Part 1 (1/2)
The Great Amulet.
by Maud Diver.
PROLOGUE.
I.
”The little more, and how much it is!
The little less, and what worlds away.”
--Browning.
No one in Zermatt dreamed that a wedding had been solemnised in the English church on that September afternoon of the early eighties.
Tourists and townsfolk alike had been cheated of a legitimate thrill of interest and speculation. Nor would even the most percipient have recognised as bride and bridegroom the tall dark Englishman, in a rough shooting suit, and the girl, in simple white travelling gear, who stood together, an hour later, on the outskirts of the little town, and took leave of their solitary wedding guest:--an artist _cap-a-pie_; velveteen coat, loosely knotted tie, and soft felt hat complete.
In this Bohemian garb Michael Maurice,--as the bride's brother,--had led his sister up the aisle, and duly surrendered her to Captain Lenox, R.A., serenely unaware, the while, of censorious side-glances bestowed upon him by the ascetic-featured chaplain, who had an air of officiating under protest, of silently a.s.serting his own aloofness from this hole-and-corner method of procedure. But his att.i.tude was powerless to affect the exalted emotion of that strange half-hour, wherein, by the repet.i.tion of a few simple, forcible words, a man and woman take upon themselves the hardest task on earth with a valiant a.s.surance which is at once pathetic and sublime.
To Quita Maurice, impressionable at all times, the absence of ceremony, of those trivialities which obscure and belittle the one supreme fact, gave an added solemnity to the unadorned service: forced upon her a half-disturbing realisation that she was pa.s.sing from an independence, dearer to her than life, into the keeping of a man:--a man of whom she knew little beyond the fact that he loved her with a strength and singleness of heart which is the heritage of those who reach life's summit without indulging in emotional excursions by the way.
And now all needful preliminaries were over; even to the wedding breakfast, a cheerful, casual meal of cold chicken, iced cake, and a bottle of champagne, served in Maurice's unpretentious rooms, on the pastry-cook's second floor.
The scene of their brief courts.h.i.+p lay behind them, dozing in the golden stillness of late September: before them a footpath climbed through a forest of pine and fir to the Eiffel Alp Hotel; and on all sides mult.i.tudinous mountains flung heroic contours outward and upward, to a galaxy of peaks, that glittered diamond-bright upon a turquoise sky. A mule, ready-saddled, champed his bit at a respectful distance from the trio: for Lenox, an indefatigable mountaineer, had insisted on taking the footpath up to the Eiffel; where they would spend ten days, before crossing into Italy, and so on to Brindisi, _en route_ for his station in India.
The expiration of his leave, and his determination to take Quita Maurice back with him, were responsible for the brevity of their engagement, and for the absence, in both, of that brand-new aspect which proclaims a bride and bridegroom to an eternally interested world.
For this last Eldred Lenox was abundantly grateful. All the Scot in him a.s.serted itself in a fierce reticence, an inbred sense of privacy where a man's deepest feelings were concerned: and now, as he stood battling with his impatience to be gone, he was suffering acute discomfiture from the demonstrative leave-taking in progress between Maurice and his sister. For their sakes, at least, he would fain have effaced himself: while they, as a matter of fact, were momentarily oblivious of his existence.
Artists both, of no mean quality, they had lived and worked together for five years, since the day when Michael had rented his first modest studio in the King's Road, Chelsea: and, setting aside Art, his feeling for Quita was the one serious element in a nature light and variable as a summer cloud. From his French mother he derived an elastic spirit that yielded itself to the emotion of the pa.s.sing moment; and Lenox, watching him, marvelled at the sharp dividing-lines drawn between the different races of earth.
He half resented such facility of self-expression. Possibly he envied it: though no doubt he would have denied the impeachment with an oath.
Eventually it occurred to Maurice that he could not well stand in the roadway till sunset, taking leave of the sister he was so loth to lose, and, with a sigh of exasperation, he pushed her gently towards her husband.
”_Voila, cherie_, . . . enough of my endless adieux, or _ce bon_ Lenox may be tempted to break the sixth commandment on my account, in addition to the eighth.”
Lenox smiled tolerantly down from six feet of height upon his slim, fair brother-in-law.
”That temptation should be your own prerogative, my dear fellow, since I am taking her from you for good.”
Maurice laughed.
”_Mon Dieu_, yes. You have certainly given me a fair excuse to hate you. And I have wondered more than once, in the last three months, why one could not manage it.”
”Too fatiguing for a man of your calibre!” the other answered with good-humoured bluntness. ”You could never be bothered to keep it up.”
”Ah, _mon ami_, you men who speak little speak to the point! You are altogether too discerning. But for Quita's sake, at least, we could never be otherwise than firm friends. With all my heart I wish good fortune to you both, and count the days to your return.”
The two men shook hands cordially: and Lenox, beckoning the muleteer, lifted his wife into the saddle; thus averting a final demonstration.
She waved her hand to a blurred vision of her brother, smiling resolutely, till his back was turned: and he departed townward;--a lonely brown figure, to which a slight stoop of the shoulders lent an added air of pathos.