Part 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....