Chapter III

(i)

'T^HE dinner-party of which Lady Beatrice had spoken took place the night before the boys went abroad — if that can be called a dinner-party at which there are but two guests; and when Val came down, still rather out of breath with the desperation with which he had dressed, he found the two being entertained by the girls, while Austin looked picturesque on the hearth-rug. He said the proper things and retired to a window-seat.

Of the two there was no choice as to which was the most impassive. He had met Professor Macintosh once or twice before (the Professor was a college friend of his father's, he knew), but his appearance never failed to strike awe into the beholder.

For, first of all, he was a tall man, much bent, who grew his white hair and beard very long, and wore spectacles; and secondly, his costume marked him out evidently as a genius of the highest rank. (It was supposed, by Professor Macintosh's admirers, that he was unaware of any startling difference between his dress and that of others, or, at the very least, was unaware that evening dress was usually governed by any code but that of individual taste.) He wore a brown velvet jacket and waistcoat, loose black trousers, and, most supreme of all, a crimson skull-cap not unlike those of the Renaissance Popes. His waistcoat was, of course, only slit down the front, disclosing a hemmed shirt held together by three pearl buttons. He wore square-toed, blacked boots upon his feet. It was a tradition in the Medd family that the Professor was a man of gigantic knowledge. He did not actually occupy a Chair in any known University of the British Isles; but he had once, many years before, been an assistant lecturer at Owen's College, Manchester. There his startling views and his unorthodoxy had, it was understood, aroused the jealousy of the scientific world generally; and it had been left for Chicago to honour a man of whom his own country was not worthy. As regards the particular line in which he was eminent, General Medd could certainly have been evasive, if he had been questioned exactly on the point. The General was himself a man who laid no claim at all to learning, but he had always understood that " Science " was the Professor's subject. Further than that he could not penetrate. It is uncertain whence he had learned even these particulars; but the Professor's critics did not hesitate to assert that the only serious advocate of Professor Macintosh's claim to eminence was Professor Macintosh. All this, however, was to the General's mind only one more proof of his friend's greatness, since none but a great man could be such a storm-centre in the scientific world, or the occasion of such extraordinary bitterness. The Professor lived in Hendon, in a small villa, with his wife, and was believed to pass the greater part of his life in the reading-rooms of the British Museum. He had issued two or three pamphlets, printed without a publisher's name; and was understood to be engaged upon a gigantic work which was to be the monument of his misunderstood life — subject unspecified.

Val, in the window-seat, therefore, looked upon him with a proper awe.

The second guest, to whom he gave scarcely a glance, was Father Maple — a smallish man, also grey-haired, with a palish face and bright grey eyes. He was disappointing, thought Val to himself, for he was dressed like an ordinary clergyman in long frock-coat and trousers. He had expected something more sensational. The priest at this instant was turning over the books on the table.

" So you boys are off to Switzerland to-morrow, I hear," said the Professor in his hearty voice.

(Val was not quite old enough to know why he disliked this heartiness, or even the fact that he did so.)

Austin said that that was so. They were to catch the seven-fifteen, which would take them up to town in time for the eleven o'clock train from Victoria.

" Ah, ha," mused the Professor, " my climbing days were over ten years ago.... Dear old Tyndall! Many's the walk and talk I've had with him."

"Professor Tyndall?" asked May, who was a confirmed worshipper at the shrine, and would as soon have doubted the existence of God as the eminence of Dr. Macintosh.

" Yes, my dear.... Dear old Tyndall. I remember on the Aletsch glacier once "

Then Lady Beatrice rustled in, apologetic but perfectly dignified, followed by her husband. It appeared that her maid was responsible.

Val for the last fortnight had, so to speak, eaten, drunk, tasted, and smelt Switzerland and Switzer-land only. The thing had seized on his imagination, as such things will at such an age; and even Austin had been inspired. So it seemed to him an extraordinary opportunity that the Professor had come to stay at such a moment, and by the time that the fish was removed, under the fire of the boys' enthusiasm, the subject had taken possession of the table and the Professor of the subject.

This was rather his way. It was said amongst his friends that he was a conversationalist, and that is always a fatal incentive to prolonged soliloquy. It was his habit therefore, positively forced on him by such a reputation and by the hushed silence that fell among his admirers, to use such social occasions as these to deliver a discourse on whatever subject had come up. (His friends used to say to one another, after such an evening, that "the Professor had been in great form.")

