CHAPTER V
AN INTERLUDE
Helen rose betimes next morning; but she found that the sun had kept an earlier tryst. Not a cloud marred a sky of dazzling blue. The phantom mist had gone with the shadows. From her bed room window she could see the whole length of the Ober-Engadin, till the view was abruptly shut off by the giant shoulders of Lagrev and Rosatch. The brilliance of the coloring was the landscape’s most astounding feature. The lakes were planes of polished turquoise, the rocks pure grays and browns and reds, the meadows emerald green, while the shining white patches of snow on the highest mountain slopes helped to blacken by contrast the somber clumps of pines that gathered thick wherever man had not disputed with the trees the tenancy of each foot of meager loam.
This morning glory of nature gladdened the girl’s heart and drove from it the overnight vapors. She dressed hurriedly, made a light breakfast, and went out.
There was no need to ask the way. In front of the hotel the narrow Silser See filled the valley. Close behind lay the crest of the pass. A picturesque château was perched on a sheer rock overhanging the Vale of Bregaglia and commanding a far flung prospect almost to the brink of Como. On both sides rose the mountain barriers; but toward the east there was an inviting gorge, beyond which the lofty Cima di Rosso flung its eternal snows heavenward.
A footpath led in that direction. Helen, who prided herself on her sense of locality, decided that it would bring her to the valley in which were situated, as she learned by the map, a small lake and a glacier.
“That will be a fine walk before lunch,” she said, “and it is quite impossible to lose the way.”
So she set off, crossing the hotel golf course, and making for a typical Swiss church that crowned the nearest of the foothills. Passing the church, she found the double doors in the porch open, and peeped in. It was a cozy little place, cleaner and less garish than such edifices are usually on the Continent. The lamp burning before the sanctuary showed that it was devoted to Roman Catholic worship. The red gleam of the tiny sentinel conveyed a curiously vivid impression of faith and spirituality. Though Helen was a Protestant, she was conscious of a benign emotion arising from the presence of this simple token of belief.
“I must ascertain the hours of service,” she thought. “It will be delightful to join the Swiss peasants in prayer. One might come near the Creator in this rustic tabernacle.”
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 sunshine, 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 sex.
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 château.
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 assuredly 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 grass 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 grass 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 grass 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, fräulein. 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 trespassers are sternly warned off the low lying lands in the mountains. Grass 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.”
He hobbled nearer, the ruin of a fine man, with a nobly 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, fräulein,” 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 passed; but I miss her now more than ever. She was all I had in the world, fräulein. 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, fräulein, 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 buttresses. “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 grass 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, fräulein, 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, fräulein; but the real difficulty is the ice. Unless you cross some of the crevasses 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 crevasses 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, fräulein. 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 névé. 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, fräulein, – 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, sigñorina,” 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 worshiped him, fräulein,” 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 passed 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 château, 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 Pass.
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 passers 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?”
“It is quite an easy matter,” was the smiling response. “Poor Stampa is not only too eager to pass every other vehicle on the road, but he is inclined to watch the mountains rather than his horses’ ears. He was a famous guide once; but he met with misfortune, and took to carriage work as a means of livelihood. He has damaged his turnout twice this year; so this morning he was dismissed by telephone, and another driver is coming from St. Moritz to take his place.”
Spencer looked at Stampa. He liked the strong, worn face, with its half wistful, half resigned expression. An uneasy feeling gripped him that the whim of a moment in the Embankment Hotel might exert its crazy influence in quarters far removed from the track that seemed then to be so direct and pleasure-giving.
“Why did he want to butt in between the other fellow and the landscape? What was the hurry, anyhow?” he asked.
Stampa smiled genially when the questions were translated to him. “I was talking to the sigñorina,” he explained, using his native tongue, for he was born on the Italian side of the Bernina.
“That counts, but it gives no good reason why he should risk her life,” objected Spencer.
Stampa’s weather furrowed cheeks reddened. “There was no danger,” he muttered wrathfully. “Madonna! I would lose the use of another limb rather than hurt a hair of her head. Is she not my good angel? Has she not drawn me back from the gate of hell? Risk her life! Are people saying that because a worm-eaten wheel went to pieces against a stone?”
“What on earth is he talking about?” demanded Spencer. “Has he been pestering Miss Wynton this morning with some story of his present difficulties?”
The manager knew Stampa’s character. He put the words in kindlier phrase. “Does the sigñorina know that you have lost your situation?” he said.
Even in that mild form, the suggestion annoyed the old man. He flung it aside with scornful gesture, and turned to leave the office. “Tell the gentleman to go to Zermatt and ask in the street if Christian Stampa the guide would throw himself on a woman’s charity,” he growled.
