Chapter V

TT was rather distressing that the next day was Sunday, since convention at the RifTelalp (at least in those days) demanded that no big expedition should be undertaken, unless, indeed, a furtive start were made for one of the huts after dark had fallen. Besides, there was the difficulty of guides, since these insisted on hearing Mass sometime in the course of Sunday morning. Convention was enforced too by the almost incredible number of clergymen present in the hotel.

There was a small tin church standing somewhat to the rear of the hotel, where the English attended with a propriety which many of them, it is to be feared, did not show at home. The two young men in the big room had heard its bell rapidly summoning worshippers shortly before eight o'clock, and had made remarks. Then they had gone to sleep again. But three hours later, in the rear of the parents, they had obeyed its call, and presently found themselves inside in a temperature of not less than seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. An

American organ, blown by its lady player in such a manner that it always seemed out of breath, welcomed them to their seats.

Val as regarded his religion was exactly true to type. He had been recently confirmed at Eton, regarding it as a suitable ceremony of unknown but vaguely spiritual import. He looked upon it as a kind of religious coming of age. He had no kind of doubt as to the existence of God, and he accepted the Christian religion as he accepted the stars in their courses and the British Constitution. And that was about all.

He set himself to work therefore, as soon as he had pulled his trousers up at the knee and resumed his seat, to look carefully at everybody present in church. He hoped to indentify the climbers, and by the end of the Absolution, read by a Dean with a brick-coloured face and a voice full of eloquent expression, had detected half a dozen. (Tom had said he would introduce him to some of them after church. )

He was more enthusiastic than ever this morning, since he felt he had taken his first step towards experience on the previous afternoon. He had, of course, dreamt of climbing nearly all night. Church then, with the slight dreaminess induced by it, was exactly the right milieu in which to think over future conquests; and by the end of the Psalms, read in alternate verses by the eloquent Dean and the congregation, and each closed by the Gloria Patri to the accompaniment of the breathless instrument and the chant of Gadsby in C, was already half-way up the Matterhorn. Gertie too was with him by now, looking exceedingly graceful and slender in a short climbing skirt, a jacket, and gauntlets. There were no guides. They were just climbing together.... He was showing her where to put her hands and feet....

For, beneath all the external interests, Gertie had been subconsciously present to him ever since he had left England. It gave him more than one ecstatic thrill, during an enormous first Lesson all about Ahab, to remember that she had pulled back her curtain to see him — or them — start....

It was unhappily the Sunday for the Litany, and this religious exercise, coming on the top of the extreme heat of the church and the weariness resulting from the previous day, caught Val rather off his guard. For by the time that " the kindly fruits of the earth " were mentioned, he was once more cross-questioning himself severely as to whether or no there were in his own character a certain slight strain of weakness. It is very hard to lay interior ghosts quite satisfactorily. He thought he had laid this ghost once for all before he had left home, yet somehow it was looking at him again; and he even ventured to ask himself this morning whether that extreme agony of yesterday, when he had hung for five seconds over the gulf, were not a symptom of this weakness. It was not that he had the smallest doubt as to how he was going to behave in future. That had been entirely settled, partly on the way home from the Riffelhorn, chiefly after a couple of glasses of Asti Spumante, and finally and completely during the delicious moments immediately after getting between cool sheets and before going to sleep. In future nothing at all was to disturb him; he was to behave perfectly always. Only, in this drowsy atmosphere, lulled by the rhythm of the Litany, he thought it wise just to run over the past once more and make quite certain that his tremors had been no more than interior. Courage, he told himself, consisted in disregarding such tremors....

(n)

It was really almost worth while to have gone to church, to come out into the delicious pine-scented air and the breeze, and to look upon the blue view. Mr. Meredith gave a long sigh of happiness.

" That's the fourth time, to my certain knowledge, that that man has preached on, Why hop ye so, ye high hills? And it's a thing I've really never seen them do."

Mr. Meredith presented an almost perfect picture of the God-fearing English gentleman on a holiday. He was in another grey tail-suit this morning of a slightly more ample cut; he had on the top of his clever head a neat Panama hat with a black ribbon, and over his brown boots — presumably out of respect for the day — a pair of white spats. He had taken the bag round in church, too, with an air of mingled humility and capability, and felt that he had done his duty adequately and even generously-till this time next week.... He did not very often go to church at home.

