“Yes.”
“A year ago, on just such a night as this, I sat with my guide, Michel Revailloud. I was going to cross the Col Dolent on the morrow. He had made his last ascent. We were not very cheerful. And he gave me as a parting present the one scrap of philosophy his life had taught him. He said: ‘Take care that when the time comes for you to get old that you have some one to share your memories. Take care that when you go home in the end, there shall be some one waiting in the room and the lamp lit against your coming.’”
Sylvia pressed against her side the hand which he had slipped through her arm.
“But he did more than give advice,” Chayne continued, “for as he went away to his home in the little village of Les Praz-Conduits, just across the fields, he passed Couttet’s Hotel and saw you under the lamp talking to a guide he knew. You were making your arrangements to ascend the Charmoz. But he dissuaded you.”
“Yes.”
“He convinced you that your first mountain should be the Aiguille d’Argentière. He gave you no doubt many reasons, but not the real one which he had in his thoughts.”
Sylvia looked at Chayne in surprise.
“He sent you to the Aiguille d’Argentière, because he knew that so you and I would meet at the Pavilion de Lognan.”
“But he had never spoken to me until that night,” exclaimed Sylvia.
“Yet he had noticed you. When I went up to fetch down my friend Lattery, you were standing on the hotel step. You said to me, ‘I am sorry.’ Michel heard you speak, and that evening talked of you. He had the thought that you and I were matched.”
Sylvia looked back to the night before her first ascent. She pictured to herself the old guide coming down the narrow street and out of the darkness into the light of the lamp above the doorway. She recalled how he had stopped at the sight of her, how cunningly he had spoken. He had desired that her last step on to her first summit should bring to her eyes and soul a revelation which no length of after years could dim. That was the argument, and it was just the argument which would prevail with her.
“So it was his doing,” she cried, with a laugh, and at once grew serious, dwelling, as lovers will, upon the small accident which had brought them together, and might so easily never have occurred. An unknown guide speaks to her in a doorway, and lo! for her the world is changed, dark years come to an end, the pathway broadens to a road; she walks not alone. Whatever the future may hold — she walks not alone. Suppose there had been no lamp above the doorway! Suppose there had been a lamp and she not there! Suppose the guide had passed five minutes sooner or five minutes later!
“Oh, Hilary!” she cried, and put the thought from her.
“I was thinking,” he said, “that if you were not tired we might walk across the fields to Michel’s house. He would, I think, be very happy if we did.”
A few minutes later they knocked upon Michel’s door. Michel Revailloud opened it himself and stood for a moment peering at the dim figures in the darkness of the road.
“It is I, Michel,” said Chayne, and at the sound of his voice Michel Revailloud drew him with a cry of welcome into the house.
“So you have come back to Chamonix, monsieur! That is good”; and he looked his “monsieur” over from head to foot and shook him warmly by the hand. “Ah, you have come back!”
“And not alone, Michel,” said Chayne.
Revailloud turned to the door and saw Sylvia standing there. She was on the threshold and the light reached to her. Sylvia moved into the low-roofed room. It was a big, long room, bare, and with a raftered ceiling, and since one oil lamp lighted it, it was full of shadows. To Chayne it had a lonely and a dreary look. He thought of his own house in Sussex and of the evening he had passed there, thinking it just as lonely. He felt perhaps at this moment, more than at any, the value of the great prize which he had won. He took her hand in his, and, turning to Michel, said simply:
“We are married, Michel. We reached Chamonix only this evening. You are the first of our friends to know of our marriage.”
Michel’s face lighted up. He looked from one to the other of his visitors and nodded his head once or twice. Then he blew his nose vigorously. “But I let you stand!” he cried, in a voice that shook a little, and he bustled about pushing chairs forward, and of a sudden stopped. He came forward to Sylvia very gravely and held out his hand. She put her hand into his great palm.
“Madame, I will not pretend to you that I am not greatly moved. This is a great happiness to me,” he said with simplicity. He made no effort to hide either the tears which filled his eyes or the unsteadiness of his voice. “I am very glad for the sake of Monsieur Chayne. But I know him well. We have been good friends for many a year, madame.”
