Rivers of Ice

Chapter Six.

A Lesson Taught and Learned

Two days after the events narrated in the last chapter, rather late in the evening, Dr George Lawrence called at “the cabin” in Grubb’s Court, and found the Captain taking what he called a quiet pipe.

“I have been visiting poor Mrs Leven,” he said to Mrs Roby, sitting down beside her, “and I fear she is a good deal worse to-night. That kind little woman, Netta White, has agreed to sit by her. I’m sorry that I shall be obliged to leave her at such a critical stage of her illness, but I am obliged to go abroad for some time.”

“Goin’ abroad, sir!” exclaimed Mrs Roby in surprise, for the Captain had not yet told her that Lawrence was to be of the party, although he had mentioned about himself and Gillie White.

“Yes, I’m going with Mrs Stoutley’s family for some weeks to Switzerland.”

Captain Wopper felt that his share in the arrangements was in danger of being found out. He therefore boldly took the lead.

“Ah! I know all about that, sir.”

“Indeed?” said Lawrence.

“Yes, I dined the other day with Mrs Stoutley; she asked me also to be of the party, and I’m going.”

Lawrence again exclaimed, “Indeed!” with increasing surprise, and added, “Well, now, that is a strange coincidence.”

“Well, d’ee know,” said the Captain, in an argumentative tone, “it don’t seem to me much of a coincidence. You know she had to git some one to go with her son, and why not you, sir, as well as any of the other young sawbones in London? If she hadn’t got you she’d have got another, and that would have been a coincidence to him, d’ee see? Then, as to me, it wasn’t unnatural that she should take a fancy to the man that nussed her dyin’ husband, an’ was chum to her brother-in-law; so, you see, that’s how it came about and I’m very glad to find, sir, that we are to sail in company for a short time.”

Lawrence returned this compliment heartily, and was about to make some further remark, when little Netta White rushed into the room with a frightened look and pale cheeks, exclaiming, “Oh, Dr Lawrence, sir, she’s very ill. I think she’s dying.”

Without waiting for a reply, the child ran out of the room followed by Lawrence and Mrs Roby, who was assisted by the Captain—for she walked with great difficulty even when aided by her crutches. In a few seconds they stood beside Mrs Leven’s bed. It was a lowly bed, with scant and threadbare coverings, and she who lay on it was of a lowly spirit—one who for many years had laid her head on the bosom of Jesus, and had found Him, through a long course of poverty and mental distress, “a very present help in trouble.”

“I fear that I’m very ill,” she said, faintly.

“No doubt you feel rather low just now,” said the doctor, “but that is very much owing to your having lived so long on insufficient diet. I will give you something, however, which will soon pull you up a bit. Come, cheer up. Don’t let your spirits get so low.”

“Yes,” she murmured, “I am brought very low, but the Lord will lift me up. He is my strength and my Redeemer.”

She clasped her hands with difficulty, and shut her eyes.

A silence followed, during which Captain Wopper drew Lawrence into the passage.

“D’you think she is near her end, doctor?”

“She looks very like it,” replied the doctor. “There is a possibility that she might recover if the right medicine could be found, namely, ease of mind; but her dissipated son has robbed her of that, and is the only one who can give it back to her—if indeed he has the power left now. She is dying of what is unprofessionally styled a broken heart. It is unfortunate that her son is not with her at present.”

“Does no one know where to find him?” asked the Captain.

“I fear not,” replied the doctor.

“Please, sir, I think I know,” said a subdued voice behind them.

It was that of Gillie White, who had drawn near very silently, being overawed by the sad scene in the sick-room.

“Do you, my lad? then get along as fast as you can and show me the way,” said the Captain, buttoning up his pilot-coat. “I’ll bring him here before long, doctor, if he’s to be found.”

In a few minutes the Captain and Gillie were at the head of the lane, where the former hailed a passing cab, bade the boy jump in, and followed him.

“Now, my lad, give the address,” said the Captain.

“The Strand,” said the boy, promptly.

“What number, sir?” asked the cabman, looking at the Captain.

“Right on till I stop you,” said Gillie, with the air of a commander-in-chief—whom in some faint manner he now resembled, for he was in livery, being clothed in blue tights and brass buttons.

