Читать книгу Fordham's Feud - Mitford Bertram - Страница 10

Alma’s wish was destined to be fulfilled, for the morning broke clear and cloudless. Starting in the highest spirits, a couple of hours’ easy walking brought the party to the foot of the steep and grassy slope which leads right up to the left arête of the Cape au Moine.

Though the morning was yet young it was uncomfortably warm. The mighty grass slopes of the Rochers des Verreaux, of which the Cape au Moine is the principal summit, stood forth with the distinctness of a steel engraving, so clear was the air. A suspicious clearness which, taken in conjunction with certain light cloud streamers flecking the sky, and the unwonted heat of that early hour, betokened to the practised eye an impending change of weather.

“Wet jackets,” remarked Wentworth, laconically, with a glance at these signs.

“Likely enough,” assented Fordham. “Hallo! what’s the row down there? They seem to be beginning already.”

These two were leading the way up the steep, slippery path, and were a little distance ahead of the rest. The above remarks referred to a sudden halt at the tail of the party, caused by one of the Miss Ottleys finding her heart fail her: for the path at that point skirts the very brink of a precipice.

“Only what I expected,” sneered Fordham. “Look at that, Wentworth. What sort of figure will all these women cut when we get them up on the arête yonder, if they can’t stand an easy, beaten track up a grass slope? We shall have them squalling and hystericking and fainting, and perhaps taking a header over. Eh?”

Wentworth merely shrugged his shoulders. “Who is that new specimen they’ve caught?” he said, as, the difficulty apparently overcome, the group behind was seen to resume its way.

“That?” said Fordham, glancing at the person indicated, a tallish, loosely-hung youth in knickerbockers, who seemed to be dividing his time between squiring the Miss Ottleys and arguing with Scott, the parson. “Don’t know who he is – and don’t want to. Confound the fellow! – began ‘Fordham-ing’ me after barely a quarter of an hour’s talk. Name’s Gedge, I believe. I suppose some of the women cut him into this trip.”

“Most probably,” replied Wentworth. “I haven’t exchanged any remarks with him myself. But he sits near me at table and talks nineteen to the dozen. It’s like having a full-sized cow-bell swinging in your ear just the time you are within his proximity.”

“They say everything has its use,” returned Fordham, meditatively. “I own to having discovered a use for friend Gedge – viz, to demonstrate that there can actually exist a more thoroughly self-sufficient and aggressive bore than even that fellow Scott.”

The other laughed. And by this time they had gained the dip where the path – a mere thread of a track – crosses the high ridge of the Chaîne des Verreaux at its extreme end, and sat down to await the arrival of the residue of the party.

The latter, broken up into twos and threes, was straggling up the slope. The temporary impediment had apparently been successfully overcome, and the trepidation of the fearful fair one removed. Still, to those unaccustomed to heights it was nervous work, for the path was, as we have said, a mere thread, intersecting the long, slippery grass, more treacherous than ice, of the frightfully steep mountain-side – and lying below was more than one precipice, comparatively insignificant, but high enough to mean a broken limb if not a broken neck.

“Well, Miss Wyatt, do you feel like going the whole way?” said Wentworth, as Alma, with her uncle and Philip Orlebar, gained the ridge where they were halted.

“Of course I do,” she answered gaily. “I always said I would get to the top if I got the chance – and I will.”

“There are five arêtes– three of them like knife-blades,” pursued Wentworth, who rather shared Fordham’s opinions regarding the other sex. “What if you begin to feel giddy in the middle of one of them?”

“But I’m not going to feel anything of the kind,” she answered, with defiant good-humour. “So don’t try and put me off, for it’s of no use.”

“I say, Fordham,” sung out a sort of hail-the-maintop voice, the property of the youth referred to as Gedge, as its owner climbed puffing up to where they sat, followed by the rest of the party. “I don’t think overmuch of this Cape au Moine of yours. Why one can dance up it on one leg.”

