The Silent Barrier Part 9

She did not cross the threshold of the inner door. At present her mind was fixed on brisk movement in the marvelous air. She wanted to absorb the suns.h.i.+ne, to dispel once and for all the unpleasing picture of life in the high Alps presented by the stupid crowd she had met in the hotel overnight. Of course, she was somewhat unjust there; but women are predisposed to trust first impressions, and Helen was no exception to her s.e.x.

Beyond the church the path was not so definite. Oddly enough, it seemed to go along the flat top of a low wall down to a tiny mountain stream. Steps were cut in the opposite hillside, but they were little used, and higher up, among some dwarf pines and azaleas, a broader way wound back toward the few scattered chalets that nestled under the chateau.

As the guidebook spoke of a carriage road to Lake Cavloccio, and a bridle path thence to within a mile of the Forno glacier, she came to the conclusion that she was taking a short cut. At any rate, on the summit of the next little hill she would be able to see her way quite distinctly, so she jumped across the brook and climbed through the undergrowth. Before she had gone twenty yards she stopped. She was almost certain that someone was sobbing bitterly up there among the trees. It had an uncanny sound, this plaint of grief in such a quiet, sunlit spot. Still, sorrow was not an affrighting thing to Helen. It might stir her sympathies, but it a.s.suredly could not drive her away in panic.

She went on, not noiselessly, as she did not wish to intrude on some stranger's misery. Soon she came to a low wall, and, before she quite realized her surroundings, she was looking into a gra.s.s grown cemetery. It was a surprise, this ambush of the silent company among the trees. Hidden away from the outer world, and so secluded that its whereabouts remain unknown to thousands of people who visit the Maloja each summer, there was an aspect of stealth in its sudden discovery that was almost menacing. But Helen was not a nervous subject. The sobbing had ceased, and when the momentary effect of such a depressing environment had been resolutely driven off, she saw that a rusty iron gate was open. The place was very small. There were a few monuments, so choked with weeds and dank gra.s.s that their inscriptions were illegible. She had never seen a more desolate graveyard. Despite the vivid light and the joyous breeze rustling the pine branches, its air of abandonment was depressing. She fought against the sensation as unworthy of her intelligence; but she had some reason for it in the fact that there was no visible explanation of the mourning she had undoubtedly heard.

Then she uttered an involuntary cry, for a man's head and shoulders rose from behind a leafy shrub. Instantly she was ashamed of her fear.

It was the old guide who acted as coachman the previous evening, and he had been lying face downward on the gra.s.s in that part of the cemetery given over to the unnamed dead.

He recognized her at once. Struggling awkwardly to his feet, he said in broken and halting German, "I pray your forgiveness, _fraulein_. I fear I have alarmed you."

"It is I who should ask forgiveness," she said. "I came here by accident. I thought I could go to Cavloccio by this path."

She could have hit on no other words so well calculated to bring him back to every day life. To direct the steps of wanderers in his beloved Engadine was a real pleasure to him. For an instant he forgot that they had both spoken German.

"No, no!" he cried animatedly. "For lek him go by village. Bad road dissa way. No cross ze field. _Verboten!_"

Then Helen remembered that trespa.s.sers are sternly warned off the low lying lands in the mountains. Gra.s.s is scarce and valuable. Until the highest pastures yield to the arid rock, pedestrians must keep to the beaten track.

"I was quite mistaken," she said. "I see now that the path I was trying to reach leads here only. And I am very, very sorry I disturbed you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I fear I have alarmed you, _fraulein_."

_Page 88_]

He hobbled nearer, the ruin of a fine man, with a n.o.bly proportioned head and shoulders, but sadly maimed by the accident which, to all appearances, made him useless as a guide.

"Pardon an old man's folly, _fraulein_," he said humbly. "I thought none could hear, and I felt the loss of my little girl more than ever to-day."

"Your daughter? Is she buried here?"

"Yes. Many a year has pa.s.sed; but I miss her now more than ever. She was all I had in the world, _fraulein_. I am alone now, and that is a hard thing when the back is bent with age."

Helen's eyes grew moist; but she tried bravely to control her voice.

"Was she young?" she asked softly.

"Only twenty, _fraulein_, only twenty, and as tall and fair as yourself. They carried her here sixteen years ago this very day. I did not even see her. On the previous night I fell on Corvatsch."