In a short time Gillie gave the order to pull up, and they got out in front of a brilliantly-lighted and open door with a lamp above it, on which was written the word Billiards. The Captain observed that it was the same door as that at which he had parted from Lewis Stoutley some days before.

Dismissing the cab and entering, they quickly found themselves in a large and well-lighted billiard-room, which was crowded with men of all ages and aspects, some of whom played, others looked on and betted, a good many drank brandy and water, and nearly all smoked. It was a bright scene of dissipation, where many young men, deceiving themselves with the idea that they went merely to practise or to enjoy a noble game of skill, were taking their first steps on the road to ruin.

The Captain, closely attended by Gillie, moved slowly through the room, looking anxiously for Fred Leven. For some time they failed to find him. At last a loud curse, uttered in the midst of a knot of on-lookers, attracted their attention. It was followed by a general laugh, as a young man, whose dishevelled hair and flushed face showed that he had been drinking hard, burst from among them and staggered towards the door.

“Never mind, Fred,” shouted a voice that seemed familiar to the Captain, “you’ll win it back from me next time.”

Ere the youth had passed, the Captain stepped forward and laid his hand on his arm.

Fred uttered a savage growl, and drew back his clenched hand as if to strike, but Captain Wopper’s size and calm look of decision induced him to hold his hand.

“What d’you mean by interrupting me?” he demanded, sternly.

“My lad,” said the Captain, in a low, solemn voice, “your mother is dying, come with me. You’ve no time to lose.”

The youth’s face turned ashy pale, and he passed his hand hastily across his brow.

“What’s wrong?” exclaimed Lewis Stoutley, who had recognised the Captain, and come forward at the moment.

“Did he lose his money to you?” asked the Captain, abruptly.

“Well, yes, he did,” retorted Lewis, with a look of offended dignity.

“Come along, then, my lad. I want you too. It’s a case of life an’ death. Ask no questions, but come along.”

The Captain said this with such an air of authority, that Lewis felt constrained to obey. Fred Leven seemed to follow like one in a dream. They all got into a cab, and were driven back to Grubb’s Court.

As they ascended the stair, the Captain whispered to Lewis, “Keep in the background, my lad. Do nothing but look and listen.”

Another moment and they were in the passage, where Lawrence stopped them.

“You’re almost too late, sir,” he said to Fred, sternly. “If you had fed and clothed your mother better in time past, she might have got over this. Fortunately for her, poor soul, some people, who don’t gamble away their own and their parents’ means, have given her the help that you have refused. Go in, sir, and try to speak words of comfort to her now.”

He went in, and fell on his knees beside the bed.

“Mother!” he said.

Fain would he have said more, but no word could he utter. His tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth. Mrs Leven opened her eyes on hearing the single word, and her cheek flushed slightly as she seized one of his hands, kissed it and held it to her breast. Then she looked earnestly, and oh! so anxiously, into his face, and said in a low tone:—

“Fred, dear, are you so—”

She stopped abruptly.

“Yes, yes,” cried her son, passionately; “yes, mother, I’m sober now! Oh mother, dearest, darling mother, I am guilty, guilty; I have sinned. Oh forgive, forgive me! Listen, listen! I am in earnest now, my mother. Think of me as I used to be long ago. Don’t shut your eyes. Look at me, mother, look at Fred.”

The poor woman looked at him with tears of gladness in her eyes.

“God bless you, Fred!” she murmured. “It is long, long, since you spoke like that. But I knew you would. I have always expected that you would. Praise the Lord!”

Fred tried to speak, and again found that he could not, but the fountain of his soul was opened. He laid his face on his mother’s hand and sobbed bitterly.

Those who witnessed this scene stood as if spellbound. As far as sound or motion went these two might have been in the room alone. Presently the sound of sobbing ceased, and Fred, raising his head, began gently to stroke the hand he held in his. Sometime in his wild career, he knew not when or where, he had heard it said that this slight action had often a wonderful power to soothe the sick. He continued it for some time. Then the doctor advanced and gazed into the invalid’s countenance.

“She sleeps,” he said, in a low tone.

“May I stay beside her?” whispered Fred.

Lawrence nodded assent, and then motioning to the others to withdraw, followed them into Mrs Roby’s room, where he told them that her sleeping was a good sign, and that they must do their best to prevent her being disturbed.