But the Dean's sermon, which certainly had been rather long for a hot Sunday morning, though astonishingly fluent and verbose, seemed to have rendered this listener of his a little peevish.

" I always feel like a Layman/' he said, " of the clerical sort, of course, whenever that man

Oh! how do you do, Mr. Dean? "

(He turned, all smiles, to greet his pastor, who had saluted him in a virile voice.)

" I was just speaking of your excellent sermon," he continued. " What an eminently suitable text, if I may say so."

"Oh! yes. You know," said the Dean (who held evening services for men on Sundays in his cathedral at home), " I always try to suit my matter to the occasion.... And those are your young people?... Good morning, Mrs. Meredith."

He patted Val briskly on the shoulder. He was always tactful and manly with males, and deferential to females.

Mr. Meredith explained.

"Ah! yes; just so. Of Medhurst, isn't it? I met your father only two years ago."

Val looked politely sullen, as boys of sixteen do.

" And I suppose you've come out to do great things," pursued the Dean, clapping him again on the shoulder.

Val's hatred rose to an acute point. But he grinned courteously and said nothing.

" Val," said a voice. And there was Tom, with two long-legged young men.

He detached himself courteously from the Dean.

"These are the two Mr. Ratcliffes," explained Tom rapidly and unceremoniously.... " Oh! this is Valentine Medd. I say, Val, they want us three for an expedition on Thursday."

Jack Ratcliffe explained.

It seemed that the other two of their party were leaving on Wednesday. There was a comparatively mild expedition that they wished to make; it began with the ascent of the Theodulhorn, continued with the ice arete running from that peak to the foot of the Matterhorn. Then the lower slopes of the Matterhorn itself were to be crossed, ending up below the Hoinbi. They would call for a meal at the Schwarz-See hotel, and return to the Riffelalp during the afternoon.

" Look here," said Jack, " I can point it out from just round the corner. Come this way."

They went round the angle of the hotel, on the embattled terrace that looks out over the valley, and Jack pointed it out. It looked a pretty long walk even from here. It was an immense curved snow wall, sharp and jagged against the sky.

" We'll have to start not later than four in the morning. It's a perfectly gorgeous view — seventy miles one way and a hundred the other. Are you chaps in training? "

" We will be by Thursday."

" Well, you'll come? We need only take one guide. I'll be leading guide. That settled?"

(He spoke in rapid, jerky sentences. He was obviously a capable person.)

;< Yes; we'll come. Rather. I've never done it. You and Austin are game? "

Val nodded.

"Rather.... If you think we can do it," he added in a burst of modesty.

" Lord, yes! It's a ladies' climb; it's only rather long."

The three toiled up the Corner Grat that afternoon, for a "training walk." Civilised life in England permits to gather at certain points of the person deposits of a substance which is almost wholly useless for athletic purposes. It also allows to lapse by desuetude certain muscles, particularly in the thigh, which are essential to very prolonged walking. It was for the removal of the one and the development of the other that these three young men, in flannel trousers, heavy boots, and shirts, and carrying their jackets over their arms as soon as they got out of sight of the hotel, went almost wordlessly, so great was the pace, first up the zigzag ascent to the Riffelberg, then, leaving the vanquished Riffelhorn first on their right, up that enormous flat back which leads unsensationally to the summit of the Corner.

The view from the top is superb. One is surrounded entirely by giant snow peaks, from Monte Rosa to the Matterhorn in one sweep; from the Matterhorn to the Weisshorn in another; and so round again, by the Dorn, back to Monte Rosa again. There they stand, that eternal ring of giants, one white blaze in the sunlight, backed by a sky darkening in the zenith almost to blackness, so rare is the air and so intense the blue. The vast glacier sleeps below, beneath the slopes of tumbled snow-fields from which the peaks begin — tumbled as if monstrous children had been at play amongst them. Yet, so vast are the distances that a large party crossing the glacier at the nearer end would look no more than a snippet of black thread against the white.

" Fifty minutes since the last stop," panted Tom as he touched the cairn. " We must do better than that. Now, you chaps, we must do that downhill in twenty.... Til tell you the peaks in the hotel this evening."

