The Silent Barrier
"If Barth and you agree that roping is unnecessary, of course I
haven't a word to say in the matter," she volunteered. "It was rather
absurd of me to mention it in the first instance."
"No, you were right. I have never seen Stampa; but his name is
familiar. It occurs in most Alpine records. Barth, fix the rope before
we go farther. The _fraeulein_ wishes it."
The rush of color induced by physical effort--effort of a tensity that
Helen was wholly unaware of--was ebbing now before a numbing terror
that had come to stay. His face was drawn and livid. His voice had the
metallic ring in it that the girl had detected once already that day.
Again she experienced a sense of bewilderment that he should regard a
trivial thing so seriously. She was not a child. The world of to-day
pulsated with far too many stories of tragic passion that she should
be shielded so determinedly from any hint of an episode that doubtless
wrung the heart's core of this quiet valley one day in August sixteen
years ago. In some slight degree Bower's paroxysm of anger was a
reflection on her own good taste, for she had unwittingly given rise
to it.
Nevertheless, she felt indebted to him. To extricate both Bower and
herself from an awkward situation she took a keen interest in Barth's
method of adjusting the rope. The man did not show any amazement at
Bower's order. He was there to earn his fee. Had these mad English
told him to cut steps up the gentle slope in front he would have
obeyed without protest, though it was more than strange that this much
traveled _voyageur_ should adopt such a needless precaution.
As a matter of fact, under Barth's guidance, a blind cripple could
have surmounted the first kilometer of the Forno glacier. The track
lay close to the left bank of the moraine. It curved slightly to the
right and soon the exquisite panorama of Monte Roseg, the Cima di
Rosso, Monte Sissone, Piz Torrone, and the Castello group opened up
before the climbers. Helen was enchanted. Twice she half turned to
address some question to Bower; but on each occasion she happened to
catch him in the act of swallowing some brandy from a flask. Governed
by an unaccountable timidity, she pretended not to notice his
actions, and diverted her words to Barth, who told her the names of
the peaks and pointed to the junctions of minor ice fields with the
main artery of the Forno.
Bower did not utter a syllable until they struck out toward the center
of the glacier. A crevasse some ten feet in width and seemingly
hundreds of feet deep, barred the way; but a bridge of ice, covered
with snow, offered safe transit. The snow carpet showed that a number
of climbers had passed quite recently in both directions. Even Helen,
somewhat awed by the dimensions of the rift, understood that the
existence of this natural arch was as well recognized by Alpinists as
Waterloo Bridge is known to dwellers on the south side of the Thames.
"Now, Miss Wynton, you should experience your first real thrill," said
Bower. "This bridge forms here every year at this season, and an army
might cross in safety. It is the genuine article, the first and
strongest of a series. Yet here you cross the Rubicon. A mixture of
metaphors is allowable in high altitudes, you know."
Helen, almost startled at first by the unaffected naturalness of his
words, was unfeignedly relieved at finding him restored to the normal.
Usually his supply of light-hearted badinage was unceasing. He knew
exactly when and how to season it with more serious statements. It is
this rare quality that makes tolerable a long day's solitude _a deux_.
"I am not Caesar's wife," she replied; "but for the credit of womankind
in general I shall act as though I was above suspicion--of
nervousness."
She did not look round. Barth was moving quickly, and she had no
desire to burden him with a drag on the rope. When she was in the
center of the narrow causeway, a snow cornice in the lip of the
crevasse detached itself under the growing heat of the sun and
shivered down into the green darkness. The incident brought her heart
into her mouth. It served as a reminder that this solid ice river was
really in a state of constant change and movement.
Bower laughed, with all his customary gayety of manner. "That came at
a dramatic moment," he said. "Too bad it could not let you pass
without giving you a quake!"
"I am not a bit afraid."
"Ah, but I can read your thoughts. There is a bond of sympathy between
us."
"Hemp is a non-conductor."
"You are willfully misunderstanding me," he retorted.
"No. I honestly believed you felt the rope quiver a little."
"Alas! it is the atmosphere. My compliments fall on idle ears."
Barth interrupted this play of harmless chaff by jerking some remark
over his shoulder. "Looks like a _guxe_," he said gruffly.
"Nonsense!" said Bower,--"a bank of mist. The sun will soon melt it."
"It's a _guxe_, right enough," chimed in Karl, who had recovered his
power of speech. "That is why the boy was blowing his horn--to show he
was bringing the cattle home."
"Well, then, push on. The sooner we are in the hut the better."
"Please, what is a _guxe_?" asked Helen, when the men had nothing more
to say.
"A word I would have wished to add later to your Alpine phrase book.
It means a storm, a blizzard."
"Should we not return at once in that event?"
"What? Who said just now she was not afraid?"
"But a storm in such a place!"
"These fellows smell a _tourmente_ in every little cloud from the
southwest. We may have some wind and a light snowfall, and that will
be an experience for you. Surely you can trust me not to run any real
risk?"
"Oh, yes. I do, indeed. But I have read of people being caught in
these storms and suffering terribly."
