he said to the men, “If I hear but one footstep in pursuit of us, I will shoot one of you dead.”
“Oh, what a relief to be on the mountain-turf once more!” said Violet in a low and broken whisper, as she grasped Kennedy’s arm, and he cautiously led her down a rude path, which was faintly marked a few hundred yards from the lonely cottage where they had been. “Are we safe now, do you think?”
“Yes, quite safe, Violet, I trust. They will not dare pursue me, now that their guns are gone, and I have this loaded one in my hand.”
“Dear brave Mr Kennedy. How shall I ever thank you enough for having saved my life so nobly? If you had not been so strong and watchful, we should both have now been killed.”
“I would die a thousand deaths,” he whispered, “to save you from the least harm, Violet. But you are tired, you must rest here till the dawn. Sit under this rock, dearest, and cover yourself with my plaid. I will keep watch still.”
She sat down wearily, and her head sank upon the rock. The storm was over: the thunder was still muttering like a baffled enemy in the distance, but the wind after its late fury was sobbing gently and fitfully like a repentant child. The rock gave her shelter, and after her fatigue and agitation she was sleeping peacefully, while Kennedy bowed down his head, and thanked God for the merciful protection which He had extended to them.
He had not been seated long when his eye caught the light of torches, being waved at a distance in the direction of the hotel. In an instant, he felt sure that Julian was come out to search for them, and gently awakening Violet, he told her with a thrill of joy that help was at hand. The torches drew nearer the place where they were seated, and he raised a joyous shout. As yet they were too far off to hear him, but suddenly it occurred to him to fire his gun. The flash and echoing report attracted their notice; the torches grew rapidly nearer; he could almost see the dark figures of those who carried them; and now in answer to his second shout came the hurried sound of familiar voices, and in five minutes more Julian and his father had grasped him by the hands, and Cyril had flung his arms round Violet’s neck.
And now at last Kennedy gave way to his emotion, and his highly-wrought feelings found relief in a burst of passionate tears. It was no time for questionings. Julian passed his arm round his sister’s waist, and, aided by Mr Kennedy, half-carried her to their hotel. Kennedy leaned heavily on the guide’s arm; the honest landlord, who accompanied the searching party, carried the plaid, the alpenstock, and one of the guns, and Cyril, impressed by the strange scene, carried the other gun, full of wondering conjecture what Kennedy could have been doing with it, and from whence it could have come.
And when Violet reached Eva’s room, in which she slept, she could only say, as they sat locked in a long embrace:—
“Dearest Eva, it is only through Edward that my life has been saved.”
Eva had never before heard Violet call her brother by his name, and she was glad at heart.