CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH. THE ALPEN-GLUHEN. "And last of all, Love, like an Alpine harebell, hung with tears, VIOLET'S fluttered nerves and wearied frame rendered it necessary for the party of English travellers to stay for a few days at Mürrem, and afterwards it was decided that they should all go down to Grindelwald, and spend there the remainder of the time which they had set apart for the Swiss tour. The landlord of the Jungfrau treated them with the utmost consideration, and amused Kennedy by paying him as much deference as if he had been Tell or Arnold himself. Leaving in his hands all endeavours to discover the two scoundrels, who had entirely decamped, Kennedy gave him one of the guns, while he carried with him the other to keep as a trophy in his rooms at Camford. There are few sights more pleasant than that of two families bound together by the ties of friendship and affection, and living together as though they were all WITH THE IMMORTALS. 223 brothers and sisters of a common home. For long years afterwards the Homes and the Kennedys looked back on those days at Grindelwald as among the happiest of their lives, and, indeed, they glided by like a dream of unbroken pleasure. How is it that there can be such a thing as ennui, or that people ever can be at a loss what to do? In the morning they took short excursions to the glaciers or the roots of the great mountains, and Cyril made adventurous expeditions with his fishing-rod to the mountain streams. And at evening they sate in the long twilight in the balcony of their room, while Eva and Violet sang them sweet, simple English songs, which rang so softly through the air, that the crowd of guides and porters which always hang about a Swiss hotel used to gather in the streets to listen, and the English visiters collected in the garden to catch the familiar tones. Julian and Kennedy always gave some hours every day to their books, and Cyril, though he could be persuaded to do little else, spent some of his unemployed time on his much-abused holiday-task for the ensuing quarter. And when the candles were lit, the girls would sketch or work, and Julian or Kennedy would read or translate to them aloud. Sometimes they spent what Mr. Kennedy used to call "an evening with the immortals," and taking some volume of the poets, would each choose a favourite passage to read aloud in turn, This was Mr. Kennedy's great delight, and he got quite enthusiastic when the well-remembered lines came back to him with fresh beauty, borne on the pleasant voices of Eva, Julian, or Cyril, like an old jewel when new facets are cut on its lustrous surface. "Stop there; that's an immortal, lad-an immortal," he would say to Cyril, when the boy seemed to be passing over some "chromatic sequence of fine thought" without sufficient admiration; and then he would repeat the passage from memory with such just emphasis, that on these evenings all felt that they were laying up precious thoughts for happy future hours. 66 'Now, Mrs. Dudley, and you young ladies, we're going to translate you part of a Greek novel to-night," said Julian. "A Greek novel!" said Cyril, with a touch of incredulous suspicion. "Those old creatures didn't write novels, did they?" Only the best novel that ever was written, Cyril." "What's it called?" "The Odyssey." "O what a chouse! you don't mean to call that a novel, do you?" "Well, let the ladies decide." So he read to them how Ulysses returned in the guise of a beggar, after twenty years of war and wandering to his own palace-door, and saw the haughty suitors revelling in his halls; and how, as he reached the door, Argus, the hunting-dog, now old and neglected, and full of fleas, recollected him, when all had forgotten him, and fawned upon him, and licked his hand and died; and how the suitors insulted him, and one of them threw a footstool at him, which by one quick move, he avoided, and said nothing, and another flung a shinbone at his head, which he caught in his hand, and said nothing, but only smiled grimly in his heart—ever so little, a grim, sardonic smile; and how the old nurse recognized him by the scar of the boar's tusk on his leg, but he quickly repressed the exclamation of wonderment which sprang to her lips; and how he sat, ragged but princely, by the fire in his hall, and the red light flickered over him, and he spake to the suitors words of solemn admonition; and how, when Agelaus warned them, a strange foreboding seized their souls, and they looked at each other with great eyes, and smiled with alien lips, and burst into quenchless laughter, though their eyes were filled with tears of blood; and how Ulysses drew his own mighty bow, which not one of them could use, and how he handled it, and twanged the string till it sang like a swallow in his ear, and sent the arrow flying with a whiz through the twelve iron rings of the line of axes; and then, lastly, how, like to a god, he leapt on his own threshold with a shout, and emptied his quiver on the ground, and gathered his rags about him, and, aided by the young Telemachus and the divine swineherd, sent hurtling into the band of wine-stained rioters the swift arrows of inevitable death. Pleased with the tale, which the girls decided, in spite of Cyril's veto, to be a genuine novel, they asked for a new Greek romance, and Julian read to them from Herodotus about the rise and fall of empires, and "Strange stories of the deaths of kings." One of his stories was the famous one of Croesus, and the irony of P 226 THE DEATHS OF KINGS. his fate, and the warning words of Solon, all of which rendered into quaint rich English, struck Cyril so much, that, mingling up the tale with reminiscences of Longfellow's "Blind Bartimeus," he produced, with much modesty at the breakfast table next morning, the following very creditable boyish imitation: "Speak Grecia's wisest, thou, 'tis said, "The monarch bent his eager eye, And slow came forth the calm reply Upon his funeral pyre he lay οὐδεὶς τῶν ζώντων ὄλβιος. "How little deemed that Grecian sage Those words should live from age to age, Τέλλος ὁ ̓Αθηναῖος. οὐδεὶς τῶν ζώντων ὄλβιος.” * In a manner such as this the summer hours glided happily away. But all things, happy or mournful, must come to an end, lest we should forget God in our prosperity, or curse Him in our despair. Too quickly for all their wishes their last Sunday in Switzerland had come. Most of them had spent the day in thought * These verses were really written by a boy of fourteen. |