Magnum Bonum

CHAPTER XIX. THE SNOWY WINDING-SHEET.

Cold, cold, 'tis a chilly clime That the youth in his journey hath reached; And he is aweary now, And faint for lack of food. Cold! cold! there is no sun in heaven. Southey.

Very merry was the party which arrived at the roughly-built hotel of Schwarenbach which serves as a half-way house to the Altels.

Never had expedition been more enjoyed than that of Mrs. Brownlow and her three boys. They had taken a week by the sea to recruit their forces, and then began their journey in earnest, since it was too late for a return to Eton, although so early in the season that to the Swiss they were like the first swallows of the spring, and they came in for some of the wondrous glory of the spring flowers, so often missed by tourists.

In her mountain dress, all state and ceremony cast aside, Caroline rode, walked, and climbed like the jolly Mother Carey she was, to use her son's favourite expression, and the boys, full of health and recovery, gambolled about her, feeling her companionship the very crown of their enjoyment.

Johnny, to whom all was more absolutely new than to the others, was the quietest of the three. He was a year older than Lucas, as Jock was now called to formal outsiders, while Friar John, a reversal of his cousin's two Christian names, was a school title that sometimes passed into home use. Friar John then had reached an age open to the influences of beautiful and sublime scenery, and when the younger ones only felt the exhilaration of mountain air, and longings to get as high as possible, his soul began to expand, and fresh revelations of glory and majesty to take possession of him. He was a very different person from the rough, awkward lad of eight years back. He still had the somewhat loutish figure which, in his mother's family, was the shell of fine-looking men, and he was shy and bashful, but Eton polish had taken away the rude gruffness, and made his manners and bearing gentlemanly. His face was honest and intelligent, and he had a thoroughly good, conscientious disposition; his character stood high, and he was the only Brownlow of them all who knew the sweets of being "sent up for good." His aunt could almost watch expression deepening on his open face, and he was enjoying with soul and mind even more than with body. Having had the illness later and more severely than the other two, his strength had not so fully returned, and he was often glad to rest, admire, and study the subject with his aunt, to whose service he was specially devoted, while the other two climbed and explored. For even Armine had been invigorated with a sudden overflow of animal health and energy, which made him far more enterprising and less contemplative than he had ever been before.

They four had walked up the mountain after breakfast from Kandersteg, bringing their bags for a couple of nights, the boys being anxious to go up the Altels the next day, as their time was nearly over and they were to be in school in ten days' time again. After luncheon and a good rest on the wooden bench outside the door, they began to stroll towards the Daubensee, along a path between desolate boulders, without vegetation, except a small kind of monkshood.

"I call this dreary," said the mother. "We don't seem to get a bit nearer the lake. I shall go home and write to Babie."

"I'll come back with you," said Johnny. "My mother will be looking for a letter."

"Not giving in already, Johnny," said Armine. "I can tell you I mean to get to the lake."

"The Friar is the slave of his note-book," said Jock. "When are we to have it-'Crags and Cousins,' or 'From Measles to Mountains'?"

"I don't want to forget everything," said Johnny, with true Kencroft doggedness.

"Do you expect ever to look at that precious diurnal again?"

"He will leave it as an heirloom to his grandchildren!"

"And they will say how slow people were in the nineteenth century."

"There will have been a reaction by that time, and they will only wonder how anybody cared to go up into such dreary places."

"Or perhaps they will have stripped them all, and eaten the glaciers up as ices and ice-creams!"

"I think I'll set up that as my pet anxiety," said their mother, laughing; "just as some people suffer from perplexity as to what is to become of the world when all the coal is used up! You are not turning on my account, are you, Johnny? I am quite happy to go back alone."

"No, indeed. I want to write my letter, and I have had enough," said John.

"Tired!" said Armine. "Poor old monk! Swiss air always makes me feel like a balloon full of gas. I could go on, up and up, for ever!"

"Well, keep to the path, and don't do anything imprudent," she said, turning back, the boys saying, "We'll only have a look down the pass! Here, Chico! Chico! Chick! Chick!"

Chico, the little dog so disdainfully rejected by Elvira, had attached himself from the first to Jock. He had been in the London house when they spent a day there, and in rapture at the meeting had smuggled himself, not without his master's connivance, among the rugs and wrappers, and had already been the cause of numerous scrapes with officials and travellers, whence sometimes money, sometimes politeness, sometimes audacity, bought off his friends as best they could.

There was a sort of grave fascination in the exceeding sternness of the scene-the grey heaps of stone, the mountains raising their shining white summits against the blue, the dark, fathomless, lifeless lake, and the utter absence of all forms of life. Armine's spirit fell under the spell, and he moved dreamily on, hardly attending to Jock, who was running on with Chico, and alarming him by feints of catching him and throwing him into the water.

