The Silent Barrier

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 châteaux 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 such heartfelt, if silent, thanksgiving. She sank exhausted on a rough bench, and watched the matter-of-fact Engadiners unpacking the stores and firewood carried in their rucksacks. Their businesslike air supplied the tonic she needed. Though the howling storm seemed to threaten the tiny refuge with destruction, these two men set to work, coolly and methodically, to prepare a meal. Barth arranged the contents of Karl’s bulky package on a small table, and the porter busied himself with lighting a fire in a Swiss stove that stood in the center of the outer room. An inner apartment loomed black and uninviting through an open doorway. Helen discovered later that some scanty accommodation was provided there for those who meant to sleep in the hut in readiness for an early ascent, while it supplied a separate room in the event of women taking part in an expedition.

Bower offered her a quantity of brandy and water. She declined it, declaring that she needed only time to regain her breath. He was a man who might be trusted not to pester anyone with well meant but useless attentions. He went to the door, lit a cigarette, and seemed to be keenly interested in the sleet as it pelted the moraine or gathered in drifts in the minor fissures of the glacier.

Within a remarkably short space of time, Karl had concocted two cups of steaming coffee. Helen was then all aglow. Her strength was restored. The boisterous wind had crimsoned her cheeks beneath the tan. She had never looked such a picture of radiant womanhood as after this tussle with the storm. Luckily her clothing was not wet, since the travelers reached the cabane at the very instant the elements became really aggressive. It was a quite composed and reinvigorated Helen who summoned Bower from his contemplation of the weather portents.

“We may be besieged,” she cried; “but at any rate we are not on famine rations. What a spread! You could hardly have brought more food if you fancied we might be kept here a week.”

The sustained physical effort called for during the last part of the climb seemed to have dispelled his fit of abstraction. Being an eminently adaptable man, he responded to her mood. “Ah, that sounds more like the enthusiast who set forth so gayly from the Kursaal this morning,” he answered, pulling the door ajar before he took a seat by her side on the bench. “A few minutes ago you were ready to condemn me as several kinds of idiot for going on in the teeth of our Switzers’ warnings. Now, confess!”

“I don’t think I could have climbed another ten yards,” she admitted.

“Our haste was due to Barth’s anxiety. He wanted to save you from a drenching. It was a near thing, and with the thermometer falling a degree a minute soaked garments might have brought very unpleasant consequences. But that was our only risk. Old mountaineer as I am, I hardly expected such a blizzard in August, after such short notice too. Otherwise, now that we are safely housed, you are fortunate in securing a memorable experience. The storm will soon blow over; but it promises to be lively while it lasts.”

Helen was sipping her coffee. Perhaps her eyes conveyed the question her tongue hesitated to utter. Bower smiled pleasantly, and gesticulated with hands and shoulders in a way that was foreign to his studiously cultivated English habit of repose. Indeed, with his climber’s garb he seemed to have acquired a new manner. There was a perplexing change in him since the morning.

“Yes,” he said. “I understand perfectly. You and I might sing lieder ohne worte, Miss Wynton. I have known these summer gales to last four days; but pray do not be alarmed,” for Helen nearly dropped her cup in quick dismay; “my own opinion is that we shall have a delightful afternoon. Of course, I am a discredited prophet. Ask Barth.”

The guide, hearing his name mentioned, glanced at them, though he was engaged at the moment in taking the wrappings off a quantity of bread, cold chicken, and slices of ham and beef. He agreed with Bower. The barometer stood high when they left the hotel. He thought, as all men think who live in the open, that “the sharper the blast the sooner it’s past.”

“Moreover,” broke in Karl, who refused to be left out of the conversation, “Johann Klucker’s cat was sitting with its back to the stove last evening.”

This bit of homely philosophy brought a ripple of laughter from Helen, whereupon Karl explained.

“Cats are very wise, fräulein. Johann Klucker’s cat is old. Therefore she is skilled in reading the tokens of the weather. A cat hates wind and rain, and makes her arrangements accordingly. If she washes herself smoothly, the next twelve hours will be fine. If she licks against the grain, it will be wet. When she lies with her back to the fire, there will surely be a squall. When her tail is up and her coat rises, look out for wind.”

