The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  'I don't know. He said he was coming, that was all.'

  He did not answer, and they went out to the sleigh, where the Freys were waiting for them.

  'Would you like to ski down, Jane?' Hilde asked. 'It would be good practice for you. It's practically all downhill and Stuart will take care of you.'

  Jane hesitated, wondering what Stuart thought of the arrangement. She would have given anything to ski down through this enchanted night with him as her guide, and they could be sure of a moon. The sky was very clear. He looked across at her, saw her momentary hesitation, and said:

  'Why not? Doctor Sark couldn't possibly have made Oberzach by this time.'

  Jane hated these sardonic references to Tom, but she accepted the loan of Hilde's skis in silence. Hilde and she were almost of a height and Stuart buckled the skis on for her as the sleigh pulled away.

  'We'll follow the trail,' he said. 'The road is rather dangerous.'

  Jane discovered that the ski trail led up behind the chalets, and they covered the ground slowly at first because of her inexperience of uphill work. She was still uncertain when the ground dropped away steeply beneath her feet, but Stuart kept close to her side and she regained confidence enough to smile at him in the moonlight.

  It was then that it happened. With no very definite movement, she had gone over on one ski and plunged headlong down the slope.

  Shaken and almost buried in icy snow, she lay there until he reached her, convinced of a dozen sprains, at least, to say nothing of a broken leg.

  'All right! You're not hurt.' His sensitive fingers were going over her limbs with professional care. 'Damn these new-type bindings!' He swore under his breath. 'I never did have faith in them. That's all that happened. This one gave way.' Relief was struggling with anger and anxiety in his deep voice. 'We'll have to go back, at least as far as one of the chalets, to see if we can get this thing mended.'

  'I shouldn't have come,' Jane whispered remorsefully, shaken and shivering with cold after her plunge into the snow. 'What a fool you must think me!'

  'It could have happened to anyone,' he assured her. 'It means walking back without your skis. Do you think you can manage it?'

  'I can always try.'

  As they approached the chalets she could see that they were all unoccupied. The Swiss doctors and their wives were all up at the clinic half a mile away and the chalets remained unlit. Jane felt desperately cold, and already she was growing tired. Stuart stood on the ski trail to consider the situation, and then he said grimly:

  'There's only one thing for it. Come on!'

  He led the way in a determined silence to the last chalet of all, the dark, closely-shuttered building which Albert Frey had pointed out as his own.

  They reached the door and he brought out a bunch of keys, fitting one into the lock. Jane could see a wrought-iron lantern hanging at the side of the door and a chain bell pull, and then he was ushering her into a long, narrow hall.

  It was very dark, and she had to grope her way, following him till he flicked on his cigarette lighter and fumbled for a switch. They went ahead again, still in darkness, with only the faint beams of moonlight coming in at the open door behind them. Jane could feel smooth wood panelling under her fingers as she ran her hand along the wall, and then, ahead of her, a light was switched on and Stuart stood aside at the entrance to a spacious room.

  Closely shuttered windows occupied two of the walls and a third was almost entirely taken up by a beautifully tiled stove behind which a wooden stairway led to a gallery and the bedrooms above. There was no soft furnishing, however, such as a woman would have provided. The tables and chairs were all austere and serviceable and dust lay thick on them and on the long pine bench beneath the shuttered windows.

  The should have been her home, she thought, and madly, cruelly she was clothing it with the curtains which would have brightened it and the cushions to give comfort on the long, hard window seat.

  'Well,' said Stuart behind her, 'this is it. In the ordinary way, I don't suppose you would ever seen it.'

  He turned to the stove without further explanation, opening the small door at its base to peer inside, and Jane shivered involuntarily. He looked up and met her eyes.

  'You're cold,' he said. 'I'll try to find some wood and light a fire. You can sit above the stove and brew cocoa while I mend your ski.'

  When he had gone she gazed about her, through the partition in the remaining wall which folded back to reveal a dining-alcove which had probably never been in use. She could imagine Stuart eating all his meals, bachelor-fashion, beside the stove.