“And one can dance down it on one head – and that in a surprisingly short space of time – viz, a few seconds,” said Wentworth, tranquilly. “However, you’ll see directly.”

“Well, who’s going up and who’s going to wait for us here?” said Philip, after a rest of ten minutes or so.

“I don’t think we are,” said the elder Miss Ottley. “I more than half promised mamma we wouldn’t. And Monsieur Dufour says it’s such a dangerous mountain. We’ll stay here and take care of General Wyatt.”

There was some demur to this on the part of the more inexperienced section of the males. The experienced ones said nothing.

“You’d better stay with us, Alma,” said the General, with a shade of anxiety. “Remember there have been several people killed up there.”

“Just why I particularly want to go, uncle. I want to be able to say I have been up a mountain on which several people have been killed.”

“I think Miss Wyatt has a steady enough head, General,” said Wentworth, who was an experienced Alpine climber. “At least, judging from the way in which she stood looking over that precipice down yonder, I should say so. If she will allow me I will take care of her.”

“I’ll be hanged if you will though!” said Phil to himself. And then they started.

The mere climbing part of what followed was not hard. But what was apt to prove trying to the nerves of the uninitiated was when, after feeling their way carefully along the narrow ledge-like path which runs beneath the rocks near the crest of the ridge, they came right out upon the summit of the arête itself. Here, indeed, it was a good deal like walking on the edge of a knife-blade even as Wentworth had defined it, and here it was that two, at any rate, of the party began to feel dubious. On the right was a precipitous fall of rocks, then the steep, slippery, grassy slope – broken here and there by a cliff – which constituted the whole of that side of the mountain; on the left an unbroken drop of seven or eight hundred feet. And on the apex of this rock ridge, in single file, poised, like Mohammed’s coffin, between the heavens and the earth, the aspiring party had to walk or crawl.

“Well, Miss Wyatt, how do you feel now?” said Wentworth, who was leading the way. Alma was immediately behind him, then came Philip Orlebar, then Fordham, Scott and Gedge bringing up the rear. “Not giddy at all, I hope?”

“Not in the very least,” said Alma, brightly. “Quite sure? I can give you a hand if you like.”

“Not for the world. I assure you I’m thoroughly enjoying it. And what a view!”

“Well, look carefully where you’re going,” continued Wentworth. “Leave the view to take care of itself until you get to the top. It won’t run away.”

That the warning was by no means superfluous was shown by a sudden stagger on the part of Philip. He reeled for a moment, then, with a great effort, recovered his balance. He had been so absorbed in watching Alma’s progress in front, that he had quite neglected the attention due to his own footing. Now this cannot be done with impunity upon the edge of a knife-like ridge about one thousand feet in mid-air – as he learned when he found himself within an ace of plunging into space. Fordham, for a moment, thought he had gone.

“You’ll add to the record of this much maligned climb, Phil, if you don’t mind,” he said. “What’s the row? Feel heady?”

“Not a bit. Only made a slip. Sha’n’t do it again though. I say, Wentworth, how far would a fellow fall here – on this side?”

“Oh, about eight hundred feet. Then he’d go footballing two or three hundred more,” was the nonchalant reply. “I wouldn’t try it, though, if I were you.”

They were off the arête now, and paused to rest under the rocks to allow the others time to come up.

“Hallo, Gedge!” continued Wentworth, as the addressed came crawling along on all-fours, and that very gingerly. “I thought you felt like doing this climb on one leg, and instead of that it seems to take you all four.”

“You people go on at such a rate. Besides, I find I’m not up to much on a place like this. No, I’ll climb down from the ‘one-leg’ position, absolutely and unreservedly.”

“There’s another man who isn’t up to much on a place like this,” said Fordham, with a dry chuckle.

