An Alpine Adventure
by Maxwell Gray, author of "The Silence of Deen Maitland," "The Reproach of Annesley," etc.
As published in Strange Doings in Strange Places (Cassell & Company, Ltd.; 1890), originally published in Cassell's Saturday Journal.
I.
One autumn evening two young English people were on the verandah of the Hôtel du Pic, in the little village of Burgli, which lies in a deep green Alpine valley, watching the unseen sun kindle the far white snow peaks into crimson fire at its setting.
One was persuading the other, who had only arrived that day, to ascend the rose-tipped snow mountain on the morrow.
"Come, Alec," she pleaded, in a voice that might have melted St. Anthony. "Both Josef and Franz Wendel are disengaged. Let us secure them before those tourists snap them up."
Mr. Alec Harley, though not a saint, remained obdurate. He did not like to see ladies on ice cliffs and precipices: it was improper; it made him ill.
"Very well," she said at last; "I shall do the mountain alone: that's all!"
"Alec," said the voice of Mattie's mother from within, "since she is bent upon this ascent, you may as well go too if you feel up to so hard a climb."
He sighed and considered; sighed again; remembering that Mattie had made more difficult ascents alone with her favourite guides, the Wendels. He was himself a promising climber, though not equal to her, and was beginning to feel the perilous fascination of the mountains; so at last he consented.
A messenger was instantly despatched to engage the guides, and Mattie went straight to bed, commanding her cousin to do likewise.
"Yes; it does make me anxious," Mrs. Linton said, in reply to her nephew's reproaches, when Mattie was gone; "but Mattie's nerve is wonderful and her enjoyment so great. The very peril she faces must brace her morally as well as physically, and her guides are the best in the district. I cannot forbid it."
Harley could not command sleep at a moment's notice, like his cousin, so he tossed on his pillow, full of dark forebodings, until just as he was dropping off to sleep he was roused for the start in the early dark morning.
Mattie was already up, drinking her coffee, refreshed by sleep, and glowing like a rose in the dim lamplight. The provisions had been duly furnished and packed by the landlord himself, and the stalwart and dignified guides were waiting in front of the hotel to receive their burdens.
A brief "good-morning" and the introduction of Mr. Harley to the guides were all that passed between them, beyond the assurance of Franz Wendel, the younger brother, that the weather promised well; and then they set off at a moderate pace in the starlight; Harley yawning, heavy-eyed, disposed to be captious under the depressing influence of the cold dark morning. Josef strode on ahead, stopping at times for the others to come up; Franz kept in the rear. Alec occasionally gave vent to a plaintive moan over the folly of leaving comfortable beds at that chill and unholy hour for the sake of a day's bodily suffering, at the constant peril of one's neck; Mattie was a little awed by the intense silence of the quiet valley, walled round by the great snow mountains, which gleamed vast and ghostly in the dim starlight. They went through a black fir wood, always climbing, and here the taciturn Josef occasionally indicated his whereabouts by a gruff shout, his tall form scarcely perceptible in the dense shade.
The cousins joined hands and called to Franz from time to time; it was rather a grim experience. Emerging from the wood, they found themselves on new fallen snow, sparkling in the starlight, and showing up the stately figure of Josef as he strode. on. Looking back, they could see a dim brown mass below, which was the silent, sleeping village of Burgli.
"Don't you like the eerie feeling of climbing up towards the stars through the darkness, Alec?" Mattie asked.
"I would rather have sunshine; that wood gave me the creeps," he replied. "And, I say, Mattie," he added, in a low voice, "there's something very creepy about that fellow ahead. After all your descriptions, your Hebrew prophets, and Teutonic gods, with a dash of angel, I did at least expect a civil fellow in your pet guide."
"Civil!" exclaimed Mattie, the dimples coming in her cheeks; "only wait: you will see something better than civility."
"The fellow won't look you in the face," he continued.
"Wait!" replied Mattie, with a triumphant little laugh.
The stars were now beginning to fade in the wan sky; the great robe of shadow slid slowly from the shoulders of the mountains, falling in dense folds in the valleys; the snow grew harder and the slope steeper; the wood was a blot far below. Now the air was grey around and beneath them; but while they gazed they saw the white peak above them suddenly smitten into burning gold, and knew that the sun was about to rise over the rich Italian plains.
