"Badly," he echoed. "Badly, since _you_ went away from Schlangenbad."
I gazed at his dusty feet. "You are tramping," I said, cruelly. "I suppose you will get forward for lunch to Meiringen?"
"I-- I did not contemplate it."
"Indeed?"
He grew bolder. "No; to say the truth, I half hoped I might stop and spend the day here with you."
"Elsie," I remarked firmly, "if Mr. Tillington persists in planting himself upon us like this, one of us must go and investigate the kitchen department."
Elsie rose like a lamb. I have an impression that she gathered we wanted to be left alone.
[Ill.u.s.tration: I MAY STAY, MAYN"T I?]
He turned to me imploringly. "Lois," he cried, stretching out his arms, with an appealing air, "I _may_ stay, mayn"t I?"
I tried to be stern; but I fear "twas a feeble pretence. "We are two girls, alone in a house," I answered. "Lady Georgina, as a matron of experience, ought to have protected us. Merely to give you lunch is almost irregular. (Good diplomatic word, irregular.) Still, in these days, I suppose you _may_ stay, if you leave early in the afternoon.
That"s the utmost I can do for you."
"You are not gracious," he cried, gazing at me with a wistful look.
I did not dare to be gracious. "Uninvited guests must not quarrel with their welcome," I answered severely. Then the woman in me broke forth.
"But indeed, Mr. Tillington, I am glad to see you."
He leaned forward eagerly. "So you are not angry with me, Lois? I may call you _Lois_?"
I trembled and hesitated. "I am not angry with you. I-- I like you too much to be ever angry with you. And I am glad you came--just this once--to see me.... Yes,--when we are alone--you may call me Lois."
He tried to seize my hand. I withdrew it. "Then I may perhaps hope," he began, "that some day----"
I shook my head. "No, no," I said, regretfully. "You misunderstand me.
I like you very much; and I like to see you. But as long as you are rich and have prospects like yours, I could never marry you. My pride wouldn"t let me. Take that as final."
I looked away. He bent forward again. "But if I were poor?" he put in, eagerly.
I hesitated. Then my heart rose, and I gave way. "If ever you are poor,"
I faltered,--"penniless, hunted, friendless--come to me, Harold, and I will help and comfort you. But not till then. Not till then, I implore you."
He leant back and clasped his hands. "You have given me something to live for, dear Lois," he murmured. "I will try to be poor--penniless, hunted, friendless. To win you I will try. And when that day arrives, I shall come to claim you."
We sat for an hour and had a delicious talk--about nothing. But we understood each other. Only that artificial barrier divided us. At the end of the hour, I heard Elsie coming back by judiciously slow stages from the kitchen to the living-room, through six feet of pa.s.sage, discoursing audibly to Ursula all the way, with a tardiness that did honour to her heart and her understanding. Dear, kind little Elsie! I believe she had never a tiny romance of her own; yet her sympathy for others was sweet to look upon.
We lunched at a small deal table in the veranda. Around us rose the pinnacles. The scent of pines and moist moss was in the air. Elsie had arranged the flowers, and got ready the omelette, and cooked the chicken cutlets, and prepared the junket. "I never thought I could do it alone without you, Brownie; but I tried, and it all came right by magic, somehow." We laughed and talked incessantly. Harold was in excellent cue; and Elsie took to him. A livelier or merrier table there wasn"t in the twenty-two Cantons that day than ours, under the sapphire sky, looking out on the sun-smitten snows of the Jungfrau.
After lunch, Harold begged hard to be allowed to stop for tea. I had misgivings, but I gave way--he _was_ such good company. One may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, says the wisdom of our ancestors: and, after all, Mrs. Grundy was only represented here by Elsie, the gentlest and least censorious of her daughters. So he stopped and chatted till four; when I made tea and insisted on dismissing him. He meant to take the rough mountain path over the screes from Lungern to Meiringen, which ran right behind the _chalet_. I feared lest he might be belated, and urged him to hurry.
"Thanks, I"m happier here," he answered.
I was sternness itself. "You _promised_ me!" I said, in a reproachful voice.
He rose instantly, and bowed. "Your will is law--even when it p.r.o.nounces sentence of exile."
Would we walk a little way with him? No, I faltered; we would not. We would follow him with the opera-gla.s.ses and wave him farewell when he reached the Kulm. He shook our hands unwillingly, and turned up the little path, looking handsomer than ever. It led ascending through a fir-wood to the rock-strewn hillside.
Once, a quarter of an hour later, we caught a glimpse of him near a sharp turn in the road; after that we waited in vain, with our eyes fixed on the Kulm; not a sign could we discern of him. At last I grew anxious. "He ought to be there," I cried, fuming.
"He ought," Elsie answered.
I swept the slopes with the opera-gla.s.ses. Anxiety and interest in him quickened my senses, I suppose. "Look here, Elsie," I burst out at last.
