The Four Corners of the World Part 20

"Nothing. The clouds closed again over the peak, and I saw no more."

Challoner had listened to the story with a growing anxiety. He took the chair behind the telescope, and sat with his eye to the lens for a long while. But he saw only writhing mists in a failing light. He rose and moved away. There was no mountaineer that day in the hotel except himself. Not one of the group about the telescope quite understood the gravity of the story which had been told them--if it were true. But it could not be true, Challoner a.s.sured himself.

It was just possible, of course, that on a fine day some party which had adventured upon a new ascent might find itself on the top of the Weisshorn at six o'clock in the evening. But on a day like this no man in his senses would be on any ridge or face of that mountain at all, even in the morning. Yet the tourist's story was circ.u.mstantial. That was the fact which troubled Challoner. The traverse of the Weisshorn from the Schallijoch, for instance, was one of the known difficult climbs of the Pennine Alps. There was that little detail, too, of the last man shaking the snow from the slack of the rope. But no doubt the tourist had read the year-books of the Austrian Alpine Club. Certainly he must have been mistaken. He wanted to see; therefore he saw. It was inconceivable that the story should be true.

Thus Challoner thought all through that evening and the next day. But as he left the dining-room the manageress met him with a grave face, and asked him into her office. She closed the door when he had entered the room, and said:

"There has been an accident."

Challoner's thoughts flew back to the story of the tourist.

"On the Weisshorn?"

"Yes. It is terrible!" And the woman sat down, while the tears came into her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

Two young Englishmen, it appeared, Mark Frobisher and George Liston, had come up from the valley a week ago. They would not hear of guides.

They had climbed from Wasdale Head and in the Snowdon range. The Alpine Club was a body of old fogies. They did not think much of the Alps.

"They were so young--boys! Mr. Frobisher brought a wife with him."

"A wife?" exclaimed Challoner.

"Yes. She was still younger than he was, and she spoke as he did--knowing nothing, but full of pride in her husband, and quite confident in his judgment. They were children--that is the truth--and very likely we might have persuaded them that they were wrong--if only Herr Ranks had not come, too, from Vienna about the same time."

Challoner began dimly to understand the tragedy which had happened.

Ranks was well known amongst mountaineers. Forty years old, the right age for endurance, he was known for a pa.s.sion for long expeditions undertaken with very small equipment; and for a rather dangerous indifference as to the companions he climbed with. He had at once proposed the Schalligrat ascent to the two Englishmen. They had gone down to Randa, slept the night there, and in bad weather had walked up to the Weisshorn hut, with provisions for three days. Nothing more had been heard of the party until this very afternoon, when Ranks and George Listen, both exhausted and the latter terribly frost-bitten, staggered into the Randa hotel.

"That's terrible," said Challoner. But still more terrible was the story which the Austrian had to tell. He had written it out at once very briefly, and sent it up to the Riffelalp. The manageress handed the letter to Challoner.

"We stayed in the hut two days," it ran, "hoping that the weather would lift. The next morning there were promising signs, and taking our blankets we crossed the Schalliberg glacier, and camped on the usual spur of the Schallihorn. We had very little food left, and I know now that we ought to have returned to Randa. But I did not think of the youth of my companions. It was very cold during the night, but no snow fell, and in the morning there was a gleam of sunshine.

Accordingly we started, and reached the Schallijoch in four hours and a half. Under the top of the col we breakfasted, and then attacked the ridge. The going was very difficult; there was often a glaze of black ice upon the rocks, and as not one of us knew the ridge at all, we wasted much time in trying to traverse some of the bigger gendarmes on the western side, whereas they were only possible on the east.

