Part 18

"You heard all about it from Susette--yes, I suppose she would tell a priest--And you warned the man this morning?--I wish you'd told me, Abbe--it would have saved me a matter of five thousand pounds. Of course, it was done for the best--all that's granted.--Did you say you were at Brigue?--going up to the Hospice?--Yes, I remember, now--well, he's away all right--the bird has flown.--Oh, I don't know where--I hope it's south--you'll understand that--You haven't seen Lady Delayne?--Ah! you never did like that charming lady, did you, Reverence?--Speak up a little, I don't quite catch that.--The boy, Philip, has gone over the pass, did you say?--He might have been here, for all I know--I shall try to find out in the morning--Let me know if you hear anything of Lady Delayne--It was a big thing for you to do, and a very kind thing under the circumstances.--She won't forget it, nor will I.--Good night, sir--and don't forget to ring up in the morning."

He stood a little while when the abbe had ceased to speak, holding the instrument in his hand, and realising anew the weird stillness of the house. It was as though he remained incredulous, and could not grasp the meaning of the few words which had come across the mountains upon the frail wire--words which revealed in a twinkling the acumen of the little abbe and the reality of his friendship. Benny could have sworn that the priest did not know one word of the story, had hardly heard Sir Luton's name, and would as soon have thought of connecting it with the episode upon the Zaat as with his own flight across Mont Blanc. And now the abbe had undeceived him in an instant, and spoken of his own shrewdness and perception beyond possibility of question.

Of course, the girl, Susette, would have told him. Benny recollected that she was a Catholic, and his odd notions about the ancient faith included the belief that nothing is kept secret, not even the most trivial things of a common day. So he argued that Susette would have "confessed," and the gendarme, Philip, have done the same, putting the abbe in possession of all the facts, and dictating this friendly intervention. The priest had been the man to warn Sir Luton. Possibly he had done so directly Philip Gaillarde left Andana. And if it were so, then the baronet was safe, and this journey had been vain indeed.

He had come to this conclusion anew when he heard someone open the front door of the shanty, and presently recognised the hacking cough of the beldame who should have been keeping it. Her feminine outburst when she discovered him, the muttered oath and then the trembling recognition were brushed aside while he asked her of his guest and heard her garrulous answer. Ah, that Englishman!--what she had suffered at his hands! And now he had gone--he went at eleven o'clock. This very morning, Bajazet, the postboy from the inn, had driven him; he would know all about it. For her part, Mother of God, she was glad that the house was quit of him. Such a man to serve--such anger, such words! She hoped that he would never return; but now that the master was come again she could be content. Which being said, she began with the method of a Swiss to set the house in order, and to justify her existence. It blazed with lights from garret to kitchen before half an hour had passed; fires roared in the grates; pots were steaming upon the hob. And while she worked she repeated her story that the Englishman had driven away at eleven o'clock, and that Bajazet could say where he had gone.

Benny let her have her say, and then went to the telephone to ring up the inn as she advised him. Being answered immediately, he asked for help to get his airship into shelter, and begged them to send up Cordivet, the gendarme, and as many young fellows of the place as they could summon. As to Bajazet, he must come to the villa immediately, if he could; and there would be ten francs for him if he hurried. Which being done, and the woman instructed to have supper ready within the hour, he went out to the lakeside and there waited for the postboy.

The night had fallen clear and the heavy clouds were now breaking to show a monstrous moon, shining full and round upon the sleeping water. By here and there the siren of a steamer could be heard, and the voices of young people who sang as they rowed; while from the village inn, some third of a mile up the road, the music of fiddles and a harp floated down upon the still air. Such a contrast to the rigour and cold of the heights was hardly to be imagined, and it seemed to Benny to stand for such a haven of rest as a man might win when he had crossed the pass and emerged victorious.

For himself, he knew that he was at the crisis of his life, and faced it with all the resolution he could command. To-night, or if not to-night, to-morrow, would tell him plainly enough whither his road lay, and to what house of fortune it would lead. Luton Delayne's possible flight had been in his calculations vaguely when he set out for Andana. He knew that his desire for this man's safety was honest, and that he would have contrived it whatever the sacrifice had cost him. Henceforth these people must lead their own lives. He perceived that it would be better that he should not see Lily again, and that she had been wise to leave Andana without a word to him. If the very fact led also to another conclusion, he strove to turn from it at such a moment. The vanity of his secret hopes was not to be disguised. Sometimes he had been ready to say that this sense of inglorious defeat, this merciless rebuke which fortune administered to him was well deserved. What had he, born to so humble a station, to do with such a friendship or its privileges? When he answered that his attainments had given him every right, he flushed secretly, as though someone overheard him. Success found him a shy lover, though he had wooed her daringly enough.