When the morning glory, kindled thus upon the altars of the mountain peaks, began to spread and stream down the white azure-shadowed flanks, and gild and redden the rolling clouds, curling and wreathing this way and that, as the growing warmth smote them, the cousins were lifted up in heart; Alec forgot his distrust of Josef; Franz took off his hat at the glorious spectacle, and murmured some sentences from the Psalms.
The sun was fully risen, and a keen breeze with it, when they stopped upon a ledge of snow-covered granite, with some large rocks dotted upon it, to eat the food Josef handed down to them. Their backs were towards him as he did this, and when Mattie turned her head to address him, he had vanished behind the rocks. Franz was below them. He carried his own food and some shawls.
"Really, Alec," Mattie whispered, "Josef is very quiet and gruff this morning."
They were now on the summit of a steep wall of turf running sheer down to the village, the roofs of which showed clear in the morning light, with pillars of blue smoke ascending heavenwards from them.
Alec's heart expanded within him; he looked at Mattie's dimpling, happy face, and wondered if he might yet hope for the warmer than cousinly feeling he wished to kindle in her heart. Mattie turned and looked him over with a critical air. He was rather a fine young fellow, well put together, and wholesome-looking; his eyes were blue and his hair was ruddy gold.
"Yes," Mattie said, thoughtfully; "you look pretty fit this morning. I fancy both your head and heart are sound." For she had had some misgivings about taking him on a harder climb than he had yet done.
"You may depend upon both," he replied, wishing Franz were out of hearing behind.
"We shall all have to do that," Mattie said, seriously; and Franz told of terrible straits in which he had found himself when with gentlemen whose heads and hearts had given way at critical moments. "But Miss Linton is always to be depended upon," he added, with enthusiasm. "I would rather climb with her than with any gentleman, even any English gentleman."
"And I, too," said a gruff voice from behind the rocks. Josef then emerged, and strode onwards, followed by the others, until they came near a glacier which they had to cross; there they all put on the rope, Alec too busy to observe that the taciturn guide effected this business without showing his face, over which his broad hat was slouched.
Mattie was roped behind him; then came Alec; Franz brought up the rear; thus being nearly thirty feet behind his brother when the rope was taut. The steep banks safely traversed, they paused a minute to take breath before crossing the glacier itself, which looked innocent and peaceful in its snow robe, under which treacherous crevasses lurked unseen. Alec's spirits began to rise: Mattie had stepped with such ease and circumspection into the ice-hewn footsteps in coming round the last steep shoulder that he no longer feared for her, and was exhilarated by his sense of power in conquering those difficult steeps.
They went very slowly, and now they were between two crevasses; Josef had to cross one to hunt for firmer ground. Alec shuddered when he saw Mattie stiffen herself, and lean slightly backwards to bear the strain if Josef should slip in crossing; but he did not slip or fall. All were soon in safety on the other side of the deep chasm, down the azure sides of which they gazed in awe.
They had nearly crossed the glacier, when Mattie felt herself stepping all at once through the snow upon nothing, having slipped over the brink of a hidden crevasse, by the edge of which they were walking. Alec and Josef quickly responded to the sudden tightening of the rope, and she regained her footing, but not until Josef, shortening his rope, had turned and given her his hand. In doing this he faced the others; the wind lifted his hat and displayed his features; Franz looked straight at him, and uttered an exclamation of excessive horror.
"Mein Gott!" he cried in Swiss German, "that is not my brother!"
They went on, Mattie laughing, Franz deadly pale, and reached the opposite bank of the great ice river, where they paused awhile to rest.
Franz, looking so wild and scared that Mattie feared he might be unwell, seasoned mountaineer though he was, went resolutely up to the mysterious guide, and, drawing him aside behind a rock, asked him fiercely who he was and why there. The false brother drew Franz still further aside, and they talked long and earnestly, sometimes angrily, until the cousins called them back. When they appeared, the chink of coin was heard, Josef's hat was slouched over his face, and Franz looked wilder and whiter than ever.
"Heaven forgive me!" he said to himself; "but what can I do? Our lives are at his mercy."
II.
