Rivers of Ice, Robert Michael Ballantyne [fun to read .txt] 📗

to join the ice-party, we at once offered to be the messengers. Hence our present expedition at so early an hour. After seeing Madame Antoine Grennon and having breakfast we mean to spend the day in sketching."

"May I join you in this after-portion of the day's work?" asked Lewis. "I may not, indeed, claim to use the pencil with the facility of our friend Slingsby, but I am not altogether destitute of a little native talent in that way. I will promise to give you both as many cigars as you choose, and will submit my sketches to Mademoiselle's criticism, which will be incurring extreme danger."

"Well, you may come," said Nita, with a condescending nod, "but pray fulfil the first part of your promise, give me the cigars."

Lewis drew them out with alacrity, and laughingly asked, "how many?"

"All of them; the case also."

In some surprise the youth put the cigar-case into her hand, and she immediately flung it into a neighbouring pool.

"Ah, how cruel," said Lewis, putting on a most forlorn look, while Emma gave vent to one of her subdued little explosions of laughter.

"What! is our society not enough for Monsieur?" asked Nita, in affected surprise.

"_More_ than enough," replied Lewis, with affected enthusiasm.

"Then you can be happy without your cigars," returned Nita.

"Perfectly happy," replied Lewis, taking a small case from his pocket, from which he extracted a neat little meerschaum pipe, and began to fill it with tobacco.

Again Emma had occasion to open the safety-valve of another little explosive laugh; but before anything further could be said, they came in sight of Antoine Grennon's cottage.

It was prettily situated beneath a clump of pines. A small stream, spanned by a rustic bridge, danced past it. Under the shadow of the bridge they saw Madame engaged in washing linen. She had a washing-tub, of course, but instead of putting the linen into this she put herself in it, after having made an island of it by placing it a few inches deep in the stream. Thus she could kneel and get at the water conveniently without wetting her knees or skirts. On a sloping slab of wood she manipulated the linen with such instrumentality as cold water, soap, a wooden mallet and a hard brush. Beside her, in a miniature tub, her little daughter conducted a miniature washing.

The three travellers, looking over the bridge, could witness the operation without being themselves observed.

"It is a lively process," remarked Lewis, as Madame seized a mass of linen with great vigour, and caused it to fall on the sloping plank with a sounding slap.

Madame was an exceedingly handsome and well-made woman, turned thirty, and much inclined to _embonpoint_. Her daughter was turned three, and still more inclined to the same condition. Their rounded, well-shaped, and muscular arms, acted very much in the same way, only Madame's vigour was a good deal more intense and persistent--too much so, perhaps, for the fabrics with which she had to deal; but if the said fabrics possessed the smallest degree of consciousness, they could not have had the heart to complain of rough treatment from such neat though strong hands, while being smiled upon by such a pretty, though decisive countenance.

"It is dreadfully rough treatment," said Emma, whose domestic-economical spirit was rather shocked.

"Terrible!" exclaimed Nita, as Madame gripped another article of apparel and beat it with her mallet as though it had been the skull of her bitterest enemy, while soap-suds and water spurted from it as if they had been that enemy's brains.

"And she washes, I believe, for our hotel," said Emma, with a slightly troubled expression. Perhaps a thought of her work-box and buttons flashed across her mind at the moment.

"You are right," said Lewis, with a pleased smile.

"I heard Antoine say to Gillie, the other day, that his wife washed a large portion of the hotel linen. No doubt some of ours is amongst it. Indeed I am sure of it," he added, with a look of quiet gravity, as Madame Grennon seized another article, swished it through the water, caused it to resound on the plank, and scrubbed it powerfully with soap; "that a what's-'is-name, belongs to me. I know it by the cut of its collar. Formerly, I used to know it chiefly by its fair and fragile texture. I shall know it hereafter as an amazing illustration of the truth of the proverb, that no one knows what he can stand till he is tried. The blows which she is at present delivering to it with her mallet, are fast driving all preconceived notions in regard to linen out of my head. Scrubbing it, as she does now, with a hard brush, against the asperities of the rough plank, and then twisting it up like a roly-poly prior to swishing it through the water a second time, would once have induced me to doubt the strength of delicate mother-of-pearl buttons and fine white thread. I shall doubt no longer."

As he said so, Madame Grennon chanced to look up, and caught sight of the strangers. She rose at once, and, forsaking her tub, advanced to meet them, the curly-haired daughter following close at her heels, for, wherever her mother went she followed, and whatever her mother did she imitated.

The object of the visit was soon explained, and the good woman led the visitors into her hut where Baptist Le Croix chanced to be at the time.