The impression diffused this evening was that the little band of scientists who for so long were associated with the Alps had by now positively been reduced to the Professor himself. Tyndall was gone, Huxley was gone, Hardy was gone; Macintosh only remained. He did not actually say this outright, but it was impossible to draw any other conclusion, and he was regarded with an ever deeper and more affectionate awe as the minutes passed by this extremely simple country-house party. A second impression made upon the company was to the effect that, in his younger days, there was scarcely an expedition of note with which he had not been closely connected. It appeared that he had been among the first to meet the diminished party that returned from the first ascent of the Matterhorn; that he had watched Hardy's conquest of the Finsteraarhorn through a telescope; and that there was not a peak or pass of any notoriety which he had not himself, at some time or another, ascended. Again, he did not say these things....

He grew very eloquent at the end of his soliloquy, which was delivered in the form of a paternal lecture to the boys on the subject of a mountaineer's mental and moral equipment.

" You can take it from me, boys," he said impressively, " that it's nothing but foolhardiness to climb unless you've got the head and the nerves for it. There's nothing to be proud of in possessing them; there's nothing to be ashamed of in being without them. For myself, I'm as happy on an arete as on the king's highway; but that's neither here nor there. And if you'll take my advice, if you find that you haven't the head for it, why, be courageous and don't attempt to climb. It needs more courage to refuse to climb than to be foolhardy. Remember that."

He paused to put a spoonful of vanilla ice into his mouth; and the priest, who had been listening attentively with downcast eyes, looked up.

" You think, then, that the nerve for climbing can't be gained by effort, Professor? "

" Certainly not, Father, certainly not. It's a purely physical matter. I remember myself having to blindfold a young officer — it was on the Jungfraujoch, I remember — and to lead him by the hand before he could move. And I'm not talking of mere physical giddiness: I mean that nerve, as it's called, which many folks seem to think is a moral matter, is nothing of the sort. It's as physical as anything else. I should no more blame a man for... for funking a bad descent than I should blame him for falling over a precipice if I pushed him over."

" Do you hold that all the so-called virtues — I know no other word to use, I am afraid — are merely the result of physical conditions? "

A large, kindly smile beamed out on the Professor's face.

" Ah, ha, Father, we're touching on delicate ground there." (He glanced round at the faces of the young persons who were watching him. ) " I'm a shocking materialist, you know — a shocking materialist."

He finished his ice in silence, with an air of extraordinary discretion.

" And what do you think about it all — er — Mr. Maple," said the General after a moment. (He was a humble and rather stupid man, and thought all these questions very important and very confusing. He was also intensely full of his traditional contempt for a Papist, but veiled it admirably under courteous attentions. ) "A cur's a cur, it seems to me." (He stroked his grey moustache.)

The priest, who had dropped his eyes, looked up again, smiling.

" I entirely disagree with the Professor, I am afraid," he said. " I hold that a man is what his will is; or, rather, that he will become so; and that qualities like nerve and fortitude can certainly be acquired."

Val fidgeted suddenly. It seemed to him an extraordinarily tiresome conversation.

" Do tell us more about step-cutting," he said shyly to the Professor.

(n)

The last evening before a day on which something pleasurable and exciting is going to happen has always a peculiarly stimulating effect upon imaginative persons, and the two boys were in a state very nearly approaching exaltation as they came out into the hall after dinner.

Val vanished immediately, to take one more look at the delightful luggage that already lay nearly packed, in the joint sitting-room upstairs. He went up three steps at a time, tore along the passages, and then stood, eyeing it all once more: the sheaf of axes, each with its little leather head-dress, umbrellas and sticks; the two portmanteaux, still open to receive last touches and additions in the morning; the roll of rugs, in the midst of which (as he knew) reposed the coil of rope with its red-thread centre. It seemed to him amazing that the eve of the journey was really come....

He came down more slowly, once, indeed, turning back to reassure himself that his boots were really packed — those boots which, heavy now with the mutton- fat he had reverently administered to them with his own hands after tea, he had worn, in accordance with the directions of " Badminton," already for two or three days. As he came towards the hall he heard the piano. This was a nuisance; he would not be able to talk to the Professor about couloirs; but at least he could think in peace, so he slipped in noiselessly, tiptoed down the length of the hall, and sat down on the couch behind his mother's chair.

In times of exaltation, external things take upon them a value out of all proportion to their intrinsic weight; and perfectly ordinary and familiar things appear in a wholly new light. And so it came about that Val, looking upon a scene which he could remember so long as he could remember anything, discovered in one or two trifling modifications of it a significance that really bore no relation at all to their essence.