Mountain climbing is a serious business, demanding the fullest concentration of mental and bodily powers; it should never be mingled with less serious pursuits. Mattie Linton had never before suffered any frivolous interruption to her thoughts while climbing, but to-day she was preoccupied both with the desire that Mr. Harley should appreciate and sympathise with the mountain joys she had so often and so glowingly described, and also with some concern lest he should be unequal to the strain about to be put upon him. She was further in that vague flutter of spirits natural to ladies when they think, but are not quite sure, that somebody loves them, and think, but are not quite sure, that they have a little tenderness for that somebody in return. Thus she did not bestow much attention upon her known and well-tried guide, whose broad back was towards her as they walked.
After their brief halt, the rope was readjusted, and she did not even observe the trembling of Franz's hands as he did it. Josef's taciturnity she put down to sulkiness at Mr. Harley's presence, which drew her attention and conversation from her guides, and also deprived them in some measure of the proud feeling of undivided responsibility for her safety: for a man, however inefficient and weak, is always supposed to be responsible for the safety of the woman near him. The cousins went joyously on, unsuspicious of the peril in which they stood, and unaware of the deadly conflict raging in Franz's stout bosom, and imperilling the calm so necessary to his dangerous calling. The glacier lay far beneath them. The rarity of the air was beginning to tell upon their lungs, and once they had to stop for Mattie to regain her breath. Sit down they could not, for the simple reason that there was nothing to sit upon, nor standing space over a foot broad. It was no longer wise to look down, though there was little to see but a rolling sea of cloud far beneath them. Never, Mattie thought, had Josef shown more decision and courage. There was no returning upon steps; no pausing to consider the better path; he went straight on, lighting, with unerring precision, upon the best footing.
They were now creeping round a precipice, in the icy sides of which Josef's axe cut their footing step by step. The rocky wall arched slightly under their path, so they were in a manner projected over the abyss below, and the cliff continued the arch above them, so that it was impossible to incline away from the void beneath. Very cautiously they made their way, alert and expectant of the sudden strain on the rope, which tells that a comrade has slipped, and when Josef reached the corner and disappeared round it, even Mattie experienced a sensation she was unwilling to confess to. She would have given the world to look round and see by Alec's face how he was bearing it. But when she herself reached the sharp corner and found herself for a moment projected into void central nothingness, with the necessity of turning sharply and leaving Alec and Franz out of sight, her feeling was one of anguish, and there was such a strain upon every nerve as made her summon all her strength, knowing, as she did, that one false step, one instant's surrender to the horror of the moment, might be fatal to the whole party. She could not even wonder how Alec was standing the strain; nor could he, though his heart sickened when he saw her vanish round the corner, think of anything but the necessity of keeping cool and stepping truly in his upward path.
Mattie had not thought anything could exceed the terror of that moment, unless it were the actual strain of a comrade's fall. She was mistaken, for something now occurred which froze the current of her blood within her. The fall of anything down a sheer abyss is always a dizzying sight, and the thing which Mattie now saw fall doubly bewildered her brain. It was Josef's short, full, brown beard, which glided from his face and sank eddying down, down, fathoms down beneath them. Mattie's lips opened in a low cry of horror, but she controlled herself; and it was well she did so, for a new terror now beset her. Josef turned and retraced his steps towards her, gazing fully and wildly in her distracted face. The startling fact that it was not Josef burst upon her in this awful place, where one false movement was instant death.
"At last!" he cried, standing by her side with the rope tightened round his arm. "Once more, Mattie—together once more, and for ever!"
"Mr. Venn," replied Mattie, in a faint, hoarse voice, "this is a cruel and wicked deed! Three lives are in your power!"
"Yes," he repeated, in a deep, full voice, and with a terrible fire in his eyes, "in my power at last. Last week I was in yours. I put my heart in your hands, and you dashed it down into dark destruction, as I might dash you now with a knife-cut across the rope." He waved his open knife over the rope as he spoke.
"What do you mean, Mr. Venn?" asked Mattie, with a strong shudder. "Why have you done this dreadful thing?"
"Dearest, you are safe with me," he answered, with a tenderness even more terrible than his fierceness. "Am I not a better guide than Josef Wendel? Once more with you and for ever. Harley is near, but I am nearer. He is dear, but I will be dearer. This day is mine. Together, always together, we two will climb the great white mountain stairs, and rest upon the summits for ever in the light of Heaven."