"Not on the Forno, I assure you. I don't wish to minimize the perils
of your first ascent; but it is only fair to say that this is an
exhibition glacier. If it was nearer town you would find an orchestra
in each amphitheater up there, with sideshows in every couloir.
Jesting apart, you are absolutely safe with Barth and me, not to
mention the irrepressible gentleman who carries our provisions."
Helen was fully alive to the fact that a woman who joins a
mountaineering party should not impose her personal doubts on men who
are willing to go on. She flourished her ice ax bravely, and cried,
"Excelsior!"
In the next instant she regretted her choice of expression. The moral
of Longfellow's poem might be admirable, but the fate of its hero was
unpleasantly topical. Again Bower laughed.
"Ah!" he said. "Will you deny now that I am a first rate receiver of
wireless messages?"
She had no breath left for a quip. Barth was hurrying, and the thin
air was beginning to have its effect. When an unusually smooth stretch
of ice permitted her to take her eyes from the track for a moment she
looked back to learn the cause of such haste. To her complete
astonishment, the Maloja Pass and the hills beyond it were dissolved
in a thick mist. A monstrous cloud was sweeping up the Orlegna Valley.
As yet, it was making for the Muretto Pass rather than the actual
ravine of the Forno; but a few wraiths of vapor were sailing high
overhead, and it needed no weatherwise native to predict that ere long
the glacier itself would be covered by that white pall. She glanced at
Bower.
He smiled cheerfully. "It is nothing," he murmured.
"I really don't care," she said. "One does not shirk an adventure
merely because it is disagreeable. The pity is that all this lovely
sunshine must vanish."
"It will reappear. You will be charmed with the novelty in an hour or
less."
"Is it far to the hut?"
"Hardly twenty minutes at our present pace."
A growl from Barth stopped their brief talk. Another huge crevasse
yawned in front. There was an ice bridge, with snow, like others they
had crossed; but this was a slender structure, and the leader stabbed
it viciously with the butt of his ax before he ventured on it. The
others kept the rope taut, and he crossed safely. They followed. As
Helen gained the further side she heard Bower's chuckle:
"Another thrill!"
"I am growing quite used to them," she said.
"Well, it may help somewhat if I tell you that the temporary departure
of the sun will cause this particular bridge to be ten times as strong
when we return."
"Attention!" cried Barth, taking a sharp turn to the left. The meaning
of his warning was soon apparent. They had to descend a few feet of
rough ice, and Helen found, to her great relief it must be confessed,
that they were approaching the lateral moraine. Already the sky was
overcast. The glacier had taken to itself a cold grayness that was
disconcerting. The heavy mist fell on them with inconceivable
rapidity. Shining peaks and towering precipices of naked rock were
swept out of sight each instant. The weather had changed with a
magical speed. The mist advanced with the rush of an express train,
and a strong wind sprang up as though it had burst through a
restraining wall and was bent on overwhelming the daring mortals who
were penetrating its chosen territory.
Somehow--anyhow--Helen scrambled on. She was obliged to keep eyes and
mind intent on each step. Her chief object was to imitate Barth, to
poise, and jump, and clamber with feet and hands exactly as he did. At
this stage the rope was obviously a hindrance; but none of the men
suggested its removal, and Helen had enough to occupy her wits without
troubling them by a question. Even in the stress of her own breathless
exertions she had room in her mind for a wondering pity for the
heavily laden Karl. She marveled that anyone, be he strong as Samson,
could carry such a load and not fall under it. Yet he was lumbering
along behind Bower with a clumsy agility that was almost supernatural
to her thinking. She was still unconscious of the fact that most of
her own struggles were due more to the rarefied air than to the real
difficulties of the route.
At last, when she really thought she must cry out for a rest, when a
steeper climb than any hitherto encountered had bereft her almost of
the power to take another upward spring to the ledge of some enormous
boulder, when her knees and ankles were sore and bruised, and the
skin of her fingers was beginning to fray under her stout gloves, she
found herself standing on a comparatively level space formed of broken
stones. A rough wall, surmounted by a flat pitched roof, stared at her
out of the mist. In the center of the wall a small, square, shuttered
window suggested a habitation. Her head swam, and her eyes ached
dreadfully; but she knew that this was the hut, and strove desperately
to appear self possessed.
"Accept my congratulations, Miss Wynton," said a low voice at her ear.
"Not one woman in a thousand would have gone through that last
half-hour without a murmur. You are no longer a novice. Allow me to
present you with the freedom of the Alps. This is one of the many
chateaux at your disposal."
A wild swirl of sleet lashed them venomously. This first whip of the
gale seemed to have the spitefulness of disappointed rage.
Helen felt her arm grasped. Bower led her to a doorway cunningly
disposed out of the path of the dreaded southwest wind. At that
instant all the woman in her recognized that the man was big, and
strong, and self reliant, and that it was good to have him near,
shouting reassuring words that were whirled across the rock-crowned
glacier by the violence of the tempest.
CHAPTER IX
"ETTA'S FATHER"
Though the hut was a crude thing, a triumph of essentials over
luxuries, Helen had never before hailed four walls and a roof with