At this time our travellers, having only just been introduced to the mountain, had a great deal to hear and see before they understood him. They returned to the hotel with the feeling of disappointment still upon them, but with excellent appetites for dinner.
In the Salle à manger they met with a miscellaneous assortment of tourists. These, of whom there were above thirty, varied not only as to size and feature, but as to country and experience. There were veteran Alpine men—steady, quiet, bronzed-looking fellows, some of them—who looked as if they had often “attacked” and conquered the most dangerous summits, and meant to do so again. There were men, and women too, from England, America, Germany, France, and Russia. Some had been at Chamouni before, and wore the self-possessed air of knowledge; others had obviously never been there before, and were excited. Many were full of interest and expectation, a few, chiefly very young men, wore a blasé, half-pitiful, half-patronising air, as though to say, “that’s right, good people, amuse yourselves with your day-dreams while you may. We have tried a few weeks of this sort of thing, and have done a summit or two; in imagination we have also been up Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, and the Matterhorn, and a few of the Hymalaya peaks, and most of the mountains in the moon, and several of the fixed stars, and—haw—are now rather boa–ord with it all than otherwise!” There were men who had done much and who said little, and men who had done little and who spoke much. There were “ice-men” who had a desire to impart their knowledge, and would-be ice-men who were glad to listen. Easy-going men and women there were, who flung the cares of life behind them, and “went in,” as they said, for enjoyment; and who, with abounding animal spirits, a dash of religious sentiment, much irrepressible humour and fun, were really pleasant objects to look at, and entertaining companions to travel with. Earnest men and women there were, too, who gathered plants and insects, and made pencil-sketches and water-colour drawings during their rambles among mountains and valleys, and not a few of whom chronicled faithfully their experiences from day to day. There was a Polish Count, a tall, handsome, middle-aged, care-worn, anxious-looking man, who came there, apparently in search of health, and who was cared for and taken care of by a dark-eyed little daughter. This daughter was so beautiful, that it ought to have made the Count well—so thought most of the young men—simply to look at her! There was a youthful British Lord, who had come to “do” Mont Blanc and a few other peaks. He was under charge of a young man of considerable experience in mountaineering, whose chief delight seemed to be the leading of his charge to well-known summits by any other and more difficult tracks than the obvious and right ones, insomuch that Lewis Stoutley, who had a tendency to imprudent remark, said in his hearing that he had heard of men who, in order to gain the roof of a house, preferred to go up by the waterspout rather than the staircase. There was an artist, whom Lewis—being, as already observed, given to insolence—styled the mad artist because he was enthusiastic in his art, galvanic in his actions, and had large, wild eyes, with long hair, and a broad-brimmed conical hat. Besides these, there was a Russian Professor, who had come there for purposes of scientific investigation, and a couple of German students, and a Scotch man of letters, whose aim was general observation, and several others, whose end was simply seeing the world.
In the arrangements of the table, Captain Wopper found himself between Emma Gray and the Polish Count, whose name was Horetzki. Directly opposite to him sat Mrs Stoutley, having her son Lewis on her right, and Dr Lawrence on her left. Beside the Count sat his lovely little daughter Nita, and just opposite to her was the mad artist. This arrangement was maintained throughout the sojourn of the various parties during their stay at Chamouni. They did, indeed, shift their position as regarded the table, according to the arrival or departure of travellers, but not in regard to each other.
Now it is an interesting, but by no means surprising fact, that Cupid planted himself in the midst of this party, and, with his fat little legs, in imminent danger of capsizing the dishes, began to draw his bow and let fly his arrows right and left. Being an airy sprite, though fat, and not at any time particularly visible, a careless observer might have missed seeing him; but to any one with moderate powers of observation, he was there, straddling across a dish of salad as plain as the salt-cellar before Captain Wopper’s nose. His deadly shafts, too, were visibly quivering in the breasts of Lewis Stoutley, George Lawrence, and the mad artist. Particularly obvious were these shafts in the case of the last, who was addicted to gazing somewhat presumptuously on “lovely woman” in general, from what he styled an artistic point of view—never from any other point of view; of course not.
Whether or not Cupid had discharged his artillery at the young ladies, we cannot say, for they betrayed no evidence of having been wounded. In their case, he must either have missed his aim, or driven his shafts home with such vigour, that they were buried out of sight altogether in their tender hearts. It is probable that not one member of that miscellaneous company gave a thought at that time to the wounded men, except the wounded men themselves, so absorbing is the love of food! The wounded were, however, sharp-set in all respects. They at once descried each other’s condition, and, instead of manifesting sympathy with each other, were, strange to say, filled with intense jealousy. This at least is true of the younger men. Lawrence, being somewhat older, was more secretive and self-possessed.
At first Captain Wopper, having declined a dish of cauliflower because it was presented alone, and having afterwards accepted a mutton chop alone, with feelings of poignant regret that he had let the cauliflower go by, was too busy to observe what the heathen-mythological youngster was doing. Indeed, at most times, the said youngster might have discharged a whole quiver of arrows into the Captain’s eyes without his being aware of the attack; but, at the present time, the Captain, as the reader is aware, was up to the eyes in a plot in which Cupid’s aid was necessary; he had, as it were, invoked the fat child’s presence. When, therefore, he had got over the regrets about the cauliflower, and had swallowed the mutton-chop, he began to look about him—to note the converse that passed between the young men, and the frequent glances they cast at the young women.
It was not the first time that the Captain had, so to speak, kept his weather-eye open in regard to the affection which he had made up his mind must now have been awakened in the breasts of George Lawrence and Emma Gray; but hitherto his hopes, although sanguine, had not received encouragement. Though polite and respectful to each other, they were by no means tender; altogether, they acted quite differently from what the Captain felt that he would have done in similar circumstances. A suspicion had even crossed the poor seaman’s mind that Emma was in love with her handsome and rattling cousin Lewis; but anxiety on this head was somewhat allayed by other and conflicting circumstances, such as occasional remarks by Lewis, to the effect that Emma was a goose, or a pert little monkey, or that she knew nothing beyond house-keeping and crochet, and similar compliments. Now, however, in a certain animated conversation between Lawrence and Emma, the designing seaman thought he saw the budding of his deep-laid plans, and fondly hoped ere long to behold the bud developed into the flower of matrimony. Under this conviction he secretly hugged himself, but in the salon, that evening, he opened his arms and released himself on beholding the apparently fickle Lawrence deeply engaged in converse with the Count Horetzki, to whose pretty daughter, however, he addressed the most of his remarks.
The Captain, being a blunt honest, straightforward man, could not understand this state of matters, and fell into a fit of abstracted perplexity on the sofa beside Mrs Stoutley, who listened listlessly to the Russian Professor as he attempted to explain to her and Emma the nature of a glacier.
“Well, I don’t understand it at all,” said Mrs Stoutley, at the end of one of the Professor’s most lucid expositions.
We may remark, in passing, that the Professor, like many of his countrymen, was a good linguist and spoke English well.
“Not understand it!” he exclaimed, with a slight elevation of his eyebrows. “My dear madam, it is most plain, but I fear my want of good English does render me not quite intelligible.”
“Your English is excellent,” replied Mrs Stoutley, with a smile, “but I fear that my brain is not a sufficiently clear one on such matters, for I confess that I cannot understand it. Can you, Captain Wopper?”
“Certainly not, ma’am,” answered the Captain, thinking of the fickle Lawrence; “it takes the wind out of my sails entirely.”
“Indeed!” said the Professor. “Well, do permit me to try again. You understand that all the mountain-tops a............