Part 7 (1/2)
Michel pushed open the door of his cottage, and lit his lamp, without after all bethinking him that the room was dark and empty. His ice-axes stood in a corner, the polished steel of their adz-heads gleaming in the light; his _Rucksack_ and some coils of rope hung upon pegs; his book with the signatures and the comments of his patrons lay at his elbow on the table, a complete record of his life. But he was not thinking that they had served him for the last time. He sat down in his chair and so remained for a little while. But a smile was upon his face, and once or twice he chuckled aloud as he thought of his high diplomacy. He did not remember at all that to-morrow he would lead mules up to the Montanvert and conduct parties on the Mer de Glace.
CHAPTER VI
THE PAVILLON DE LOGNAN
The Pavillon de Lognan is built high upon the southern slope of the valley of Chamonix, under the great b.u.t.tresses of the Aiguille Verte. It faces the north and from the railed parapet before its door the path winds down through pastures bright with Alpine flowers to the pine woods, and the village of Les Tines in the bed of the valley. But at its eastern end a precipice drops to the great ice-fall of the Glacier d'Argentiere, and night and day from far below the roar of the glacier streams enters in at the windows and fills the rooms with the music of a river in spate.
At five o'clock on the next afternoon, Chayne was leaning upon the rail looking straight down to the ice-fall. The din of the torrent was in his ears, and it was not until a foot sounded lightly close behind him that he knew he was no longer alone. He turned round and saw to his surprise the over-dainty doll of the Annema.s.se buffet, the child of the casinos and the bathing beaches, Sylvia Thesiger. His surprise was very noticeable and Sylvia's face flushed. She made him a little bow and went into the chalet.
Chayne noticed a couple of fresh guides by the door of the guides'
quarters. He remembered the book which he had seen her reading with so deep an interest in the buffet. And in a minute or two she came out again on to the earth platform and he saw that she was not overdressed to-day.
She was simply and warmly dressed in a way which suggested business. On the other hand she had not made herself ungainly. He guessed her mountain and named it to her.
”Yes,” she replied. ”Please say that it will be fine to-morrow!”
”I have never seen an evening of better promise,” returned Chayne, with a smile at her eagerness. The brown cliffs of the Aiguille du Chardonnet just across the glacier glowed red in the sunlight; and only a wisp of white cloud trailed like a lady's scarf here and there in the blue of the sky. The woman of the chalet came out and spoke to him.
”She wants to know when we will dine,” he explained to Sylvia. ”There are only you and I. We should dine early, for you will have to start early”; and he repeated the invariable cry of that year: ”There is so very little snow. It may take you some time to get off the glacier on to your mountain. There is always a creva.s.se to cross.”
”I know,” said Sylvia, with a smile. ”The bergschrund.”
”I beg your pardon,” said Chayne, and in his turn he smiled too. ”Of course you know these terms. I saw you reading a copy of the 'Alpine Journal.'”
They dined together an hour later with the light of the sunset reddening the whitewashed walls of the little simple room and bathing in glory the hills without. Sylvia Thesiger could hardly eat for wonder. Her face was always to the window, her lips were always parted in a smile, her gray eyes bright with happiness.
”I have never known anything like this,” she said. ”It is all so strange, so very beautiful.”
Her freshness and simplicity laid their charm on him, even as they had done on Michel Revailloud the night before. She was as eager as a child to get the meal done with and to go out again into the open air, before the after-glow had faded from the peaks. There was something almost pathetic in her desire to make the very most of such rare moments. Her eagerness so clearly told him that such holidays came but seldom in her life. He urged her, however, to eat, and when she had done they went out together and sat upon the bench, watching in silence the light upon the peaks change from purple to rose, the rocks grow cold, and the blue of the sky deepen as the night came.
”You too are making an ascent?” she asked.
”No,” he answered. ”I am crossing a pa.s.s into Italy. I am going away from Chamonix altogether.”
Sylvia turned to him; her eyes were gentle with sympathy.
”Yes, I understand that,” she said. ”I am sorry.”
”You said that once before to me, on the steps of the hotel,” said Chayne. ”It was kind of you. Though I said nothing, I was grateful”; and he was moved to open his heart to her, and to speak of his dead friend.
The darkness gathered about them; he spoke in the curt sentences which men use who shrink from any emotional display; he interrupted himself to light his pipe. But none the less she understood the reality of his distress. He told her with a freedom of which he was not himself at the moment quite aware, of a clean, strong friends.h.i.+p which owed nothing to sentiment, which was never fed by protestations, which endured through long intervals, and was established by the memory of great dangers cheerily encountered and overcome. It had begun amongst the mountains, and surely, she thought, it had retained to the end something of their inspiration.
”We first met in the Tyrol, eight years ago. I had crossed a mountain with a guide--the Glockturm--and came down in the evening to the Radurschal Thal where I had heard there was an inn. The evening had turned to rain; but from a shoulder of the mountain I had been able to look right down the valley and had seen one long low building about four miles from the foot of the glacier. I walked through the pastures toward it, and found sitting outside the door in the rain the man who was to be my friend. The door was locked, and there was no one about the house, nor was there any other house within miles. My guide, however, went on.
Lattery and I sat out there in the rain for a couple of hours, and then an old woman with a big umbrella held above her head came down from the upper pastures, driving some cows in front of her. She told us that no one had stayed at her inn for fourteen years. But she opened her door, lit us a great fire, and cooked us eggs and made us coffee. I remember that night as clearly as if it were yesterday. We sat in front of the fire with the bedding and the mattresses airing behind us until late into the night. The rain got worse too. There was a hole in the thatch overhead, and through it I saw the lightning slash the sky, as I lay in bed. Very few people ever came up or down that valley; and the next morning, after the storm, the chamois were close about the inn, on the gra.s.s. We went on together. That was the beginning.”
He spoke simply, with a deep quietude of voice. The tobacco glowed and grew dull in the bowl of his pipe regularly; the darkness hid his face.
But the tenderness, almost the amus.e.m.e.nt with which he dwelt on the little insignificant details of that first meeting showed her how very near to him it was at this moment.
”We went from the Tyrol down to Verona and baked ourselves in the sun there for a day, under the colonnades, and then came back through the St. Gotthard to Goschenen. Do you know the Goschenen Thal? There is a semicircle of mountains, the Winterbergen, which closes it in at the head. We climbed there together for a week, just he and I and no guides.
I remember a rock-ridge there. It was barred by a pinnacle which stood up from it--'a gendarme,' as they call it. We had to leave the arete and work out along the face of the pinnacle at right angles to the mountain.