They came to the gap where they expected to look over the pass, but it was blotted out by a mist, not in itself visible though hiding everything, and they were turning to go home when, in the ravine near at hand, the white ruggedness of the Wildstrube glacier gleamed on their eyes.

"I didn't know it was so near," said Jock. "Come and have a look at it."

"Not on it," said Armine, who had somewhat more Swiss experience than his brother. "There's no going there without a guide."

"There's no reason we should not get on the moraine," said Jock ; and they presently began to scramble about among the rocks and boulders, trying to mount some larger one whence they might get a more general view of the form of the glacier. Chico ran on before them, stimulated by some reminiscence of the rabbit-holes of Belforest, and they were looking after him and whistling him back; Armine heard a sudden cry and fall-Jock had disappeared. "Never mind!" he called up the next instant. "I'm all right. Only, come down here! I've twisted my foot somehow."

Armine scrambled round the rock over which he had fallen, a loose stone having turned with him. He had pulled himself up, but even with an arm round Armine's neck, he could not have walked a step on even ground, far less on these rough debris, which were painful walking even for the lightest, most springy tread.

"You must get to the inn and bring help," he said, sinking down with a sigh.

"I suppose there's nothing else to be done," said Armine, unwillingly. "You'll have a terrible time to wait, unless I meet some one first. I'll be as quick as I can."

"Not too quick till you get off this place," said Jock, "or you'll be down too, and here, help me off with this boot first."

This was not done quickly or easily. Jock was almost sick with the pain of the effort, and the bruise looked serious. Armine tried to make him comfortable, and set out, as he thought, in the right direction, but he had hardly gone twenty steps before he came to a sudden standstill with an emphatic "I say!" then came back repeating "I say, Jock, we are close upon the glacier; I was as near as possible going down into an awful blue crack!"

"That's why it's getting so cold," said Jock. "Here, Chick, come and warm me. Well, Armie, why ain't you off?"

"Yes," said Armine, with a quiver in his voice, "if I keep down by the side of the glacier, I suppose I must come to the Daubensee in time."

"What! Have we lost the way?" said Jock, beginning to look alarmed.

"There's no doubt of that," said Armine, "and what's worse, that fog is coming up; but I've got my little compass here, and if I keep to the south-west, and down, I must strike the lake somewhere. Goodbye, Jock."

He looked white and braced up for the effort. Jock caught hold of him. "Don't leave me, Armie," he said; "you can't-you'll fall into one of those crevasses."

"You'd better let me go before the fog gets worse," said Armine.

"I say you can't; it's not fit for a little chap like you. If you fell it would be ever so much worse for us both."

"I know! But it is the less risk," said Armine, gravely.

"I tell you, Armie, I can't have you go. Mother will send out for us, and we can make no end of a row together. There's a much better chance that way than alone. Don't go, I say-"

"I was only looking out beyond the rock. I don't think it would be possible to get on now. I can't see even the ridge of stones we climbed over."

"I wish it was I," said Jock, "I'll be bound I could manage it!" Then impatiently-"Something must be done, you know, Armie. We can't stay here all night."

Yet when Armine went a step or two to see whether there was any practicability of moving, he instantly called out against his attempting to go away. He was in a good deal of pain, and high- spirited boy as he was, was thoroughly unnerved and appalled, and much less able to consider than the usually quieter and more timid Armine. Suddenly there was a frightful thunderous roar and crash, and with a cry of "An avalanche," the brothers clasped one another fast and shut their eyes, but ere the words "Have mercy" were uttered all was still again, and they found themselves alive!

"I don't think it was an avalanche," said Armine, recovering first. "It was most likely to be a great mass of ice tumbling off the arch at the bottom of the glacier. They do make a most awful row. I've heard one before, only not so near. Anyway we can't be far from the bottom of the glacier, if I only could crawl there."

"No, no;" cried Jock, holding him tight; "I tell you, you can't do it."

Jock could not have defined whether he was most actuated by fears for his brother's safety or by actual terror at being left alone and helpless. At any rate Armine much preferred remaining, in all the certain misery and danger, to losing sight of his brother, with the great probability of only being further lost himself.

"I wonder whether Chico would find mother," he said.

Jock brightened; Armine found an envelope in his pocket, and scribbled-

"On the moraine. Jock's ankle sprained-Come."

Then Jock produced a bit of string, wherewith it was fastened to the dog's collar, and then authoritatively bade Chico go to mother.