“Johann Klucker’s cat has settled the dispute,” said Bower gravely in English. “A squall it is, – a most suitable prediction for a cat, – and I am once more rehabilitated in your esteem, I hope?”

A cold iridescence suddenly illumined the gloomy interior of the hut. It gave individuality to each particle of sleet whirling past the door. Helen thought that the sun had broken through the storm clouds for an instant; but Bower said quietly:

“Are you afraid of lightning?”

“Not very. I don’t like it.”

“Some people collapse altogether when they see it. Perhaps when forewarned you are forearmed.”

A low rumble boomed up the valley, and the mountain echoes muttered in solemn chorus.

“We are to be spared none of the scenic accessories, then?” said Helen.

“None. In fact, you will soon see and hear a thunder storm that would have delighted Gustave Doré. Please remember that it cannot last long, and that this hut has been built twenty years to my knowledge.”

Helen sipped her coffee, but pushed away a plate set before her by Barth. “If you don’t mind, I should like the door wide open,” she said.

“You prefer to lunch later?”

“Yes.”

“And you wish to face the music – is that it?”

“I think so.”

“Let me remind you that Jove’s thunderbolts are really forged on the hilltops.”

“I am here; so I must make the best of it. I shall not scream, or faint, if that is what you dread.”

“I dread nothing but your anger for not having turned back when a retreat was possible. I hate turning back, Miss Wynton. I have never yet withdrawn from any enterprise seriously undertaken, and I was determined to share your first ramble among my beloved hills.”

Another gleam of light, bluer and more penetrating than its forerunner, lit the brown rafters of the cabane. It was succeeded by a crash like the roar of massed artillery. The walls trembled. Some particles of mortar rattled noisily to the floor. A strange sound of rending, followed by a heavy thud, suggested something more tangible than thunderbolts. Bower kicked the door and it swung inward.

“An avalanche,” he said. “Probably a rockfall too. Of course, the hut stands clear of the track of unpleasant visitors of that description.”

Helen had not expected this courageous bearing in a man of Bower’s physical characteristics. Hitherto she had regarded him as somewhat self indulgent, a Sybarite, the product of modernity in its London aspects. His demeanor in the train, in the hotel, bespoke one accustomed to gratify the flesh, who found all the world ready to pander to his desires. Again she was conscious of that instinctive trustfulness a woman freely reposes in a dominant man. Oddly enough, she thought of Spencer in the same breath. An hour earlier, had she been asked which of these two would command her confidence during a storm, her unhesitating choice would have favored the American. Now, she was at least sure that Bower’s coolness was not assumed. His attitude inspired emulation. She rose and went to the door.

“I want to see an avalanche,” she cried. “Where did that one fall?”

Bower followed her. He spoke over her shoulder. “On Monte Roseg, I expect. The weather seems to be clearing slightly. This tearing wind will soon roll up the mist, and the thunder will certainly start another big rock or a snowslide. If you are lucky, you may witness something really fine.”

A dazzling flash leaped over the glacier. Although the surrounding peaks were as yet invisible through the haze of sleet and vapor, objects near at hand were revealed with uncanny distinctness. Each frozen wave on the surface of the ice was etched in sharp lines. A cluster of séracs on a neighboring icefall showed all their mad chaos. The blue green chasm of a huge crevasse was illumined to a depth far below any point to which the rays of the sun penetrated. On the neighboring slope of Monte Roseg the crimson and green and yellow mosses were given sudden life against the black background of rock. Every boulder here wore a somber robe. They were stark and grim. The eye instantly caught the contrast to their gray-white fellows piled on the lower moraine or in the bed of the Orlegna.

Helen was quick to note the new tone of black amid the vividly white patches of snow. She waited until the deafening thunder peal was dying away in eerie cadences. “Why are the rocks black here and almost white in the valley?” she asked.

“Because they are young, as rocks go,” was the smiling answer. “They have yet to pass through the mill. They will be battered and bruised and polished before they emerge from the glacier several years hence and a few miles nearer peace. In that they resemble men. ’Pon my word, Miss Wynton, you have caused me to evolve a rather poetic explanation of certain gray hairs I have noticed of late among my own raven locks.”

“You appear to know and love these hills so well that I wonder – if you will excuse a personal remark – I wonder you ever were able to tear yourself away from them.”