It was the priest who was playing — a man of.whom a certain profane musician had said twenty years before that the Church had only gained a sacrament-monger while the world had lost an artist; and though Val knew nothing at all of music, it was impossible that he should not be enormously affected, all circumstances considered, by the atmosphere generated by the really exquisite performance. For a time he watched the player's face, thin, quiet, and intent, with the candlelight falling on it and turning to pure silver the grey hairs about his ears and temples, and thought only of rock-climbing. It crossed his mind with a kind of marvel that any man should be as contented, as this priest obviously looked, who was not going to Switzer-land next day. And meanwhile the music did its work.

Val knew neither then nor afterwards what music it was that was being played. One phrase in it, however — a motif, if he had only known it — be-gan little by little to colour his thoughts. He began almost to look for it, as it insisted upon itself gently from time to time, like a wise friend intervening with infinite tact. It was simple and clear now, as if speaking alone; it inserted itself a moment or two later across a tangle of controversy; it shouted suddenly across a raging sea; then once again it spoke gently....

So the music began to do its work.

Val scarcely knew afterwards at what instant he first noticed Gertie Marjoribanks from the new angle. They were all very still. His mother's feather fan lay on her knee; he could see the jewelled fingers, perfectly motionless, clasping it. His father sat opposite, one long leg cocked over the other, one long foot outstretched in the air, with a shoe dangling from its toe; his hands were clasped behind his head, and his face was grave and still. Austin was in the shadow of a window-seat, all but invisible. Miss Deverell was beyond him again, seated beneath a lamp; but her work was lying unheeded in her lap as she leaned back and listened.. Above and about them all was the darkening beauty of this great old room.

And presently Val perceived that he was staring at Gertie Marjoribanks as if he had never seen her before.

This girl was sitting with her profile towards him, rather forward on her chair, in a pose that seemed to the boy one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. (Naturally he would not have called it this.) She sat forward in her chair, with her slender white hands clasped round her knee, her face, shadowed in her dark hair, thrown forward and up, with her lips slightly parted, and her breath coming evenly between them. But it was that, so far as he could see it, which he saw on her face that gave such an amazing sense of beauty to the boy as he looked at her — an expression of absolutely real, rapturous attention, as if the sweetness and delicacy of the music had entered into her very life and transformed her altogether. These initiations are mysterious things, and it was Val's first experience of them. Only, he was aware that something had happened which somehow altered the relations of everything. He went on looking at this slender dark-haired girl, a year younger than himself, in her white frock; at her round arms clasped about her knee — this girl who, to do her justice, had lost during these minutes every ounce of that self-consciousness which girls can rarely evade; and who was actually, as she seemed to be, for the time being entirely absorbed in the astonishing sweetness of sound that was filling the room.... He looked carefully and minutely at her, at her face, again and again, at her hands, her arms, her feet, her thick hair; and suddenly and vividly a perfectly perceptible pang shot through him at the memory that the brougham was ordered for his departure at half -past six next morning.

As he turned a little restlessly in his seat, the music ended.

(m)

The cruellest nickname ever given to a really beautiful thing is that of calf-love. Certainly it has its clumsinesses and its crudenesses, but these result simply from the fact that the instruments of expression are not adequate. A boy in his first falling in love is of course awkward and spasmodic externally, and mentally he is usually sentimental and fatuous; but these defects no more detract from the amazing simplicity and gallantry and purity of the passion itself, than a creaky harmonium affects the beauty of a sonata played upon it.

Val's first clumsy moment fell at the handing out of bedroom candles that same night.

The priest had received the thanks of everybody (the Professor, indeed, had been kind enough to say that himself in his own musical days had never heard the piece played better), and had been ultimately seen as far as the porch by the General and as far as the terrace steps by Austin. Then, after a little talk, a move had been made towards the table under the gallery where the silver candlesticks stood.

This was Val's moment. He had rehearsed it to himself while the priest had played for the second time; and he was there with a promptitude that made his mother smile at him approvingly. (Lady Beatrice had had a lot of difficulty about such matters with her younger son.)

Gertie came second in the queue for candles, and he had already set aside one for her with a glass that did not rattle. Then he gave it her before lighting it, that he might have the pleasure of holding it on one side while she held it on the other. Then he applied the taper to the wick, and simultaneously his fingers touched hers. The shock was so great that he dropped his side abruptly, and the entire candlestick, fortunately without the glass, fell crashing to the floor. Then, as he groped for it, he laid hold of her shoe by mistake, which was his second shock.

" My dear Val," said his mother.

" Very sorry, mother."

He stood up, and, to his horror, became aware that he was turning scarlet in the face.

" You've forgotten the glass, my boy," said his father behind.

This was remedied. And then Val fired off the sentence he had rehearsed, all in a breath.