“I know, Michel,” she said.
“And I can say therefore with confidence I am very glad for your sake too. I am also very glad for mine. A minute ago I was sitting here alone — now you are both here and together. Madame, it was a kind thought which brought you both here to me at once.”
“To whom else should we come?” said Sylvia with a smile, “since it was you, Michel, who would not let me ascend the Aiguille des Charmoz when I wanted to.”
Michel was taken aback for a moment; then his wrinkled and weatherbeaten face grew yet more wrinkled and he broke into a low and very pleasant laugh.
“Since my diplomacy has been so successful, madame, I will not deny it. From the first moment when I heard you with your small and pretty voice say on the steps of the hotel ‘I am sorry’ to my patron in his great distress, and when I saw your face, too thoughtful for one so young, I thought it would be a fine thing if you and he could come together. In youth to be lonely — what is it? You slip on your hat and your cloak and you go out. But when you are old, and your habits are settled, and you do not want to go out at nights to search for company, then it is as well to have a companion. And it is well to choose your companion in your youth, madame, so that you may have many recollections to talk over together when the good of life is chiefly recollection.”
He made his visitors sit down, fetched out a bottle of wine and offered them the hospitalities of his house, easily and naturally, like the true gentleman he was. It seemed to Chayne that he looked a little older, that he was a little more heavy in his gait, a little more troubled with his eyes than he had been last year. But at all events to-night he had the spirit, the good-humor of his youth. He talked of old exploits upon peaks then unclimbed, he brought out his guide’s book, in which his messieurs had written down their names and the dates of the climbs, and the photographs which they had sent to him.
“There are many photographs of men grown famous, madame,” he said, proudly, “with whom I had the good fortune to climb when they and I and the Alps were all young together. But it is not only the famous who are interesting. Look, madame! Here is your husband’s friend, Monsieur Lattery — a good climber but not always very sure on ice.”
“You always will say that, Michel,” protested Chayne. “I never knew a man so obstinate.”
Michel Revailloud smiled and said to Sylvia:
“I knew he would spring out on me. Never say a word against Monsieur Lattery if you would keep friends with Monsieur Chayne. See, I give you good advice in return for your kindness in visiting an old man. Nevertheless,” and he dropped his voice in a pretence of secrecy and nodded emphatically: “It is true. Monsieur Lattery was not always sure on ice. And here, madame, is the portrait of one whose name is no doubt known to you in London — Professor Kenyon.”
Sylvia, who was turning over the leaves of the guide’s little book, looked up at the photograph.
“It was taken many years ago,” she said.
“Twenty or twenty-five years ago,” said Michel, with a shrug of the shoulders, “when he and I and the Alps were young.”
Chayne began quickly to look through the photographs outspread upon the table. If Kenyon’s portrait was amongst Revailloud’s small treasures, there might be another which he h
ad no wish for his wife to see, the portrait of the man who climbed with Kenyon, who was Kenyon’s “John Lattery.” There might well be the group before the Monte Rosa Hotel in Zermatt which he himself had seen in Kenyon’s rooms. Fortunately however, or so it seemed to him, Sylvia was engrossed in Michel’s little book.
CHAPTER XXIII
MICHEL REVAILLOUD’S FÜHRBUCH
THE BOOK INDEED was of far more interest to her than the portrait of any mountaineer. It had a romance, a glamour of its own. It was just a little note-book with blue-lined pages and an old dark-red soiled leather cover which could fit into the breast pocket and never be noticed there. But it went back to the early days of mountaineering when even the passes were not all discovered and many of them were still uncrossed, when mythical peaks were still gravely allotted their positions and approximate heights in the maps; and when the easy expedition of the young lady of to-day was the difficult achievement of the explorer. It was to the early part of the book to which she turned. Here she found first ascents of which she had read with her heart in her mouth, ascents since made famous, simply recorded in the handwriting of the men who had accomplished them — the dates, the hours of starting and returning, a word or two perhaps about the condition of the snow, a warm tribute to Michel Revailloud and the signatures. The same names recurred year after year, and often the same hand recorded year after year attempts on one particular pinnacle, until at the last, perhaps after fifteen or sixteen failures, weather and snow and the determination of the climbers conspired together, and the top was reached.
