Samuel Rutherford Crockett – The Complete Collection

Chapter 12

All this came back to me as I walked alone by the lake while the day was breaking behind the mountains.

As though she had heard the trumpet of my heart calling her, she came. I did not see her till she was near me on the gravel path which leads to the châlet by the lake. There was a book of devotion in her hand. It was marked with a cross. I had forgotten my prayers that morning till I saw this.

Yet I hardly felt rebuked, for it was morning and the day was before me. With so much that was new, the old could well wait a little. For which I had bitterly to repent.

She looked beyond conception lovely as she came towards me. Taller than I had thought, for I had not seen her--you must remember--since. It seemed to me that in the night she had been recreated, and came forth fresh as Eve from the Eden sleep. Her eyelashes were so long that they swept her cheeks; and her eyes, that I had thought to be violet, had now the sparkle in them which you may see in the depths of the southern sea just where the sapphire changes into amethyst.

Did we say good-morning? I forget, and it matters little. We were walking together. How light the air was!--cool and rapturous like snow-chilled wine that is drunk beneath the rose at thirsty Teheran. The ground on which we trod, too, how strangely elastic! The pine-trees give out how good a smell! Is my heart beating at all, or only so fine and quick that I cannot count its pulsings?

What is she saying--this lady of mine? I am not speaking aloud--only thinking. Cannot I think?

She told me, I believe, why she had come out. I have forgotten why. It was her custom thus to walk in the prime. She had still the mantilla over her head, which, as soon as the sun looked over the eastern crest of the mountains, she let drop on her shoulders and so walked bareheaded, with her head carried a trifle to the side and thrown back, so that her little rounded chin was in the air.

"I have thought," she was saying when I came to myself, "all the night of what you told me of your home on the hills. It must be happiness of the greatest and most perfect, to be alone there with the voices of nature--the birds crying over the heather and the cattle in the fields."

"Good enough," I said, "it is for us moorland folk who know nothing better than each other's society--the bleating sheep to take us out upon the hills and the lamp-light streaming through the door as we return homewards."

"There is nothing better in this world!" said the Countess with emphasis.

But just then I was not at all of that mind.

"Ah, you think so," said I, "because you do not know the hardness of the life and its weary sameness. It is better to be free to wander where you will, in this old land of enchantments, where each morning brings a new joy and every sun a clear sky."

"You are young--young," she said, shaking her head musingly, "and you do not know. I am old. I have tried many ways of life, and I know."

It angered me thus to hear her speak of being old. It seemed to put her far from me I remembered afterwards that I spoke with some sharpness, like a petulant boy.

"You are not so much older than I, and a great lady cannot know of the hardness of the life of those who have to earn their daily bread."

She smiled in an infinitely patient way behind her eyelashes.

"Douglas," she said, "I have earned my living for more years than the difference of age that is between us."

I looked at her in amazement, but she went on--

"In my brother's country, which is Russia, we are not secure of what is our own, even for a day. We may well pray there for our daily bread. In Russia we learn the meaning of the Lord's Prayer."

"But have you not," I asked, "great possessions in Italy?"

"I have," the Countess said, "an estate here that is my own, and many anxieties therewith. Also I have, at present, the command of wealth--which I have never yet seen bring happiness. But for all, I would that I dwelt on the wide moors and baked my own bread."

I did not contradict her, seeing that her heart was set on such things; nevertheless, I knew better than she.

"You do not believe!" she said suddenly, for I think from the first she read my heart like a printed book. "You do not understand! Well, I do not ask you to believe. You do not know me yet, though I know you. Some day you will have proof!"

"I believe everything you tell me," I answered fervently.

"Remember," she said, lifting a finger at me--"only enough and not too much. Tell me what is your idea of the place where I could be happy."

This I could answer, for I had thought of it.

"In a town of clear rivers and marble palaces," I answered, "where there are brave knights to escort fair ladies and save them from harm. In a city where to be a woman is to be honoured, and to be young is to be loved."

"And you, young seer, that are of the moorland and the heather," she said, "where would you be in such a city?"

"As for me," I said, "I would stand far off and watch you as you passed by."

"Ah, Messer Dante Alighieri, do not make a mistake. I am no Beatrice. I love not chill aloofness. I am but Lucia, here to-day and gone to-morrow. But rather than all rhapsodies, I would that you were just my friend, and no further off than where I can reach you my hand and you can take it."

