I
It was late in the season, and for the best part of a week the weather
had been disheartening. Even to-day, though there had been no rain
since last night, the mists swirled in masses over a sunless valley
green as spring, and the hill-sides ran with water. It pleased Dennis
Challoner, however, to believe that better times were coming. He stood
at a window of the Riffelalp Hotel, and imagined breaches in the dark
canopy of cloud.
"Yes," he said, hopefully, "the weather is taking up."
He was speaking to a young girl whose name he did not know, a
desultory acquaintance made during the twelve hours which he had
passed at the hotel.
"I believe it is," she answered. She looked out of the window at two
men who were sitting disconsolately on a bench. "Those are your men,
aren't they? So you climb with guides!"
There was, a note of deprecation in her voice quite unmistakable. She
was trying not to show scorn, but the scorn was a little too strong
for her. Challoner laughed.
"I do. With guides I can go where I like, when I like. I don't have to
hunt for companions or make arrangements beforehand. I have climbed
with the Blauers for five years now, and we know each other's ways."
He broke off, conscious that in her eyes he was making rather feeble
excuses to cover his timidity and incompetence.
"I have no doubt you are quite right," she replied. There was a gentle
indulgence in her voice, and a smile upon her lips which cried as
plainly as words, "I could tell you something if I chose." But she was
content to keep her triumphant secret to herself. She laid her hand
upon the ledge of the window, and beat a little tattoo with her
finger-tips, so that Challoner could not but look at them. When he
looked he understood why she thus called his attention. She wore a
wedding-ring.
Challoner was surprised. For she was just a tall slip of a girl. He
put her age at nineteen or less. She was clear-eyed and pretty, with
the tremendous confidence of one who looks out at life from the secure
shelter of a school-room. Then, with too conscious an unconsciousness,
she turned away, and Challoner saw no more of her that day.
But the hotel was still full, though most of the climbers had gone,
and in the garden looking over the valley of Zermatt, at six o'clock
that evening, a commotion broke out about the big telescope. Challoner
was discussing plans for the morrow with his guides by the parapet at
the time, and the three men turned as one towards the centre of the
clamour. A German tourist was gesticulating excitedly amidst a group
of his compatriots. He broke through the group and came towards
Challoner, beaming like a man with good news.
"You should see--through the telescope--since you climb. It is very
interesting. But you must be quick, or the clouds will close in
again."
"What do you mean?" Challoner asked.
"There, on the top of the Weisshorn, I saw two men."
"Now? At six o'clock in the evening--on a day of storm?" Challoner
cried. "It's impossible."
"But I have seen them, I tell you."
Challoner turned and looked down and across the valley. The great
curtain of cloud hung down in front of the hills like wool. The lower
slopes of dark green met it, and on them the black pines marched up
into the mist. Of rock and glacier and soaring snow not an inch was
visible. But the tourist clung to his story.
"It is my first visit to the mountains. I was never free before, and I
must go down to-morrow morning. I thought that even now I should never
see them--all the time I have been here the weather has been terrible.
But at the last moment I have had the good fortune. Oh, I am very
pleased."
The enthusiasm of this middle-aged German business man, an enthusiasm
childlike as it was sincere, did not surprise Challoner. He looked
upon that as natural. But he doubted the truth of the man's vision. He
wanted so much to see what he saw.
"Tell me exactly what you saw," Challoner asked, and this was the
story which the tourist told.
He was looking through the telescope when suddenly the clouds thinned,
and through a film of vapour he saw, very far away and dimly, a
soaring line of black like a jagged reef, and a great white slope more
solid than the clouds, and holding light. He kept his eye to the lens,
hoping with all his soul that the wonderful vision might be vouchsafed
to him, and as he looked, the screen of vapour vanished, and he saw
quite clearly the exquisite silver pyramid of the Weisshorn soaring up
alone in the depths of a great cavern of grey cloud. For a little
while he continued to watch, hoping for a ray of sunlight to complete
a picture which he was never to forget, and then, to his amazement and
delight, two men climbed suddenly into his vision on to the top of the
peak. They came from the south or the south-west.
"By the Schalligrat!" exclaimed Challoner. "It's not possible!"
"Yes," the tourist protested. He was sure. There was no illusion at
all. The two men did not halt for a second on the top. They crossed
it, and began to descend the long ridge towards the St. Nicholas
valley.
