It was a mellow September noon. The three sat under the front of the grim old Château in the quiet sunlight. Far off across the valley, on a level with their eyes, great flakes of silver-white, spangling a golden haze, were the huddled masses of the Alps, no less. Soft and unsubstantial in appearance as the floating iridescences one sees in water, they were still the native home and most austere dominion of primordial rock and ice. It seemed impossible to realise it. The very shadows on their slopes were traced so soft, they were no more shadows than the blue veins in marble, than the blue inter-webbings of running surf. Surely that mist of peaks must be descended cloud, and the changing colours of it the bloom of angelic wings beating within!
Below the sitters’ feet terrace declined upon terrace, until, halted against a buttress wall, the cultivated land gave place beyond to stony pastures, which descended to the lower verge of the estate and the great wrought-iron gates of the entrance.
And between, poised high in the mid-ether of the valley, a watching kestrel floated like a leaf.
Madame Saint-Péray, looking up, answered for her husband. Her recognition that neither high achievement nor great failure was ever for this dear weanling of her passion was not to find her loyalty to him at fault—rather to confirm her jealousy for his reputation.
“That is a very right sentiment for a guide, M. Jacques,” she said; “but there may be nobler conquests for duty even than those of mountains. Monsieur owed his life to me; and he sacrificed his ambitions to that debt.”
That was the thorn. Then she offered the rose.
“For you, you owed that conquest to your love; and bravely you strove and gained. I hope the dear father recovers himself of your naughtiness?”
Jacques laughed; then essayed his little gallantry. No Frenchman, however primitive, lacks that essential grace,—
“I said, Monsieur should not have lost his heart for the enterprise. I was a dog, an imbecile. What summit could equal that to which his heart attained! I thought myself near heaven as I stood up there alone—the first to get so near. Alas, Madame! Monsieur staying on the ground had already gained it.”
Monsieur, lying comfortably back in his chair, smiled kindly.