  He came back with an armful of log chippings and some old magazines, and soon the warmth of crackling timber was easing the silence between them. He also found a sealed tin of coffee and produced sugar from another tin while she measured the coffee into a pan.

  When she had made the coffee he brought two beakers and they drank it huddled over the stove before he went to look at the broken ski.

  Jane sat on, nursing the warm beaker between her hands and wondering how she should feel sitting here in the chalet that would have been her home during those past four eventful years. She closed her eyes, unable to think of anything more peaceful, yet it must all remain a dream. It had come so near, the thought of it too bitter-sweet to endure for long.

  When Stuart came back with the mended ski she was kneeling before the stove pushing small logs on to the flames. She looked up at him, conscious of sudden tension, aware of an emotion she could not name which hovered on the brink of panic. There was no kindness in his face, and his eyes were as cold as steel as he came towards her.

  'You should have come here as a bride,' he said harshly. 'As my wife. In those days I felt myself cheated of something worth while. I've wondered since if I could have been wrong.'

  His eyes held her as securely as if his strong hands had fastened over her wrists.

  'No, Stuart—no!' she pleaded.

  For a moment longer he continued to look at her and then he turned away.

  'Don't worry! I'm not that sort of a savage.' He flung open the inner door. 'I brought you here to prove something to myself, but I'm not sure if I've entirely succeeded. Men can be everlasting fools!'

  Something rose in Jane to choke back utterance. The past, the truth—what did it matter now? She got to her feet and followed him to the door, watching as he bent to close the stove and see that it was safe before they left, much as he might have done if they had, indeed, been man and wife.

  Stuart scarcely spoke as they negotiated the distance between the chalets and Oberzach, and she felt humiliated and crushed and willing to die.

  Dinner that night was a fiasco. They all tried too hard, endeavouring to capture a festive spirit that was no longer there. Hans Kirchhofer and his brother had been invited up from the hotel, but even their bright company did little to lessen the tension which bound Della as well as Stuart and Jane. After the holiday, Martin Kirchhofer said, there would be plenty of room at the hotel. He had turned out to be quieter than his twin, more thoughtful perhaps. There were times when his thoughts seemed to be far away in a world of his own, a white world of slaloms and ski-jumping and long trail runs into the wilds.

  That Della was there with him in spirit was not very difficult to see, and two days later, when Stuart announced that he must go to Geneva for a week, he sought Jane out with a warning.

  'I'm not too happy about these old associations,' he said candidly. 'The Kirchhofers and their like are mountaineers, of course, and they live for climbing. They have, too, enough money to make it possible all the year round. If it won't be too much of an effort to tear yourself away from Doctor Sark's company occasionally keep an eye on Della for me.'

  Jane met the mocking gaze with an angry challenge in her eyes.

  'I don't think I've ever neglected my duty, Stuart—not even for love.' Her voice had sunk to a whisper and all the colour fled from her cheeks. 'You needn't remind me of my duty to Della, but I can tell
you that you might be kinder to her.'

  He looked down at her, faintly surprised.

  'In what way?'

  'You—she's in love with you. Can't you see what your— rejection of her is likely to mean?'

  He stood for a moment, searching her distressed face, and then he laughed.

  'My dear Jane,' he said, 'love has you by the ears! It can even distort your vision, you know, so beware!'

  He was gone with that, callously assured that he was doing right, Jane thought in bitter disappointment.

  Surprisingly, Della did not seem unduly depressed by his sudden departure for Geneva. She appeared to consider herself more free, less under his unchallengeable domination, but her preoccupation with the thought of the mountain trails still remained.

  One morning when a party of climbers came up from the village with alpenstocks and icepicks across their rucksacks, she watched them pass with the flame of unquenchable envy in her pale eyes and a hardening expression about her mouth.

  'I'm well enough,' she said. 'I could easily go.'

  It was the first time she had openly confessed her desire and Jane was glad that the issue had come out into the open, at last.