“Those were the grand days,” cried Sylvia. “Michel, you must be proud of this book.”
“I value it very much, madame,” he said, smiling at her enthusiasm. Michel was a human person; and to have a young girl with a lovely face looking at him out of her great eyes in admiration, and speaking almost in a voice of awe, was flattery of a soothing kind. “Yes, many have offered to buy it from me at a great price — Americans and others. But I would not part with it. It is me. And when I am inclined to grumble, as old people will, and to complain that my bones ache too sorely, I have only to turn over the pages of that book to understand that I have no excuse to grumble. For I have the proof there that my life has been very good to live. No, I would not part with that little book.”
Sylvia turned over the pages slowly, naming now this mountain, now that, and putting a question from time to time as to some point in a climb which she remembered to have read and concerning which the narrative had not been clear. And then a cry of surprise burst from her lips.
Chayne had just assured himself that there was no portrait of Gabriel Strood amongst those spread out upon the table.
“What is it, madame?” asked Michel.
Sylvia did not answer, but stared in bewilderment at the open page. Chayne saw the book which she was reading and knew that his care lest she should come across her father’s portrait was of no avail. He crossed round behind her chair and looked over her shoulder. There on the page in her father’s handwriting was the signature: “Gabriel Strood.”
Sylvia raised her face to Hilary’s, and before she could put her question he answered it quietly with a nod of the head.
“Yes, that is so,” he said.
“You knew?”
“I have known for a long time,” he replied.
Sylvia was lost in wonder. Yet there was no doubt in her mind. Gabriel Strood, of whom she had made a hero, whose exploits she knew almost by heart, had suffered from a physical disability which might well have kept the most eager mountaineer to the level. It was because of his mastery over his disability that she had set him so high in her esteem. Well, there had been a day when her father had tramped across the downs to Dorchester and had come back lame and in spite of his lameness had left his companions behind. Other trifles recurred to her memory. She had found him reading “The Alps in 1864,” and yes — he had tried to hide from her the title of the book. On their first meeting he had understood at once when she had spoken to him of the emotion which her first mountain peak had waked in her. And before that — yes, her guide had cried aloud to her, “You remind me of Gabriel Strood.” She owed it to him that she had turned to the Alps as to her heritage, and that she had brought to them an instinctive knowledge. Her first feeling was one of sheer pride in her father. Then the doubts began to thicken. He called himself Garratt Skinner.
“Why? But why?” she cried, impulsively, and Chayne, still leaning on her chair, pressed her arm with his hand and warned her to be silent.
“I will tell you afterward,” he said, quietly, and then he suddenly drew himself upright. The movement was abrupt like the movement of a man thoroughly startled — more startled even than she had been by the unexpected sight of her father’s handwriting. She looked up into his face. He was staring at the open page of Michel’s book. She turned back to it herself and saw nothing which should so trouble him. Over Gabriel Strood’s signature there were just these words written in his hand and nothing more:
“Mont Blanc by the Brenva route. July, 1868.”
Yet it was just that sentence which had so startled Hilary. Gabriel Strood had then climbed Mont Blanc from the Italian side — up from the glacier to the top of the great rock-buttress, then along the world-famous ice-arête, thin as a knife edge, and to right and left precipitous as a wall, and on the far side above the ice-ridge up the hanging glaciers and the ice-cliffs to the summit of the Corridor. From the Italian side of the range of Mont Blanc! And the day before yesterday Gabriel Strood had crossed with Walter Hine to Italy, bound upon some expedition which would take five days, five days at the least.
