Gemmi Pass

“ Out of the village, and more towards the mountains, there are said to be still stronger ones. The water has not the slightest smell of sulphur, and neither at its source nor in its channel does it make the least deposit of ochre or of any other earth or mineral, but like any other clear spring water it leaves not the slightest trace behind it. As it comes out of the earth it is extremely hot, and is famous for its good qualities. We had still time for a walk to the foot of the Gemmi, which appeared to us to be at no great distance. ”

“ The next morning, however, he awoke in a soberer mood and remembered that Gemma was going to Leghorn and the Padre to Rome. January, February, March—three long months to Easter! And if Gemma should fall under “Protestant” influences at home (in Arthur's vocabulary “Protestant” stood for “Philistine”) ———No, Gemma would never learn to flirt and simper and captivate tourists and bald-headed shipowners, like the other English girls in Leghorn; she was made of different stuff. But she might be very miserable; she was so young, so friendless, so utterly alone among all those wooden people. ”

“ Gemma, lying chest downward on the turf, sighed, and buried her hands in her abundant curls and cooled her forehead on the damp grass. She was just thirteen years old, and she was so pretty that she made the heart of the old grandfather ache often when he looked at her and thought that she would most likely soon be left alone in the world, for her little brother Bindo could not be said to count for anything, being only ten years old. Gemma was very lovely indeed, being tall and lithe and gay, and full of grace, and having a beautiful changeable face, all light and color. ”

“ The children, too, cover their heads in the same way, and Gemila no longer looks out to see what is passing: the sun is too bright; it would hurt her eyes and make her head ache. She shuts her eyes and falls half asleep, sitting there high upon the camel's back. But, if she could look out, there would be nothing to see but what she has seen many and many times before,—great plains of sand or pebbles, and sometimes high, bare rocks,—not a tree to be seen, and far off against the sky, the low purple hills. ”

“ The next morning, when she awoke, Gemma stretched out her hand as if she expected to find some one by her side; but she was alone, and for a few minutes her eyes wandered round the chamber, and then turned and fixed themselves on the table by the bedside. An open letter lay upon it, she took it up and read:—
“Madame la Comtesse,—I could have taken the vengeance of a brigand upon you; I preferred to indulge myself in the pleasure of a prince! but that, when you awake, you may not imagine you have been in a dream, I have left you a proof of the reality; look in your mirror. “Pascal Bruno.” ”

“ Jimmie passed around a ledge of rock and was soon out of their sight.
The remainder of that race for freedom always came back to the boy’s mind as a bit of nightmare. He ran swiftly along ledges, bounded over boulders, dipped breathlessly into gulches, and clung to precipitous sides with his bare fingers until it seemed that he must drop from sheer exhaustion. At last he came to a canyon wider and deeper than any which he had yet encountered. ”

“ The bored and melancholy literary lions brightened up a little at the sound of Gemma's name; she was very popular among them; and the radical journalists, especially, gravitated at once to her end of the long room. But she was far too practised a conspirator to let them monopolize her. Radicals could be had any day; and now, when they came crowding round her, she gently sent them about their business, reminding them with a smile that they need not waste their time on converting her when there were so many tourists in need of instruction. ”

“ The Capuchins at Realp.
During the descent of Gemmi the woman died on his back, but he brought her dead as she was to Leukerbad. When we asked what sort of people they were, and what could have brought them at such a season into the mountains, he said they were poor people of the canton of Berne, who, driven by want, had taken to the road at an unseasonable period of the year, in the hope of finding some relations either in Valais or the Italian canton, and had been overtaken by a snow-storm. ”

“ Gemma went back to her room to finish her dressing. She put on a pink muslin frock and a hat of white straw wreathed with roses and leaves. Surely her beauty should avail to give her all she desired, light and warmth always, diamonds and fine laces, and silks to clothe her and give her grace, and the possession of the one man’s heart, with his name and a place in the world beside him. Surely she was not destined to live with Orazio and his tiresome mother, penned up in a shabby little house in Lucca, and there growing old and hideous. ”