The conversation that night was tremendous.

The five sat out together on the terrace, with a small table in the midst (the parents twenty yards away talking to the Dean), and discussed climbing from every possible point of view. It is not proposed to report their conversation. On the table stood a tray with five glasses, a bottle, and three siphons, and Jack Ratcliffe grew almost eloquent on the pernicious effects of spirits taken en route, unless in the case of real exhaustion. In the evening, it seemed, a glass or two would hurt nobody; and Val, over the first whisky and soda ever drunk by him, assented, shuddering furtively meanwhile at the nauseous taste. Austin drank a plain soda, and regarded his desperate young brother witi a face of discreet severity.

And meanwhile Val's enthusiasm grew higher every minute.

He relapsed into an intense silence at last, listening to the talk, watching Jack's face glow and darken again luridly as he drew on his cigarette, and meantime constructing and constructing day-dream after day-dream of Gertie and the mountains and the mountains and Gertie. He was in a pleasant glow after food and wine, a glow warmed up again by that exceedingly disagreeable drink he had had just now. His muscles were relaxed after the tense exercise of yesterday and to-day; and he was looking forward, with a zeal untouched now by even the faintest apprehensiveness, to the expedition up the Corner glacier to-morrow.

(" You chaps must have a bit of real ice-work before Thursday," Tom had panted parenthetically on the way down from the Corner Grat this afternoon. )

Then, finally, as the terrace began to empty and Val to be aware of drowsiness, the subject was introduced which had been on his mind ever since yesterday morning, yet which he had not dared to mention again.

They had sat silent for a minute. Jim Ratcliffe, a stoutish young man of twenty-five, yet a " devil to go," as Tom had said this afternoon, had beaten out his pipe and stood up. The great silence of nightfall had descended; the murmur of streams released by the sun all day to pour in ten thousand channels down to the Zermatt valley, now lying in the darkness below, were chained up again by frost up there, four and five thousand feet above this hotel. To sight too the world had faded; or, rather, had closed in under cover of the night, so that the mountains far off across the valley now stood, it seemed, in shadowy lines scarcely a hundred yards away. Only there still stood out, dominant and tremendous, glimmering in starlight, itself blotting out the stars, as august and unattainable as ever, the huge wedge called the Matterhorn.

Then Tom spoke; and sentences followed with impressive and business-like rapidity.

" I say, Jack, these chaps want to do the Matter-horn before they go."

" Well, why shouldn't they? "

"Think it's all right? It's their first time, you know."

" Good Lord, that doesn't matter. They can do it all right. Who'll you get?"

" I thought of Ulrich Edersheim, if he isn't engaged; and Heinrich Aimer."

" You'll be lucky if you get them."

" Think I could engage them now? "

" Armstrong's been climbing with Ulrich lately.

I'd speak to him if I were you; I rather think he's got first claim on him for the season."

" If you think there's any risk " began Austin's deliberate voice out of the darkness.

Val snorted uncontrollably. Sometimes he did it on purpose; but this time it was perfectly spontaneous.

" My dear chap," said Tom. " We've simply got to settle at once, if we're to get those guides. We've only a fortnight, you see."

" And do you think we're capable of doing it? " pursued Austin, with severe conscientiousness.

There was just the faintest pause of hesitation before the answer came. But when it came its heartiness made up for all.

"I'm perfectly certain you can — both of you. You climbed first-rate yesterday. Well, in the Matterhorn you've only got to go on doing it for eight hours, instead of half an hour."

"Of course we can do it, Austin," put in Val in a tone of indignant and contemptuous protest. " At least if we can't it'll be our own fault. We've plenty of time to learn the tricks."

" Exactly," said Tom briefly. " But you must work hard, you know. You must have a good go on ice."

" What's the matter with to-morrow? " said Jack, who had spent the previous week in the company of Americans.

" That'll do very well," observed Tom. " We'll just have a good steady day on the Corner. Start at ten."

" And we'll try to get Armstrong again."

The parents Meredith stood at precisely the opposite standpoint, with regard to Switzerland, to that occupied by their young men. And, indeed, there is a great deal to be said for it.

