Rivers of Ice by R. M. Ballantyne (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

Croix happily leaves no family. He was an unmarried man. I must not tell you, just yet, mother. Trust me, it shall be well bestowed; besides, I ask it as a loan. It shall be refunded.”

“Don’t talk of refunding money to your mother, foolish boy. Go; you may have it.”

Lewis kissed his mother’s cheek and thanked her. He quickly found the Count, but experienced considerable difficulty in persuading him to accept the money. However, by delicacy of management and by assuming, as a matter of course, that it was a loan, to be repaid when convenient, he prevailed. The Count made an entry of the loan in his notebook, with Lewis’s London address, and they parted with a kindly shake of the hand, little imagining that they had seen each other on earth for the last time.

On the Monday following, a superb day opened on the vale of Chamouni, such a day as, through the medium of sight and scent, is calculated to gladden the heart of man and beast. That the beasts enjoyed it was manifest from the pleasant sounds that they sent, gushing, like a hymn of thanksgiving—and who shall say it was not!—into the bright blue sky.

Birds carolled on the shrubs and in the air; cats ventured abroad with hair erect and backs curved, to exchange greetings with each other in wary defiance of dogs; kittens sprawled in the sunshine, and made frantic efforts to achieve the impossible feat of catching their own shadows, varying the pastime with more successful, though arduous, attempts at their own tails; dogs bounded and danced, chiefly on their hind legs, round their loved companion man (including woman); juvenile dogs chased, tumbled over, barked at, and gnawed each other with amiable fury, wagging their various tails with a vigour that suggested a desire to shake them off; tourist men and boys moved about with a decision that indicated the having of particular business on hand; tourist women and girls were busily engaged with baskets and botanical boxes, or flitted hither and thither in climbing costume with obtrusive alpenstocks, as though a general attack on Mont Blanc and all his satellite aiguilles were meditated.

Among these were our friends the Professor, Captain Wopper, Emma Gray, Slingsby, Lewis, and Lawrence, under the guidance of Antoine Grennon.

Strange to say they were all a little dull, notwithstanding the beauty of the weather, and the pleasant anticipation of a day on the hills—not a hard, toilsome day, with some awful Alpine summit as its aim, but what Lewis termed a jolly day, a picnicky day, to be extended into night, and to include any place, or to be cut short or extended according to whim.

The Professor was dull, because, having to leave, this was to be his last excursion; Captain Wopper was dull, because his cherished matrimonial hopes were being gradually dissipated. He could not perceive that Lawrence was falling in love with Emma, or Emma with Lawrence. The utmost exertion of sly diplomacy of which he was capable, short of straightforward advice, had failed to accomplish anything towards the desirable end. Emma was dull, because her friend Nita, although recovering, was still far from well. Slingsby was dull for the same reason, and also because he felt his passion to be hopeless. Lewis was dull because he knew Nita’s circumstances to be so very sad; and Lawrence was dull because—well, we are not quite sure why he was dull. He was rather a self-contained fellow, and couldn’t be easily understood. Of the whole party, Antoine alone was not dull. Nothing could put him in that condition, but, seeing that the others were so, he was grave, quiet attentive.

Some of the excursionists had left at a much earlier hour. Four strapping youths, with guides, had set out for the summit of Mont Blanc; a mingled party of ladies, gentlemen, guides, and mules, were on the point of starting to visit the Mer de Glace; a delicate student, unable for long excursions, was preparing to visit with his sister, the Glacier des Bossons. Others were going, or had gone, to the source of the Arveiron, and to the Brévent, while the British peer, having previously been conducted by a new and needlessly difficult path to the top of Monte Rosa, was led off by his persecutor to attempt, by an impossible route, to scale the Matterhorn—to reach the main-truck, as Captain Wopper put it, by going down the stern-post along the keel, over the bobstay, up the flyin’ jib, across the foretopmast-stay, and up the maintop-gallant halyards. This at least was Lewis Stoutley’s report of the Captain’s remark. We cannot answer for its correctness.

But nothing can withstand the sweet influences of fresh mountain-air and sunshine. In a short time “dull care” was put to flight and when our party—Emma being on a mule—reached the neighbouring heights, past and future were largely forgotten in the enjoyment of the present.

Besides being sunny and bright, the day was rather cool, so that, after dismissing the mule, and taking to the glaciers and ice-slope, the air was found to be eminently suitable for walking.

“It’s a bad look-out,” murmured Captain Wopper, when he observed that Dr Lawrence turned deliberately to converse with the Professor, leaving Lewis to assist Emma to alight, even although he, the Captain, had, by means of laboured contrivance and vast sagacity, brought the Doctor and the mule into close juxtaposition at the right time. However, the Captain’s temperament was sanguine. He soon forgot his troubles in observing the curious position assumed by Slingsby on the first steep slope of rocky ground they had to descend, for descents as well as ascents were frequent at first.

The artist walked on all-fours, but with his back to the hill instead of his face, his feet thus being in advance.

“What sort of an outside-in fashion is that, Slingsby?” asked the Captain, when they had reached the bottom.

“It’s a way I have of relieving my knees,” said Slingsby; “try it.”