Scott, to whom this remark referred, had nearly reached the middle of the arête. He, too, was creeping on hands and knees. But suddenly his heart seemed to fail him, for there he sat, straddling the ridge, one leg on each side of the mountain, the very picture of wild panic. His hat had blown off, and hung by a string over his shoulder, and he dared not move a finger to replace it. His hands shook as he grasped the rock in a strained, terror-stricken grasp, and his eyes seemed to start from his deadly white face.

“Oh, help me off!” he cried piteously. “For Heaven’s sake, some of you help me off!”

In vain they called out to him that he was perfectly safe – that if Miss Wyatt could get along the place without any difficulty surely he could. The poor man’s reasoning faculties seemed to have deserted him altogether.

“I suppose I must go back and salvage him!” said Wentworth, resignedly. “You had better wait here for me, though.” And in a moment he was beside the distressed chaplain.

“Hang it all, Mr Scott!” he said in an undertone, “do remember what an exhibition you are making of yourself before Miss Wyatt, and pull yourself together. You’re quite safe, I tell you. Now, turn round – carefully as you like – and then crawl back again as you came.”

When a man of Scott’s calibre is in a horrible funk, poised a thousand feet in mid-air, appeals to his reason or his sense of shame are apt to fall alike on deaf ears. To all Wentworth’s adjurations he only reiterated piteously, “I can’t move! What is to be done? I can’t move!”

What, indeed, was to be done? It was a position in which if a man will not help himself nobody can help him. Wentworth was in despair. Suddenly a happy thought struck him. His flask!

“Here, take a nip of this and pull yourself together. That’s right,” as Scott eagerly seized the proffered refreshment.

And soon the effects were felt. A liberal gulp or two having infused into his system a faint modicum of that artificial courage libellously termed “Dutch,” the panic-stricken cleric managed to turn round upon his aërial perch, and began to crawl gingerly back in the same ignominious posture as that in which he had come, stipulating eagerly that his succourer should keep just behind him in order to grab hold of him if he should show the least sign of falling. Wentworth was glad to get rid of him on any terms, and, depositing him in safety under a rock, solemnly enjoined upon him not to move therefrom until they should return.

“Well, Mr Fordham,” said Alma, wickedly, “we poor women are not always the ones who give the most trouble, you see.”

“No, by Jove, you’re not, Miss Wyatt,” struck in Gedge, characteristically eager to answer for everybody. “What an awful fool I must have looked myself. I’ll do the next arête on my hind legs like the rest of you.” And he was as good as his word.

Two more of these narrow rock-ridges, overhanging a dizzy height, then a particularly awkward “corner” where a very slight excrescence of the rock constituted the only foothold, and where Wentworth and Philip’s combined caution availed to render the danger for Alma practically nil, and they began the steep but easy climb of the grassy cone itself. A few minutes later they stood on the summit.

“Well, Miss Wyatt, I must in all due sincerity congratulate you,” said Wentworth, as they sat down to rest after their exertions. “No one could have got along better than you have done. And you have never climbed a mountain before?”

“Never. Why, I’ve never even seen a mountain before I came to this country a couple of weeks ago,” answered Alma, with a gratified smile.

“Wonderful I wonderful! Isn’t it, Fordham?”

“Very,” replied that worthy, drily.

“No chance of any one holding too good an opinion of herself when Mr Fordham is by,” said Alma, with mischievous emphasis on the “her.”

“Which is to say that everything – everybody, rather – is of some use,” was the ready rejoinder.

“I don’t see the point of that at all,” cried Phil, dimly conscious that his deity was being made the butt of his crusty friend’s satire. “No, I don’t. Come now, Fordham.”

“I suppose not. There is another point you don’t see either, which is that when a man has taken the trouble to shin up the Cape au Moine on a particularly hot and surpassingly clear day, he prefers the enjoyment of the magnificent view which a bountiful Providence has spread around him to the labour of driving this or that ‘point’ into the somewhat opaque brain-box of Philip Orlebar, Esq.”