  'It's so soon, Della,' she cautioned. 'If you would only wait a little longer till you were really well ‑'

  'Wait! Wait!' Della was on her feet, cheeks flushed, eyes blazing. 'You're like Stuart! All you ever think about is your precious cures. You don't care that I'm being crushed with shame every time I meet these people, that they can only look my way with pity in their eyes!'

  'Are you sure they look at it in that way?' Jane asked quietly.

  'Why shouldn't they? All men are a little resentful of the woman who can meet them out there on the snowfields on their own level.' Her eyes travelled longingly to the high peaks, sudden purpose in their depths. 'But I'll show them,' she declared. 'One day I'll show them, if it kills me!'

  'Della, you mustn't!' Jane cried desperately. 'What good would it do? We've come such a long way in these past few months. Don't undo everything Stuart and Doktor Frey have done for you by this sudden foolishness.'

  'Stuart?' Della laughed, bitterness still the predominating emotion in her deep voice. 'How much do you think Stuart really cares—or anyone else? He owes it to my father to see me through this, but it will just be .another cure as far as he is concerned. Stuart's like that. As hard as nails. He won't give way ‑'

  'Della, it's because he can't. Don't you see?' Jane was imploring now. 'If you take a risk at this stage it might prove—fatal. Stuart knows that. Promise me you'll do nothing rash. Promise me you'll wait till Stuart gets back.'

  'And then I can be as rash as I please 1' Della laughed with a swift return to her former indifference. 'We both know Stuart far too well to believe that, Jane 1'

  Two days before Stuart was due to return Doktor Frey went to Zurich for the day. The Kirchhofer brothers had invited them to the hotel the evening before for dinner and Jane had been frankly relieved to find that Tom had not yet put in an appearance there. The dinner party had consisted of eight people. Doktor Frey and Hilde, Della and Jane, the two Kirchhofers, and a married couple whom Della already knew. The talk had turned inevitably to the local ski runs and the glacier conditions up in the passes, but Della had contributed very little to the conversation, contenting herself with a sly dig at Jane by asking if she intended to join the climbers.

  'They're willing to take any risk, short of calculated murder,' she had added.

  'Not with a complete greenhorn!' Jane had countered, and Hans Kirchhofer had laughed and said that he considered she was doing very well for a beginner.

  Doktor Frey left Oberzach early in the morning. There was much movement in the house, and Jane thought that Hilde must have been up to see her brother off. When she looked at her watch it was not quite six o'clock and still dark, so she pulled the down bolster up under her chin and snuggled beneath its comforting warmth. In spite of central heating, the house was often chilly in the early morning.

  She must have slept for two hours, because the children were skiing merrily down the valley road when she crossed to her window and the baker's sleigh was already at the terrace steps.

  'I expect Della will breakfast in her room later,' Hilda-said when she reached the dining-room. 'She prefers to spend the morning there, and it is always good when she agrees to rest. You and I will have a cosy chat over our rolls and jam, and you will tell me how to make your English hot-pot, of which I hear so much from Stuart when he is with us! He will tell me always that Swiss cooking is superb, but there are some things in England which cannot be imitated!'

  They spent the greater part of the morning together, and when Hilde buckled on her skis to go to the grocery store with the weekly order Jane went in search of Della for the first time, hoping that she had managed to sleep in the interval and felt refreshed.

  Della's room was empty.

  Even before she began her search, Jane knew where Della had gone. The innocent questions of the evening before: those few minutes alone with Hans Kirchhofer in the foyer of the hotel; the voices down on the terrace so early in the morning all pointed to the one fact that Della had gone to the beckoning heights.

  For one bewildering moment Jane knew her sheer panic. She was alone in the house. There was nobody to help her or give her advice, and she had no idea how far the ski runners had gone or when they had left.

  Even if their rendezvous had been the hotel, they would be hours ahead of any pursuit.