This passed at the lakeside, but the interlude of waiting galled him, and he found himself impelled resistlessly to act--he knew now how. When the coachman, Bajazet, appeared, he was greeted as an old friend: taken apart and made much of, and wine commanded for him. It seemed good to be talking to a man who had played a part, however humble, in the drama of the day. Benny led him to the little study and poured out a tumbler of red wine with his own hands, while he asked him twenty questions and hardly waited for an answer.

"So milord went away at eleven o'clock, Bajazet?"

"He did, Monsieur--it was just before the hour."

"He was very anxious to go?"

Bajazet raised his eyes to the ceiling.

"All the time, all the time, he gave me no rest! I know your countrymen, but not many such as he, thanks be to God! He is at Domo d'Ossola this night. May he remain there many years!"

Benny looked at him as though he had been lying.

"At Domo d'Ossola? But you are not speaking wisely, Bajazet; you make some mistake? A man who goes to Domo d'Ossola is returning to Switzerland. It is impossible to believe it--of my friend! Think again, and tell me truly."

The fellow shook his head, and drank a little more wine.

"I know what I am saying. Milord wished to go by the railway, but the trains were not running. Very well, then, he will cross the pass. Why should he not do so, Monsieur? There are many who wish to see it; why should not your countryman be among the number? I tell you, I left him at the posthouse. He was engaging horses for the journey; perhaps he is at the Hospice to-night. Should you wish to know that the telephone will inform you. What I have said is of my own knowledge, Monsieur; the rest is with God!"

He laughed, and reached out his hand to the flask. Upon the road without the light of many lanterns was to be seen, and, anon, the voice of Cordivet, the gendarme, to be heard. A little company of men and boys had come up from the inn to do the Englishman's bidding, and Cordivet marshalled them as though they had been an army. Soon these were grouped about the airship; their eyes staring at the glistening steel of its tubes; their tongues loosed in wonder. Had they been English the buffoons among them would have worked a mischief; but the love of things mechanical waxes strong among the Swiss even in the villages to-day, and these youths understood very well what was asked of them. Willing lads were sent hither and thither for tarpaulins to cover the machinery; strong arms helped to wheel the ship down toward the garden by the lake. These good folk had heard of the great Flight, and they stood awed before the master who held the key to the secrets. Every word they spoke was a tribute to his achievement--every gesture honoured him.

Benny saw the machine safely anchored, and then went in to eat the supper prepared before him. His mind was already made up, and he had determined that the worthy Bajazet should drive him immediately to Domo d'Ossola, and afterwards, if need be, to the summit of the Simplon. For had not the fellow said that Luton Delayne would cross the pass, and if that mad purpose were filled, who would save the man from the penalties of his folly?

Benny had the vague idea that he might yet be in time--he knew not how! But he promised Bajazet a hundred francs if his work were well done, and they went at a gallop, blindly in the silence of the night toward the mighty high road which must speak eternally of Napoleon and his genius.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

*AT THE HOSPICE*

It was three in the morning when Bajazet turned into the yard of the Hotel de Ville at Domo d'Ossola and ordered a sleepy ostler to prepare horses for Brigue.

In summer the place would have been wide awake enough even at such an hour, for the summer would have found it alive with motorists about to cross the pass according to the regulations which forbid them to travel at the height of the day. But being the month of February, the town was as silent as the grave when the carriage drove in, and even the ostler could be discovered with difficulty. When twenty questions had recalled his understanding, he remembered that an Englishman had set out for Brigue yesterday, but had no idea who he was. His description, however, answered to that of Luton Delayne, and Benny quickly came to the conclusion that the baronet had persisted in his madness, and had returned to Switzerland upon an impulse no one else might pretend to understand.

And yet, was it so difficult to be understood? Luton Delayne knew the best and the worst that life had in store for him. Of all his fortune, good or ill, fortune of character and of possessions, there remained to him but the supreme desire to seek out the woman who had been his wife, and to throw himself upon her pity. Desperately, and with almost a child's trust, he had come to believe that she would save him. The unanswered letter, the hours of loneliness by the lakeside, the alternations of hope and despair, so drove him at the last, that, flinging all reason to the winds, he determined to go to her and hear the worst. And he had set off immediately when the abbe sent him a warning message. What mattered it, if he could win a hearing from her? The good that was in him claimed audience now. He believed that she would judge him lightly if all were known; and, determined that it should be known, he drove to Iselle and the pass.

Perhaps Benny guessed something of this when he commanded horses for the journey to Brigue, and announced his determination to depart immediately. He understood men in many moods, and could almost sympathise with this broken man who thus flung down the gauntlet to the world and did not stop to consider that it might be picked up--not by a chivalrous enemy, but by the police. For himself, his task was plain, and events had not changed the trend of it. He would save Luton Delayne from a public exposure if he could, and would save him for the woman's sake. What happened afterwards must be as destiny decided. It would be enough for him that he had done his duty to one who claimed his friendship, and for whom he would measure no sacrifice.