"Just take this gla.s.s and have a glance at those birds, down the crag below the Kulm. Don"t they seem to be circling and behaving most oddly?"
Elsie gazed where I bid her. "They"re wheeling round and round," she answered, after a minute; "and they certainly _do_ look as if they were screaming."
"They seem to be frightened," I suggested.
"It looks like it, Brownie,"
"Then he"s fallen over a precipice!" I cried, rising up; "and he"s lying there on a ledge by their nest. Elsie, we must go to him!"
She clasped her hands and looked terrified. "Oh, Brownie, how dreadful!"
she exclaimed. Her face was deadly white. Mine burned like fire.
"Not a moment to lose!" I said, holding my breath. "Get out the rope and let us run to him!"
"Don"t you think," Elsie suggested, "we had better hurry down on our cycles to Lungern and call some men from the village to help us? We are two girls, and alone. What can we do to aid him?"
"No," I answered, promptly, "that won"t do. It would only lose time--and time may be precious. You and I must go; I"ll send Ursula off to bring up guides from the village."
Fortunately, we had a good long coil of new rope in the house, which Mrs. Evelegh had provided in case of accident. I slipped it on my arm, and set out on foot; for the path was by far too rough for cycles. I was sorry afterwards that I had not taken Ursula, and sent Elsie to Lungern to rouse the men; for she found the climbing hard, and I had difficulty at times in dragging her up the steep and stony pathway, almost a watercourse. However, we persisted in the direction of the Kulm, tracking Harold by his footprints; for he wore mountain boots with sharp-headed nails, which made dints in the moist soil, and scratched the smooth surface of the rock where he trod on it.
We followed him thus for a mile or two, along the regular path; then of a sudden, in an open part, the trail failed us. I turned back, a few yards, and looked close, with my eyes fixed on the spongy soil, as keen as a hound that sniffs his way after his quarry. "He went off _here_, Elsie!" I said at last, pulling up short by a spindle bush on the hillside.
"How do you know, Brownie?"
"Why, see, there are the marks of his stick; he had a thick one, you remember, with a square iron spike. These are its dints; I have been watching them all the way along from the _chalet_!
"But there are so many such marks!"
"Yes, I know; I can tell his from the older ones made by the spikes of alpenstocks because Harold"s are fresher and sharper on the edge. They look so much newer. See, here, he slipped on the rock; you can know that scratch is recent by the clean way it"s traced, and the little glistening crystals still left behind in it. Those other marks have been wind-swept and washed by the rain. There are no broken particles."
"How on earth did you find that out, Brownie?"
How on earth did I find it out! I wondered myself. But the emergency seemed somehow to teach me something of the instinctive lore of hunters and savages. I did not trouble to answer her. "At this bush, the tracks fail," I went on; "and, look, he must have clutched at that branch and crushed the broken leaves as the twigs slipped through his fingers. He left the path here, then, and struck off on a short cut of his own along the hillside, lower down. Elsie, we must follow him."
She shrank from it; but I held her hand. It was a more difficult task to track him now; for we had no longer the path to guide us. However, I explored the ground on my hands and knees, and soon found marks of footsteps on the boggy patches, with scratches on the rock where he had leapt from point to point, or planted his stick to steady himself. I tried to help Elsie along among the littered boulders and the dwarf growth of wind-swept daphne: but, poor child, it was too much for her: she sat down after a few minutes upon the flat juniper scrub and began to cry. What was I to do? My anxiety was breathless. I couldn"t leave her there alone, and I couldn"t forsake Harold. Yet I felt every minute might now be critical. We were making among wet whortleberry thicket and torn rock towards the spot where I had seen the birds wheel and circle, screaming. The only way left was to encourage Elsie and make her feel the necessity for instant action. "He is alive still," I exclaimed, looking up; "the birds are crying! If he were dead, they would return to their nest-- Elsie, we _must_ get to him!"
She rose, bewildered, and followed me. I held her hand tight, and coaxed her to scramble over the rocks where the scratches showed the way, or to clamber at times over fallen trunks of huge fir-trees. Yet it was hard work climbing; even Harold"s sure feet had slipped often on the wet and slimy boulders, though, like most of Queen Margherita"s set, he was an expert mountaineer. Then, at times, I lost the faint track, so that I had to diverge and look close to find it. These delays fretted me. "See, a stone loosed from its bed--he must have pa.s.sed by here.... That twig is newly snapped; no doubt he caught at it.... Ha, the moss there has been crushed; a foot has gone by. And the ants on that ant-hill, with their eggs in their mouths--a man"s tread has frightened them." So, by some instinctive sense, as if the spirit of my savage ancestors revived within me, I managed to recover the spoor again and again by a miracle, till at last, round a corner by a defiant cliff--with a terrible foreboding, my heart stood still within me.