  The idea that she must go after Della to dissuade her from this mad adventure at any price had been fixed in her mind from the moment of her patient's disappearance and she did not stop now to examine it. To go down to the village would be wasting precious time. The skiers could only have taken the single trail up the valley as far as the chalets above the clinic, and she knew her way to the clinic.

  With trembling fingers and her breath driving hard between her lips, she buckled on her own skis, almost sobbing when the bindings slipped again and again under her unpractised touch, but she was equipped, at least, and she dug her sticks into the snow with a fierce determination in her heart.

  'It is madness, Fraulein!' Hilde's maid said as she watched her go. 'You will never catch them. They run like the wind!'

  Jane thought that she could get to the clinic, at least, hoping that Della might not have gone any farther than that.

  The clinic had not seemed quite so far away when she had made the journey by sleigh, nor on the way back with Stuart, but she reminded herself that the run back had been mostly downhill, and therefore easier. Her arms began to ache and she seemed to be ploughing into the snow instead of skimming over it as she had been taught, and once or twice she stood still in her tracks, looking back to where she could see the dark, snaking road leading up from the fast dwindling village, wondering if she should have followed it for greater safety. There was no sense in turning back now, however, and there seemed no doubt about the marks on the trail. They were undoubtedly fresh, made since the overnight fall of snow.

  The aching tiredness of her limbs increased, but her mind was closed to fatigue. She must find Della and dissuade her from this mad adventure at all costs, and her one hope remained that the ski party might have stopped at the clinic to rest or even to take a meal there. She remembered Doktor Frey issuing the invitation to Martin Kirchhofer the evening before, but she could not bring the young mountaineer's reply to mind—or did not want to, because it might have been that Martin had refused, explaining that they wanted to press on as quickly as possible while the light remained good.

  Their destination was the rest-hut at Neuhaus, far up on the plateau above the valley, and Jane prayed that Della had already abandoned the overnight project, realising just how much it would entail. One of the young Swiss doctors at the clinic might have been able to reason with her.

  Steadily the ski trail drew away from the road, winding closer in to the mountains, and then, abruptly, disconcertingly, it div
ided.

  Jane stood in the churned-up snow where the small party must have stopped to consult their maps, staring in utter dismay at two distinct trails branching away to right and left. For some reason which she could not imagine, the party had broken up here, and she knew so little of trail running that no explanation presented itself. There was nothing for it but to use her own sense of direction and hope that the skiers had eventually joined forces again at the clinic.

  Four people had taken the right-hand trail and two had gone off on their own. Jane followed the four parallel lines and prayed that she might be right. Her idea was that Della and Mabel Kinross had left the male members of the climbing party and made directly for the clinic.

  The going became strenuous, her laboured breathing audible in the stillness. There was very little wind, and the trees under which she passed seemed to pause, waiting. Once she heard an ominous rumble ahead of her and stood fascinated to watch a miniature avalanche of fine snow cascading down over the jutting rock face like powdered crystal, and perhaps it was then that she realised that she had come far too near to the mountain wall. The clinic and the clustering chalets on the plateau above it were farther to the west.

  Yet the trail remained. She stood for a moment, irresolute, wondering if she should turn back, but ahead the ski-runners had swerved to the left again and she bit her teeth into her trembling lower lip and pressed on.

  When the first flakes of snow settled on her windcheater she gazed at them, hardly believing what she saw, but the thought of the clinic had become such an obsession with her that she refused to examine the full significance of a fresh snowfall. It was still bright, and there were patches of blue in the sky over to the west, above the hidden valley. She would not think of Oberzach and Hilde coming home to find that she had gone. The maid would give Hilde her message and she would understand. She would telephone the clinic and, later, Doktor Frey would bring the sleigh and take Della home!

  All easy enough to plan, but would it work out that way?

  She banished the defeatist thought, forcing her unwilling limbs to carry her forward. She was climbing gradually along the side of a steep col and before her she imagined that she could see the squat turf roof of a little hut. Sheer fatigue and a desperate, gnawing hunger made her regard it with relief. Wherever she was, she had reached shelter, and the trail she had been following led upwards to the distant roof.