Alas! cleverness had never been Chico's strong point, and the present extremity did not inspire him with sagacity. He knew the way as little as his masters did, and would only dance about in an unmeaning way, and when ordered home crouch in abject entreaty. Jock grew impatient and threatened him, but this only made him creep behind Armine, put his tail between his legs, hold up his little paw, and look piteously imploring.

"There's no use in the little brute," sighed Jock at last, but the attempt had done him good and recalled his nerve and good sense.

"We are in for a night of it," he said, "unless they find us; and how are they ever to do that in this beastly fog?"

"We must halloo," said Armine, attempting it.

"Yes, and we don't know when to begin! We can't go on all night, you know," said Jock; "and if we begin too soon, we may have no voice left just at the right time."

"It is half-past seven now," said Armine, looking at his watch. "The food was to be at seven, so they must have missed us by this time."

"They won't think anything of it till it gets dark."

"No. Give them till half-past eight. Somewhere about nine or half- past it may be worth while to yodel."

"And how awfully cold it will be by that time. And my foot is aching like fun!"

Armine offered to rub it, and there was some occupation in this and in watching the darkening of the evening, which was very gradual in the dense white fog that shut them in with a damp, cold, moist curtain of undeveloped snow.

The poor lads were thinly clad for a summer walk, Jock had left his plaid behind him, and they were beginning to feel only too vividly that it was past supper-time, when they could dimly see that it was past nine, and began to shout, but they soon found this severe and exhausting.

Armine suggested counting ten between each cry, which would husband their powers and give them time to listen for an answer. Yet even thus there was an empty, feeble sound about their cries, so that Jock observed-

"It's very odd that when there's no good in making a row, one can make it fast enough, and now when it would be of some use, one seems to have no more voice than a little sick mouse."

"Not so much, I think," said Armine. "It is hunger partly."

"Hark! That sounded like something."

Invigorated by hope they shouted again, but though several times they did hear a distant yodel, the hope that it was in answer to themselves soon faded, as the sound became more distant, and their own exertions ended soon in an utter breakdown-into a hoarse squeak on Jock's part and a weak, hungry cry on Armine's. Jock's face was covered with tears, as much from the strain as from despair.

"There!" he sighed, "there's our last chance gone! We are in for a night of it."

"It can't be a very long night," Armine said, through chattering teeth. "It's only a week to the longest day."

"Much that will matter to us," said Jock, impatiently. "We shall be frozen long before morning."

"We must keep ourselves awake."

"You little ass," said poor Jock, in the petulant inconsistency of his distress; "it is not come to that yet."

Armine did not answer at once. He was kneeling against the rock, and a strange thrill came over Jock, forbidding him again to say-"It was not come to that," but a shoot of aching pain in his ankle presently drew forth an exclamation.

Armine again offered to rub it for him, and the two arranged themselves for this purpose, the curtain of damp woolliness seeming to thicken on them. There was a moon somewhere, and the darkness was not total, but the dreariness and isolation were the more felt from the absence of all outlines being manifest. They even lost sight of their own hands if they stretched out their arms, and their light summer garments were already saturated with damp and would soon freeze. No part of their bodies was free from that deadly chill save where they could press against one another.

They were brave boys. Jock had collected himself again, and for some time they kept up a show of mirth in the shakings and buffetings they bestowed on one another, but they began to grow too stiff and spent to pursue this discipline. Armine thought that the night must be nearly over, and Jock tried to see his watch, but decided that he could not, because he could not bear to believe how far it was from day.

Armine was drowsily rubbing the ankle, mechanically murmuring something to himself. Jock shook him, saying-

"Take care, don't doze off. What are you mumbling about leisure?"

"O tarry thou the Lord's leisure. Be strong and- Was I saying it aloud?" he broke off with a start.

"Yes; go on."

Armine finished the verse, and Jock commented-

"Comfort thine heart. Does the little chap mean it in a fix like this?"

"Jock," said Armine, now fully awake, "I do want to say something."

"Cut on."

"If you get out of this and I don't-"

"Stop that! We've got heat enough to last till morning."

"Will they find us then? These fogs last for days and turn to snow."

"Don't croak, I say. I can't face mother without you."

"She'll be glad enough to get you. Please listen, Jock, while I'm awake. I want you to give her and all of them my love, and say I'm sorry for all the times I've vexed them."

"As if you had ever-"

"And please Jock, if I was nasty and conceited about the champagne-"

"Shut up, I can't stand this," cried Jock, chiefly from force of habit, for it was a tacit agreement among the elder brothers that Armine must not be suffered to "be cocky and humbug," by which they meant no implication on his sincerity, but that they did not choose to hear remonstrances or appeals to higher motives, and this had made him very reticent with all except his sister Barbara and Miss Ogilvie, but he now persisted.

