194 66 CONSCIENCE DOTH MAKE COWARDS." honorable act started like a specter, and threw a sudden shadow on his brow. He felt its presence when he saw the sun rise from Rigi; it stood by him amid the wreathing mists of Pilatus; it even checked his enthusiasm as they gazed together on the unequaled glories spread beneath the green summit of Montorone, and as their graceful boat made ripples on the moonlit waves of Orta and Lugans. In a word, the conviction of weakness was the only alloying influence to the pleasure of his tour, the one-absinth drop that lent bitterness to the honeyed wine. It was not only the consciousness of the wrong act and its possible results, but horror at the instability of moral principle which it showed, and a deep fear lest the same weakness should prove a snare and a ruin to him in the course of future life. CHAPTER XVI. A DAY OF WONDER. "Flowers are lovely, Love is flower-like, When I was young."-COLERIdge. "TO-MORROW, then, we are all to ascend the Schilthorn," said Mr. Kennedy, as he bade good-night to the merry party assembled in the salle à manger of the châlet inn at Müren. "Or as high as we ladies can get," said Mrs. Dudley. 66 Oh, we'll get you up, aunt," said Kennedy; "if Julian and my father and I can't get you and Miss Home and Eva up, we're not worth much." "To say nothing of me!" said Cyril, putting his arms akimbo, with a look of immense importance. "Breakfast, then, at five to-morrow morning, young people," said Mr. Kennedy, retiring; and full of happy anticipations, they went off to bed. Punctually at five they were all seated round the breakfast table, eagerly discussing the prospects of the day. "I say, did any of you see the first sunbeam tip the Jungfrau this morning?" said Kennedy. "It looked like-like-what did it look like, Miss Home?" "Like the golden rim of a crown of pearls," said Violet, smiling. "And did you see the morning star, shining above the orange-colored line of morning light, over the hills behind us, Eva? What did that remind you of?" "Oh, I can't invent poetic similes," answered Eva. "I must take refuge in Wordsworth's "Sweet as a star when only one Is shining in the sky.'" "Yes," said Julian; "or Browning's "Hum!" said Cyril, who had been standing impatiently at the door during the colloquy; "when you young ladies and people have done poetizing, etc., the guide's quite ready." "Come along, then; we're soon equipped," said Violet, adjusting at the looking-glass her pretty straw hat, with its drooping feather, and the blue vail tied round it. "I say, Miss Kennedy-bother take it though, I can't always be saying Miss Kennedy-it's too long. I shall call you Eva-may I?" said Cyril. "By all means, if you like." "Well, then, Eva, the guide is such a rum fellow; he looks like a revived mummy out of-out of Palmyra," said he, blundering a little in his geography. 66 Mummy or no," said Julian, "he'll carry all our provisions and plaids to-day up to the top, which is more than most of your A. C.'s would do." "A. C.-what does that mean?" asked Violet. "One sees it constantly in the visitors' books." "Don't you know, Vi.?" said Cyril. "It stands for 'athletic climber.' "Alpine Club, you little monkey," said Kennedy, throwing a fir-cone at him. "You'll be qualified for the Alpine Club, Miss Home, before the day's over, I've no doubt." "No," said Julian, "they want thirteen thousand feet, I believe, and the Schilthorn is only nine thousand." "Nearly three times higher than Snowden; only fancy!" said Cyril. Meanwhile the party had started with fair weather, and in high spirits. The guide, with the gentlemen's plaids strapped together, led the way cheerily, occasionally talking his vile patois with Julian and Mr. Kennedy, or laughing heartily at Cyril's "bad language," for Cyril, not being strong in German, exercised a delightful ingenuity in making a very few words go a very long way. Kennedy walked generally with Eva and Violet, while Julian often joined them, and Cyril, always with some new scheme in hand, or some new fancy darting through his brain, ran chattering, from one group to another, plucking bilberries and wild strawberries in handfuls, and trying the merits of his alpenstock as a leaping-pole. The light of morning flowed down in an ever-broadening river, and peak after peak flashed first into rose, then into crimson, and then into golden light, as the sun fell on their fields of snow; high overhead rose Alp after Alp of snow-white and luminous cloud, but 198 AN ALPINE VIEW. the flowing curves of the hills themselves stood unvailed, with their crests cut clearly on the pale, divine, lustrous blue of heaven, and our happy band of travelers gazed untired on that glorious panorama of glistering heights from the towering cones of the Eiger and the Moench to the crowding precipices of the Ebenen-fluen and the Silberhorn. Deep below them, in the valley, "like handfuls of pearl in a goblet of emerald," the quiet châlets clustered over their pastures of vivid grass, and gave that touch of human interest which alone was wanting to complete the loveliness of the scene. Every step brought them some new object to gaze upon with loving admiration; now the gaunt spurs of some noble pine that had thrust his gnarled roots into the crevices of rock to look down in safety on the torrent roaring far below him, and now the track of a chamois, or the bright black eyes of some little marmot peering from his burrow on the side of a sunny bank, and whistling a quick alarm to his comrades at their play. "What an extraordinary howl!" said Cyril, laughing, as the guide whooped back a sort of jodel in answer to a salute from the other side of the valley. "It's very harmonious-is it not?" said Violet. "Yes, that's one of the varieties of the Ranz des Vâches," said Kennedy. "And why do they shout at each other in that way?" "Because the mountains are lonely, Cyril, and the shepherds don't see human faces too often; so men begin to feel like brothers, and are glad to greet each other in these silent hills." |