CHAPTER XXII

CATASTROPHE

They were up and away before the light, taking only one guide with

them, a sinewy, dark man with a clubbed beard on his chin. If they had

had two it had been better, and Urquhart, who knew that, made a great

fuss; but to no purpose. All the men were at the saeters, they were

told; haymaking was in full swing out there. There was nothing to be

done. Urquhart was put out, and in default of another man of sense

made James his partner in griefs. "I know these chaps," he said. "When

they are alone they lose their heads. The least little difficulty,

they shy off and turn for home. I judge this man of ours to have the

heart of a mouse. He don't want to go at all. If there are two of them

they egg each other on. They talk it over. Each tries to be the bolder

man."

"But is there going to be any difficulty?" James enquired, surveying

the waste through his eyeglass. "I don't see why there should be."

"You never know," Urquhart said curtly; but presently he was more

confidential. "Don't tell that ass Lingen; but it might be quite

difficult to get off this place."

James stared about him. "You know best. But is it harder to get off

than on?"

"Of course it is, my dear chap," said Urquhart, quite in his old vein

of good-tempered scorn. "We are going up on the north side, where the

snow is as hard as a brick."

"Ah," said James, "now I see. And we go down on the south, where it's

as soft--"

"Where it may be as soft as a bran-mash. Or blown over into cornices."

James saw, or said that he did. In his private mind he judged Urquhart

of trying to intimidate him. The vice of the expert! But he noticed

that the guide had a coil of rope, and that Urquhart carried a shovel.

It was easy going until near noon, with no snow to speak about. They

climbed a series of ridges, like frozen waves; but each was higher

than the last, and took them closer to the clouds. When they lunched

under the shelter of some tumbled rocks a drifting rain blew across

the desolation.

"Jolly!" said James, but quite happily. Lingen shivered.

"My dear man," said Urquhart, "just you wait. I'll surprise you in a

quarter of an hour's time." He spoke in his old way, as hectoring whom

he tolerated. James noticed it, and was amused. He hadn't yet had time

to be angry with this rascal; and now he began to doubt whether he

should. After all, he had gained so very much more than he had lost.

Honour? Oh, that be jiggered. Something too much of his own honour.

Why, it was through Urquhart's attack upon Lucy that he had found out

what Lucy was. Urquhart, at this time, was marching rather in front of

him: James looked him over. A hardy, impudent rogue, no doubt--with

that square, small head on him, that jutting chin--and his pair of

blue eyes which would look through any woman born and burn her heart

to water. Yes, and so he had had Lucy's heart--as water to be poured

over his feet. By Heaven, when he thought of it, he, James Adolphus,

had been the greater rogue: to play the Grand Turk; to hoard that

lovely, quivering creature in his still seraglio; to turn the key, and

leave her there! And Jimmy Urquhart got in by the window. Of course

he did. He was not an imaginative man by nature; but he was now a

lover and had need to enhance his mistress. How better do that than by

calling himself a d----d fool (the greatest blame he knew)? It follows

that if he had been a fool, Urquhart had not! Impudent dog, if you

like, but not a fool. Now, for the life of him, James could not

despise a man who was not a fool. Nor could he hate one whom he had

bested. He did not hate Urquhart; he wasn't angry with him; he

couldn't despise him. On the contrary, he was sorry for him.

But now the miracle happened, and one could think of nothing else. As

they tramped through the cold mist, over snow that was still crisp and

short with frost, the light gained by degrees. The flying fog became

blue, then radiant: quite suddenly they burst into the sun. The

dazzling field stretched on all sides so far as the eye could see.

Snow and cloud, one could not distinguish them; and above them the

arch of hyaline, a blue interwoven with light, which throbbed to the

point of utterance, and drowned itself in the photo-sphere. The light

seemed to make the sun, to climb towards the zenith, to mass and then

to burst in flame. All three men took it in, each in his fashion.

Lingen was greatly moved; Urquhart became jocular.

"Well," he said to Macartney, "what do you make of that? That's worth

coming up for. That ought to extenuate a good deal." James was quick

to notice the phrase.

"Oh," he said, "you can show me things. I'm very much obliged to you.

This is a wonder of the world."

"Now what the deuce does he mean by that?" Urquhart thought to

himself. Had Lucy told him anything? He didn't believe it. Impossible.

Women don't tell.

They had seven miles of snow, pretty soft by now, and steadily up

hill. They bent themselves seriously to it, and found no occasion for

talk. There were crevasses--green depths of death--to be avoided.

Their guide, light-eyed for scares, seemed to know them all, and

reserved his alarm for signs in the sky invisible to the party. He

mended the pace, which became rather severe. Francis Lingen was

distressed; Macartney kept back to give him company. Urquhart forged

on ahead with the guide.

By four in the afternoon one at least of them was gruelled. That was

Lingen. "If we don't get down after all, it'll go hard with

Poplolly," Urquhart said to James. James replied, "Oh, we must get

down. That's all nonsense." Urquhart said nothing, and they went on.

They reached a point where their guide, stopping for a moment, looked

back at them and pointed forward with his staff. "Odde is over there,"

he said, and Urquhart added that he knew whereabouts they were. "If it

were clear enough," he told them, "you might see it all lying below

you like a map; but I doubt if you'll see anything." They pushed on.

Before the last slope, which was now close at hand, the ground became

very bad. The crevasses showed in every direction, raying out like

cracks on an old bench. The guide was evidently anxious. He gave up

all appearance of conducting his party and went off rapidly by

himself. They waited for him in silence; but presently Urquhart said,

"I bet you any money he won't want to go down."

"Don't he want to dine as much as we do?" said James.

"He doesn't want to break his neck," said Urquhart; "that's his little

weakness."

