Karl was stocked with reminiscences of Stampa. “I remember the time when people said Christian was the best man in the Bernina,” he said. “He would never go back to the Valais after his daughter died. It was a strange thing that he should come to grief on a cowherd’s track like that over Corvatsch. But Etta’s affair——”
“Schweige!” snarled Bower, straightening himself suddenly. His dark eyes shot such a gleam of lambent fury at the porter that the man’s jaw fell. The words were frozen on his lips. He could not have been stricken dumb more effectually had he come face to face with one of the horrific sprites described in the folklore of the hills.
Helen was surprised. What had poor Karl done that he should be bidden so fiercely to hold his tongue? Then she thought that Bower must have recalled Stampa’s history, and feared that perhaps the outspoken peasant might enter into a piquant account of some village scandal. A chambermaid in the hotel, questioned about Stampa, had told her that the daughter he loved so greatly had committed suicide. Really, she ought to be grateful to her companion for saving her from a passing embarrassment. But she had the tact not to drop the subject too quickly.
“If Barth and you agree that roping is unnecessary, of course I haven’t a word to say in the matter,” she volunteered. “It was rather absurd of me to mention it in the first instance.”
“No, you were right. I have never seen Stampa; but his name is familiar. It occurs in most Alpine records. Barth, fix the rope before we go farther. The fräulein wishes it.”
The rush of color induced by physical effort—effort of a tensity that Helen was wholly unaware of—was ebbing now before a numbing terror that had come to stay. His face was drawn and livid. His voice had the metallic ring in it that the girl had detected once already that day. Again she experienced a sense of bewilderment that he should regard a trivial thing so seriously. She was not a child. The world of to-day pulsated with far too many stories of tragic passion that she should be shielded so determinedly from any hint of an episode that doubtless wrung the heart’s core of this quiet valley one day in August sixteen years ago. In some slight degree Bower’s paroxysm of anger was a reflection on her own good taste, for she had unwittingly given rise to it.
Nevertheless, she felt indebted to him. To extricate both Bower and herself from an awkward situation she took a keen interest in Barth’s method of adjusting the rope. The man did not show any amazement at Bower’s order. He was there to earn his fee. Had these mad English told him to cut steps up the gentle slope in front he would have obeyed without protest, though it was more than strange that this much traveled voyageur should adopt such a needless precaution.
As a matter of fact, under Barth’s guidance, a blind cripple could have surmounted the first kilometer of the Forno glacier. The track lay close to the left bank of the moraine. It curved slightly to the right and soon the exquisite panorama of Monte Roseg, the Cima di Rosso, Monte Sissone, Piz Torrone, and the Castello group opened up before the climbers. Helen was enchanted. Twice she half turned to address some question to Bower; but on each occasion she happened to catch him in the act of swallowing some brandy from a flask. Governed by an unaccountable timidity, she pretended not to notice his actions, and diverted her words to Barth, who told her the names of the peaks and pointed to the junctions of minor ice fields with the main artery of the Forno.
Bower did not utter a syllable until they struck out toward the center of the glacier. A crevasse some ten feet in width and seemingly hundreds of feet deep, barred the way; but a bridge of ice, covered with snow, offered safe transit. The snow carpet showed that a number of climbers had passed quite recently in both directions. Even Helen, somewhat awed by the dimensions of the rift, understood that the existence of this natural arch was as well recognized by Alpinists as Waterloo Bridge is known to dwellers on the south side of the Thames.
“Now, Miss Wynton, you should experience your first real thrill,” said Bower. “This bridge forms here every year at this season, and an army might cross in safety. It is the genuine article, the first and strongest of a series. Yet here you cross the Rubicon. A mixture of metaphors is allowable in high altitudes, you know.”