" Good night, Miss Gertie, and good-bye. Shan't see you in the morning unless you're up by half-past six." He knew it was hopeless, but he had determined to say it. It would be exquisite to say good-bye to her again in the summer morning. It seemed to him an exceedingly daring suggestion to make.

" Half-past six! Why, good gracious, my dear boy " began May explosively.

" Well, good-bye, Miss Gertie," said Val again. And for one vibrating instant their eyes met.

The conflict of emotions was indescribable that night; for a boy, in the exaltation of a falling in love, will pose and attitudinise interiorly in a manner almost inconceivable to a maturer mind. He will, that is to say, group himself and his beloved, rehearse conversations, enact dramas — all in a scenery which the imagination contrives out of the material at its disposal — with a vividness and a dramatic power wholly unattainable by him in less emotional moods. Curiously enough, too, these dramas usually end in tragedy so moving and so poignant as to bring tears to the creator's eyes; and Val was no exception. More than once that night, before he fell asleep, he was on the point of an actual sob, as he lingered over some exquisite parting scene between himself and Gertie — or over some meeting, years hence, between himself as a homeless, stern-faced wanderer and her as a rich and important personage. These, however, came later, when the simpler situations had been exhausted — when he had perished of cold in the high Alps, after having covered her with his coat and waistcoat; when he had toiled homewards, bearing her inanimate form on his shoulders, himself to fall dead as the applauding crowds gathered round in the moonlight.

He awoke with a start, to find the man in his room and the daylight streaming in.

" It's half-past five, Master Val; and Mr. Austin's in the bathroom," said fresh-faced Charles, who waited on the boys.

He still lay a minute or two re-sorting his emotions.

There had been something almost dramatic and appealing, last night, in the thought of his departure this morning (while she still lay sleeping in her beauty) to face the perils of the high Alps; but the drama seemed gone now, and dreariness to have taken its place. It suddenly seemed to him that it was by a peculiarly malevolent stroke of Providence that he had made the discovery that she was so lovable, only last night. Why, what a blind ass he had been not to have seen it before! What might not those past three weeks have been... those long afternoons, those rides? And he had let Austin open gates, and May walk with her in the woods.... And he had actually not ridden at all, for this last fortnight.

Then, with a pang, he remembered again the catastrophe of last night — the dropped candlestick, the clumsy gestures.

It was a stern and moody Val who strode down to the early breakfast, who went into his mother's room as requested, on the way down, to wish her good-bye, who made rather more noise than he need on going past the door of the beloved. At the corner of the passage he even turned for one instant to watch that door. "What if it were to open, and a sleep-flushed face look out!...

" You must buck up/' said Austin, with his mouth full of kidney. " Brougham'll be round in ten minutes."

Val said nothing. He inspected the cold ham with the frown of a truculent despot. What did he want with ham?

He was, however, interiorly, slowly arranging the situation; and he saw himself now, once again, as a romantic lover whom severe duty called away to face dangers unspeakable. He was to go out and conquer; he was to return a fortnight hence, brown and determined and infinitely modest, to... to find her, no doubt, detained by some unforeseen accident, and still in his home. And if not? Well, if not, she should see the newspapers, that by that time would have some startling news from Switzer-land.

" There are the wheels," said Austin. " Got your things down? "

" I suppose so," said Val. " Charles said - "Good Lord! don't trust to Charles." " Better see after your own, hadn't you? " said Val offensively.

Well, the impossible happened.

He stood in his tweed suit, bare-headed, on the steps by the carriage, in something of an attitude, it must be confessed; while Austin, practical and efficient, as always, counted the pieces of luggage which Charles was setting on the top of the brougham. Val's left leg was advanced a little; his right hand was on his hip, grasping his hat; his left hand held a walking-stick. He was aware that the morning sunlight fell on him from over the shrubbery by the house, and that he stood, with a faint resemblance to a youthful Napoleon, exactly at that point where his figure showed to the best advantage. It was at this moment that the immense poignancy of his situation struck him again with renewed force. She was sleeping; he was taking his last look — and all the rest — before setting out to meet in a hand-to-hand struggle the elemental forces of nature.

He turned then for one last look at the sleeping house, carrying his eye slowly along the front, from the north wing where his own room was to the south wing where the girls slept. And as his eyes rested there the impossible happened — that which was now his last hope. The curtain drew back and dropped again; but not before he had time to see, as in a flash, a face crowned with dark hair tumbling about the shoulders and a glimmer of white....

"When you've done looking like a stuck pig," said Austin with peculiar vehemence from within the brougham (it must be remembered that he had had to do all the overseeing), " perhaps you'll get in and let us go. We're ten minutes late already."

The brothers did not speak after that until they reached the station.