“Well, you can put it off then, for I’ve just been scheming out a promising climb. Got two first-rate Zermatt guides, who turned up last night and want to go back there. Everything is ready. What do you say to doing the Rothhorn? We can start for the Mountet cabin soon after lunch; sleep there, get to the top any time by midday, and go down the other side to Zermatt. What do you say?”
“I’m your man, Fordham. Just the very thing I should like. And, I say—while we are about it—we might stay at Zermatt a few days and do the Matterhorn and two or three others, eh?”
Fordham looked at him curiously.
“Just the very thing I was going to suggest,” he said, “only I doubted whether you’d cotton. A smart shaking up and a change will do you all the good in the world, just now, Phil. We’ll start half an hour after lunch—there goes the second bell!—and go up to the hut quietly.”
This they had done, and now after an excruciatingly early start from that convenient tarrying-place, and about six hours of really difficult climbing, of scrambling from rock to rock, worming round “corners” overhanging dizzy heights—work that called into full play every muscle and braced every nerve—here they were on the summit with the world at their feet.
During the actual process of ascent Philip’s spirits seemed to return. The hard, and, in places, really hazardous, nature of the undertaking demanded all his attention, and whether clinging spreadeagled against the face of the cliff with no real hold to speak of, or balancing with one foot upon a rock projection about the size of a walnut, the other dangling over nothing, what time the next man above should secure a footing, or skirting gingerly the treacherous line of a curling snow cornice, where the thrust of the handle of an ice-axe left a hole through which lay viewed the awful depth of space which it overhung—all this constituted such a strain upon his faculties as to leave room for no other thought. Though strong and active, and in good training all round, Philip, be it remembered, was a novice at this sort of thing, consequently he found enough to do in ensuring his own safety, and, relatively, that of his companions. At one point of their progress a cloud had come over the mountain, rendering the rocks rimy and slippery, throwing out the ridge of ice crowning a sharp arête spectral and drear against the misty murk, magnifying the cliffs to gigantic proportions in their uncertain and ill-defined outlines. Gazing down upon the snow-flecked rocks far, far beneath, losing themselves in the swirling vortex of vapour, Philip felt rather small as he remembered his reckless intentions of the day before. Life, strange to say, seemed still worth having; at any rate such a way of ending it as a sudden dash through space on to those hideous black and white rocks struck him as grim and horrible in the extreme.
But the excitement and physical exertion over, and the summit attained, his depression returned. More over he was tired, for he had hardly slept the night before, was, in fact, just dropping off, when roused by his indefatigable friend at 2 a.m. to make a pretence at devouring the breakfast which the guides were preparing over the weather-beaten stove. Now the magnificence and extent of the view was nothing to him. It seemed to lie outside his gaze. In spirit he was back again at the hotel at Zinal. Was Alma beginning to miss him—to think more kindly of him, now that they would not see each other for some days? Would those execrable Glovers have left by the time he returned? And would all come right again? If only it might!
But if his younger friend’s thoughts were far-away down in the valley they had come up out of, Fordham’s were not. That saturnine individual was, for him, in high spirits. He had got out an excellent map—in the production of such Switzerland stands in the foremost place—and with the guides was busy verifying the topographical details of the stupendous panorama lying beneath and around. The cloud which had overshadowed them during their ascent had long since vanished, and now the sky was blue and clear, and the air like an elixir of life. The only clouds were those from three pipes, for the two guides and Fordham were smoking like chimneys.
But they had been an hour on the summit, and the air, though exhilarating, was uncommonly chill. It became time to start downwards. The guides were beginning to repack the haversacks.
“Have a pull at this, Phil,” said Fordham, handing him a flask. “And—I tell you what it is, man. You don’t know when you’re well off.”