“ Jemmy, she cried, if my father should hear thee,
We shall be ruin'd, pray therefore repair,
At the sea-side I will instantly meet you,
With my two maids I will come to thee there.
Her night-gown embroider'd with gold and silver,
Carelessly round her body she throws,
With the two maidens who did attend her,
To meet her true love she instantly goes.
Close in his arms the spirit did enfold her,
Jemmy, she said, you are colder than clay;
Sure you can never be the man I admire,
Paler than death you appear unto me. ”

“ Dear Pietro," he added, moving towards the bed, "I know you were tempted and——"
"Keep off! Keep off!" screamed Neri, shrinking back. "Liar! you have come to kill me. I see it in your eyes!"
"No, no," said Gemma, soothingly; "he has no weapon."
"None, my wife!" echoed Bardi, touching the spring of the cross—"only this dagger!" and Gemma saw the silver Christ fall on the floor, while the cross which had borne Him remained, a poniard, in the right hand of her deceived husband. With a cry of horror, she flung herself on the sick man. ”

“ Thus laden they were to descend the Gemmi Rocks, and seemed to think it no hardship, returning us cheerful looks while we noticed the happy burthens which they carried. Those peasant travellers out of sight, we go on over the same rocky ground, snowy pikes and craggy eminences still bounding the prospect. But ere long we approach the neighbourhood of trees, and overlooking a long smooth level covered with poor yellowish grass, saw at a distance, in the centre of the level, a group of travellers of a different kind—a party of gentry, male and female, on mules. ”

“ That he was a handsome young man, with a grave and pensive face and a very sweet smile, when he did smile, which was rarely, did not affect Gemma’s dislike to him: she was too young to be impressed by good looks. Philip Carey was not touched by the beauty of her either: he scarcely saw that she was pretty, he was so angry with her for what seemed to him her saucy answers. ”

“ That's just the way with Italy; it's not patience that's wanted—it's for somebody to get up and defend themselves———”
“Jim, dear, if anger and passion could have saved Italy she would have been free long ago; it is not hatred that she needs, it is love.”
As he said the word a sudden flush went up to his forehead and died out again. Gemma did not see it; she was looking straight before her with knitted brows and set mouth.
“You think I am wrong, Arthur,” she said after a pause; “but I am right, and you will grow to see it some day. This is the house. Will you come in?” ”

“ The boys’ stories of the wild man had worked on his imagination and a feeling that the man [297] might be his father had come to possess him. But, of course, he had no proof of the matter till he knelt at the bedside of the raving man and saw the tattoo marks. Such, in brief, was Jimmie’s strange story.
With this, our party had to be content for the time being, and leaving Jimmie with the neighborhood doctor at Bill Dawkins’ hut, they went down the trail to pitch camp at the Big Bend. ”

“ Jimmie, whose total unconsciousness of her great beauty is one of her supreme charms. She wore a black lace gown that night with sleeves which came not quite to her elbow; no bracelets to mar those perfect arms, but her hands fairly loaded with rings. She never looks at any other man except Jimmie, and Jimmie thinks that the earth exists simply for her. Poor Jimmie never can express his emotion in proper words, but I have seen his eyes fill with tears of love and pride as he whispered to me, "Isn't she ripping to-night?" ”

“ Their passionate paroxysms of woe had no limit, and no likeness to anything ever seen in Devon before.
Gemma had to be torn by main force from her brother and grandfather, and, writhing in the hands of the constables as an otter writhes on a spear, she shook her little clinched fists at the bench, and, seeing there only the face of Philip Carey, who to her belief [154] was sole author of all her sorrows and ills, she cried to him, “I struck you yesterday, I will hurt you more before many days are over. You are a wicked, wicked, wicked man!” ”

