THE CRIMSON SHAWL
Henry Fenwick and the Count went shooting. He came and asked my leave as
one who is uncertain of an answer. And I gave it guiltily, saying to
myself that anything which took his mind off Madame Von Eisenhagen was
certainly good. But there leaped in my heart a great hope that, in what
remained of the day, I might again see the Countess.
I was grievously disappointed. For though I lounged all the afternoon in
the pleasant spaces by the lake, only the servants, of the great empty
hotel passed at rare intervals. Of Lucia I saw nothing, till the Count
and Henry passed in with their guns and found me with my book.
"Have you been alone all the afternoon?" they said, innocently enough.
And it was some consolation to answer "Yes," and so to receive their
sympathy.
Henry came again to me after dinner. The Count was going over the hills
to the Forno glacier, and had asked him; but he would not go unless I
wished it. I bade him take my blessing and depart, and again he thanked
me.
There was that night a band of thirty excellent performers to discourse
music to the guests at the table--being, as the saw says, us four and no
more. But the Count was greatly at his ease, and told us tales of the
forests of Russia, of wolf-hunts, and of other hunts when the wolves
were the hunters--tales to make the blood run cold, yet not amiss being
recounted over a bottle of Forzato in the bright dining-room. For,
though it was the beginning of May, the fire was sparkling and roaring
upwards to dispel the chill which fell with the evening in these high
regions.
There is talk of mountaineering and of the English madness for it. The
Count and Henry Fenwick are on a side. Henry has been over long by
himself on the Continent. He is at present all for sport. Every day he
must kill something, that he may have something to show. The Countess is
for the hills, as I am, and the _élan_ of going ever upward. So we fall
to talk about the mountains that are about us, and the Count says that
it is an impossibility to climb them at this season of the year.
Avalanches are frequent, and the cliffs are slippery with the daily
sun-thaw congealing in thin sheets upon the rocks. He tells us that
there is one peak immediately behind the hotel which yet remains
unclimbed. It is the Piz Langrev, and it rises like a tower. No man
could climb that mural precipice and live.
I tell them that I have never climbed in this country; but that I do not
believe that there is a peak in, the world which cannot in some fashion
or another be surmounted--time, money, and pluck being provided
wherewith to do it.
"You have a fine chance, my friend," says the Count kindly, "for you
will be canonised by the guides if you find a way up the front of the
Langrev. They would at once clap on a tariff which would make their
fortunes, in order to tempt your wise countrymen, who are willing to pay
vast sums to have the risk of breaking their necks, yet who will not
invest in the best property in Switzerland when it is offered to them
for a song."
The Count is a little sore about his venture and its ill success.
The Countess, who sits opposite to me to-night, looks across and says,
"I am sure that the peak can be climbed. If Mr. Douglas says so, it
can."
"I thank you, Madame," I say, bowing across at her.
Whereat the other two exclaim. It is (they say) but an attempt on my
part to claim credit with a lady, who is naturally on the side of the
adventurous. The thing is impossible.
"Countess," say I, piqued by their insistency, "if you will give me a
favour to be my _drapeau de guerre_, in twenty-four hours I shall plant
your colours on the battlements of the Piz Langrev."
Certainly the Forzato had been excellent.
The Countess Lucia handed a crimson shawl, which had fallen back from
her shoulders, and which now hung over the back of her chair, across the
table to me.
"They are my colours!" she said, with a light in her eye as though she
had been royalty itself.
Now, I had studied the Piz Langrev that afternoon, and I was sure it
could be done. I had climbed the worst precipices in the Dungeon of
Buchan, and looked into the nest of the eagle on the Clints of Craignaw.
It was not likely that I would come to any harm so long as there was a
foothold or an armhold on the face of the cliff. At least, my idiotic
pique had now pledged me to the attempt, as well as my pride, for above
all things I desired to stand well in the eyes of the Countess.
But when we had risen from table, and in the evening light took our
walk, she repented her of the giving of the gage, and said that the
danger was too great. I must forget it--how could she bear the anxiety
of waiting below while I was climbing the rocks of the Piz Langrev? It
pleased me to hear her say so, but for all that my mind was not turned
away from my endeavour.
It was a foolish thing that I had undertaken, but it sprang upon me in
the way of talk. So many follies are committed because we men fear to go
back upon our word. The privilege of woman works the other way. Which is
as well, for the world would come to a speedy end if men and women were
to be fools according to the same follies.
The Countess was quieter to-night. Perhaps she felt that her
encouragement had led me into some danger. Yet she had that sense of the
binding nature of the "passed word," which is perhaps strongest in women
who are by nature and education cosmopolitan. She did not any more
persuade me against my attempt, and soon went within. She had said
little, and we had walked along together for the most part silent.
Methought the stars were not so bright to-night, and the glamour had
gone from the bridge under which the water was dashing white.
I also returned, for I had my arrangements to make for the expedition.
The weather did not look very promising, for the Thal wind was bringing
the heavy mist-spume pouring over the throat of the pass, and driving
past the hotel in thin hissing wisps on a chill breeze. However, even in
May the frost was keen at night, and to-morrow might be a day after the
climber's heart.
I sought the manager in his sanctum of polished wood--a _comptoir_ where
there was little to count. Managers were a fleeting race in the Kursaal
Promontonio. The Count was a kind master. But he was a Russian, and a
taskmaster like those of Egypt, in that he expected his managers to make
the bricks of dividends without the straw of visitors. With him I
covenanted to be roused at midnight.
Herr Gutwein was somewhat unwilling. He had not so many visitors that he
could afford to expend one on the cliffs of the Piz Langrev.
I looked out on the lake and the mountains from the window of my room
before I turned in. They did not look encouraging.
Hardly, it seemed, had my head touched the pillow, when "clang, clang"
went some one on my door. "It is half-past twelve, Herr, and time to get
up!"
I saw the frost-flowers on the window-pane, and shivered. Yet there was
the laughter of Henry and the Count to be faced; and, above all, I had
passed my word to Lucia.
"Well, I suppose I may as well get up and take a look at the thing, any
way. Perhaps it may be snowing," I said, with a devout hope that the
blinds of mist or storm might be drawn down close about the mountains.
But, pushing aside the green window-blind, I saw all the stars
twinkling; and the broad moon, a little worm-eaten about the upper edge,
was flinging a pale light over the Forno glacier and the thick pines
that hide Lake Cavaloccia.
"Ah, it is cold!" I flung open the hot-air register, but the fires were
out and the engineer asleep, for a draft of icy wind came up--direct
from the snowfields. I slammed it down, for the mercury in my
thermometer was falling so rapidly that I seemed to hear it tap-tapping
on the bottom of the scale.
Below there was a sleepy porter, who with the utmost gruffness produced
some lukewarm coffee, with stale, dry slices of over-night bread, and
flavoured the whole with an evil-smelling lamp.
"Shriekingly cold, Herr; yes, it is so in here!" he said in answer to my
complaints. "Yes--but, it is warm to what it will be up there outside."
The pack was donned. The double stockings, the fingerless woollen gloves
were put on, and the earflaps of the cap were drawn down. The door was
opened quietly, and the chill outer air met us like a wall.
"A good journey, my Herr!" said the porter, a mocking accent in his
voice--the rascal.
I strode from under the dark shadow of the hotel, wondering if Lucia was
asleep behind her curtains over the porch.