"I sympathise with him," James said; "but I should like to know more

before I turn back."

"You'll only know what he chooses to tell you," Urquhart answered.

Lingen was sitting on the snow.

The guide came back with firm steps. His eyes sought Urquhart's

naturally.

"Well?" he was asked; and lifted his stock up.

"Impossible," he said.

"Why impossible?" James asked Urquhart, having none of the language,

but guessing at the word.

Urquhart and the man talked; the latter was eloquent.

"He says," Urquhart told them, "that there's a great cornice, and a

drop of forty feet or so. Then he thinks there's another; but he's not

sure of that. He intends to go back. I knew he did before he went out

to look. It's a beastly nuisance."

James looked at Lingen, who was now on his feet. "Well," he said,

"what do you feel about it?"

Lingen, red in the face, said, "You'll excuse me, but I shall do what

the guide proposes, though I admit to great fatigue. I don't think it

would be right, under the circumstances, to do otherwise. I feel a

great responsibility; but I gather that, in any case, he himself would

decline to go down. You will think me timid, I dare say."

"No, no," James said. "That's all right, of course. Personally, I

should be inclined to try the first cornice anyhow. There's always a

chance, you know."

Urquhart looked at him keenly. "Do you mean that?" he asked him.

"Yes," James said. "Why do you ask?" Urquhart turned away. When he

faced James again he was strangely altered. His eyes were narrower;

lines showed beside his mouth. Temptation was hot in the mouth. "We'd

better talk about it," he said, and jerked his head sideways.

James walked with him a little way. "What's all this mystery?" he

asked.

"I wonder if you know what you are doing," Urquhart said; "I wonder if

you know what this means. Do you know, for instance, that I don't care

a damn whether I break my neck or not, and on the whole would rather

that you did than didn't? You ought to know it. But I'm asking you."

James kept his eyeglass to his eye. "I think you are talking

nonsense," he said, "but I don't suppose you intend it for nonsense.

You inspire me to say, taking you on your face value, that I shall try

the first cornice. If it's a forty-foot drop, we ought to have rope

enough."

Urquhart peered at him. "You mean what you say?"

"Certainly I do." Urquhart turned on his heel.

"All right," he said, and went over to the other two.

"Macartney and I are going down," he said to Lingen. "I don't at all

blame you for going back, but I'll trouble you to see that this man

does the needful to-morrow. The needful is to come out here as early

as he can get over the ground, to see if we want him. He had better

fire a gun, or shout. If we are alive we shall answer him. If we don't

answer, he had better see about it. I don't want to scare you, but

this is not a joke, and I can't afford to be misunderstood. Now I'm

going to tell him all that in his own lingo."

Lingen took it very badly; but said nothing. Urquhart spoke vehemently

to the guide, who raised his staff and appeared to be testifying to

Heaven. He handed over the rope, the shovel, and the kit with an air

of Pilate washing his hands.

"Now," Urquhart said to James, "we'll rope, and see if we can cut some

steps through this thing. I've seen that done." James, dropping his

eyeglass, said that he was in his hands. Everybody was quiet, but they

were all in a hurry.

Lingen came up to say good-bye. He was very much distressed, nearly

crying. The guide, on the other hand, was chafing to be off. "If that

chap calls himself a guide," said Urquhart, "he ought to be shot." The

guide thereupon threw up his hands with a gesture of despair. Lingen

said that he couldn't possibly go until he had seen them down. The

guide, who was sullen and nervous, remained to help them. Even that

seemed to be against his convictions.

They fixed one of the stocks in a crevasse; Urquhart roped. Then he

went forward to the edge, or what seemed to be the edge, and having

crawled on his belly so far as to be almost invisible, presently was

seen to be standing up, then to fall to it with the shovel. He seemed

to be cutting steps, and descending as he worked. Gradually he

disappeared, and the pull on the rope began. They paid out cautiously

and regularly--all seemed well. He might have had twenty feet of it;

and then there was a sudden violent wrench at it, and it came back

limp in Macartney's hands.

"He's gone," he said. Then he shouted with all his might. No answer

came. They all shouted; the echoes rang round the waste, driven back

on them from the hidden mountain tops. In the deathlike hush which

followed one of them thought to hear an answering cry. Lingen heard

it, or thought that he did, and began to haul up the rope. When they

had the end of it in their hands it was found to be cut clean. "He did

that himself," James said, then added, "I'm going down. Give me out

this rope--for what it's worth." To Lingen he said, "Get back as quick

as you can, and bring up some men to-morrow." Then, having secured

himself, he went down the flawless snow slope, and they paid out the

cord as he wanted it. He had no particular sensation of fear; he knew

too little about it to have any. It is imaginative men who fear the

unknown. True, the rope had been cut once, and might have to be cut

again. If Urquhart had had to cut, it was because it had been too

short. And now it would be shorter. But there was no time to think of

anything.

The snow seemed to be holding him. He had got far beyond Urquhart's

ledges, was upon the place where Urquhart must have slid rapidly down.

All was well as yet, but he didn't want to overshoot the mark. He kept

his nerve steady, and tried to work it all out in his mind. If this

were really a cornice it must now be very thin, he thought. He drove

at it with his staff, and found that it was so. It was little more

than a frozen crust. He kicked into it with his feet, got a foothold,

and worked the hole bigger. Then he could peer down into the deep,

where the shadows were intensely blue. It looked a fearful drop; but

he saw Urquhart lying there, and went on. He descended some ten, or

perhaps fifteen feet more, and found himself dangling in the air. He

was at the end of the rope then. "I'll risk it," he said, and got his

knife out.

He dropped within a few yards of Urquhart.