There was something very striking in the appearance of this man. He was a tall fine-looking fellow, a little past the prime of life, but with a frame whose great muscular power was in no degree abated. His face was grave, good-natured, and deeply sunburnt; but there was a peculiarly anxious look about the eyes, and a restless motion in them, as if he were constantly searching for something which he could not find.

He willingly undertook to conduct his friend's wife and child to the residence of their relative.

On leaving the hut to return to Chamouni, Madame Grennon accompanied her visitors a short way, and Nita took occasion, while expressing admiration of Baptist's appearance, to comment on his curiously anxious look.

"Ah! Mademoiselle," said Madame, with a half sad look, "the poor man is taken up with a strange notion--some people call it a delusion--that gold is to be found somewhere here in the mountains."

"Gold?" cried Nita, with such energy that her companions looked at her in surprise.

"Why, Nita," exclaimed Emma, "your looks are almost as troubled and anxious as those of Le Croix himself."

"How strange!" said Nita, musing and paying no attention to Emma's remark. "Why does he think so?"

"Indeed, Mademoiselle, I cannot tell; but he seems quite sure of it, and spends nearly all his time in the mountains searching for gold, and hunting the chamois."

They parted here, and for a time Lewis tried to rally Nita about what he styled her sympathy with the chamois-hunter, but Nita did not retort with her wonted sprightliness; the flow of her spirits was obviously checked, and did not return during their walk back to the hotel.

While this little incident was enacting in the valley, events of a far different nature were taking place among the mountains, into the solitudes of which the Professor, accompanied by Captain Wopper, Lawrence, Slingsby, and Gillie, and led by Antoine, had penetrated for the purpose of ascertaining the motion of a huge precipice of ice.

"You are not a nervous man, I think," said the Professor to Antoine as they plodded over the ice together.

"No, Monsieur, not very," answered the guide, with a smile and a sly glance out of the corners of his eyes. Captain Wopper laughed aloud at the question, and Gillie grinned. Gillie's countenance was frequently the residence of a broad grin. Nature had furnished him with a keen sense of the ludicrous, and a remarkably open countenance. Human beings are said to be blind to their own peculiarities.

If Gillie had been an exception to this rule and if he could have, by some magical power, been enabled to stand aside and look at his own spider-like little frame, as others saw it, clad in blue tights and buttons, it is highly probable that he would have expired in laughing at himself.

"I ask the question," continued the Professor, "because I mean to request your assistance in taking measurements in a somewhat dangerous place, namely, the ice-precipice of the Tacul."

"It is well, Monsieur," returned the guide, with another smile, "I am a little used to dangerous places."

Gillie pulled his small hands out of the trouser-pockets in which he usually carried them, and rubbed them by way of expressing his gleeful feelings. Had the sentiment which predominated in his little mind been audibly expressed, it would probably have found vent in some such phrase as, "won't there be fun, neither--oh dear no, not by no means." To him the height of happiness was the practice of mischief. Danger in his estimation meant an extremely delicious form of mischief.

"Is the place picturesque as well as dangerous?" asked Slingsby, with a wild look in his large eyes as he walked nearer to the Professor.

"It is; you will find many aspects of ice-formation well worthy of your pencil."

It is due to the artist to say that his wildness that morning was not the result only of despair at the obvious indifference with which Nita regarded him. It was the combination of that wretched condition with a heroic resolve to forsake the coy maiden and return to his first love-- his beloved art--that excited him; and the idea of renewing his devotion to her in dangerous circumstances was rather congenial to his savage state of mind. It may be here remarked that Mr Slingsby, besides being an enthusiastic painter, was an original genius in a variety of ways. Among other qualities he possessed an inventive mind, and, besides having had an ice-axe made after a pattern of his own,--which was entirely new and nearly useless,--he had designed a new style of belt with a powerful rope having a hook attached to it, with which he proposed, and actually managed, to clamber up and down difficult places, and thus attain points of vantage for sketching. Several times had he been rescued by guides from positions of extreme peril, but his daring and altogether unteachable spirit had thrown him again and again into new conditions of danger. He was armed with his formidable belt and rope on the present excursion, and his aspect was such that his friends felt rather uneasy about him, and would not have been surprised if he had put the belt round his neck instead of his waist, and attempted to hang himself.

"Do you expect to complete your measurements to-day?" asked Lawrence, who accompanied the Professor as his assistant.

"Oh no. That were impossible. I can merely fix my stakes to-day and leave them. To-morrow or next day I will return to observe the result."

The eastern side of the Glacier du Geant, near the Tacul, at which they soon arrived, showed an almost perpendicular precipice about 140 feet high. As they collected in a group in front of that mighty pale-blue wall, the danger to which the Professor had alluded became apparent, even to the most inexperienced eye among them.