Windyridge Part 23

But my chief enjoyment was one which could be shared by any who had eyes to see, though they were sitting upright on the bare and narrow boards of the miserable third-cla.s.s compartments which I caught sight of occasionally in the stations when morning came.

The glory of the dawn! of the sun rising behind the mountains, when a pink flush spread over the sky, dissolving quickly into rose and amber and azure, delicately pencilled in diverging rays which spread like a great fan to the zenith! The crags of a great hill caught the glow, and the mountain burned with fire. Below, the gra.s.s was gold and emerald; there were fruit-laden trees in the foreground, and in the distance, away beyond the belt of low-lying mist and the vague neutral tints which concealed their bases, were the snow mountains! I pushed down the window and gorged myself with the heavenly vision.

There was no time to see Geneva, but the ride along the banks of the lake and through the fertile Rhone valley was one long, delightful dream. Luncheon was provided at Visp, and then began the journey on the mountain railway which I can never forget.

As the train snorted and grunted up the steep incline I rejoiced to realise that it could not travel more quickly. Stream, mountain and forest; fertile valley, rus.h.i.+ng waterfall and lofty precipice--all contributed to the charm of the experience. But the rush of the Visp, as it poured down the narrow gorge, and boiled and fretted in turbulent cascades which hurled their spray through the windows of the pa.s.sing train is the one outstanding remembrance. It was glorious! Then the Matterhorn came in sight for a moment, and just afterwards the toy train drew up at the toy platform in Zermatt.

The concierge of the Hotel Victoria took my bag and pointed me out to a diminutive young lady who was standing near. She at once came forward and held out her hand, whilst a winning smile spread over her pleasant face.

"You are Miss Holden, are you not? I have stepped across to meet you, so that you might not feel so strange on your arrival. My husband is a doctor--Dr. Grey--and he has taken an interest in Mr. Evans, and continues to do so even though I have fallen in love with the old gentleman."

I liked the girl straight away. She is quite young--only just twenty-three, as she told me frankly, and ever such a little creature, though she carries herself with the dignity of a d.u.c.h.ess--in fact, with much more dignity than some d.u.c.h.esses I have seen.

"Now that is 'real good' of you, as the Americans whose company I have just left would say," I replied; "and I think it was very nice of you to think of it. Tell me first, please, if Mr. Evans is worse."

"I really cannot say with certainty," she replied; "the Zermatt doctor thinks he is not going to recover, and my husband says that he will live for months. Now my husband, dear, is a _very clever man indeed_, though he is only young; and although the other man looks very formidable and wears spectacles I don't believe he is as clever as Ralph."

I smiled. "You have known the one doctor longer than the other," I said.

"Not much, as a doctor," she confided. "To let you into a secret which n.o.body here has discovered, Ralph and I are on our honeymoon, so that my experience of his medical abilities is limited, but I am sure he is very clever. But come! the hotel is only just across the way."

She accompanied me to my room and chatted incessantly whilst I was endeavouring to remove the grime and grit which the continental engines deposit so generously upon the traveller behind them.

"There!" she said, as I emptied the water for the third time, and sponged my face and neck preparatory to a brisk towelling; "you have emerged at last. But you will never be quite yourself until you have washed your hair. Do it to-night, dear. I know a splendid way of tying your head up in a towel so that you can sleep quite comfy."

The squire's face brightened when he saw me. He was sitting near the window in a great easy-chair which was almost a couch, and his hair was whiter than when he left England, and his face was--oh! so thin and grey; but what a gentleman he looked! He held out both hands, but I bent over and kissed him. If it was a bold thing to do I don't mind.

My Inner Self bade me do it and I obeyed.

He held my face against his for a moment, and neither of us spoke.

Then he said:

"Look at my view, Grace, and tell me if you like it."

I sat on the arm of his chair and looked through the open window. I saw before me a scene of peaceful loveliness--a valley, richly green, with here and there oblong patches of yellow framed in olive hedges: a narrow valley, girded with mountains whose sides rise steeply to tremendous heights, jagged, scarped, and streaked with snow: a wooded valley, too, where sombre trees of fir and pine climb the heights and spread out into thickets which end only with the rock. Quaint, brown-timbered structures, built on piles and with overhanging roofs, sometimes isolated, sometimes in little groups, were dotted about the landscape. A white road wound down the valley, and the yellow waters of the Visp rushed, torrent-like, along the bottom, to be lost to view where the land dipped abruptly to the left.

In the far distance mountains of snow lifted up their h.o.a.ry heads into the luminous haze; and light clouds, rivalling their whiteness, gave the illusion of loftier heights still, and led the eye to the brilliant blue of high heaven.

The sun was behind us, and banks of clouds must have intercepted his rays from time to time, for the play of light and shade varied like a kaleidoscope, and the bare, stony flanks of the mountains in the middle distance shone green or grey or red as the sun caught them. A rude bridge crossed the stream away below, and I could just make out some tourists in Tyrolese caps and with knapsacks on their backs, leaning over the white rails.

The squire put his arm on mine. "I will tell you the names of these giants later. Meanwhile, tell me, have I chosen well?"

"It is heavenly," I replied. "I should be content to sit here for days."