"Oh, how sad! But why did she die at that age? And in this splendid climate? Was her death unexpected?"

"Unexpected!" He turned and looked at the huge mountain of which the cemetery hill formed one of the lowermost b.u.t.tresses. "If the Piz della Margna were to topple over and crush me where I stand, it would be less unforeseen than was my sweet Etta's fate. But I frighten you, lady,--a poor return for your kindness. That is your way,--through the village, and by the postroad till you reach a notice board telling you where to take the path."

There was a crude gentility in his manner that added to the pathos of his words. Helen was sure that he wished to be left alone with his memories. Yet she lingered.

"Please tell me your name," she said. "I may visit St. Moritz while I remain here, and I shall try to find you."

"Christian Stampa," he said. He seemed to be on the point of adding something, but checked himself. "Christian Stampa," he repeated, after a pause. "Everybody knows old Stampa the guide. If I am not there, and you go to Zermatt some day--well, just ask for Stampa. They will tell you what has become of me."

She found it hard to reconcile this broken, careworn old man with her cheery companion of the previous afternoon. What did he mean? She understood his queer jargon of Italianized German quite clearly; but there was a sinister ring in his words that blanched her face. She could not leave him in his present mood. She was more alarmed now than when she saw him rising ghostlike from behind the screen of gra.s.s and weeds.

"Please walk with me to the village," she said. "All this beautiful land is strange to me. It will divert your thoughts from a mournful topic if you tell me something of its wonders."

He looked at her for an instant. Then his eyes fell on the church in the neighboring hollow, and he crossed himself, murmuring a few words in Italian. She guessed their meaning. He was thanking the Virgin for having sent to his rescue a girl who reminded him of his lost Etta.

"Yes," he said, "I will come. If I were remaining in the Maloja, _fraulein_, I would beg you to let me take you to the Forno, and perhaps to one of the peaks beyond. Old as I am, and lame, you would be safe with me."

Helen breathed freely again. She felt that she had been within measurable distance of a tragedy. Nor was there any call on her wits to devise fresh means of drawing his mind away from the madness that possessed him a few minutes earlier. As he limped unevenly by her side, his talk was of the mountains. Did she intend to climb? Well, slow and sure was the golden rule. Do little or nothing during four or five days, until she had grown accustomed to the thin and keen Alpine air. Then go to Lake Lunghino,--that would suffice for the first real excursion. Next day, she ought to start early, and climb the mountain overlooking that same lake,--up there, on the other side of the hotel,--all rock and not difficult. If the weather was clear, she would have a grand view of the Bernina range. Next she might try the Forno glacier. It was a simple thing. She could go to and from the _cabane_ in ten hours. Afterward, the Cima di Rosso offered an easy climb; but that meant sleeping at the hut. All of which was excellent advice, though the reflection came that Stampa's "slow and sure"

methods were not strongly in evidence some sixteen hours earlier.

Now, the Cima di Rosso was in full view at that instant. Helen stopped.

"Do you really mean to tell me that if I wish to reach the top of that mountain, I must devote two days to it?" she cried.

Stampa, though bothered with troubles beyond her ken, forgot them sufficiently to laugh grimly. "It is farther away than you seem to think, _fraulein_; but the real difficulty is the ice. Unless you cross some of the creva.s.ses in the early morning, before the sun has had time to undo the work accomplished by the night's frost, you run a great risk. And that is why you must be ready to start from the _cabane_ at dawn. Moreover, at this time of year, you get the finest view about six o'clock."

The mention of creva.s.ses was somewhat awesome. "Is it necessary to be roped when one tries that climb?" she asked.

"If any guide ever tells you that you need not be roped while crossing ice or climbing rock, turn back at once, _fraulein_. Wait for another day, and go with a man who knows his business. That is how the Alps get a bad name for accidents. Look at me! I have climbed the Matterhorn forty times, and the Jungfrau times out of count, and never did I or anyone in my care come to grief. 'Use the rope properly,' is my motto, and it has never failed me, not even when two out of five of us were struck senseless by falling stones on the south side of Monte Rosa."

Helen experienced another thrill. "I very much object to falling stones," she said.