"I am sure," he continued. "One of the climbers, the one in front, was
moving very slowly and uncertainly like a man in an extremity of
weakness. The last was strong. I saw him lift the rope between them,
which was slack, and shake the snow off it----"
"You saw that?" exclaimed Challoner. "What then?"
"Nothing. The clouds closed again over the peak, and I saw no more."
Challoner had listened to the story with a growing anxiety. He took
the chair behind the telescope, and sat with his eye to the lens for a
long while. But he saw only writhing mists in a failing light. He rose
and moved away. There was no mountaineer that day in the hotel except
himself. Not one of the group about the telescope quite understood the
gravity of the story which had been told them--if it were true. But it
could not be true, Challoner assured himself.
It was just possible, of course, that on a fine day some party which
had adventured upon a new ascent might find itself on the top of the
Weisshorn at six o'clock in the evening. But on a day like this no man
in his senses would be on any ridge or face of that mountain at all,
even in the morning. Yet the tourist's story was circumstantial. That
was the fact which troubled Challoner. The traverse of the Weisshorn
from the Schallijoch, for instance, was one of the known difficult
climbs of the Pennine Alps. There was that little detail, too, of the
last man shaking the snow from the slack of the rope. But no doubt the
tourist had read the year-books of the Austrian Alpine Club. Certainly
he must have been mistaken. He wanted to see; therefore he saw. It was
inconceivable that the story should be true.
Thus Challoner thought all through that evening and the next day. But
as he left the dining-room the manageress met him with a grave face,
and asked him into her office. She closed the door when he had entered
the room, and said:
"There has been an accident."
Challoner's thoughts flew back to the story of the tourist.
"On the Weisshorn?"
"Yes. It is terrible!" And the woman sat down, while the tears came
into her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Two young Englishmen, it appeared, Mark Frobisher and George Liston,
had come up from the valley a week ago. They would not hear of guides.
They had climbed from Wasdale Head and in the Snowdon range. The
Alpine Club was a body of old fogies. They did not think much of the
Alps.
"They were so young--boys! Mr. Frobisher brought a wife with him."
"A wife?" exclaimed Challoner.
"Yes. She was still younger than he was, and she spoke as he
did--knowing nothing, but full of pride in her husband, and quite
confident in his judgment. They were children--that is the truth--and
very likely we might have persuaded them that they were wrong--if only
Herr Ranks had not come, too, from Vienna about the same time."
Challoner began dimly to understand the tragedy which had happened.
Ranks was well known amongst mountaineers. Forty years old, the right
age for endurance, he was known for a passion for long expeditions
undertaken with very small equipment; and for a rather dangerous
indifference as to the companions he climbed with. He had at once
proposed the Schalligrat ascent to the two Englishmen. They had gone
down to Randa, slept the night there, and in bad weather had walked up
to the Weisshorn hut, with provisions for three days. Nothing more had
been heard of the party until this very afternoon, when Ranks and
George Listen, both exhausted and the latter terribly frost-bitten,
staggered into the Randa hotel.
"That's terrible," said Challoner. But still more terrible was the
story which the Austrian had to tell. He had written it out at once
very briefly, and sent it up to the Riffelalp. The manageress handed
the letter to Challoner.
"We stayed in the hut two days," it ran, "hoping that the weather
would lift. The next morning there were promising signs, and taking
our blankets we crossed the Schalliberg glacier, and camped on the
usual spur of the Schallihorn. We had very little food left, and I
know now that we ought to have returned to Randa. But I did not think
of the youth of my companions. It was very cold during the night, but
no snow fell, and in the morning there was a gleam of sunshine.
Accordingly we started, and reached the Schallijoch in four hours and
a half. Under the top of the col we breakfasted, and then attacked the
ridge. The going was very difficult; there was often a glaze of black
ice upon the rocks, and as not one of us knew the ridge at all, we
wasted much time in trying to traverse some of the bigger gendarmes on
the western side, whereas they were only possible on the east.