His arm was round her and his kiss upon her cheek. Mattie dare not move a hair's breadth, though the horror of the moment sickened her to swooning point. For a moment she hoped it was not true. It was too like a nightmare to be real; perhaps she would wake soon in the hôtel and find it all a dream. She tried to speak, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, already parched with mountain thirst. This was really George Venn, the man she knew well and liked much, though she could not love him, and had plainly told him so but a week since: Venn, of the Alpine Club, the writer of a book on mountaineering, but with such a look upon his brown face as she had never seen in any man's. Was it a demon's face? Had she gone mad on the mountain? Alec was shouting round the corner—
"Anything wrong?"
"Nothing," she managed to reply, after two repetitions of Alec's question. The kiss on her cheek burned a deeper indignation into her troubled soul.
"Coward!" she cried. "Let go of me! Let us turn!"
But for Alec she felt that she could have sprung into the abyss.
"Turn! when our bridal is but just beginning! Why, Mattie, that would be madness--madness," he repeated in a low, agonised voice, dying away into a faint moan. was Then the truth flashed upon Mattie: she poised over that abyss in the embrace of a madman. She rallied her powers with a strong effort, and remembered that it is best to humour maniacs.
"Quite so," she returned, gently. "Let us go on. I am tired of standing. My head swims. Will you lead on, Mr. Venn, if you please?"
As she spoke all her life flashed before her, and with it the full realisation of the peril in which they stood, together with the advisability of communicating the truth to Franz and Alec; but she could do or say nothing without the knowledge of her terrible guide, and she feared to startle Alec. To irritate Venn might be death to all. If she could but save Alec! The thought of cutting the rope between Alec and herself occurred to her, and was dismissed. He had said that his head would fail him without a rope before and behind on that awful steep. Besides, he would never leave her to the mercy of Venn, and there might be a conflict between the tall, athletic mountaineer of thirty-five, strong with the strength of madness, and the slighter, smaller Alec, a novice in climbing. Her own peril was nothing; she could think only of Alec's safety; she would risk cutting the rope. She could not. Her knife was too far in her pocket to be available. Alec and Franz were both shouting to know what was wrong; Venn, with that dreadful tenderness in his distraught gaze, was still looking in her face, apparently not receiving her entreaties to go on. The thick thud of her heart against her breast took away her already failing breath; by her own dizziness she knew that Alec's head must be turning. The ice on which her feet rested cracked slightly; her footing would be gone if they did not quickly move. The clouds beneath their feet parted and rolled away with a dizzying motion, disclosing a sun-lit village far in the valley's depths; her agony became insupportable; cold beads stood upon her brow. Her mother was perhaps looking up, ignorant of the tragedy being enacted up there above the clouds. Mattie's heart went up to Heaven in strong supplication. Suddenly an eagle flew out and floated far beneath, with the sunlight on its broad pinions, bringing her inexplicable comfort and hope. She knew that she was safer than the bird in the hand of God.
She now bethought her that this poor lunatic, loving her, must be to some extent in her control: her will, sane as it was, could surely master his poor bewildered wits. What had she been told of her own magnetic powers? She bent her gaze upon his, throwing all the intensity of her will into it.
"Go on, George," she said, in a firm, commanding voice; "don't you know that we must reach the summit?"
"Of course," he replied, with a bewildered look. "I had forgotten. We must soar and soar together until we solve the everlasting problem."
His arm left its clasp of her shuddering body. He went on, and she stepped with difficulty into the notches he had cut with his axe, her knees so loosened and tremulous that she felt they would give way. Alec turned the corner, and then Franz; the latter's face was livid. If Mattie had suffered a certainty of anguish in the few minutes into which all this horror was crowded, Franz had endured a perfect purgatory of unseen and conjectural misery. Alec, whose lungs were now distressed by the thin, keen air, did not imagine there was anything wrong beyond a little difficulty in finding a path; Mattie dared not tell him in Venn's hearing. They climbed steadily on, the mountaineer's instinct calming Venn by claiming his energies to find safe footing; the necessary mental effort to do this concentrating his distraught faculties and bringing order into that dread chaos. Alec's bodily and mental faculties were absorbed in the task of climbing; he dared not look even as far up as the guide; Mattie's whole being was strained to the utmost in watching Venn, minding her steps, trying to get her knife out, and sending her heart up to Heaven in fervent prayer.
