“I am sorry to hurry you, sigñora, but there is a bit of really bad snow on the Sella Pass,” urged Pietro apologetically at her shoulder, and she reëntered the hut at once, sitting down to that which she deemed to be her last meal on the Swiss side of the Upper Engadine.
It was in a hotel at St. Moritz that she had settled her route with the aid of a map and a guidebook. When, on that day of great happenings, she quitted the Kursaal-Maloja, she stipulated that the utmost secrecy should be observed as to her departure. Her boxes and portmanteau were brought from her room by the little used exit she had discovered soon after her arrival. A closed carriage met her there in the dusk, and she drove straight to St. Moritz station. Leaving her baggage in the parcels office, she sought a quiet hotel for the night, registering her room under her mother’s maiden name of Trenholme. She meant to return to England by the earliest train in the morning; but her new-born terror of encountering Spencer set in motion a scheme for evading pursuit either by him or Bower.
By going up the Roseg Valley, and carrying the barest necessaries for a few days’ travel, she could cross the Bernina range into Italy, reach the rail at Sondrio, and go round by Como to Lucerne and thence to Basle, whither the excellent Swiss system of delivering passengers’ luggage would convey her bulky packages long before she was ready to claim them.
With a sense of equity that was creditable, she made up her mind to expend every farthing of the money received from “The Firefly.” She had kept her contract faithfully: Mackenzie, therefore, or Spencer, must abide by it to the last letter. The third article of the series was already written and in the post. The fourth she wrote quietly in her room at the St. Moritz hotel, nor did she stir out during the next day until it was dark, when she walked a few yards up the main street to buy a rucksack and an alpenstock.
Early next morning, close wrapped and veiled, she took a carriage to the Restaurant du Glacier. Here she met an unforeseen check. The local guides were absent in the Bernina, and the hotel proprietor—good, careful man!—would not hear of intrusting the pretty English girl to inexperienced villagers, but persuaded her to await the coming of a party from Italy, whose rooms were bespoke. Their guides, in all probability, would be returning over the Sella Pass, and would charge far less for the journey.
He was right. On the afternoon of the following day, three tired Englishmen arrived at the restaurant, and their hardy Italian pilots were only too glad to find a voyageur ready to start at once for the Mortel hut, whence a nine hours’ climb would take them back to the Val Malenco, provided they crossed the dangerous névé on the upper part of the glacier soon after daybreak.
Pietro, the leader, was a cheery soul. Like others of his type in the Bernina region, he spoke a good deal of German, and his fund of pleasant anecdote and reminiscence kept Helen from brooding on her own troubles during the long evening in the hut.
And now, while she was finishing her meal in the dim light of dawn, and the second guide was packing their few belongings, Pietro regaled her with a legend of the Monte del Diavolo, which overlooks Sondrio and the lovely valley of the Adda.
“Once upon a time, sigñora, they used to grow fine grapes there,” he said, “and the wine was always sent to Rome for the special use of the Pope and his cardinals. That made the people proud, and the devil took possession of them, which greatly grieved a pious hermit who dwelt in a cell in the little Val Malgina, by the side of a torrent that flows into the Adda. So one day he asked the good Lord to permit the devil to visit him; but when Satan appeared the saint laughed at him. ‘You!’ he cried. ‘Who sent for you? You are not the Prince of the Infernal Regions?’—‘Am I not?’ said the stranger, with a truly fiendish grin. ‘Just try my powers, and see what will happen!’—‘Very well,’ said the saint, ‘produce me twenty barrels of better wine than can be grown in Sondrio.’ So old Barbariccia stamped his hoof, and lo! there were the twenty barrels, while the mere scent of them nearly made the saint break a vow that he would never again taste fermented wine. But he held fast, and said, ‘Now, drink the lot.’—‘Oh, nonsense!’ roared the devil. ‘Pooh!’ said the hermit, ‘you’re not much of a devil if you can’t do in a moment what the College of Cardinals can do in a week.’ That annoyed Satan, and he put away barrel after barrel, until the saint began to feel very uneasy. But the last barrel finished him, and down he went like a log, whereupon the holy man put him into one of his own tubs and sent him to Rome to be dealt with properly. There was a tremendous row, it is said, when the cask was opened. In the confusion, Satan escaped; but in revenge for the trick that had been played on him, he put a blight on the vines of the Adda, and from that day to this never a liter of decent wine came out of Sondrio.”
“I guess if that occurred anywhere in Italy nowadays, they’d lynch the hermit,” said a voice in English outside.