Rivers of Ice by Robert Michael Ballantyne (books to read to improve english TXT) 📖

hearts and strong hands. Everything that ingenuity could contrive was done to relieve the sufferer, and when at last, after weary hours, they reached the high-road of the valley, a carriage was found waiting. A messenger had been sent in advance to fetch it, and Mrs Stoutley was in it.

There was something quite touching in the quiet, firm air of self-restraint with which she met the procession, and afterwards tended her poor boy; it was so unlike her old character!

The sun was setting in a field of golden glory when they carried Lewis into the hotel at Chamouni, and laid him on his bed--a mere wreck of his former self.


CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.


DOWN IN THE MORAINE AT LAST.

As the reader may suppose, the terrible accident to Lewis Stoutley put an end to further merry-making among our friends at Chamouni. Mrs Stoutley would have left for England at once if that had been possible, but Lewis could not be moved for several weeks. At first indeed, fears were entertained for his life, but his constitution being good, and not having been damaged by dissipation, he rallied sooner than might have been expected, although it was evident from the beginning that complete restoration could not be looked for until many months, perhaps years, had passed away.

We need scarcely say, that the rapid improvement of his health was largely due to the tender watchful care of his mother.

Since visiting Switzerland, that excellent lady's spirit had undergone a considerable change. Without going minutely into particulars, we may say that the startling events which had occurred had been made the means of opening her spiritual eyes. It had occurred to her--she scarce knew how or why--that her Creator had a claim on her for more consideration than she had been in the habit, heretofore, of testifying by a few formalities on Sundays; that there must be some higher end and aim in life than the mere obtaining and maintaining of health, and the pursuit of pleasure; and that as there was a Saviour, whom she professed on Sundays to follow, there must be something real from which she had to be saved, as well as something real that had to be done. Sin, she knew, of course, was the evil from which everybody had to be saved; but, being a good-natured and easy-going woman, she really did not feel much troubled by sin. Little weaknesses she had, no doubt, but not half so many as other people she knew of. As to anything seriously worthy the name of sin, she did not believe she had any at all. It had never, until now, occurred to her that the treating of her best Friend, during a lifetime, with cool and systematic indifference, or with mere protestations, on Sundays, of adoration, was probably as great a sin as she could commit.

Her thoughts on these points she did not at first mention to any one, but she received great help and enlightenment, as well as comfort, from the quiet sensible talk of Dr Lawrence, as he sat day after day, and hour after hour, at the bedside of his friend, endeavouring to cheer his spirits as well as to relieve his physical pain--for Lawrence was well fitted to do both.

He was not by any means what is styled a sermoniser. He made no apparent effort to turn conversation into religious channels. Indeed we believe that when men talk with the unrestrained freedom of true friendship, conversation needs no directing. It will naturally flow along all channels, and into all the zigzags and crevices of human thought--religion included. Lewis was in great pain and serious danger. Lawrence was a man full of the Holy Spirit and love to Jesus. Out of the fullness of his heart his mouth spoke when his friend appeared to desire such converse; but he never bored him with _any_ subject--for it is possible to be a profane, as well as a religious, bore!

As soon as Lewis could turn his mind to anything, after his being brought back to the hotel, he asked earnestly after Nita Horetzki.

"She has left," said Mrs Stoutley.

"Left! D'you mean gone from Chamouni, mother?" exclaimed Lewis, with a start and a look of anxiety which he did not care to conceal.

"Yes, they went yesterday. Nita had recovered sufficiently to travel, and the medical man who has been attending her urged her removal without delay. She and her father seemed both very sorry to leave us, and left kind messages for you. The Count wanted much to see you, but we would not allow it."

"Kind messages for me," repeated Lewis, in a tone of bitterness, "what sort of messages?"

"Well, really, I cannot exactly remember," returned Mrs Stoutley, with a slight smile, "the kind of messages that amiable people might be expected to leave in the circumstances, you know--regret that they should have to leave us in such a sad condition, and sincere hope that you might soon recover, etcetera. Yes, by the way, Nita also, just at parting, expressed a hope--an earnest hope--that we might meet again. Poor dear thing, she is an extremely affectionate girl, and quite broke down when saying good-bye."

"D'you know where they have gone to, mother?"

"No. They mean to move about from place to place, I believe."

"Nita said nothing about writing to you, did she?"

"Did they leave any address--a _poste restante_--anywhere, or any clew whatever as to their whereabouts?"

"None whatever."

So then, during the weary days of suffering that he knew full well lay before him, poor Lewis had no consolatory thought in regard to Nita save in her expressed "earnest hope" that they might meet again. It was not much, but it was better than nothing. Being an ingenious as well as daring architect, Lewis built amazing structures on that slight foundation--structures which charmed his mental eyes to look upon, and which, we verily believe, tended to facilitate his recovery--so potent is the power of true love!