“It won’t be necessary for any one to watch. Her son will prove her best attendant just now; but it may be as well that some one should sit up in this room, and look in now and then to see that the candle doesn’t burn out, and that all is right. I will go now, and will make this my first visit in the morning.”

“Captain Wopper,” said Lewis Stoutley, in a subdued voice, when Lawrence had left, “I won this ten-pound note to-night from Fred. I—I robbed him of it. Will you give it to him in the morning?”

“Yes, my lad, I will,” said the Captain.

“And will you let me sit up and watch here tonight?”

“No, my lad, I won’t. I mean to do that myself.”

“But do let me stay an hour or so with you, in case anything is wanted,” pleaded Lewis.

“Well, you may.”

They sat down together by the fireside, Mrs Roby having lain down on her bed with her clothes on, but they spoke never a word; and as they sat there, the young man’s busy brain arrayed before him many and many a scene of death, and sickness, and suffering, and sorrow, and madness, and despair, which, he knew well from hearsay (and he now believed it), had been the terrible result of gambling and drink.

When the hour was past, the Captain rose and said, “Now, Lewis, you’ll go, and I’ll take a look at the next room.”

He put off his shoes and went on tiptoe. Lewis followed, and took a peep before parting.

Fred had drawn three chairs to the bedside and lain down on them, with his shoulders resting on the edge of the bed, so that he could continue to stroke his mother’s hand without disturbing her. He had continued doing so until his head had slowly drooped upon the pillow; and there they now lay, the dissipated son and the humble Christian mother, sleeping quietly together.

Chapter Seven.

The Great White Mountain

We are in Switzerland now; in the “land of the mountain and the flood”—the land also of perennial ice and snow. The solemn presence of the Great White Mountain is beginning to be felt. Its pure summit was first seen from Geneva; its shadow is now beginning to steal over us.

We are on the road to Chamouni, not yet over the frontier, in a carriage and four. Mrs Stoutley, being a lady of unbounded wealth, always travels post in a carriage and four when she can manage to do so, having an unconquerable antipathy to railroads and steamers. She could not well travel in any other fashion here, railways not having yet penetrated the mountain regions in this direction, and a mode of ascending roaring mountain torrents in steamboats not having yet been discovered. She might, however, travel with two horses, but she prefers four. Captain Wopper, who sits opposite Emma Gray, wonders in a quiet speculative way whether “the Mines” will produce a dividend sufficient to pay the expenses of this journey. He is quite disinterested in the thought, it being understood that the Captain pays his own expenses.

But we wander from our text, which is—the Great White Mountain. We are driving now under its shadow with Mrs Stoutley’s party, which, in addition to the Captain and Miss Gray, already mentioned, includes young Dr George Lawrence and Lewis, who are on horseback; also Mrs Stoutley’s maid (Mrs Stoutley never travels without a maid), Susan Quick, who sits beside the Captain; and Gillie White, alias the Spider and the Imp, who sits beside the driver, making earnest but futile efforts to draw him into a conversation in English, of which language the driver knows next to nothing.

But to return: Mrs Stoutley and party are now in the very heart of scenery the most magnificent; they have penetrated to a great fountain-head of European waters; they are surrounded by the cliffs, the gorges, the moraines, and are not far from the snow-slopes and ice-fields, the couloirs, the seracs, the crevasses, and the ice-precipices and pinnacles of a great glacial world; but not one of the party betrays the smallest amount of interest, or expresses the faintest emotion of surprise, owing to the melancholy fact that all is shrouded in an impenetrable veil of mist through which a thick fine rain percolates as if the mountain monarch himself were bewailing their misfortunes.

“Isn’t it provoking?” murmured Mrs Stoutley drawing her shawl closer.

“Very,” replied Emma.

“Disgusting!” exclaimed Lewis, who rode at the side of the carriage next his cousin.

“It might be worse,” said Lawrence, with a grim smile.

“Impossible,” retorted Lewis.

“Come, Captain, have you no remark to make by way of inspiring a little hope?” asked Mrs Stoutley.

