“Ha! ha! ha! Can you? Only try it. I see I was giving you undue credit just now when I defined you as a woman of the world. Those who talk airily of poverty are always the ones who have spent life in luxury. Think of it in all its aspects—of being on the very verge of starvation, of the fireless grate, and weeks of north-east wind and snowstorm, of the foul, insanitary den—kennel rather—covered by the same roof as that which shelters the most debased two-legged animals which ever bore semblance to the stamp of humanity. Think of the sights and sounds, the mad-drunk ruffians, and the fighting, clawing, screaming, harpies; the ‘language of the people,’ and nights made hideous with the yells of some one being murdered. This is what poverty is going to mean in your case. This is what you and your—child will come to. Stay a moment. You think I am exaggerating? You think, no doubt, you have friends who will help you—who will never see you come to this? But don’t flatter yourself. I will prevent them from helping you. I will cause them to spurn you from their doors—both of you. In fact, I will hunt you down into utter and complete ruin—both of you. Both of you—mark it well! Why do I not do so in any case? I don’t know. But oppose me in the slightest particular—neglect in the minutest detail the scheme I am going to set you to carry out—and this—and more than all this shall come upon you—shall come upon you both—as sure as I am a living man.”
Her face was as white as a sheet, and in her flashing eyes there was the look of a tigress whose whelps are menaced, as she advanced a step nearer to him, her breast heaving violently.
“Dare you boast that you are a living man?” she panted, clenching and unclenching her hands. “Are you not afraid I shall kill you where you stand? I shall some day—I know it!”
“Do—if you can. And, by the way, this would have been an excellent opportunity. In the first place, you would be entirely free from interruption, for I have already scouted the whole of this covert to ensure the absence of the regulation dauber intent on evolving the pictorial presentment of a dissipated-looking sugar-loaf, under the impression that he or she is sketching the Matterhorn. In the next, this country has practically abolished the death penalty, so that you would get a dozen years at most, and your child would have the honour of being the daughter of a convict as well as—But drop these melodramatics, and return to sound sense. Heavens, woman! I wonder you dare talk to me like this.” And as his memory leaped back his deep voice took the snarling rumble of an enraged wild beast.
Man and Nature are ever offering the most vivid and jarring contrasts. The brown roofs of the village, dominated by the white cubes of the great hotels, lay nestling amid the green meadows, against a background of stately mountains. The hoarse rush of the torrent, pent up in the narrow fissure at their feet, joined with the deeper roar of the churning Visp, gathering hourly in volume as the midday sun told in power upon its feeder, the great Gorner glacier, whose sheeny séracs reared their dazzling battlements in a blue and white line above the vernal pastures at the head of the valley, while the stately monolith of the giant Matterhorn towered aloft into the vivid blue of the cloudless heavens. Yet there, amid the sequestered solitude of the jagged pines, stood these two, confronting each other with deadly rage in their hearts, with bitterest hate and defiance flashing from their set faces and burning eyes—a very hell of evil passions surging alike in both.
“Now take your choice,” he went on. “Carry out my plan as I am about to lay it before you, and you will benefit yourself in doing so. Refuse, or mar it in the slightest detail, either by bungling or of set design, and I will utterly crush you both, beginning from this day. You know me.”
She made no answer. She never removed her eyes from his, and her breath came in quick, hard gasps. Her aspect was that of some dangerous animal cornered, driven to bay. Barely a couple of yards behind him was the brink of the narrow fissure by which the churning torrent cleft its way through the heart of the rocks. The sneering, mocking smile which came into his face as he read her thoughts was devilish in its maddening provocation.
“No go,” he said. “You couldn’t do it. I am much too firm on my pins. You would be extremely likely to go over yourself, and then what would become of Laura, left to my tender mercies?”
“You fiend! I think Satan himself must be a god compared with you.”
“Am I to take that as a compliment? Well, now to business. Sit down.”