5
Presently it occurred to Ann Veronica to ask about
the journey he had planned. He had his sections of
the Siegfried map folded in his pocket, and he squatted
up with his legs crossed like an Indian idol while she lay
prone beside him and followed every movement of his
indicatory finger.
“Here,” he said, “is this Blau See, and here we rest
until to-morrow. I think we rest here until to-morrow?”
There was a brief silence.
“It is a very pleasant place,” said Ann Veronica,
biting a rhododendron stalk through, and with that
faint shadow of a smile returning to her lips. . . .
“And then?” said Ann Veronica.
“Then we go on to this place, the Oeschinensee. It's
a lake among precipices, and there is a little inn where
we can stay, and sit and eat our dinner at a pleasant
table that looks upon the lake. For some days we shall
be very idle there among the trees and rocks. There are
boats on the lake and shady depths and wildernesses of
pine-wood. After a day or so, perhaps, we will go on
one or two little excursions and see how good your head
is —a mild scramble or so; and then up to a hut on a pass
just here, and out upon the Blumlis-alp glacier that
spreads out so and so.”
She roused herself from some dream at the word.
“Glaciers?” she said.
“Under the Wilde Frau —which was named after
you.”
He bent and kissed her hair and paused, and then
forced his attention back to the map. “One day,” he
resumed, “we will start off early and come down into
Kandersteg and up these zigzags and here and here,
and so past this Daubensee to a tiny inn —it won't be
busy yet, though; we may get it all to ourselves —on the
brim of the steepest zigzag you can imagine, thousands
of feet of zigzag; and you will sit and eat lunch with me
and look out across the Rhone Valley and over blue
distances beyond blue distances to the Matterhorn and
Monte Rosa and a long regiment of sunny, snowy mountains.
And when we see them we shall at once want to
go to them —that's the way with beautiful things —and
down we shall go, like flies down a wall, to Leukerbad,
and so to Leuk Station, here, and then by train up the
Rhone Valley and this little side valley to Stalden; and
there, in the cool of the afternoon, we shall start off up
a gorge, torrents and cliffs below us and above us, to
sleep in a half-way inn, and go on next day to Saas Fee,
Saas of the Magic, Saas of the Pagan People. And
there, about Saas, are ice and snows again, and sometimes
we will loiter among the rocks and trees about
Saas or peep into Samuel Butler's chapels, and sometimes
we will climb up out of the way of the other people
on to the glaciers and snow. And, for one expedition
at least, we will go up this desolate valley here to
Mattmark, and so on to Monte Moro. There indeed
you see Monte Rosa. Almost the best of all.”
“Is it very beautiful?”
“When I saw it there it was very beautiful. It was
wonderful. It was the crowned queen of mountains
in her robes of shining white. It towered up high
above the level of the pass, thousands of feet, still,
shining, and white, and below, thousands of feet below,
was a floor of little woolly clouds. And then presently
these clouds began to wear thin and expose steep, deep
slopes, going down and down, with grass and pine-trees,
down and down, and at last, through a great rent in
the clouds, bare roofs, shining like very minute pin-heads, and a road like a fibre of white silk-Macugnana,
in Italy. That will be a fine day —it will have to be, when
first you set eyes on Italy. . . . That's as far as we go.”
“Can't we go down into Italy?”
“No,” he said; “it won't run to that now. We must
wave our hands at the blue hills far away there and go
back to London and work.”
“But Italy —”
“Italy's for a good girl,” he said, and laid his hand
for a moment on her shoulder. “She must look forward
to Italy.”
“I say,” she reflected, “you are
rather the master,
you know.”
The idea struck him as novel. “Of course I'm
manager for this expedition,” he said, after an interval
of self-examination.
She slid her cheek down the tweed sleeve of his
coat. “Nice sleeve,” she said, and came to his hand
and kissed it.
“I say!” he cried. “Look here! Aren't you going
a little too far? This —this is degradation —making
a fuss with sleeves. You mustn't do things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Free woman —and equal.”
“I do it —of my own free will,” said Ann Veronica,
kissing his hand again. “It's nothing to what I
will
do.”
“Oh, well!” he said, a little doubtfully, “it's just
a phase,” and bent down and rested his hand on her
shoulder for a moment, with his heart beating and
his nerves a-quiver. Then as she lay very still, with
her hands clinched and her black hair tumbled about
her face, he came still closer and softly kissed the nape
of her neck. . . .