"Captain Wopper," said Mrs Stoutley one morning, towards the end of their stay in Switzerland, Lewis having been pronounced sufficiently restored to travel homeward by easy stages, "I have sent for you to ask you to do me a favour--to give me your advice--your--"

Here, to the Captain's amazement, not to say consternation, Mrs Stoutley's voice trembled, and she burst into tears. If she had suddenly caught him by the nose, pulled his rugged face down and kissed it, he could not have been more taken aback.

"My dear madam," he stammered, sitting down inadvertently on Mrs Stoutley's bonnet--for it was to the good lady's private dressing-room that he had been summoned by Gillie White--"hold on! don't now, please! What ever have I done to--"

"You've done nothing, my dear Captain," said Mrs Stoutley, endeavouring to check her tears. "There, I'm very foolish, but I can't help it. Indeed I can't."

In proof of the truth of this assertion she broke down again, and the Captain, moving uneasily on his chair, ground the bonnet almost to powder--it was a straw one.

"You have been a kind friend, Captain Wopper," said Mrs Stoutley, drying her eyes, "a very kind friend."

"I'm glad you think so, ma'am; I've meant to be--anyhow."

"You have, you have," cried Mrs Stoutley, earnestly, as she looked through her tears into the seaman's rugged countenance, "and that is my reason for venturing to ask you now to trouble yourself with--with--"

There was an alarming symptom here of a recurrence of "squally weather," which caused the Captain to give the bonnet an "extra turn," but she recovered herself and went on--

"With my affairs. I would not have thought of troubling you, but with poor Lewie so ill, and Dr Lawrence being so young, and probably inexperienced in the ways of life, and Emma so innocent and helpless, and--in short I'm--hee!--that is to say--ho dear! I _am_ so silly, but I can't--indeed I can't--hoo-o-o!"

It blew a regular gale now, and a very rain of straw _debris_ fell through the cane-bottomed chair on which the Captain sat, as he vainly essayed to sooth his friend by earnest, pathetic, and even tender adjurations to "clap a stopper upon that," to "hold hard," to "belay", to "shut down the dead-lights of her peepers," and such-like expressive phrases.

At length, amid many sobs, the poor lady revealed the overwhelming fact that she was a beggar; that she had actually come down to her last franc; that her man of business had flatly declined to advance her another sovereign, informing her that the Gorong mine had declared "no dividend;" that the wreck of her shattered fortune had been swallowed up by the expenses of their ill-advised trip to Switzerland, and that she had not even funds enough to pay their travelling expenses home; in short that she was a miserable boulder, at the lowest level of the terminal moraine!

To all this Captain Wopper listened in perfect silence, with a blank expression on his face that revealed nothing of the state of feeling within.

"Oh! Captain Wopper," exclaimed the poor lady anxiously, "surely-- surely _you_ won't forsake me! I know that I have no claim on you beyond friendship, but you have always given us to understand that you were well off, and I merely wish to _borrow_ a small sum. Just enough, and no more. Perhaps I may not be able to repay you just immediately, but I hope soon; and even if it came to the worst, there is the furniture in Euston Square, and the carriage and horses."

Poor Mrs Stoutley! She was not aware that her man of business had already had these resources appraised, and that they no more belonged to her at that moment than if they had been part of the personal estate of the celebrated man in the moon.

Still the Captain gazed at her in stolid silence.

"Even my personal wardrobe," proceeded Mrs Stoutley, beginning again to weep, "I will gladly dis--"

"Avast! Madam," cried the Captain, suddenly, thrusting his right hand into his breeches-pocket, and endeavouring to drag something therefrom with a series of wrenches that would have been terribly trying to the bonnet, had its ruin not been already complete, "don't talk to me of repayment. Ain't I your--your--husband's brother's buzzum friend-- Willum's old chum an' messmate? See here."

He jerked the chair (without rising) close to a table which stood at his elbow, and placed thereon a large canvas bag, much soiled, and tied round the neck with a piece of rope-yarn, which smelt of tar even at a distance. This was the Captain's purse. He carried it always in his right trouser-pocket, and it contained his gold. As for such trifling metal as silver, he carried that loose, mixed with coppers, bits of tobacco, broken pipes, and a clasp-knife, in the other pocket. He was very fond of his purse. In California he had been wont to carry nuggets in it, that simple species of exchange being the chief currency of the country at the time he was there. Some of the Californian _debris_ had stuck to it when he had filled it, at a place of exchange in London, with Napoleons. Emptying its glittering contents upon the table, he spread it out.

"There, madam," he said, with a hearty smile, "you're welcome to all I've got about me just at this moment, and