Her terror was annihilated by the necessity for straining all her energies; she felt that upon her coolness all their lives depended.
III.
An hour passed thus, in hard climbing: up and down and round peaks and crags, with never a level resting place over two or three feet square. They could not unrope, and dared not stop. During this prolonged nightmare Mattie felt as if she had been facing the awful peril for ages and ages. She seemed to herself to grow old and decrepit in the terrible strain. Sometimes Venn would turn and begin addressing her more or less incoherently; then Mattie would summon extra will force to her glance and voice, and gently and firmly bid him advance. Once he burst out into a wild and eloquent address to the mountains, beginning in blank verse, but dwindling away into babbling and meaningless prose. But if he stopped or approached her, she always bade him go on she thought that if she once let him come near and touch her, his madness would again master him. She hoped they might reach some comparatively secure platform on which she could get free of him. She knew that he would not be persuaded to turn and descend.
Presently the way became easier. They had crossed a fearful chasm, the guide leaping it and handing the others over, and were standing to breathe on a ledge more than three feet broad. Alec had just observed the change in the guide's face, and was about to speak of it to Mattie, who was now close to him, when she whispered hurriedly to him--
"The guide has gone mad! Tell Franz."
Venn saw them whisper, and sprang with a wild cry to Mattie, clasping her in his arm.
"At last!" he shouted; "at last; with one leap we shall be wiser than Socrates!"
But the two men were upon him in an instant, and an awful struggle followed. Franz cut the rope from Venn, but had to drop his knife before he could disentangle Mattie and Alec from himself and each other.
"Stab him!" cried Franz; "stab him before we are over!"
And Mattie could have stabbed him once; the knife was within her grasp; but she hesitated till Venn went over the verge, clutching her fiercely. More than once he was drawn back; Alec and Franz were almost exhausted, when he struck his head against the granite wall and fell, lying quiet upon the narrow platform, the others upon him as he lay lengthwise.
After a time Mattie found herself lying covered with shawls in a safe cleft of rock, with Alec and the true Josef bending over her and giving her brandy, while Franz looked on, with a shower of gold pieces on the snow at his feet.
Afterwards she learned that Josef Wendel, who had been apprised the night before by a second messenger from the hotel that Mattie had changed her mind about the expedition, went up to the Hôtel du Pic two hours after the party had started, and heard of their departure with Franz and his supposed self from the landlord. It was evident, both to the landlord and Josef, that some man had personated the latter, with or without the complicity of Franz Wendel. Josef's faithful heart foreboded danger to his dear young lady, whom he truly loved for her courage, sweet manners, and much kindness. He therefore quickly engaged another guide, and started at full speed to the rescue. As soon as it was light he saw the party on the mountain, and, taking a quicker but more difficult way, aimed to cut them off higher up, as he succeeded in doing just after their struggle with the madman. He and his fellow guide were in time to carry the fainting Mattie up to a safer resting place, and bind the stunned Venn securely. Franz, full of remorse, was left to watch the unfortunate Venn until he could be carried down and put under proper treatment. Franz was held blameless in going on with the false guide; for Mattie affirmed that he had been unable to help himself, Venn having threatened him, and being the strongest man and most capable mountaineer, as Franz well knew, though he had no suspicion of the guide's mental trouble, which had never before broken out, and which was eventually conquered.
When Mattie and Alec reached the Hôtel du Pic, the latter appeared to be the more knocked up of the two, and told Mrs. Linton, who had been in happy ignorance of their adventure, that he wished never even to see a snow mountain again. Mattie said nothing, but went to bed and to sleep for three days and three nights--only waking to take food from time to time, as a ship puts into port for coal. Then she rose, and was pleased to find that her dark, curly hair had not turned grey. For about six weeks she slept a good deal, though not too much to find time to be formally engaged to Alec Harley, and after that her roses were as bright and her cheeks as dimpled as ever.
One day in the following summer they were strolling by the sea, when Mattie sighed.
"What are you thinking of to sigh so mournfully?" Alec asked.
"I was thinking," replied Mattie, "how I should like to do the Matterhorn with you this autumn!"