Florence a few days before him, and whom he was desirous to overtake, were still in the village.
“An English family—the Traffords. I’ve asked already at the Poste, but the landlady, who was busy ladling out soup to the new arrivals by the diligence, had hardly leisure to attend to me, and said she knew nothing of any forestieri of that name.”
“There is another inn,” said I, “the Silver Pelican, just round the corner, by the quaint old church. But English travellers are as rare in Airolo just now, as they will be plenty when the heats of early summer shall have given the foreign residents notice to quit. I’ve seen nothing of your friends. Stop—perhaps they were the folks who left this morning with a sort of caravan of motley people, forced into temporary comradeship by fear of being smothered in a drift.”
“A green carriage?”
“Just so.”
“Father, mother, and two daughters, one of them pretty, a lady’s maid in the rumble, and a heap of luggage?”
Maurice changed colour, and saying that he would make sure as to the truth, hurried off to the inn. He returned almost instantly, to say that the family that had just left had really been the Traffords. His having missed them was, he said, a most provoking circumstance, but the diligence would soon start, and he should catch them somewhere on this side of Bâle.
“But for that wearisome Prince Potocki, who kept me for three days hard at work altering—and, in my fancy, spoiling—the picture I had done for his Russian dilettanteship, I should have started along with the Traffords. As it is—”
“As it is, Maurice, you must be desperately smitten to hunt a family coach as the Furies did that classical party, Orestes. The black eyes are of course the magnet which—”
Maurice cut me short with a stamp and an impatient exclamation, and then reddened and begged my pardon for his burst of anger. “Excuse me, George, old boy, but you know a man in love is apt to be thin-skinned when anyone, even an old friend, seems to ridicule the girl he is engaged to; and as I am in hopes of being married some time this summer, and we are old chums—why, I don’t see any reason for keeping you in the dark.”
Then it all came out. At Florence, Maurice, who had the entrée of many good houses, had made the acquaintance of the Traffords, a well-to-do English family spending the winter there, and a mutual attachment had sprung up between the young artist and the eldest daughter. Lucy Trafford was one of the handsomest girls in Florence that winter, and, if Maurice’s enthusiastic praises were to be believed, as clever and good as she was beautiful. That Maurice should have fallen in love with her was not wonderful, nor was it very strange that this love should have been returned; but the most surprising feature in the case was, that old Trafford should have given his consent. The suitor had little or no property beyond his abilities and skill with brush and pencil, while the daughters would be co-heiresses of a fair property. As far as I could tell from Tindal’s hasty sketch of past proceedings, there had been a good deal of demur and paternal opposition, but this had somehow been smoothed away, and the engagement had received the fullest sanction of the parents.
“But am I not a lucky fellow, lucky beyond my deserts I feel and know! and have I not some excuse for being in a hurry to catch up the fugitives after a whole week, an age of separation from—”
“The diligence won’t start to-day, Monsieur. I would advise Monsieur to be prompt in securing a bed at the hotel, rooms being few!”
“The diligence not start to-day! You must surely be joking, conducteur!”
No. The man was perfectly serious. There were signs, he said, of a change of weather, signs not to be disregarded by one in his position, responsible for the safety of carriage and passengers. These signs had been first remarked by an old farmer from Uri, famous for his skill in detecting the tokens of an approaching storm, a skill as necessary among the mountains as in a seafaring life, and the most experienced of the Airolo men had confirmed the statement.
“And see, Monsieur, the change that has come over the sky. Even a city-bred man can make out a warning in that,” said the conducteur, as he turned away to superintend the placing of the diligence under shelter in the remise. Maurice and I looked up, and beheld a semitransparent veil of white film thickening and darkening over the pure sky, and growing like the fatal web of the Destinies. The sun grew dimmer every minute, and the frightened chirp of the birds came shrill and often from among the budding fruit-trees. It was easy to guess that a storm was brewing.
Suddenly Maurice struck his forehead, and uttered what was almost a cry of despair. “Lucy, Lucy, my own Lucy! On the pitiless Alpine heights, far from shelter or succour, with a storm coming on; and I stand here, safe and idle, like a coward, while she perishes in the snowdrifts.” And but for me, the young artist, whose distress of mind had overpowered his reason, would have started at a run up the winding road. I caught his arm and held it, though in spite of my superior strength I could hardly keep him back.
“Let me go, Bolton! let me go!” he angrily exclaimed, and for a moment I thought he would have struck me in the blindness of his frenzy.
“Listen only one moment; be reasonable, for Miss Trafford’s sake, if not for your own,” cried I, panting. “You would only lose your life on the hillside, and in no way assist her. If anything in the way of rescue is to be done, it must be done by coolness and concert. If we can get a guide, I will go with you, and between us we may hope to be of real service, unless, indeed, the caravan has gained shelter. Cheer up, man. Perhaps they are all snugly under cover at the Hospice or elsewhere.”
Maurice fairly sobbed as he wrung my hand, and thanked me for my goodwill. But nothing would serve him but that we should start at once. He could not be reassured, even by my strongest