“Thank ’ee; no,” returned the Captain. “It don’t suit my pecooliar build; it would throw too much of my weight amidships.”

“You’ve no idea,” said Slingsby, “what a comfort it is to a man whose knees suffer in descending. I’d rather go up twenty mountains than descend one. This plan answers only on steep places, and is but a temporary relief. Still that is something at the end of a long day.”

The artist exemplified his plan at the next slope. The Captain tried it, but, as he expressed it, broke in two at the waist and rolled down the slope, to the unspeakable delight of his friends.

“I fear you will find this rather severe?” said the Professor to Emma, during a pause in a steep ascent.

“Oh no; I am remarkably strong,” replied Emma, smiling. “I was in Switzerland two years ago, and am quite accustomed to mountaineering.”

“Yes,” remarked Lawrence, “and Miss Gray on that occasion, I am told, ascended to the top of the Dent du Midi, which you know is between ten and eleven thousand feet high; and she also, during the same season, walked from Champéry to Sixt which is a good day’s journey, so we need have no anxiety on her account.”

Although the Doctor smiled as he spoke, he also glanced at Emma with a look of admiration. Captain Wopper noted the glance and was comforted. At luncheon, however, the Doctor seated himself so that the Professor’s bulky person came between him and Emma. The Captain noted that also, and was depressed. What between elation and depression, mingled with fatigue and victuals, the Captain ultimately became recklessly jovial.

“What are yonder curious things?” asked Emma, pointing to so me gigantic objects which looked at a distance like rude pillars carved by man.

“These,” said the Professor, “are Nature’s handiwork. You will observe that on each pillar rests a rugged capital. The capital is the cause of the pillar. It is a hard rock which originally rested on a softer bed of friable stone. The weather has worn away the soft bed, except where it has been protected by the hard stone, and thus a natural pillar has arisen—just like the ice-pillars, which are protected from the sun in the same way; only the latter are more evanescent.”

Further on, the Professor drew the attention of his friends to the beautiful blue colour of the holes which their alpenstocks made in the snow. “Once,” said he, “while walking on the heights of Monte Rosa, I observed this effect with great interest, and, while engaged in the investigation of the cause, got a surprise which was not altogether agreeable. Some of the paths there are on very narrow ridges, and the snow on these ridges often overhangs them. I chanced to be walking in advance of my guide at the time to which I refer, and amused myself as I went along by driving my alpenstock deep into the snow, when suddenly, to my amazement I sent the end of the staff right through the snow, and, on withdrawing it, looked down into space! I had actually walked over the ridge altogether, and was standing above an abyss some thousands of feet deep!”

“Horrible!” exclaimed Emma. “You jumped off pretty quickly, I dare say.”

“Nay, I walked off with extreme caution; but I confess to having felt a sort of cold shudder with which my frame had not been acquainted previously.”

While they were thus conversing, a cloud passed overhead and sent down a slight shower of snow. To most of the party this was a matter of indifference, but the man of science soon changed their feelings by drawing attention to the form of the flakes. He carried a magnifying glass with him, which enabled him to show their wonders more distinctly. It was like a shower of frozen flowers of the most delicate and exquisite kind. Each flake was a flower with six leaves. Some of the leaves threw out lateral spines or points, like ferns, some were rounded, others arrowy, reticulated, and serrated; but, although varied in many respects, there was no variation in the number of leaves.

“What amazin’ beauty in a snowflake,” exclaimed the Captain, “many a one I’ve seen without knowin’ how splendid it was.”

“The works of God are indeed wonderful,” said the Professor, “but they must be ‘sought out’—examined with care—to be fully understood and appreciated.”

“Yet there are certain philosophers,” observed Lewis, “who hold that the evidence of design here and elsewhere does not at all prove the existence of God. They say that the crystals of these snow-flakes are drawn together and arrange themselves by means of natural forces.”

“They say truly,” replied the Professor, “but they seem to me to stop short in their reasoning. They appear to ignore the fact that this elemental original force of which they speak must have had a Creator. However far they may go back into mysterious and incomprehensible elements, which they choose to call ‘blind forces,’ they do not escape the fact that matter cannot have created itself; that behind their utmost conceptions there must still be One non-created, eternal, living Being who created all, who upholds all, and whom we call God.”

Descending again from the heights in order to cross a valley and gain the opposite mountain, our ramblers quitted the glacier, and, about noon, found themselves close to a lovely pine-clad knoll, the shaded slopes of which commanded an unusually fine view of rocky cliff and fringing wood, with a background of glacier and snow-flecked pinnacles.

Halting, accidentally in a row, before this spot they looked at it with interest. Suddenly the Professor stepped in front of the others, and, pointing to the knoll, said, with twinkling eyes—

“What does it suggest? Come, dux (to Slingsby, who happened to stand at the head of the line), tell me, sir, what does it suggest?”

“I know, sir!” exclaimed the Captain, who stood at the dunce’s extremity of the line, holding out his fist with true schoolboy eagerness.

“It suggests,” said the artist, rolling his eyes, “‘a thing of beauty;’ and—”

“Next!” interrupted