There was silence for a few minutes, then:
"Ready. Haul away," cried Wentworth.
And they did haul away--those on the _arete_ flat on their faces, carefully watching the ascent of the rope lest it should be worn through by any friction. In a very short time Wentworth appeared in sight where the line of the slope broke into the precipice; a moment more and he was beside them in safety.
Then what a stentorian cheer split the echoes of those craggy heights, conveying to the rest of the party, waiting in anxious, breathless suspense below, that the rescue had been safely effected. Wentworth himself seemed rather dazed, and said but little; nor did it add to his composure when he found Alma Wyatt wringing both his hands, and ejaculating, "Oh, I am so glad--I am so glad!" preparatory to breaking forth into a perfect paroxysm of unnerved crying.
"You"ve had a narrow squeak, old chap!" said Philip.
"Hurt at all?" asked the more practical Fordham.
"No. Don"t seem like it. Scratched a bit--nothing more."
His face was badly scratched and covered with blood. One sleeve of his coat was nearly torn from the shoulder, and he had lost his watch.
"_Vous vous y-etes joliment tire--Nom de nom_!" said the cowherd oracularly. "_Remplacer une montre c"est plus simple que de remplacer ses membres broyes--allez_!"
CHAPTER TWELVE.
LIGHT.
"Wentworth, old man, here"s to your lucky escape," cried Gedge, with his usual effusiveness, flourishing a br.i.m.m.i.n.g b.u.mper of Beaune.
A roaring fire blazed in the wide chimney-place of the Chalet Soladier.
The air was raw and chill, for another rain-gust had swept suddenly up; and seated around the cheerful glow our party was engaged in the comfortable and highly congenial occupation of a.s.similating the luncheon which had been brought along.
"That"s a most appropriate toast, and one we ought all to join in," said the old General, approvingly. "Here, Philip, give the _chalet_ man a full b.u.mper. He is ent.i.tled to join if any one is, and, Alma--explain to him what it is all about."
This was done, and the toast drunk with a hearty cheer. The recipient of the honour, however, was in no responsive mood. That he, of all people, should have been fool enough to miss his footing; he an experienced climber, and who, moreover, was in a way the leader of the expedition! It was intolerable. And this aspect of the situation tended far more towards the somewhat silent and subdued demeanour he had worn ever since, than any recollection of the ghastly peril from which he had been extricated, than even the thought of the grisly death from which he had been saved almost by a miracle. Yes, he felt small, and said so unreservedly.
But Alma came to the rescue in no ambiguous fashion.
"You are not fair to yourself, Mr Wentworth," she declared. "The thing might have happened to anybody up there in that awful wind. Of course I don"t know anything about mountain climbing, but what strikes me is that if, as you say, you considered yourself in a way responsible for us, the fact that you incurred the danger, while we have all come down safe and sound--incurred it, too, out of care for our safety--is not a thing to feel small about, but very much the reverse."
"Hear, hear!" sung out Gedge, l.u.s.tily, stamping with his feet in such wise as to upset a whole heap of sandwiches and the residue of Fordham"s beverage. But Wentworth shook his head.
"It"s very kind of you to put it that way, Miss Wyatt. Still the fact remains that it oughtn"t to have happened; and perhaps the best side of the affair is that it happened to me after all, and not to one of yourselves. By Jove! though," he added, with a laugh. "Friend Dufour will score off me now for all time. We are always having arguments about the Cape au Moine. I always say it is an over-rated climb, and for the matter of that I say so still."
"That may easily be," struck in Philip. "I suppose any mountain is dangerous with a gale of five hundred hurricane power blowing."
"Of course. But where I blame myself, Orlebar, is in not starting to come down sooner. And I fancy that is the line Miss Wyatt"s advocacy will take when she finds herself laid up with a bad cold after getting wet through up there."
"It will take nothing of the kind, Mr Wentworth," replied Alma, "for I am not going to be laid up with any cold at all. The walk down here almost dried my things, and this splendid fire has done the rest."
Luncheon over pipes were produced, indeed the suggestion to that effect originated with the representatives of the softer s.e.x there present, who preferred the, at other times much-decried, narcotic to the somewhat rancid odour emanating from sundry tubs used in cheese-making, which stood in the corner of the room. The rain beat hard upon the roof without, but nothing could have been more snug than the interior of the _chalet_ in its semi-darkness, the firelight dancing upon the beams and quaint appointments of this rough but picturesque habitation.
"Now, Gedge, you"re by way of being a logician," said Wentworth, blowing out a cloud of smoke. "Can you tell us why a man can"t keep his head just as well over a drop of a thousand feet as over one of six?"
"_Do_ you mean when the wind is blowing," answered Gedge, suspecting a "catch."
"No. I mean when there"s no apparent reason why he shouldn"t."
"Because he gets confoundedly dizzy, I suppose."
"But why should he? He has the same foothold. Take that _arete_ up there. If the drop on each side were only six feet, no fellow would hesitate to run along it like a cat along a wall."