For, to them, Switzerland was primarily a place of superb rest — of superb views, air, climate, and idleness. The hotel in which they stayed must be, as the advertisements here stated, replete with every modern convenience. It must be large, expensive, well served, provided with a lift; it must be surrounded by flat walks; it must contain a French chef; it must be filled with the right kind of people and not too many of the wrong; it must have bath-rooms, and, for Mrs. Meredith's sake at least, an English chapel and a chaplain, if possible, of a decent eminence in his own country.

All those things were, under the presidence of Herr Seiler, exactly suitable. One breakfasted, leisurely, about nine; one read the papers, smoked a cigar or so, and looked at the view till lunch. One slept gently for an hour or so; then, sometimes with a tea-basket and sometimes without, walked quite slowly a couple of miles through exquisite pine forests, observed views once more, breathed some quite first-rate air, and then strolled back again in time to dress comfortably for dinner. Food followed, and then an evening of gentle, shrewd talk, some whisky and soda, three nice cigars, and bed — altogether a blameless and recreating existence, almost perfectly calculated to restore an extremely prosperous Counsel who worked at a pressure and for periods that would dismay those democratic philanthropists who were beginning already to preach the gospel of Not Too Much Work. And Mrs. Meredith supplied precisely the right kind of temperament in which to lead such a life.

There are few persons so delightful as first-rate barristers on a holiday, and Mr. Meredith was a first-rate specimen. He was emphatically a gentleman; he was shrewd, tolerant, humorous with a touch of cynicism; scrupulously conventional in manner and unconventional in mind. He looked his part, too, to perfection; his face was keen and kindly and clean shaven; he had an air of suppressed and beneficent power.. His old friends found him always the same, and new acquaintances rapidly considered themselves his friends. He was always in the most intelligent circle in the smoking-room and the verandahs; he told new stories exceedingly well; and he had the art of appearing subtly interested in anyone who spoke to him. Even the prize bore of the hotel thought him sympathetic.

He was gently but sincerely interested in the ardour of climbers; and he was discussing it over tea on this very Monday afternoon with a judge and the eloquent Dean. (Mrs. Meredith was sitting with the matrons in the drawing-room.)

" I am no climber," he was saying, " but I think I catch glimpses now and again of the divine secret of it. There's my boy Tom, for instance. I must confess I envy him sometimes."

The Judge nodded.

" I know what you mean," he said. " By the way, your boy Tom has promised to bring me a stone from the top of the Matterhorn."

" It's very good of you to "

" Not at all. I am perfectly genuine. I shall label it and put it in a cabinet with the date and circumstances."

" Well, that's almost an illustration of what I mean. Any stone would do, objectively, just as well. And yet there's a subtle something... By the way, a friend of mine promised to bring an ivy-leaf from Wagner's grave, for an enthusiast in England. He quite forgot it until he was halfway back from Bayreuth, so he picked one in a station in Germany instead."

" No doubt it did just as well," said the Dean, smiling.

" You think so? " said the Judge, cocking an eye at the ecclesiastic. " Well, to me that seems simply an outrage. It makes no kind of difference that the female enthusiast — (I take it that she was female?... Just so...) — that the enthusiast never knew. It was a grave moral crime in itself."

" Well," went on the lawyer, " climbing seems to me an almost infinitely subtle thing. All sport is subtle, of course. It is one of the innumerable proofs that two and two make five quite as often as they make four. Take shooting. Analyse it. It consists of two elements and really no more — skill and death-dealing. Now neither of these is sufficient in itself. No man in his senses would enjoy a season in which he merely shot at elaborately concealed clay pigeons; and no man would enjoy killing pigs. Yet when you unite the two elements you get sport."

" ' Not a fourth, but a star,' " quoted the Dean, who loved to think he could join in a lay conversation with intelligence.

"Exactly. Well, climbing "

" Yes," said the Judge, carefully brushing off the ash of his cigar on to the little stone wall beside him. (They were having tea on the terrace.) " Analyse climbing. I don't think I understand it."

"Well, first there's the skill. Call it gymnastics — elaborate and unexpected gymnastics. And then there's the danger."

" Do you think danger " —

" Certainly. No one would climb if there were nets everywhere. But combine skill and danger and you have the real thing — the sport.... Oh! I forgot the endurance. That certainly enters in. No one could be really keen on climbing rocks. It must be a sufficiently exhausting feat to expose the roots of the character, so to speak."