"Indeed I want you to forgive me, Jock. You don't know how often I've thought all sorts of horridness about you."

Jock laughed, "Not more than I deserved, I'll be bound. How can you be so absurd! If anyone wants forgiveness, it is I. I say, Armie, this is all nonsense. You don't really think you are done for, or you would not take it so coolly."

"Of course I know Who can bring us through if He will," said Armine. "There's the Rock. I've been asking Him all this time-every moment- --only I get so sleepy."

"If He will; but if He won't?"

"Then there's Paradise. And Himself and father," said Armine, still in a dreamy tone.

"Oh, yes; that's for you! But how about a mad fellow like me? It's so sneaking just to take to one's prayers because one's in a bad case."

"Oh, Jock! He is always ready to hear! More ready than we to pray!"

"Now don't begin to improve the occasion," broke out Jock. "By all the stories that ever were written, I'm the one to come to a bad end, not you."

"Don't," said Armine, with an accent of pain that made Jock cry, hugging him tighter. "There, never mind, Armie; I'll let you say all you like. I don't know what made me stop you, except that I'm a beast, and always have been one. I'd give anything not to have gone on playing the fool all my life, so as to be able to mind this as little as you do."

"I don't seem awake enough to mind anything much," said the little boy, "or I should trouble more about Mother and Babie; but somehow I can't."

"Oh!" wailed Jock, "you must! You must get out of it, Armie. Come closer. Shove in between me and the rock. Here, Chico, lie down on the top of us! Mother must have you back any way, Armie."

The little fellow was half-dozing, but words of prayer and faith kept dropping from his tongue. Pain, and a stronger vitality alike, kept Jock free from the torpor, and he used his utmost efforts to rouse his brother; but every now and then a horrible conviction of the hopelessness of their condition came over him.

"Oh!" he groaned out, "how is it to be if this is the end of it? What is to become of a fellow that has been like me?"

Armine only spoke one word; the Name that is above every name.

"Yes, you always cared! But I never cared for anything but fun! Never went to Communion at Easter. It is too late."

"Oh, no, no!" cried Armine, rousing up, "not too late! Never! You are His! You belong to Him! He cares for you!"

"If He does, it makes it all the worse. I never heeded; I thought it all a bore. I never let myself think what it all meant. I've thrown it all away."

"Oh! I wish I wasn't so stupid," cried Armine, with a violent effort against his exhaustion. "Mother loves us, however horrid we are! He is like that; only let us tell Him all the bad we've done, and ask Him to blot it out. I've been trying-trying-only I'm so dull; and let us give ourselves more and more out and out to Him, whether it is here or there."

"That I must," said Jock; "it would be shabby and sneaking not."

"Oh, Jock," cried Armine, joyfully, "then it will all be right any way;" and he raised his face and kissed his brother. "You promise, Jock. Please promise."

"Promise what? That if He will save us out of this, I'll take a new line, and be as good as I know how, and-"

Armine took the word, whether consciously or not: "And manfully to fight under His banner, and continue Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto our lives' end. Amen!"

"Amen," Jock said, after him.

After that, Jock found that the child was repeating the Creed, and said it after him, the meanings thrilling through him as they had never done before. Next followed lines of "Rock of Ages," and for some time longer there was a drowsy murmur of sacred words, but there was no eliciting a direct reply any more; and with dull constern- ation, Jock knew that the fatal torpor could no longer be broken, and was almost irritated that all the words he caught were such happy, peaceful ones. The very last were, "Inside angels' wings, all white down."

The child seemed almost comfortable-certainly not suffering like himself, bruised and strained, with sharp twinges rending his damaged foot; his limbs cramped, and sensible of the acute misery of the cold, and the full horror of their position; but as long as he could shake even an unconscious murmur from his brother, it seemed like happiness compared with the utter desolation after the last whisper had died away, and he was left intolerably alone under the solid impenetrable shroud that enveloped him, and the senseless form he held on his breast. And if he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker shades of a self- indulgent and audacious school-boy life!

It was a little lighter, as if dawn might be coming, but the cold was bitterer, and benumbing more than paining him. His clothes were stiff, his eyelashes white with frost, he did not feel equal to looking at his watch, he _would_ not see Armine's face, he found the fog depositing itself in snow, but he heeded it no longer. Fear and hope had alike faded out of his mind, his ankle seemed to belong to some one else far away, he had left off wishing to see his mother, he wanted nothing but to be let alone!

He did not hear when Chico, finding no comfort, no sign of life in his masters, stood upon them as they lay clasped together in the drift of fine small snow, and in the climax of misery he lifted up the long and wretched wailing howlings of utter dog-wretchedness.