“ Gemma started ... “He will wake mamma!” Sanin promptly darted out into the street, thrust a few kreutzers into the organ-grinder’s hand, and made him cease playing and move away. When he came back, Gemma thanked him with a little nod of the head, and with a pensive smile she began herself just audibly humming the beautiful melody of Weber’s, in which Max expresses all the perplexities of first love. ”

“ The boys had traveled farther from the camp than they had intended, and the return journey was all up hill. They surveyed the prospect gloomily.
"I could eat the top off one of the mountains!" Jimmie declared, as they turned to make the climb. "I never was so hungry in my life. Wish we were back in camp!"
Teddy, who had turned to look down into the valley, now caught Jimmie by the arm and pointed downward, where a low-lying ridge jutted out of the general slope and made a small canyon between itself and the body of the mountains, a canyon in which a trinkle of water showed. ”

“ Gemila still rides upon the camel, and I can easily understand that she prays to Allah with a full heart under the shining stars so clear and far, and that at the call to prayer in the early dawn her pretty little veiled head is bent in true love and worship. But I must tell you what she sees soon after sunrise on this second morning. Across the sand, a long way before them, something with very long legs is running, almost flying. She knows well what it is, for she has often seen them before, and she calls to one of the servants, "See, there is the ostrich!" ”

“ Poor Jemmy! I shall never forget the manner in which he, by one of those straightforward, not-to-be-mistaken flashes of wit, silenced a brow-beating Radical Huntingdon attorney, at a Reform-meeting in Cambridge market-pace. Jemmy was a native of Cambridge, and was the son of a former chapel-clerk of Trinity College, who gave him an excellent classical education, and had him articled to an eminent solicitor, with fine talents and good prospects. But though Jemmy was “a cunning man with a hard head,” such as [Pg 104] his profession required, he had a soft heart,—fell in love with a pretty girl. ”

“ At this last information, Altavilla could not restrain his mirth.
“And you think, my lord,” said he, “that Bruno will bring them back?”
“I am certain of it,” replied the prince.
“Now we are on this subject,” interrupted the Princess of Butera, “is there any one else in this company who has seen Pascal Bruno, and who has spoken to him? I dote upon tales of brigands, they make me ready to die with fright.”
“There is the Countess of Castel Nuovo,” observed the Albanian; “she has seen him.”
Gemma started, and every one looked at her as if to interrogate her. ”

“ Sanin consented. He felt very happy. In the quietly monotonous, smooth current of life lie hid great delights, and he gave himself up to these delights with zest, asking nothing much of the present day, but also thinking nothing of the morrow, nor recalling the day before. How much the mere society of such a girl as Gemma meant to him! He would shortly part from her and, most likely, for ever; but so long as they were borne, as in Uhland's song, in one skiff over the sea of life, untossed by tempest, well might the traveller rejoice and be glad. ”

“ Awfully in sympathy with our sensations is the ghastly scenery at the top of the Gemmi—the black lake, which is frozen all the year round, and the dismal, miserable inn beside it, which is the scene of Werther's horrible tragedy, of which I have so often since told the foundation-story.
My Uncle Penrhyn paid us a visit at Thun, with his daughter Emmie and a cousin, and I afterwards joined them at Lucerne, and was their guest in a most happy excursion to Andermatt. Afterwards I went alone to Engelberg, the village and great Benedictine convent in the green Alps under the Tetlis mountains. ”

“ Mary's parents showed Jemmy much gratitude for his courageous conduct in saving her life, and the girl clung to him with intense affection; whilst Jemmy, who seemed to think he had acquired some right over her by his having saved her life, was never happy unless he was by her side. They were always together. ”

“ I watched Jimmie as he first saw the Achensee. The colour came into his face, his eyes brightened, and he clenched his hands—a sure sign of feeling in Jimmie.
There was a little white steamboat at the pier. The lake spread out before us was of the colour which you see when you look down into the depths of some fine unmounted sapphire at Tiffany's. The pebbles on the beach under the water looked as if they were in a basin of blueing. I reached in to take one out, and thoroughly expected to find my hand stained when I withdrew it. ”