“By the way,” he said, as he draped her
cloak about her shoulders. “You have that
telegram from Jarvice?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good,” he said. “It
might be useful.”
REVAILLOUD REVISITED
Never that familiar journey across France seemed to
Chayne so slow. Would he be in time? Would
he arrive too late? The throb of the wheels beat
out the questions in a perpetual rhythm and gave him
no answer. The words of Jarvice’s telegram
were ever present in his mind, and grew more sinister,
the more he thought upon them. “What are
you waiting for? Hurry up!” Once, when
the train stopped over long as it seemed to him he
muttered the words aloud and then glanced in alarm
at his wife, lest perchance she had overheard them.
But she had not. She was remembering her former
journey along this very road. Then it had been
night; now it was day. Then she had been used
to seek respite from her life in the shelter of her
dreams. Now the dreams were of no use, since what
was real made them by comparison so pale and thin.
The blood ran strong and joyous in her veins to-day;
and looking at her, Chayne sent up his prayers that
they might not arrive in Chamonix too late. To
him as to her Walter Hine was a mere puppet, a thing
without importance—so long as he lived.
But he must live. Dead, he threatened ruin and
dishonor, and since from the beginning Sylvia and
he had shared—for so she would have it—had
shared in the effort to save this life, it would be
well for them, he thought that they should not fail.
The long hot day drew to an end, and at last from
the platform at the end of the electric train they
saw the snow-fields lift toward the soaring peaks,
and the peaks purple with the after glow stand solitary
and beautiful against the evening sky.
“At last!” said Sylvia, with a catch in
her breath, and the clasp of her hand tightened upon
her husband’s arm. But Chayne was remembering
certain words once spoken to him in a garden of Dorsetshire,
by a man who lay idly in a hammock and stared up between
the leaves. “On the most sunny day, the
mountains hold in their recesses mystery and death.”
“You know where your father is staying?”
Chayne asked.
“He wrote from the Hotel de l’Arve,”
Sylvia replied.
“We will stay at Couttet’s and walk over
to see him this evening,” said Chayne, and after
dinner they strolled across the little town. But
at the Hotel de l’Arve they found neither Garratt
Skinner nor his friend, Walter Hine.
“Only the day before yesterday,” said
the proprietor, “they started for the mountains.
Always they make expeditions.”
Chayne drew no satisfaction from that statement.
Garratt Skinner and his friend would make many expeditions
from which both men would return in safety. Garratt
Skinner was no blunderer. And when at the last
he returned alone with some flawless story of an accident
in which his friend had lost his life, no one would
believe but that here was another mishap, and another
name to be added to the Alpine death-roll.
