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Unless he could get work and all his efforts to find it failed it would not do to remain in England. At Engelberg had secured a position as a wood carver, and his livelihood was assured. There, too, he possessed a scanty knowledge of the neighbors, and they of him.
But she spoke wistfully, as if it would be pleasant to hear Phebe say she would go with her. For a few minutes Phebe was lost in bewildered thought. Felicita had told her some months ago that she must go to Engelberg before she could give her consent to Felix marrying Alice, but it had escaped her memory, pushed out by more immediate and more present cares.
"Cecil's rejoicing is quite as much for Jock's sake as over his boy. He told me how they had been pledged as brothers in arms, and traces all that is best in himself to those days at Engelberg." "Yes, that night on the mountain was the great starting-point, thanks to dear little Armine." "I am writing to him and to Allen," said Barbara from a corner.
The journey, though not more than fourteen miles from Stans to Engelberg, occupied several hours, so broken up the narrow road was by the winter's rains and the melting snow. The steep ascent between Grafenort and Engelberg was dangerous, the more so as a heavy thunderstorm broke over it; but Felicita remained insensible to any peril.
Canon Pascal laid his hand fondly on her bowed head; and then he left her that she might be alone with the grave, and God. The miserable, delapidated hut at the entrance of Engelberg, with no light save that which entered by the doorway, had been Jean Merle's home since he had fixed his abode in the valley, drawn thither irresistibly by the grave which bore Roland Sefton's name.
"Some of us would have known French, or German, or Italian," was the reply, "but not one of us knows English." "Nor I," said the landlord; "and our English speaker went away last week, over the St. Gothard to Italy for the winter. Send round, Marie," he went on, speaking to his wife, "and find out any one in Engelberg who knows English. See! The poor fellow is trying to say something now."
"There are formalities to observe," said Phebe earnestly, "and they take much time. But I must leave Engelberg to-morrow, or the next day at the latest, taking her with me. Can you help me to do this?"
So careful was he of the monument that it was generally rumored he received a sum of money yearly for keeping it in order. No doubt the friends of the rich Englishman, who had erected so handsome a stone to his memory, made it worth the man's while to attend to it. Besides this grave, which he could not keep himself from haunting, Engelberg attracted him by its double association with Felicita.
The long, hot, white highway, dusty with a week's drought, carried back his thoughts so fully to old times that he walked on unconscious of the noontide heat and the sultriness of the road. Yet when he came to the lanes, green overhead and underfoot, and as silent as the mountain-heights round Engelberg, he felt the solace of the change.
"It was best for them all," he answered. "God knows I believed it was best. But it was a second sin, worse than the first, Phebe. I did the man who died no wrong, for he told me as he lay dying that he had no friends to grieve for him, and no property to leave. All he wanted was a decent grave; and he has it, and my name with it. The grave at Engelberg contains a stranger.
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