There was a considerable delay before the carriage could leave the hotel, and he was glad of the hot coffee which the maids prepared for him. Early as it was, the great road to the pass now became alive with peasants coming down into Italy or returning to the Valley of the Rhone. These seldom travel by the train, and for them the Hospice upon the summit of the pass is kept open during the winter months. Benny watched them as they tramped stolidly through the darkness, their eyes set upon a visionary city, and their faces pinched with the cold. When he spoke to one of them at the door of the inn yard, an old man whose sister was ill at Baveno, the veteran told him that there had been a dreadful storm on the heights last night, and that a bruit of accidents was abroad. He also spoke of the railway, and of the mishap above Brigue; but that, he said, had now been put right, and the trains were running as usual. When he left, with a five-franc piece for his gratuity, he confessed that it was seldom an Englishman was met upon the pass nowadays--bad luck to all this craze for railway travelling which robbed so many of their dues.

Benny was pleased at the news about the trains, for it fitted in very well with the idea which had come to him at the shanty, and had not been abandoned during the journey. He perceived that all now depended upon what the gendarme Philip had done--whether the lad had attempted to reach Italy by the pass, or had waited for the line to Milan to be reopened. In the former case, nothing could save Luton Delayne from arrest--or worse. In the latter, it might very well be that the baronet would reach Sierre, and, having met his wife, would be persuaded to take the express to Paris. Should that be done, his escape was almost assured, for the heat of the hue and cry had subsided by this time, and but for Philip Gaillarde might have been forgotten altogether. The gendarme, truly, was the key to the whole situation, and Benny was almost tempted to ring up the abbe at the Hospice and ask if he had news of him. This, however, would have been a concession to mere curiosity, and, set upon his purpose of overtaking the baronet if he could, he entered his carriage about four o'clock and departed immediately for Brigue.

Many know the Simplon Pass by name, but to few of this generation is it more than a name. Sometimes, in the history lesson, the boy learns that the great road was built at Napoleon's command immediately after the battle of Marengo, and that it took no fewer than six years to construct. By here and there in an old painting there are pictures of the Ponto Alto, or, more commonly, of the Gallery of Gondo, with its wondrous black-mouthed tunnel and arched bridge, and mighty ramparts uplifted, as it were, to the very heavens. But these things are but traditions to the flitting tourist, who climbs mountains in a railway carriage and would have his waterfalls illuminated.

Benny knew nothing of the pass, but insensibly the wonders of it grew upon him as the day dawned and the fertile valleys of Italy began to give place to the grandeur and desolation of the heights. What mind had conceived these things--what hand had planned them? An engineer by every instinct of his being, he tried to understand the spirit in which this great work was conceived and the labour which had accomplished it. And from that he passed to the sheer fascination of it all; of these frail bridges spanning the very jaws of hell; of the galleries wrought in the face of the iron rock; of the vast aqueducts bringing black torrents, and the mighty roofs which defied the thundering avalanche. By one man's genius this had come to be; the gates had been opened, the goal attained. And with that man he crossed the pass in spirit, and lifted his eyes to the stars, and dwelt in the infinite.

Upward and still upward--to what end, to what humour of destiny? Must all this grandeur of the road melt ultimately to a vulgar truth of life; must it give place to a man's shame and a woman's tears? He tried to think that it could not be, and yet the inevitableness of it all seemed written upon every rock which towered above him. He believed no longer that Philip Gaillarde had gone down into Italy. The lad, he thought, would be advised by others, and all that had been done at the villa would be well known to the authorities. Possibly, and this was to be reckoned with, Philip had himself gone up to the Hospice and would there meet the baronet face to face. And if he did so it might well be that a new page in this sordid tragedy would be written that very day. Benny would not dwell upon this, but he encouraged Bajazet with new promises, while that good fellow urged on his horses with wild cries and a great cracking of his whip, which echoed in the hills like a pistol shot.

They were at the Gallery of Gondo by this time, and its black mouth shaped bell-like at the break of day. The open valley here closed in until it became but a tremendous canon; the towering heights were uplifted as the spires of a Gargantuan cathedral; the road itself seemed to disappear into the very bowels of the rock. Upon the right hand, what would have been a roaring torrent in the spring was but a runnel cut in the cliff's face; upon their left hand was the abyss whose black depths no eye could fathom. Here no living thing stirred--there was no sound but that of the water dripping; the very bridge should have been built for fabled demons of the Simplon and not for human travellers.