Moreover, the sunlight did not keep its promise: it went out
altogether at half-past ten; the ridge became bitterly and dangerously
cold, and soon after midday the wind rose. We dared not stop anywhere,
and our food was now altogether exhausted. At two o'clock we found a
shelter under a huge tower of red rock, and there we rested. Frobisher
complained of exhaustion, and was clearly very weak. Liston was
stronger, but not in a condition for a climb which I think must always
be difficult and was now hazardous in the extreme. The cold had made
him very sleepy. We called a council of war. But it was quite evident
to me that we could not get down in the state in which we were, and
that a night upon the ridge without food or drink was not to be
thought of. I was certain that we were not very far from the top, and
I persuaded my friends to go forward. I climbed up and over the red
tower by a small winding crack in its face, and with great difficulty
managed, by the help of the rope, to draw my friends up after me. But
this one tower took more than an hour to cross, and on a little
snow-col like a knife-edge on the farther side of it, Frobisher
collapsed altogether. What with the cold and his exhaustion his heart
gave out. I swear that we stayed with him until he died--yes, I swear
it--although the wind was very dangerous to the rest of us, and he was
evidently dying. We stayed with him--yes. When all was over, I tied
him by the waist with a piece of spare rope we carried to a splinter
of rock which cropped out of the col, and went on with Liston. I did
not think that we should either of us now escape, but the rock-towers
upon the arete came to an end at last, and at six o'clock we stood on
the mountain-top. Then we changed the order, Liston going now first
down the easy eastern ridge. The snow was granulated and did not bind,
and we made very slow progress. We stopped for the night at a height,
I should think, of thirteen thousand feet, with very little protection
from the wind. The cold was terrible, and I did not think that Liston
would live through the night. But he did, and today there was
sunlight, and warmth in the sunlight, so that moving very carefully we
got down to the hut by midday. There, by a happy chance, we found some
crusts and odds and ends of food which we had left behind; and after a
rest were able to come on to Randa, getting some milk at the half-way
chalet on the way down. Liston is frost-bitten in the feet and hands,
but I think will be able to be moved down to the clinic at Lucerne in
a couple of days. It is all my fault. Yes. I say that frankly. I alone
am to blame. I take it all upon my shoulders. You can say so freely at
the Riffelalp. 'Ranks takes all the blame.' I shall indeed write
to-morrow to the Zurich papers to say that the fault is mine."
Challoner read the message through again. The assumption of
magnanimity in the last few lines was singularly displeasing, and the
eager assertion that the party had not left Frobisher until he was
actually dead seemed to protest overmuch.
"That's a bad letter," said Challoner. "He left Frobisher still alive
upon the ridge," and the desolation of that death in the cold and the
darkness and the utter loneliness of those storm-riven pinnacles
soaring above the world seemed to him appalling. But the manageress
had no thoughts to spare for the letter.
"Who will tell her?" she asked, rocking her body to and fro, and
fixing her troubled eyes on Challoner. "It is you. You are her
countryman."
Challoner was startled.
"What do you mean?"
"I told you. Mr. Frobisher brought a wife with him. Yes. They had only
been married a couple of months. She is a year or two younger than he
is--a child. Oh, and she was so proud of him. For my part I did not
like him very much. I would not have trusted him with the happiness of
anyone I cared for. But she had given him all her heart. And now she
must be told!"
"She is in the hotel now?" Challoner asked.
"Yes. You were talking to her yesterday."
Challoner did not need the answer.
"Very well. I will tell her." And he turned away, his heart sick at
the task which lay before him. But before he had reached the door the
woman called him back.
"Could we not give her just one more night of confidence and
contentment? Nothing can be done until to-morrow. No one in the hotel
knows but you and I. She will have sorrow enough. She need not begin
to suffer before she must. Just one more night of quiet sleep."
So she pleaded, and Challoner clutched at the plea. He was twenty-six,
and up to the moment life had hidden from him her stern ordeals. How
should he break the news? He needed time carefully to prepare the way.
He shrank from the vision of the pain which he must inflict.
"Yes, it can all wait until to-morrow," he said, and he went out of
the office into the hall. There was a sound of music in the big
drawing-room--a waltz, and the visitors were dancing to it. The noise
jarred upon his ears, and he crossed towards the garden door in order
to escape from it. But to reach the garden he had to pass the
ballroom, and as he passed it he looked in, and the irony of the world
shocked him so that he stood staring upon the company with a white
face and open-mouthed. Frobisher's widow was dancing. She was dancing
with all the supple grace of her nineteen years, her face flushed
and smiling, whilst up there, fourteen thousand feet high on the
storm-swept ridge of the Weisshorn, throughout that bitter night her
dead husband bestrode the snow, and nodded and swayed to the gale. As
she whirled past the door she saw him. She smiled with the pleasant
friendliness of a girl who is perfectly happy, and with just a hint of
condescension for the weaker vessel who found it necessary to climb
with guides. Challoner hurried out into the garden.
