The Marriage of William Ashe

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

This bad moment, however, proved to be the last and worst, and when they emerged upon the high valley in which stands the village of Simplon, the rain was already lessening and the clouds rolling up the great sides and peaks of the Fletschhorn. Ashe promised himself a comparatively fine evening and a rapid run down to Brieg.

Outside the old Simplon posting-house, however, they presently came upon a crowd of vehicles of every description, of which the drivers were standing in groups with dripping rugs across their shoulders—shouting and gesticulating.

And as they drove up the news was thundered at them in every possible tongue. Between the hospice and Bérizal two hundred metres of road had been completely washed away. The afternoon diligence had just got through by a miracle an hour before the accident occurred; before anything else could pass it would take at least ten or twelve hours' hard work, through the night, before the laborers now being requisitioned by the commune could possibly provide even a temporary passage.

Ashe in despair went into the inn to speak with the landlord, and found that unless he was prepared to abandon books and papers, and make a push for it over mountain paths covered deep in fresh snow, there was no possible escape from the dilemma. He must stay the night. The navvies were already on their way; and as soon as ever the road was passable he should know. For not even a future Prime Minister of England could Herr Ludwig do more.

He and Dell went gloomily up the narrow stone stairs of the inn to look at the bedrooms, which were low-roofed and primitive, penetrated everywhere by the roar of a stream which came down close behind the inn. Through the open door of one of the rooms Ashe saw the foaming mass, framed as it were in a window, and almost in the house.

He chose two small rooms looking on the street, and bade Dell get a fire lit in one of them, a bed moved out, an arm-chair moved in, and as large a table set for him as the inn could provide, while he took a stroll before dinner. He had some important letters to answer, and he pointed out to Dell the bag which contained them.

Then he stepped out into the muddy street, which was still a confusion of horses, vehicles, and men, and, turning up a path behind the inn, was soon in solitude. An evening of splendor! Nature was still in a tragic, declamatory mood—sending piled thunder-clouds of dazzling white across a sky extravagantly blue, and throwing on the high snow-fields and craggy tops a fierce, flame-colored light. The valley was resonant with angry sound, and the village, now in shadow, with its slender, crumbling campanile, seemed like a cowering thing over which the eagle has passed.

The grandeur and the freshness, the free, elemental play of stream and sky and mountain, seized upon a man in whom the main impulses of life were already weary, and filled him with an involuntary physical delight. He noticed the flowers at his feet, in the drenched grass which was already lifting up its battered stalks, and along the margins of the streams—deep blue colombines, white lilies, and yellow anemones. Incomparable beauty lived and breathed in each foot of pasture; and when he raised his eyes from the grass they fed on visionary splendors of snow and rock, stretching into the heavens.

No life visible—except a line of homing cattle, led by a little girl with tucked-up skirt and bare feet. And—in the distance—the slender figure of a woman walking—stopping often to gather a flower—or to rest? Not a woman of the valley, clearly. No doubt a traveller, weather-bound like himself at the inn. He watched the figure a little, for some vague grace of movement that seemed to enter into and make a part of that high beauty in which the scene was steeped; but it disappeared behind a fold of pasture, and he did not see it again.

In spite of the multitude of vehicles gathered about the inn there were not so many guests in the salle-à-manger, when Ashe entered it, as he had expected. He supposed that a majority of these vehicles must be return carriages from Brieg. Still there was much clatter of talk and plates, and German seemed to be the prevailing tongue. Except for a couple whom Ashe took to be a Genevese professor and his wife, there was no lady in the room.