"Not even Scott," muttered Fordham, in a tone just audible to Alma, who at the picture thus conjured up of the unfortunate chaplain straddling the _arete_, and screaming to be taken off, could hardly restrain herself from breaking forth into a peal of laughter.
"It"s a clear case of the triumph of mind over matter, I take it,"
answered Gedge. "What do you say, Scott?"
"Oh, I"m no authority," mumbled the latter hastily. "Don"t appeal to me. My head seems going round still."
"Scott is no authority on matters outside the smoking-room," said Fordham, mercilessly--thereby nearly causing Alma to choke again, and begetting inextinguishable resentment in the breast of the youngest Miss Ottley, who had taken the parson under her own especial wing. "Within those sacred precincts we all bow to him as supreme."
"I don"t quite see where that comes in," rejoined Wentworth, in answer to Gedge. "If anything it would be the other way about--triumph of matter over mind: the matter being represented by several hundred feet of perpendicularity, before, or rather above, which the "mind" takes a back seat; or, in plainer English, gets in a funk."
"That very fact proves the mind to be paramount; proves its triumph, paradoxical as it may sound," argued Gedge. "An idiot, for instance, wouldn"t care twopence whether the drop was six feet or six hundred. As long as there was firm ground under him, he"d shuffle along it gaily.
Why? Because he is incapable of thought--deficient in mind."
"Upon that showing," said General Wyatt, with a twinkle in his eye--"upon that showing, the Miss Ottleys and myself must be the most sensible people of the lot; for, unlike your hypothetical idiot, Gedge, we emphatically did care twopence whether the drop was six feet or six hundred. In other words, we funked it egregiously and stayed behind.
Our minds, you see triumphed over matter in the most practical way of all."
"I guess this argument"s going to end in a clean draw," said Philip.
"Hallo! the sun"s out again, and, by Jove, there isn"t a cloud in the sky," he added, flinging the door open and going outside. "The day is young yet. How would it be to go over the Col de Falvay and work round home again by way of the Alliaz? It"s a lovely walk."
But this, after some discussion, was voted too large an undertaking. At Alma"s suggestion it was decided that the party should stroll over the _col_ into the next valley and pick flowers.
"It is our last day here, uncle," she urged, in answer to the old General"s somewhat half-hearted objection that they would have had about enough walking by the time they reached home. "It is our last day, so we ought to make the most of it. And look how lovely it has turned out!"
It had. No sign was left now of the dour mist curtain which had swept the heavens but a short while before. Wandering in the golden sunshine, among fragrant pine woods and pastures, knee-deep in narcissus, the party soon split up as such parties will. Fordham and the General took it very easily; strolling a little, sitting down a little, they chatted and smoked many pipes, and were happy. Scott and his fair admirer paired off in search of floral and botanical specimens, and were also happy. The residue of the crowd a.s.similated themselves in like harmonious fashion, or did not--as they chose. Two units of it at any rate did, for crafty Phil seized an early opportunity of carrying off Alma to a spot where he knew they would find lilies of the valley. As a matter of fact they did not find any, but this was of no consequence to him. What was of consequence was the blissful fact that he had got her all to himself for the afternoon. And this was her last afternoon, their last afternoon together. And in consideration of this, the light-hearted, easy-going Phil became seized with an abnormal melancholy.
"You are a rank deceiver," said Alma, some three hours later, as, in obedience to a shout of recall, they turned to rejoin the rest of the party now taking the homeward way, but as yet some distance off. "You told me you knew we should find the lilies there--you _knew_, mind, not you _thought_. Then when we found none at the first place, you knew we should at another; and you dragged me from place to place, but yet I haven"t found one. And now I must be content with the bundle of bell-gentians I gathered this morning. Poor things! how they have faded," she added, undoing a corner of the handkerchief containing them.
"Ah! here is some water. I must freshen them up a bit."
"What a day this has been," said Philip, regretfully, as Alma stooped down to freshen the gentians with water from the tiny runnel which, dripping from the mossy undergrowth beneath the shadowy pines, sped at their feet with a bell-like tinkle. There was a moist fragrance as of crushed blossoms in the air, and the unearthly glow of a cloudless evening was upon the sunlit slopes, and the grey solemn faces of the cliffs across the valley.
"Yes, indeed," she answered, her wet, tapering hands plunged lightly among the rich blue blossoms of the bell-gentians.
"And it is your last!"
"Unfortunately it is. But--who would have thought, to look around now-- who would have believed the awful time we went through up there only this morning! When Mr Wentworth was drawn up again safe and unhurt, I could not help crying for joy. Poor fellow! What must he have gone through all that time, with nothing but a rhododendron bush between him and a frightful death!"
"I reverse the usual order and begin to think I"d rather it was me than him," said Philip, gruffly. "May I ask whether, in that case, you would have manifested the same delight?"
There was a flash of mischievous mirth in Alma"s great grey eyes as she looked up at him.