“Why, never havin’ cruised in this region before,” answered the Captain, “my remarks can’t be of much value. Hows’ever, there is one idea that may be said to afford consolation, namely, that this sort o’ thing can’t last. I’ve sailed pretty nigh in all parts of the globe, an’ I’ve invariably found that bad weather has its limits—that after rain we may look for sunshine, and after storm, calm.”

“How cheering!” said Lewis, as the rain trickled from the point of his prominent nose.

At that moment Gillie White, happening to cast his eyes upward, beheld a vision which drew from him an exclamation of wild surprise.

They all looked quickly in the same direction, and there, through a rent in the watery veil, they beheld a little spot of blue sky, rising into which was a mountain-top so pure, so faint so high and inexpressibly far off, yet so brilliant in a glow of sunshine, that it seemed as if heaven had been opened, and one of the hills of Paradise revealed. It was the first near view that the travellers had obtained of these mountains of everlasting ice. With the exception of the exclamations “Wonderful!” “Most glorious!” they found no words for a time to express their feelings, and seemed glad to escape the necessity of doing so by listening to the remarks of their driver, as he went into an elaborate explanation of the name and locality of the particular part of Mont Blanc that had been thus disclosed.

The rent in the mist closed almost as quickly as it had opened, utterly concealing the beautiful vision; but the impression it had made, being a first and a very deep one, could never more be removed. The travellers lived now in the faith of what they had seen. Scepticism was no longer possible, and in this improved frame of mind they dashed into the village of Chamouni—one of the haunts of those whose war-cry is “Excelsior!”—and drove to the best hotel.

Their arrival in the village was an unexpected point of interest to many would-be mountaineers, who lounged about the place with macintoshes and umbrellas, growling at the weather. Any event out of the common forms a subject of interest to men who wait and have nothing to do. As the party passed them, growlers gazed and speculated as to who the new-comers might be. Some thought Miss Gray pretty; some thought otherwise—to agree on any point on such a day being, of course, impossible. Others “guessed” that the young fellows must be uncommonly fond of riding to “get on the outside of a horse” in such weather; some remarked that the “elderly female” seemed “used up,” or “blasée,” and all agreed—yes, they did agree on this point—that the thing in blue tights and buttons beside the driver was the most impudent-looking monkey the world had ever produced!

The natives of the place also had their opinions, and expressed them to each other; especially the bronzed, stalwart sedate-looking men who hung about in knots near the centre of the village, and seemed to estimate the probability of the stout young Englishmen on horseback being likely to require their services often—for these, said the driver, were the celebrated guides of Chamouni; men of bone and muscle, and endurance and courage; the leaders of those daring spirits who consider—and justly so—the ascent to the summit of Mont Blanc, or Monte Rosa, or the Matterhorn, a feat; the men who perform this feat it may be, two or three times a week—as often as you choose to call them to it, in fact—and think nothing of it; the men whose profession it is to risk their lives every summer from day to day for a few francs; who have become so inured to danger that they have grown quite familiar with it, insomuch that some of the reckless blades among them treat it now and then with contempt, and pay the penalty of such conduct with their lives.

Sinking into a couch in her private sitting-room, Mrs Stoutley resigned herself to Susan’s care, and, while she was having her boots taken off, said with a sigh:—

“Well, here we are at last. What do you think of Chamouni, Susan?”

“Rather a wet place, ma’am; ain’t it?”

With a languid smile, Mrs Stoutley admitted that it was, but added, by way of encouragement that it was not always so. To which Susan replied that she was glad to hear it, so she was, as nothink depressed her spirits so much as wet and clouds, and gloom.

Susan was a pretty girl of sixteen, tall, as well as very sedate and womanly, for her age. Having been born in one of the midland counties, of poor, though remarkably honest, parents, who had received no education themselves, and therefore held it to be quite unnecessary to bestow anything so useless on their daughter, she was, until very recently, as ignorant of all beyond the circle of her father’s homestead as the daughter of the man in the moon—supposing no compulsory education-act to be in operation in the orb of night. Having passed through them, she now knew of the existence of France and Switzerland, but she was quite in the dark as to the position of these two countries with respect to the rest of the world, and would probably have regarded them as one and the same if their boundary-line had not been somewhat deeply impressed upon her by the ungallant manner in which the Customs officials examined the contents of her modest little portmanteau in search, as Gillie gave her to understand, of tobacco.