So saying, because we came to the little bridge where the pines meet overhead, she reached me her hand at the word; and as it lay in mine I stooped and kissed it, which seemed the most natural thing in the world to do.

She looked at me earnestly, and I thought there was a reproachful pity in her eyes.

"Friend of mine, you will keep your promise," she said. I knew well enough what promise it was that she meant.

"Fear not," I replied; "I promise and I keep."

Yet all the while my heart was busy planning how through all the future I might abide near by her side.

We turned and walked slowly back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles with a pleasant clapping sound.

"See," she said, "here is my brother coming to meet us. Tell me if you have been happy this morning?"

"Oh," I said quickly, "happy!--you know that without needing to be told."

"No matter what I know," the Countess said, with a certain petulance, swift and lovable--"tell it me."

So I said obediently, yet as one that means his words to the full--

"I have been happier than ever I thought to be this morning!"

"Lucia!" she said softly--"say Lucia!"

"Lucia!" I answered to her will; yet I thought she did not well to try me so hard.

Then her brother came up briskly and heartily, like one who had been a-foot many hours, asking us how we did.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CRIMSON SHAWL

Henry Fenwick and the Count went shooting. He came and asked my leave as one who is uncertain of an answer. And I gave it guiltily, saying to myself that anything which took his mind off Madame Von Eisenhagen was certainly good. But there leaped in my heart a great hope that, in what remained of the day, I might again see the Countess.

I was grievously disappointed. For though I lounged all the afternoon in the pleasant spaces by the lake, only the servants, of the great empty hotel passed at rare intervals. Of Lucia I saw nothing, till the Count and Henry passed in with their guns and found me with my book.

"Have you been alone all the afternoon?" they said, innocently enough. And it was some consolation to answer "Yes," and so to receive their sympathy.

Henry came again to me after dinner. The Count was going over the hills to the Forno glacier, and had asked him; but he would not go unless I wished it. I bade him take my blessing and depart, and again he thanked me.

There was that night a band of thirty excellent performers to discourse music to the guests at the table--being, as the saw says, us four and no more. But the Count was greatly at his ease, and told us tales of the forests of Russia, of wolf-hunts, and of other hunts when the wolves were the hunters--tales to make the blood run cold, yet not amiss being recounted over a bottle of Forzato in the bright dining-room. For, though it was the beginning of May, the fire was sparkling and roaring upwards to dispel the chill which fell with the evening in these high regions.

There is talk of mountaineering and of the English madness for it. The Count and Henry Fenwick are on a side. Henry has been over long by himself on the Continent. He is at present all for sport. Every day he must kill something, that he may have something to show. The Countess is for the hills, as I am, and the _élan_ of going ever upward. So we fall to talk about the mountains that are about us, and the Count says that it is an impossibility to climb them at this season of the year. Avalanches are frequent, and the cliffs are slippery with the daily sun-thaw congealing in thin sheets upon the rocks. He tells us that there is one peak immediately behind the hotel which yet remains unclimbed. It is the Piz Langrev, and it rises like a tower. No man could climb that mural precipice and live.

I tell them that I have never climbed in this country; but that I do not believe that there is a peak in, the world which cannot in some fashion or another be surmounted--time, money, and pluck being provided wherewith to do it.

"You have a fine chance, my friend," says the Count kindly, "for you will be canonised by the guides if you find a way up the front of the Langrev. They would at once clap on a tariff which would make their fortunes, in order to tempt your wise countrymen, who are willing to pay vast sums to have the risk of breaking their necks, yet who will not invest in the best property in Switzerland when it is offered to them for a song."

The Count is a little sore about his venture and its ill success.

The Countess, who sits opposite to me to-night, looks across and says, "I am sure that the peak can be climbed. If Mr. Douglas says so, it can."

"I thank you, Madame," I say, bowing across at her.

Whereat the other two exclaim. It is (they say) but an attempt on my part to claim credit with a lady, who is naturally on the side of the adventurous. The thing is impossible.

"Countess," say I, piqued by their insistency, "if you will give me a favour to be my drapeau de guerre , in twenty-four hours I shall plant your colours on the battlements of the Piz Langrev."

Certainly the Forzato had been excellent.

The Countess Lucia handed a crimson shawl, which had fallen back from her shoulders, and which now hung over the back of her chair, across the table to me.