Moreover, the sunlight did not keep its promise: it went out altogether at half-past ten; the ridge became bitterly and dangerously cold, and soon after midday the wind rose. We dared not stop anywhere, and our food was now altogether exhausted. At two o'clock we found a shelter under a huge tower of red rock, and there we rested. Frobisher complained of exhaustion, and was clearly very weak. Liston was stronger, but not in a condition for a climb which I think must always be difficult and was now hazardous in the extreme. The cold had made him very sleepy. We called a council of war. But it was quite evident to me that we could not get down in the state in which we were, and that a night upon the ridge without food or drink was not to be thought of. I was certain that we were not very far from the top, and I persuaded my friends to go forward. I climbed up and over the red tower by a small winding crack in its face, and with great difficulty managed, by the help of the rope, to draw my friends up after me. But this one tower took more than an hour to cross, and on a little snow-col like a knife-edge on the farther side of it, Frobisher collapsed altogether. What with the cold and his exhaustion his heart gave out. I swear that we stayed with him until he died--yes, I swear it--although the wind was very dangerous to the rest of us, and he was evidently dying. We stayed with him--yes. When all was over, I tied him by the waist with a piece of spare rope we carried to a splinter of rock which cropped out of the col, and went on with Liston. I did not think that we should either of us now escape, but the rock-towers upon the arete came to an end at last, and at six o'clock we stood on the mountain-top. Then we changed the order, Liston going now first down the easy eastern ridge. The snow was granulated and did not bind, and we made very slow progress. We stopped for the night at a height, I should think, of thirteen thousand feet, with very little protection from the wind. The cold was terrible, and I did not think that Liston would live through the night. But he did, and today there was sunlight, and warmth in the sunlight, so that moving very carefully we got down to the hut by midday. There, by a happy chance, we found some crusts and odds and ends of food which we had left behind; and after a rest were able to come on to Randa, getting some milk at the half-way chalet on the way down. Liston is frost-bitten in the feet and hands, but I think will be able to be moved down to the clinic at Lucerne in a couple of days. It is all my fault. Yes. I say that frankly. I alone am to blame. I take it all upon my shoulders. You can say so freely at the Riffelalp. 'Ranks takes all the blame.' I shall indeed write to-morrow to the Zurich papers to say that the fault is mine."

Challoner read the message through again. The a.s.sumption of magnanimity in the last few lines was singularly displeasing, and the eager a.s.sertion that the party had not left Frobisher until he was actually dead seemed to protest overmuch.

"That's a bad letter," said Challoner. "He left Frobisher still alive upon the ridge," and the desolation of that death in the cold and the darkness and the utter loneliness of those storm-riven pinnacles soaring above the world seemed to him appalling. But the manageress had no thoughts to spare for the letter.

"Who will tell her?" she asked, rocking her body to and fro, and fixing her troubled eyes on Challoner. "It is you. You are her countryman."

Challoner was startled.

"What do you mean?"

"I told you. Mr. Frobisher brought a wife with him. Yes. They had only been married a couple of months. She is a year or two younger than he is--a child. Oh, and she was so proud of him. For my part I did not like him very much. I would not have trusted him with the happiness of anyone I cared for. But she had given him all her heart. And now she must be told!"

"She is in the hotel now?" Challoner asked.

"Yes. You were talking to her yesterday."

Challoner did not need the answer.

"Very well. I will tell her." And he turned away, his heart sick at the task which lay before him. But before he had reached the door the woman called him back.

"Could we not give her just one more night of confidence and contentment? Nothing can be done until to-morrow. No one in the hotel knows but you and I. She will have sorrow enough. She need not begin to suffer before she must. Just one more night of quiet sleep."

So she pleaded, and Challoner clutched at the plea. He was twenty-six, and up to the moment life had hidden from him her stern ordeals. How should he break the news? He needed time carefully to prepare the way.

He shrank from the vision of the pain which he must inflict.