It was to the Brenva ascent of Mont Blanc that Garratt Skinner was leading Walter Hine! The thought flashed upon Chayne swift as an inspiration and as convincing. Chayne was sure. The Brenva route! It was to this climb Garratt Skinner’s thoughts had perpetually recurred during that one summer afternoon in the garden in Dorsetshire, when he had forgotten his secrecy and spoken even with his enemy of the one passion they had in common. Chayne worked out the dates and they fitted in with his belief. Two days ago Garratt Skinner started to cross the Col du Géant. He would sleep very likely in the hut on the Col, and go down the next morning to Courmayeur and make his arrangements for the Brenva climb. On the third day, to-day, he would set out with Walter Hine and sleep at the gîte on the rocks in the bay to the right of the great ice-fall of the Brenva glacier. To-morrow he would ascend the buttress, traverse the ice-ridge with Walter Hine — perhaps — yes, only perhaps — and at that thought Chayne’s heart stood still. And even if he did, there were the hanging ice-cliffs above, and yet another day would pass before any alarm at his absence would be felt. Surely, it would be the Brenva route!
Garratt Skinner himself would run great risk upon this hazardous expedition — that was true. But Chayne knew enough of the man to be assured that he would not hesitate on that account. The very audacity of the exploit marked it out as Gabriel Strood’s. Moreover, there would be no other party on the Brenva ridge to spy upon his actions. There was just one fact so far as Chayne could judge to discredit his inspiration — the inconvenient presence of a guide.
“Do you know a guide Delouvain, Michel?”
“Indeed, yes! A good name, monsieur, and borne by a man worthy of it.”
“So I thought,” said Chayne. “Pierre Delouvain,” and Michel laughed scornfully and waved the name away.
“Pierre! No, indeed!” he cried. “Monsieur, never engage Pierre Delouvain for your guide. I speak solemnly. Joseph — yes, and whenever you can secure him. I thought you spoke of him. But Pierre, he is a cousin who lives upon Joseph’s name, a worthless fellow, a drunkard. Monsieur, never trust yourself or any one whom you hold dear with Pierre Delouvain!”
Chayne’s last doubt was dispelled. Garratt Skinner had laid his plans for the Brenva route. Somewhere on that long and difficult climb the accident was to take place. The very choice of a guide was in itself a confirmation of Chayne’s
fears. It was a piece of subtlety altogether in keeping with Garratt Skinner. He had taken a bad and untrustworthy guide on one of the most difficult expeditions in the range of Mont Blanc. Why, he would be asked? And the answer was ready. He had confused Pierre Delouvain with Joseph, his cousin, as no doubt many another man had done before. Did not Pierre live on that very confusion? The answer was not capable of refutation.
Chayne was in despair. Garratt Skinner had started two days before from Chamonix, was already, now, at this moment, asleep, with his unconscious victim at his side, high up on the rocks of the upper Brenva glacier. There was no way to hinder him — no way unless God helped. He asked abruptly of Michel:
“Have you climbed this season, Michel?”
Michel laughed grimly.
“Indeed, yes, to the Montanvert, monsieur. And beyond — yes, beyond, to the Jardin.”
Chayne broke in upon his bitter humor.
“I want the best guide in Chamonix. I want him at once. I must start by daylight.”
Michel glanced up in surprise. But what he saw in Chayne’s face stopped all remonstrance.
“For what ascent, monsieur?” he asked.
“The Brenva route.”
“Madame will not go!”
“No, I go alone. I must go quickly. There is very much at stake. I beg you to help me.”
In answer Michel took his hat down from a peg, and while he did so Chayne turned quickly to his wife. She had risen from her chair, but she had not interrupted him, she had asked no questions, she had uttered no prayer. She stood now, waiting upon him with a quiet and beautiful confidence which deeply stirred his heart.
“Thank you, sweetheart!” he said, quietly. “You can trust. I thank you,” and he added, gravely: “Whatever happens — you and I — there is no altering that.”
Michel opened the door.
“I will walk with you into Chamonix, and I will bring the best guides I can find to your hotel.”
They passed out, and crossed the fields quickly to Chamonix.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 444