He went up to her room the next morning and broke the news to her as
gently as he could. He was prepared for tears, for an overwhelming
grief. But she showed him neither. She caught at an arm of a chair,
and leaning upon it, seated herself when he began to speak. But after
that she listened, frowning at him in a perplexity like a child over
some difficult problem of her books. And when he had finished she drew
a long breath.
"I don't know why you should try to frighten me," she said. "Of
course, it is not true."
She would not believe--no, not even with Ranks's letter in her hand,
at which she stared and stared as though it needed decoding.
"Perhaps I could read it if I were alone," she said at last, and
Challoner left her to herself.
In an hour she sent for him again. Now indeed she knew, but she had no
tears wherewith to ease her knowledge. Challoner saw upon her face
such an expression of misery and torture as he hoped never to see
again. She spoke with a submission which was very strange. It was only
the fact of her youth, not her consciousness of it, which seemed to
protest against her anguish as against an injustice.
"I was abrupt to you," she said. "I am sorry. You were kind to me. I
did not understand. But I understand now, and there is something which
I should like to ask you. You see, I do not know."
"Yes?"
"Would it be possible that he should be brought back to me?"
She had turned to the window, and she spoke low, and with a world of
yearning in her voice.
"We will try."
"I should be so very grateful."
She had so desolate a look that Challoner made a promise of it, even
though he knew well the rashness of the promise.
"You will go yourself?" she asked, turning her face to him.
"Of course."
"Thank you. I have no friends here, you see, but you."
Eight guides were collected that afternoon in the valley. Challoner
brought down his two, and the whole party, under the guide-chief,
moved up to the Weisshorn hut. Starting the next morning with a clear
sky of starlight above their heads, they crossed the mountain by the
eastern arete, and descending the Schalligrat, found young Frobisher
tied by the waist and shoulders to a splinter of rock as Ranks had
described. He was astride a narrow edge of snow, a leg dangling down
each precipice. His eyes stared at them, his mouth hung open, and when
any stray gust of wind struck the ridge, he nodded at them with a
dreadful pleasantry. He had the air, to Challoner's eyes, of a live
paralytic rather than of a man frozen and dead. His face was the
colour of cheese.
With infinite trouble they lifted him back on to the mountain summit,
and roped him round in a piece of stout sacking. Then they dragged him
down the snow of the upper part of the ridge, carried him over the
lower section of rock, and, turning off the ridge to the right,
brought him down to the glacier.
It was then three o'clock in the afternoon, and half an hour later the
grimmest episode of all that terrible day occurred. The lashing of the
rope got loose as they dragged the body down the glacier, and suddenly
it worked out of the sacking and slid swiftly past them down a steep
slope of ice. A cry of horror broke from the rescue party. For a
moment or two they watched it helplessly as it gathered speed and
leapt into the air from one little hummock to another, the arms
tossing and whirling like the arms of a man taken off his guard. Then
it disappeared with a crash into a crevasse, and the glacier was
empty.
The party stood for a little while aghast, and the illusion which had
seized upon Challoner when he had first come in sight of the red
rock-tower on the other ridge attacked him again. He could not get it
out of his thoughts that this was a living man who had disappeared
from their gaze, so natural had all his movements been.
The party descended to the lip of the crevasse, and a guide was
lowered into it. But he could not reach the bottom, and they drew him
up again.
"That is his grave," said Joseph Blauer, solemnly; and they turned
away again and descended to Randa.
"How shall I meet that girl?" Challoner asked himself, in a passion of
remorse. It seemed to him that he had betrayed a trust, and the sum of
treachery deepened in him when he did tell it that night at the
Riffelalp. For tears had their way with her at last. She buried her
face in her arms upon the table, and sobbed as though her heart would
burst.
"I had so hoped that you would bring him back to me," she said. "I
cannot bear to think of him lying for ever in that loneliness of ice."
"I am very sorry," Challoner stammered, and she was silent. "You have
friends coming out to you?" he asked.
He went down into the hall, and a man whose face he remembered came
eagerly towards him. Challoner was able to identify him the next
moment. For the man cried out:
"It is done. Yes, it is in all the Zurich papers. I have said that I
alone am to blame. I have taken the whole responsibility upon my
shoulders." Herr Ranks brimmed with magnanimity.