“You had better take that as final, Mr Orlebar, ere worse befall you,” laughed! Alma, interrupting the derisive hoot wherewith her adorer had greeted the above contemptuous speech. “And Mr Fordham’s principle is a sound one in the main, for I never could have imagined the world could show anything so glorious, so perfectly heavenly as this view. Let us make the most of it.”

Her enthusiasm was not feigned, and for it there was every justification. The atmosphere balmy and clear, the lofty elevation at which they found themselves – these alone were enough to engender an unbounded sense of exhilaration. But what a panorama! Range upon range of noble mountains, the dazzling snow-summits of the giants of the Oberland reaching in a stately line across the whole eastern background of the picture, from the cloud-like Wetterhorn to the massive rock rampart of the Diablerets. Mountains, mountains everywhere – one vast rolling sea of tossing peaks, rock-ridges, and smooth, hump-like backs; of bold and sweeping slopes, here black with pine forest, there vividly green in the full blaze of unclouded sunlight; and, cleaving the heart of the billowy expanse, such a maze of sequestered and peaceful valleys resonant with the far-away music of cow-bells, at eventide sweet with the melodious jodel of the Ranz des Vaches. In the distance the turbid Sarine winding its way by more than one cluster of red roofs grouping around a modest steeple on its banks. This on the one hand. On the other, the rolling, wooded champaign and rich pasture-lands of the plain of Switzerland stretching away to the lakes of Neuchatel and Bienne, and historic Morat; and below, like a huge turquoise, the blue Lake Léman in its mountain-girt setting, between the far-away line of the purple Jura and the great masses of the Savoy Alps rearing up opposite. What a panorama, beneath a sky of deep and unclouded blue, lighted by the golden radiance of a summer sun! It was indeed something to make the most of – to store up within the treasure-house of the memory.

Seated upon the rank grass which carpeted the windswept summit of the narrow pinnacle, Alma was making Wentworth tell her the names of the sea of peaks, far and near, which lay around them. This he was well qualified to do, knowing them as he did by heart, and for nearly an hour the object lesson went on. Fordham lay on the grass, smoking a pipe, in an attitude of the most perfect repose, and the irrepressible Gedge was bearing his part in a bawled colloquy between himself and those they had left to await their return. Neither heard what the other said, but this was a secondary consideration. The great thing was to be saying something – anyhow as far as the volatile Gedge was concerned.

“It isn’t the snow mountains that are responsible for the greatest number of smashes,” said Wentworth, having pointed out two or three peaks which, like the one they were on, were responsible for having killed somebody. “The grass peaks like this are far the worst. It’s this way. A fellow makes up his mind to do a regular climb – say the Matterhorn or the Jungfrau. All right. He makes up his mind that he’s going to do a big thing, and from start to finish he’s keenly on the look out. Besides, he has guides, who won’t allow him to take any risk. Now, on a thing like this, that you can just hop up and down again between the two table d’hôtes, why he thinks he is going to do it on one leg, like friend Gedge there.”

“Well, but – Wentworth – you don’t call this a small thing?” struck in he named. “The confounded – what d’you call ’em? —arêtes require a pretty strong head.”

“Yes, that’s so. This is, perhaps, a little more difficult than some of the other climbs that break fellows’ necks. Take the old Jaman, for instance. You could almost ride a mule up and down it. Anyhow, the path, with ordinary care, is as safe as a church. But some day the know-everything Briton spots a rather fine gentian growing just off the path. Quite easy, of course. But he soon finds all the difference in the world between the path and the mountain-side. The grass is as slippery as ice, especially if it is a little wet. His feet slide from under him and away he goes. A toboggan’s nothing to it. He shoots down the grass slope like a streak of lightning, then over the inevitable cliff – and – a sack of bones is brought back to the hotel, and a paragraph goes the round of the English papers, headed ‘Another Alpine Accident.’ Thus a mountain gets the name of being a dangerous one, whereas really it is a mere idiot-trap, sensible people being perfectly safe on it – in ordinarily decent weather, that is.”