Stampa threw out his hands in emphatic gesture. "What can one do?" he cried. "They are always a danger, like the snow cornice and the _neve_. There is a chimney on the Jungfrau through which stones are constantly shooting from a height of two thousand feet. You cannot see them,--they travel too fast for the eye. You hear something sing past your ears, that is all. Occasionally there is a report like a gunshot, and then you observe a little cloud of dust rising from a new scar on a rock. If you are hit--well, there is no dust, because the stone goes right through. Of course one does not loiter there."

Then, seeing the scared look on her face, he went on. "Ladies should not go to such places. It is not fit. But for men, yes. There is the joy of battle. Do not err, _fraulein_,--the mountains are alive. And they fight to the death. They can be beaten; but there must be no mistakes. They are like strong men, the hills. When you strive against them, strain them to your breast and never relax your grip. Then they yield slowly, with many a trick and false move that a man must learn if he would look down over them all and say, 'I am lord here.' Ah me!

Shall I ever again cross the Col du Lion or climb the Great Tower?

But there! I am old, and thrown aside. Boys whom I engaged as porters would refuse me now as their porter. Better to have died like my friend, Michel Croz, than live to be a goatherd."

He seemed to pull himself up with an effort. "That way--to your left--you cannot miss the path. _Addio, signorina_," and he lifted his hat with the inborn grace of the peasantry of Southern Europe.

Helen was hoping that he might elect to accompany her to Cavloccio.

She would willingly have paid him for loss of time. Her ear was becoming better tuned each moment to his strange patois. Though he often gave a soft Italian inflection to the harsh German syllables, she grasped his meaning quite literally. She had read so much about Switzerland that she knew how Michel Croz was killed while descending the Matterhorn after having made the first ascent. That historic accident happened long before she was born. To hear a man speak of Croz as a friend sounded almost unbelievable, though a moment's thought told her that Whymper, who led the attack on the hitherto impregnable Cervin on that July day in 1865, was still living, a keen Alpinist.

She could not refrain from asking Stampa one question, though she imagined that he was now in a hurry to take the damaged carriage back to St. Moritz. "Michel Croz was a brave man," she said. "Did you know him well?"

"I wors.h.i.+ped him, _fraulein_," was the reverent answer. "May I receive pardon in my last hour, but I took him for an evil spirit on the day of his death! I was with Jean Antoine Carrel in Signor Giordano's party. We started from Breuil, Croz and his voyageurs from Zermatt.

We failed; he succeeded. When we saw him and his Englishmen on the summit, we believed they were devils, because they yelled in triumph, and started an avalanche of stones to announce their victory. Three days later, Carrel and I, with two men from Breuil, tried again. We gained the top that time, and pa.s.sed the place where Croz was knocked over by the English milord and the others who fell with him. I saw three bodies on the glacier four thousand feet below,--a fine burial-ground, better than that up there."

He looked back at the pines which now hid the cemetery wall from sight. Then, with another courteous sweep of his hat, he walked away, covering the ground rapidly despite his twisted leg.

If Helen had been better trained as a woman journalist, she would have regarded this meeting with Stampa as an incident of much value. Long experience of the lights and shades of life might have rendered her less sensitive. As it was, the man's personality appealed to her. She had been vouchsafed a glimpse into an abyss profound as that into which Stampa himself peered on the day he discovered three of the four who fell from the Matterhorn still roped together in death. The old man's simple references to the terrors lurking in those radiant mountains had also shaken her somewhat. The snow capped Cima di Rosso no longer looked so attractive. The Orlegna Gorge had lost some of its beauty. Though the sun was pouring into its wooded depths, it had grown gloomy and somber in her eyes. Yielding to impulse, she loitered in the village, took the carriage road to the chateau, and sat there, with her back to the inner heights and her gaze fixed on the smiling valley that opened toward Italy out of the Septimer Pa.s.s.

Meanwhile, Stampa hurried past the stables, where his horses were munching the remains of the little oaten loaves which form the staple food of hard worked animals in the Alps. He entered the hotel by the main entrance, and was on his way to the manager's bureau, when Spencer, smoking on the veranda, caught sight of him.

Instantly the American started in pursuit. By this time he had heard of Helen's accident from one of yesterday's pa.s.sers by. It accounted for the delay; but he was anxious to learn exactly what had happened.

Stampa reached the office first. He was speaking to the manager, when Spencer came in and said in his downright way:

"This is the man who drove Miss Wynton from St. Moritz last night. I don't suppose I shall be able to understand what he says. Will you kindly ask him what caused the trouble?"