Their route was very lonely. It would have shocked an American traveller, who does not care to pass over any but well-frequented roads, where pedestrians, chaises-à-porteur and heavily-laden mules are to be met with in numbers. But with the early break-up of the season these things had gone. Even the small sheds where light refreshments are temptingly displayed in the summer months were empty and deserted; the places of the men who for the small sum of fifty centimes had been wont to awaken the echoes of the everlasting hills, "knew them no more." Maurice and Arthur had the mountains to themselves. They reached about midday the point of which Maurice had spoken. He had not overpraised it. After a last little bit of climbing, so steep that it had taken all their attention to keep a footing on the slippery rock, they reached a kind of rocky plateau partly covered with snow, partly patched with the emerald green which belongs peculiarly to the Alps. Standing near a ragged pine tree, they looked up. The sky was of a deep unruffled blue, and against it, clear as crystal, shone out the dazzle of the snow-peaks; lower down, a glacier, rendered pure by the late snow-falls, swept a radiant ice-river between gray, cloud-like rocks, in whose crevices the rich soft moss had made a home; lower still, tier above tier, rose the straight stems and green crowns of the hardy pine; while far below, at an almost inconceivable depth, that which could not be seen made itself felt—a torrent had been making for its waters a way throughout the ages, and its roar and hiss rose evermore into the daylight.
Arthur gazed silently for a few minutes, then turned to his friend a pale and earnest face. "Beautiful!" he said in a low, impassioned voice. He bent his young head. "It make me think of her."
Maurice smiled. He was pleased with the frank expression of enjoyment, and in his answer there was an elder man's indulgence to the amiable weakness of a younger: "Come! here's a forsaken shed looks as if it had been left on purpose—faces the sunshine and sheltered from the wind. We can sit down and rest if you like, take our brandy and water, and eat the crusts we were provident enough to bring, for, by Jove! in these regions, at least, a man can't live on air; then you must tell me about this mysterious 'her,' in whom I really begin to take an alarming interest. Why, old fellow, what's come over you? Here, take some brandy. You've been doing too much. One oughtn't to overdo this kind of thing at first."
But Arthur put away the brandy-flask with an attempt at a smile. Not fatigue, but a sudden emotion had overcome him. Margaret's fate seemed in his hands. It was trembling in the balance, and he felt, for the moment, powerless by excess of feeling.
"I will drink nothing, thank you," he said; and he sat down on a stone bench in full view of the radiant snow-peaks. They were sheltered from the bleak wind by one of the walls; the opening of the shed let in a flood of sunlight. It might have been a summer's day.
Maurice spread his overcoat on the ground and stretched himself out luxuriously, with his face toward Arthur. "After labor, rest," he said lightly; "but come, I am impatient; let the mystic lady appear."
He laughed as he spoke, but there was no answering merriment in Arthur's face. He looked away from Maurice toward the mountains. "I wish to God she might!" he said earnestly. "If her sweet face were here my poor words would be useless. It would tell its own tale of long-suffering, of angelic patience, of truth, of purity. But—" he felt, though he did not dare to look round, that the face of his companion expressed calm philosophic wonder, that his lips were curled into the faintest possible sneer—"I did not intend to rhapsodize. My tale should speak for itself plain, unvarnished facts, which I defy the falsest being that ever lived to gainsay."
He paused, and Maurice sighed. "The young man is evidently cracked on this point," was the burden of his thought. "I am in for a good half hour of ecstasies. Well, I brought it on myself. Patience is the only remedy.—Permit me," he said aloud; "this promises to be rather exciting—I must hear it through the medium of my usual sedative." He lit a cigar, and the blue wreaths of smoke curled up into the sunshine, while Arthur, his task rendered all the more difficult by his companion's nonchalance, struggled to find the truant words in which he had thought to clothe his subject. "It is not very long since I first met her," he said quietly, "but it seems a lifetime, for the meeting changed me. In the light of her history I read that life has a certain reality; in the depths of her sad eyes I saw that endurance and self-denial are beautiful and good. It must have been early in the month of May—yes, I remember, the Exhibition of the Royal Academy had not long been open—I strolled in one day to amuse myself and pass an hour or two of the afternoon. My cousin and fiancée was to have met me there. She did not appear, and I was considerably indignant, for at that time I believed that all womankind owed me a debt of gratitude, simply for being and giving them the light of my countenance. You see, women had spoiled me from my babyhood upward. But enough about myself.
"As I was wandering about, discontented and cross, a picture took my fancy. I sat down on the seat that faced it to examine it in detail. There was only one other on the same bench (for it was tolerably late and the rooms were thinning), a lady, but I paid little attention to her, as her dress was shabby and she wore a close bonnet and thick crape veil. It had been my habit to ogle only the well-dressed ladies—others offended my fastidious taste; but when this stranger fell back suddenly in a deep faint I did my duty as a gentleman (there was no one else in the room at the moment)—I rose hastily to offer her assistance.
"Then for the first time I saw her face, as the bonnet and veil had fallen back. Such a face! I wish I could describe it—-its purity of outline, its exquisite marble-like coloring, its deep sadness. She had a quantity of golden hair: as I tried to raise her it fell down in a perfect shower over my arm. I was paralyzed—a sudden fever possessed me. I could have carried off the mysterious lady there and then, and hidden her away from every eye. But do what I would I could not restore her to consciousness, and I began to tremble. I had a kind of objection to calling in the assistance of any passing stranger. At the critical moment, however, like the good genius in a fairy-tale, my kind little cousin appeared, and in a very few moments took the matter out of my hands altogether. She was as enthusiastic as I had been, and far more successful. In a few moments we had the pleasure of seeing our fair lady restored, and of taking her back to her home, which turned out to be only a miserable lodging in the gloomiest part of London.