' You have left out the wonderful views that are surely a part of - " began the Dean.

" Excuse me. I am quite confident that views do not enter in at all. I questioned my boy very carefully about that. He pretends that they do, of course; but it's obvious they don't. Why, only yesterday the three of them ran straight up to the top of the Corner Grat and back again. They identified the names of the peaks that they ought to have seen, in a panoramic map, after dinner; but they didn't look at them at all."

" You think that climbing is a test of character then," asked the Judge.

" I think it one of the best I know; and it's an admirable trainer of character too. The fatigue of it soon rubs off all the merely showy qualities and leaves the real traits naked. And then the danger, which is there, more or less, the whole time, tests a man's fidelity to his ideals. A coward either funks at a critical moment, or he's foolhardy. And all the real climbers detest both equally. To hear Armstrong talk, you'd think that a man who refuses to wear a rope in bad places is as much of a poltroon as a man who refuses to follow the guide."

" By the way," put in the Judge, " are those two Medd boys you have with you the Medds of Med-hurst? " Mr. Meredith nodded.

" A very finely bred family," he said. " They've avoided too much intermarrying too. It's extraordinary to me how anyone can deny heredity. And with regard to such qualities as pluck and honour, I'd trust either of those two boys absolutely — I don't say wisdom, or judgment; those come largely from experience; but for the real old chivalric virtues you simply cannot beat these old families. I'm a full-blooded plebeian myself; but I recognise descent when I see it."

" What about the chorus-girls, though, that most of them marry nowadays? "

" Well, I think a little of that blood doesn't do any harm. There's pluck there, you know, too. For sheer moral courage I think the courage of a chorus-girl, who dances on a lighted stage in an insufficient costume, before strangers on whose approval her whole future depends — well, it's hard to beat. But those Medds have done nothing of that sort. They and a few others like them are really the pride of our people. I wouldn't exchange them for ten thousand democracies."

" I think this is your party coming back, Mr. Meredith," observed the Dean, upon whose face a faintly grieved disapprobation was beginning to show itself. (He thought the subject of chorus-girls not wholly suitable to his friends' company. )

The lawyer lifted a slow eye over the terrace wall.

" Yes, there they are," he said. " Now look at that delightful roll they've all got, coming uphill. My boy explained it to me once. You must swing your feet round, not lift them. All the guides do it; it saves you enormous exertion in a long day. And what prudence!... And what perseverance to keep it up."

" Ah! they're in sight of the hotel now," observed the Judge cynically.

ioo THE COWARD

They looked strangely unsociable as they advanced, but exceedingly capable and business-like — muscular, spare figures in what is, after the days of ancient Greeks, perhaps the most picturesque costume known to the human race — well-made knickerbockers and jackets, caps, low gaiters, and great sensible boots moulded wonderfully to the foot. Each carried an axe whose head shone like silver in the low, level sunlight, and Tom, who led, carried a rope coiled over one shoulder and under the other arm; each was burnt by the glare of the sun on the ice all day to a fine manly bronze. And they came up, as the observer had pointed out, with that steady, strong swing that every climber who wishes to endure must set himself to acquire. Tom was leading, Austin followed, then after a space, walking by the side of the path, came Val, while the middle-aged man came last.

"Had a good day?" came a voice over the parapet as the party came beneath.

" Oh! it was all right," said Tom.

Mr. Meredith leant back again.

" Now what's up, I wonder," he said; " the boys have had a row. I know Tom's manner. I must examine Armstrong."

(v)

" I assure you it was nothing but inexperience," said the Secretary, as the two sat together in the gloom at the end of the long glass verandah, whither the lawyer had inveigled him after dinner. " Nothing but inexperience. He simply didn't know the danger."

The lawyer carefully squirted some soda-water into his long glass.

:< The essence of the crime was insubordination, I gather? The recklessness was secondary? "

" I suppose you might say so. We had got to the foot of the seracs —

" Interpret, please."

