Rivers of Ice

by R. M. Ballantyne

A summons from the sick-room cut short the conversation.

During the week in question it had rained a good deal, compelling the visitors at Chamouni to pass the time in-doors with books, billiards, draughts, and chess. Towards the end of the week Lewis met the Count and discovered that he was absolutely destitute of funds—did not, in fact possess enough to defray the hotel expenses.

“Mother,” said Lewis, during a private audience in her bed-chamber the same evening, “I want twenty pounds from you.”

“Certainly, my boy; but why do you come to me? You know that Dr Lawrence has charge of and manages my money. How I wish there were no such thing as money, and no need for it!”

Mrs Stoutley finished her remark with her usual languid smile and pathetic sigh, but if her physician, Dr Tough, had been there, he would probably have noted that mountain-air had robbed the smile of half its languor, and the sigh of nearly all its pathos. There was something like seriousness, too, in the good lady’s eye. She had been impressed more than she chose to admit by the sudden death of Le Croix, whom she had frequently seen, and whose stalwart frame and grave countenance she had greatly admired. Besides this, one or two accidents had occurred since her arrival in the Swiss valley; for there never passes a season without the occurrence of accidents more or less serious in the Alps. On one occasion the news had been brought that a young lady, recently married, whose good looks had been the subject of remark more than once, was killed by falling rocks before her husband’s eyes. On another occasion the spirits of the tourists were clouded by the report that a guide had fallen into a crevasse, and, though not killed, was much injured. Mrs Stoutley chanced to meet the rescue-party returning slowly to the village, with the poor shattered frame of the fine young fellow on a stretcher. It is one thing to read of such events in the newspapers. It is another and a very different thing to be near or to witness them—to be in the actual presence of physical and mental agony. Antoine Grennon, too, had made a favourable impression on Mrs Stoutley; and when, in passing one day his extremely humble cottage, she was invited by Antoine’s exceedingly pretty wife to enter and partake of bread and milk largely impregnated with cream, which was handed to her by Antoine’s excessively sweet blue-eyed daughter, the lady who had hitherto spent her life among the bright ice-pinnacles of society, was forced to admit to Emma Gray that Dr Tough was right when he said there were some beautiful and precious stones to be found among the moraines of social life.

“I know that Lawrence keeps the purse,” said Lewis, “but I want your special permission to take this money, because I intend to give it away.”

“Twenty pounds is a pretty large gift, Lewis,” said his mother, raising her eyebrows. “Who is it that has touched the springs of your liberality? Not the family of poor Le Croix?”

“No; Le Croix happily leaves no family. He was an unmarried man. I must not tell you, just yet, mother. Trust me, it shall be well bestowed; besides, I ask it as a loan. It shall be refunded.”

“Don’t talk of refunding money to your mother, foolish boy. Go; you may have it.”

Lewis kissed his mother’s cheek and thanked her. He quickly found the Count, but experienced considerable difficulty in persuading him to accept the money. However, by delicacy of management and by assuming, as a matter of course, that it was a loan, to be repaid when convenient, he prevailed. The Count made an entry of the loan in his notebook, with Lewis’s London address, and they parted with a kindly shake of the hand, little imagining that they had seen each other on earth for the last time.