Spencer did not wait for any interpretation. “Hold on,” he said quietly. “What is he going to do now? Work, for a man of his years, doesn’t grow on gooseberry bushes, I suppose.”
“Christian, Christian! You are hot-headed as a boy,” cried the manager. “The fact is,” he went on, “he came to me to offer his services. But I have already engaged more drivers than I need, and I am dismissing some stable men. Perhaps he can find a job in St. Moritz.”
“Are his days as guide ended?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I believe he is as active as ever; but people won’t credit it. And you cannot blame them. When one’s safety depends on a man who may have to cling to an ice covered rock like a fly to a window-pane, one is apt to distrust a crooked leg.”
“Did he have an accident?”
The manager hesitated. “It is part of his sad history,” he said. “He fell, and nearly killed himself; but he was hurrying to see the last of a daughter to whom he was devoted.”
“Is he a local man, then?”
“No. Oh, no! The girl happened to be here when the end came.”
“Well, I guess he will suit my limited requirements in the fly and window-pane business while I remain in Maloja,” said Spencer. “Tell him I am willing to put up ten francs a day and extras for his exclusive services as guide during my stay.”
Poor Stampa was nearly overwhelmed by this unexpected good fortune. In his agitation he blurted out, “Ah, then, the good God did really send an angel to my help this morning!”
Spencer, however, reviewing his own benevolence over a pipe outside the hotel, expressed the cynical opinion that the hot sun was affecting his brain. “I’m on a loose end,” he communed. “Next time I waft myself to Europe on a steamer I’ll bring my mother. It would be a bully fine notion to cable for her right away. I want someone to take care of me. It looks as if I had a cinch on running this hotel gratis. What in thunder will happen next?”
He could surely have answered that query if he had the least inkling of the circumstances governing Helen’s prior meeting with Stampa. As it was, the development of events followed the natural course. While Spencer strolled off by the side of the lake, the old guide lumbered into the village street, and waited there, knowing that he would waylay the bella Inglesa on her return. Though she came from the château and not from Cavloccio, he did not fail to see her.
At first she was at a loss to fathom the cause of Stampa’s delight, and still less to understand why he should want to thank her with such exuberance. She imagined he was overjoyed at having gone back to his beloved profession, and it was only by dint of questioning that she discovered the truth. Then it dawned on her that the man had been goaded to desperation by the curt message from St. Moritz, – that he was sorely tempted to abandon the struggle, and follow into the darkness the daughter taken from him so many years ago, – and the remembrance of her suspicion when they were about to part at the cemetery gate lent a serious note to her words of congratulation.
“You see, Stampa,” she said, “you were very wrong to lose faith this morning. At the very moment of your deepest despair Heaven was providing a good friend for you.”
“Yes, indeed, fräulein. That is why I waited here. I felt that I must thank you. It was all through you. The good God sent you – ”
“I think you are far more beholden to the gentleman who employed you than to me,” she broke in.
“Yes, he is splendid, the young voyageur; but it was wholly on your account, lady. He was angry with me at first, because he thought I placed you in peril in the matter of the wheel.”
Helen was amazed. “He spoke of me?” she cried.
“Ah, yes. He did not say much, but his eyes looked through me. He has the eyes of a true man, that young American.”
She was more bewildered than ever. “What is his name?” she asked.
“Here it is. The director wrote it for me, so that I may learn how to pronounce it.”
Stampa produced a scrap of paper, and Helen read, “Mr. Charles K. Spencer.”
“Are you quite certain he mentioned me?” she repeated.
“Can I be mistaken, fräulein. I know, because I studied the labels on your boxes. Mees Hélène Weenton – so? And did he not rate me about the accident?”
“Well, wonders will never cease,” she vowed; and indeed they were only just beginning in her life, which shows how blind to excellent material wonders can be.
At luncheon she summoned the head waiter. “Is there a Mr. Charles K. Spencer staying in the hotel?” she asked.
“Yes, madam.”
“Will you please tell me if he is in the room?”
The head waiter turned. Spencer was studying the menu. “Yes, madam. There he is, sitting alone, at the second table from the window.”
It was quite to be expected that the subject of their joint gaze should look at them instantly. There is a magnetism in the human eye that is unfailing in that respect, and its power is increased a hundredfold when a charming young woman tries it on a young man who happens to be thinking of her at the moment.
Then Spencer realized that Stampa had told Helen what had taken place in the hotel bureau, and he wanted to kick himself for having forgotten to make secrecy a part of the bargain.
Helen, knowing that he knew, blushed furiously. She tried to hide her confusion by murmuring something to the head waiter. But in her heart she was saying, “Who in the world is he? I have never seen him before last night. And why am I such an idiot as to tremble all over just because he happened to catch me looking at him?”