" The seracs are the tumbled and broken part of the glacier — the actual fall of the river, so to speak. Well, I wouldn't dream of doing those seracs unroped, however experienced the climbers may be. To slip badly means death in nine cases out of ten. Of course you can't generally see the death; there's no great drop below you at any point down to the mean level. But there are first, the crevasses — some of which go down to the bed of the glacier — say eight hundred feet, and then there's the danger of an ice pinnacle falling."

" I see."

" Well, Master Val refused to put on the rope.

While I was getting the rope ready he went on, which he had no business to do, and got on the top of a ridge. I told him to come back, but he said he was all right, and he argued a bit while I was wrestling with a knot and talking in between. Then he went on again, and laughed out loud, and pretended it was a joke."

' You mean he flatly disobeyed."

"No, not flatly. Indirectly. I hardly liked to call him back outright. He was in quite a bad place, though it didn't look very bad. And I must say he climbed well. But you know that sort of thing really mustn't happen. I told him so plainly, and he did me the honour to sulk."

Mr. Meredith drank off the contents of his glass.

" Well, what am I to say to him? Shall I forbid him to climb again? "

" Good gad, no! It was simply ignorance of what he was doing. And he knows now. The elder boy gave him what for. You can always trust a brother to be brutal."

"And Tom?"

" Tom looked like Rhadamanthus. I don't think Master Val liked that.... No, just tell him Quite gently and lightly (you know how) that no decent climber ever dreams of disobeying the leader of the party, and that you're perfectly certain he won't do it again/

" He's got plenty of pluck, I suppose? "

" Oh, Lord! yes."

" Right. Well, I'll catch him before he goes to bed."

" Shall I send him to you? I saw him in the smoking-room just now."

" Do. Thanks very much. And you'll tell me if he ever behaves badly again. You're going with them on Monday, aren't you? "

"I think so. Oh! I'll tell you all right. But I don't think there'll be any need."

Val had a sprightly and genial air as presently he came along the corridor to where the lawyer waited for him. He made a handsome, smart figure with his white shirt-front and his browned, bright-eyed face, and he carried himself with a distinctly exaggerated ease.

" Want to see me, sir?"

" Yes, my boy. Sit down a minute..., It was about the expedition of this afternoon. You know I'm bound to look after you a bit, aren't I?"

He glanced up with shrewd, kind eyes (Val was sitting absolutely motionless in an attitude of detached and frozen dignity). He didn't like doing it at all, but he did not propose to flinch.

" Well, I thought I'd better explain what perhaps you didn't know: that on those climbing expeditions one man must always take charge and be responsible. I've been talking to Mr. Armstrong; he's a magnificent climber, you know, and by no means timid. Well, he tells me you didn't seem to understand about the rope, and thought you were safe without it. I dare say you were — as certainly the event proved — but for all that, the rest of the climbers must always be very particular to observe discipline...."

He paused, hoping to be reassured that the boy was not still sulking. Val remained motionless and silent.

;< Well," said the older man a trifle more coldly, " you must please to understand that what happened this afternoon mustn't occur again. I don't ask you to give me your word, because I'm certain that's unnecessary. But it must not happen again. I am responsible for you as long as you are with me; and on climbing expeditions, when I'm not there, you must please to regard the leader of the expedition, whoever he may be, as your superior officer. When you are head of any expedition yourself you will have to demand the same thing from the rest."

Again there was a pause. It was obvious that the boy was sulking badly. He remained perfectly motionless, his eyelids slightly lowered in such a way as to give him an air of extraordinary insolence.

A pang of real pity mingled with impatience touched the heart of the other. He knew exactly how the other felt — humiliated and enraged; and yet that his breeding forbade him to utter either emotion.

" Look here, my boy; I know it's disagreeable to be found fault with. But I should like to tell you, on the other side, that Mr. Armstrong said you climbed with real courage and skill. He particularly »

He stopped, astonished at the deep flush of pleasure in the boy's face. Val turned to him, his eyes swimming and his whole face a-smile.

11 Thank you, sir.... And I beg your pardon. I have been behaving like a boor."

The elder man put out his hand, really touched by this self-humiliation and apology. Val took it.

" That's all right, old chap. That's all right."

He still sat on a minute or two after Val had left him for bed. (The boy said that the glare of the sunlit ice had made him by now almost blind with sleep.)

" Queer chap," he said to himself. " Bundle of nerves, I should say."