“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… .
Part 6
Most of the things that he had planned they did. But they climbed more than he had intended because Ann Veronica proved rather a good climber, steady-headed and plucky, rather daring, but quite willing to be cautious at his command.
One of the things that most surprised him in her was her capacity for blind obedience. She loved to be told to do things.
He knew the circle of mountains about Saas Fee fairly well: he had been there twice before, and it was fine to get away from the straggling pedestrians into the high, lonely places, and sit and munch sandwiches and talk together and do things together that were just a little difficult and dangerous. And they could talk, they found; and never once, it seemed, did their meaning and intention hitch. They were enormously pleased with one another; they found each other beyond measure better than they had expected, if only because of the want of substance in mere expectation. Their conversation degenerated again and again into a strain of self-congratulation that would have irked an eavesdropper.
“You’re—I don’t know,” said Ann Veronica. “You’re splendid.”
“It isn’t that you’re splendid or I,” said Capes. “But we satisfy one another. Heaven alone knows why. So completely! The oddest fitness! What is it made of? Texture of skin and texture of mind? Complexion and voice. I don’t think I’ve got illusions, nor you… . If I had never met anything of you at all but a scrap of your skin binding a book, Ann Veronica, I know I would have kept that somewhere near to me… . All your faults are just jolly modelling