Mrs Stoutley had particularly small feet, a circumstance which might have induced her, more than other ladies, to wear easy boots; but owing to some unaccountable perversity of mental constitution, she deemed this a good reason for having her boots made unusually tight. The removal of these, therefore, afforded great relief, and the administration of a cup of tea produced a cheering reaction of spirits, under the influence of which she partially forgot herself, and resolved to devote a few minutes to the instruction of her interestingly ignorant maid.

“Yes,” she said, arranging herself comfortably, and sipping her tea, while Susan busied herself putting away her lady’s “things,” and otherwise tidying the room, “it does not always rain here; there is a little sunshine sometimes. By the way, where is Miss Gray?”

“In the bedroom, ma’am, unpacking the trunks.”

“Ah, well, as I was saying, they have a little sunshine sometimes, for you know, Susan, people must live, and grass or grain cannot grow without sunshine, so it has been arranged that there should be enough here for these purposes, but no more than enough, because Switzerland has to maintain its character as one of the great refrigerators of Europe.”

“One of the what, ma’am?”

“Refrigerators,” explained Mrs Stoutley; “a refrigerator, Susan, is a freezer; and it is the special mission of Switzerland to freeze nearly all the water that falls on its mountains, and retain it there in the form of ice and snow until it is wanted for the use of man. Isn’t that a grand idea?”

The lecturer’s explanation had conveyed to Susan’s mind the idea of the Switzers going with long strings of carts to the top of Mont Blanc for supplies of ice to meet the European demand, and she admitted that it was a grand idea, and asked if the ice and snow lasted long into the summer.

“Long into it!” exclaimed her teacher. “Why, you foolish thing, its lasts all through it.”

“Oh indeed, ma’am!” said Susan, who entertained strong doubts in her heart as to the correctness of Mrs Stoutley’s information on this point.

“Yes,” continued that lady, with more animation than she had experienced for many months past, so invigorating was the change of moral atmosphere induced by this little breeze of instruction; “yes, the ice and snow cover the hills and higher valleys for dozens and dozens of miles round here in all directions, not a few inches deep, such as we sometimes see in England, but with thousands and millions of tons of it, so that the ice in the valleys is hundreds of feet thick, and never melts away altogether, but remains there from year to year—has been there, I suppose, since the world began, and will continue, I fancy, until the world comes to an end.”

Mrs Stoutley warmed up here, to such an extent that she absolutely flushed, and Susan, who had heretofore regarded her mistress merely as a weakish woman, now set her down, mentally, as a barefaced story-teller.

“Surely, ma’am,” she said, with diffidence, “ice and snow like that doesn’t fill all the valleys, else we should see it, and find it difficult to travel through ’em; shouldn’t we, ma’am?”

“Silly girl!” exclaimed her preceptress, “I did not say it filled all the valleys, but the higher valleys—valleys such as, in England and Scotland, would be clothed with pasturage and waving grain, and dotted with cattle and sheep and smiling cottages.”

Mrs Stoutley had by this time risen to a heroic frame, and spoke poetically, which accounts for her ascribing risible powers to cottages.

“And thus you see, Susan,” she continued, “Switzerland is, as it were, a great ice-tank, or a series of ice-tanks, in which the ice of ages is accumulated and saved up, so that the melting of a little of it—the mere dribbling of it, so to speak—is sufficient to cause the continuous flow of innumerable streams and of great rivers, such as the Rhone, and the Rhine, and the Var.”

The lecture received unexpected and appropriate illustration here by the sudden lifting of the mists, which had hitherto blotted out the landscape.

“Oh, aunt!” exclaimed Emma, running in at the moment, “just look at the hills. How exquisite! How much grander than if we had seen them quite clear from the first!”

Emma was strictly correct, for it is well known that the grandeur of Alpine scenery is greatly enhanced by the wild and weird movements of the gauze-like drapery with which it is almost always partially enshrouded.

As the trio stood gazing in silent wonder and admiration from their window, which, they had been informed, commanded a view of the summit of Mont Blanc, the mist had risen like a curtain partially rolled up. All above the curtain-foot presented the dismal grey, to which they had been too long accustomed, but below, and, as it were, far behind this curtain, the mountain-world was seen rising upwards.