They passed on by the seventh refuge, and set out across the dreary tableland, beyond which lay the village of Simplon itself. They had out-distanced other travellers, and were alone upon this waste, which breaks into the hills as an oasis whose icy mirage mocks the wayfarer. Here, for the first time, they perceived the effects of last night's storm: the profound drifts; the scarred rocks--even relics of the pilgrims who had dared the journey. A little farther on, and they entered the village, and heard the warning that the road to the Hospice was unsafe. No sleighs would be allowed to pass: there had been accidents upon the road, and the snow was not yet cleared. Some hours must intervene before permission could be given, they said, but Benny heard them with scorn, for he was determined to make the Hospice, and to hear the abbe's news, cost him what it might. When he had talked a little way with one of the soldiers at the inn, it appeared that nothing would be said to those who cared to set out on foot, and this he did immediately, instructing Bajazet to follow him directly the road was open that they might continue the journey to Brigue.

To Brigue--was that his destination? Lily, he remembered, should be at Sierre; it was even possible that her husband had joined her there, and that they would leave for England by the express to-night. He himself would follow after, but not for many weeks. The triumphs which awaited him in England had ceased to interest him. He had lost, as it were, in an hour the ambitions which had sustained him through the years, and the inspiration by which they had been gratified. It would be well enough to think of his future when all this were over, and he knew the best or the worst of it. The brain refusing to contemplate any other issue, it brought him back to the starting-point: would he be in time to save Delayne, or was the gendarme, Philip, already avenged?

He pressed on over a barren road which has been likened to a waterless lake in the hollow of the mountains. The snow lay heavy and the walking was difficult. By here and there he passed wayfarers coming down from the Hospice, but telling ever the same story of hardship and distress. When, at length, he espied the monastery buildings, it was at a moment when an avalanche crashed down on the road before him, and its thunders echoed in the heights with the booming of a thousand cannon. Such appalling sounds affrighted him beyond all reason, for he knew little of Switzerland in the winter, save what Andana had taught him. Grimly and with satisfaction, he remembered how little all this terror of the hills had meant to him last night, and how little it would mean to the men of to-morrow. Give him his ship, and he would be but a speck above these imprisoning peaks--as free as an eagle, and as kingly. To go as he must go--battling with the snow and often almost conquered by it, was a humiliation his genius derided. But it was in keeping with the truth of the quest; and presently, when a second avalanche thundered down, and the snow sprayed above a gallery as foam upon a seashore, he shuddered at its reality and wondered if his courage were equal to the ordeal.

He was but a quarter of a mile from the gate of the Hospice by this time, and he perceived that those who had gone before him here deserted the pass itself and went downward a little way toward the abyss. So many feet had trodden out a path that prudence bade him take it. Striking out boldly, he found himself presently in a magic sea whose billows rose above his head but never engulfed him. At this time the monastery disappeared from his view entirely; the landmarks by which he might have guided himself to its doors vanished to give place to this monstrous and unbroken curtain of the snow. He had the sense of being lost beyond hope, of being a man adrift upon an ocean whose waters were white with an icy foam. All idea of direction was blotted out immediately in this blinding waste. He found the path and lost it ten times in as many minutes, and then fell to bitter self-reproach because he had deserted the high road. Vain lament--that desertion was his salvation!

A great dog came battling through the snow, and, anon, a monk with a cassock tucked up to his waist, and skis upon his feet. He was quite a youth, and he laughed and nodded to the stranger as one who would say: "All is well; we knew you were coming to us." At his direction Benny turned up the hillside again, and there he found the rope by which travellers pull themselves up to the gates of the Hospice. They were now but fifty yards from its door, and he could hear a bell calling the priests to terce. The monk, in his turn, pointed to the high road, and to the mountains of snow which rested upon its galleries.

"You were wise to come as you did," he said. "Many lose their lives up there; three have done so this week, Monsieur."

No answer was made, and they entered the monastery. The bell still tolled, and the brethren were crossing the court toward the chapel. The Englishman, however, was conducted immediately to the guest hall, where a great fire blazed and a table was spread. The monk had already told him that the Abbe Villari was at the Hospice, and the desire to see him brooked no control. Benny had almost forgotten where he was; the events of the night and the journey of the day were as nothing when the abbe at last entered the room and greeted him with hand uplifted and a hushed word upon his lips.

"Yes, yes, I had expected you," he said, nodding his head slowly while he spoke. "It was natural that you should not have heard. We found him lying just above the seventh shelter. He was quite dead; he had been dead for some hours."

Benny drew a step nearer, as though afraid of the sound of his voice.

"You found him--are you speaking of Luton Delayne?"

The abbe looked bewildered.

"Of whom, then? They would have kept him at Iselle, but he would not hear reason. He tried to cross on foot at the height of the storm. I had an idea that it might be so. Yes, yes, the Almighty God made this known to me, and so I came."

And then he said, turning away:

"She will be here this afternoon--I have spoken to her myself; she is now upon her way from Sierre."