"Yes, it can all wait until to-morrow," he said, and he went out of the office into the hall. There was a sound of music in the big drawing-room--a waltz, and the visitors were dancing to it. The noise jarred upon his ears, and he crossed towards the garden door in order to escape from it. But to reach the garden he had to pa.s.s the ballroom, and as he pa.s.sed it he looked in, and the irony of the world shocked him so that he stood staring upon the company with a white face and open-mouthed. Frobisher's widow was dancing. She was dancing with all the supple grace of her nineteen years, her face flushed and smiling, whilst up there, fourteen thousand feet high on the storm-swept ridge of the Weisshorn, throughout that bitter night her dead husband bestrode the snow, and nodded and swayed to the gale. As she whirled past the door she saw him. She smiled with the pleasant friendliness of a girl who is perfectly happy, and with just a hint of condescension for the weaker vessel who found it necessary to climb with guides. Challoner hurried out into the garden.

He went up to her room the next morning and broke the news to her as gently as he could. He was prepared for tears, for an overwhelming grief. But she showed him neither. She caught at an arm of a chair, and leaning upon it, seated herself when he began to speak. But after that she listened, frowning at him in a perplexity like a child over some difficult problem of her books. And when he had finished she drew a long breath.

"I don't know why you should try to frighten me," she said. "Of course, it is not true."

She would not believe--no, not even with Ranks's letter in her hand, at which she stared and stared as though it needed decoding.

"Perhaps I could read it if I were alone," she said at last, and Challoner left her to herself.

In an hour she sent for him again. Now indeed she knew, but she had no tears wherewith to ease her knowledge. Challoner saw upon her face such an expression of misery and torture as he hoped never to see again. She spoke with a submission which was very strange. It was only the fact of her youth, not her consciousness of it, which seemed to protest against her anguish as against an injustice.

"I was abrupt to you," she said. "I am sorry. You were kind to me. I did not understand. But I understand now, and there is something which I should like to ask you. You see, I do not know."

"Yes?"

"Would it be possible that he should be brought back to me?"

She had turned to the window, and she spoke low, and with a world of yearning in her voice.

"We will try."

"I should be so very grateful."

She had so desolate a look that Challoner made a promise of it, even though he knew well the rashness of the promise.

"You will go yourself?" she asked, turning her face to him.

"Of course."

"Thank you. I have no friends here, you see, but you."

Eight guides were collected that afternoon in the valley. Challoner brought down his two, and the whole party, under the guide-chief, moved up to the Weisshorn hut. Starting the next morning with a clear sky of starlight above their heads, they crossed the mountain by the eastern arete, and descending the Schalligrat, found young Frobisher tied by the waist and shoulders to a splinter of rock as Ranks had described. He was astride a narrow edge of snow, a leg dangling down each precipice. His eyes stared at them, his mouth hung open, and when any stray gust of wind struck the ridge, he nodded at them with a dreadful pleasantry. He had the air, to Challoner's eyes, of a live paralytic rather than of a man frozen and dead. His face was the colour of cheese.

With infinite trouble they lifted him back on to the mountain summit, and roped him round in a piece of stout sacking. Then they dragged him down the snow of the upper part of the ridge, carried him over the lower section of rock, and, turning off the ridge to the right, brought him down to the glacier.

It was then three o'clock in the afternoon, and half an hour later the grimmest episode of all that terrible day occurred. The lashing of the rope got loose as they dragged the body down the glacier, and suddenly it worked out of the sacking and slid swiftly past them down a steep slope of ice. A cry of horror broke from the rescue party. For a moment or two they watched it helplessly as it gathered speed and leapt into the air from one little hummock to another, the arms tossing and whirling like the arms of a man taken off his guard. Then it disappeared with a crash into a creva.s.se, and the glacier was empty.

The party stood for a little while aghast, and the illusion which had seized upon Challoner when he had first come in sight of the red rock-tower on the other ridge attacked him again. He could not get it out of his thoughts that this was a living man who had disappeared from their gaze, so natural had all his movements been.

The party descended to the lip of the creva.s.se, and a guide was lowered into it. But he could not reach the bottom, and they drew him up again.