"I am content," he said; "there is grander scenery than this around Zermatt--grander by far. At the other end of the valley you will see and you will glory in the towering ma.s.ses of crag and snow which the Matterhorn and Breithorn present. You will see miles of glaciers and sparkling waterfalls and a thousand wonders of G.o.d's providing; but it was too cold and ma.s.sive and hard to suit the mood of a dying man. I wanted Nature in a kindlier temper, so I sit by the window and commune with her, and she is always friendly."

There was a stool in the room, and I drew it up and sat at his feet with one arm upon his knee, as I used to sit for hours in the days of old, before my father's death left me solitary; and when the squire placed a caressing hand upon my shoulder I could have thought that, a chapter had been re-opened in the sealed pages of my life.

"Who is this Dr. Grey," I inquired, "whose charming little wife met me at the station, and told me you are not going to die for a long time?--for which I love her."

He smiled. "Grey is an optimist, my dear, and a downright good fellow, and he has picked up a prize in his wife. They are on their wedding-tour, as anyone quite unversed in that lore can see at a glance; and they ought to have left Zermatt a week ago or more but they have cheerfully stayed on to minister to the physical and mental necessities of an old man and a stranger. Not many would have done it, for they are sacrificing one of the most attractive programmes that Switzerland offers, for my sake."

"What a lot of good people there are in the world," I said. "I am going to like Dr. Grey as much as I like his wife. He is a big, strong, well-developed man, of course?"

"Why 'of course?'?" he asked.

"Husbands of tiny wives invariably are; the infinitely small seems to have a remarkable affinity for the infinitely great."

"Well, he is certainly a strapping fellow, and he is devoted to the wee woman he has made his wife. I believe, too, he will get on in his profession."

"His wife says he is a very clever man indeed," I remarked.

"Does she? An unbia.s.sed opinion of that kind is valuable. All the same, he has done me good, not so much with physic--for I take the Zermatt man's concoctions--as with his cheery outlook. I believe he thinks I am a trickster."

"Do you know what I believe, sir?" I asked.

"No; tell me," he said.

"I believe you are going to get better, and I shall take you back to Windyridge and the moors."

He sighed then, and laid a hand fondly upon mine. "Grace, my child, I will say now what it may be more difficult to say later. You have caught me in a good hour, and my weary spirits have been refreshed by the sight of your face and the sound of your voice; but you must be prepared for darker experiences. Sometimes I suffer; often I am terribly weak and depressed. Gottlieb, I know, does not expect me to recover, and my Inner Self (that is your expression, child, and I often think of it) tells me he is right. You are too sensible to be unduly distressed before the time comes, and I want to tell you what I have planned, and to tell you quite calmly and without emotion. Death to me is only a curtain between one room and the next, so that it does not disturb me to explain to you what I wish to be done when it is raised for me to pa.s.s through.

"Midway in the village you will find some gardens opposite the Mont Cervin Hotel. Pa.s.s through them and you will reach a little English church, surrounded by a tiny graveyard. There lie the bones of men who have been killed on the mountains, and of others who have found death instead of life in these health-giving heights. There is one sunny spot where I want my body to rest, and the chaplain knows it. You can bear to hear me speak of these things, can you?"

Yes, I could bear it. He spoke so naturally and with such ease that I hardly realised what it meant: it was unreal, far-off, fallacious.

"At first," he continued, "the idea was repugnant. I longed to be laid side by side with my wife in the homeland, but that feeling pa.s.sed. It was nothing more than sentiment, though it was a sentiment that nearly took me home, in spite of the doctors. But the more I have thought of it the more childish it has seemed. I am conscious of her presence here, always. Metaphysicians would explain that easily enough, no doubt, but to me it is an experience, and what can one want more? Why, then, should I run away to Windyridge and Fawks.h.i.+ll in order to find her, or be carried there for that purpose after death? No, no. Heaven is about me here, and our spirits will meet at once when the silver thread is loosed which binds me to earth. Am I right, Grace?"

I was crying a little now, but I could not contradict him.

"Gottlieb shakes his head, but Grey says I may last for months.

Perhaps he is right, but I have no desire to live. Why should I? And where could I end my days more pleasantly than amidst these masterpieces of the great Architect?"

Mrs. Grey came for me when the dinner bell sounded, and we went down together. It has been arranged that I am to lunch with the squire in his own room, but to have dinner with the rest at a little table which I share with the Greys.

The doctor is just a great bouncing boy, with merry eyes and thick brown hair. He is on good terms with everybody--guests of high degree and low, waiters, porters, chambermaids--all the cosmopolitan crowd.

He adores his little wife, and it is funny to see so big a man wors.h.i.+pping at so small a shrine.

I expressed my grat.i.tude to them both as we sat at dinner, and he laughed--such a hearty, boisterous laugh.

"It's my wife. Dot wouldn't hear of leaving, and you cannot get a separation order in these wilds. She has spent so much time with the old gentleman that I have been madly jealous for hours at a stretch."

"Don't be untruthful, Ralph," said Mrs. Grey. "You know perfectly well that you have spoiled our honeymoon with the simple and sordid motive of gaining professional experience. Besides, you are nicest when you are jealous."

"Am I, by Jove!" he laughed. "Then 'niceness' will become habitual with me, for the way all the men look at you fans the flame of my jealousy. But this is poor stuff for Miss Holden, and I want to talk seriously to her."

"What is your candid opinion of Mr. Evans?" I asked.

"He is marked to fall, Miss Holden, but if he can be persuaded to make the effort to live he need not fall for months, perhaps even for years.