Mr. Standfast

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'The what?' I yelled.

'The Schwarzstein. The Swiss call the pass the Schwarzsteinthor.
You can see it from Grunewald.'

I suppose every man has a tinge of superstition in him. To hear that
name in that ferocious place gave me a sudden access of confidence. I
seemed to see all my doings as part of a great predestined plan. Surely
it was not for nothing that the word which had been the key of my first
adventure in the long tussle should appear in this last phase. I felt new
strength in my legs and more vigour in my lungs. 'A good omen,' I
shouted. 'Wake, old man, we're going to win out.'

'The worst is still to come,' he said.

He was right. To get down that tongue of rock to the lower
snows of the couloir was a job that fairly brought us to the end of
our tether. I can feel yet the sour, bleak smell of wet rock and ice
and the hard nerve pain that racked my forehead. The Kaffirs used
to say that there were devils in the high berg, and this place was
assuredly given over to the powers of the air who had no thought
of human life. I seemed to be in the world which had endured from
the eternity before man was dreamed of. There was no mercy in it,
and the elements were pitting their immortal strength against two
pigmies who had profaned their sanctuary. I yearned for warmth,
for the glow of a fire, for a tree or blade of grass or anything which
meant the sheltered homeliness of mortality. I knew then what the
Greeks meant by panic, for I was scared by the apathy of nature.
But the terror gave me a kind of comfort, too. Ivery and his doings
seemed less formidable. Let me but get out of this cold hell and I
could meet him with a new confidence.

Wake led, for he knew the road and the road wanted knowing.
Otherwise he should have been last on the rope, for that is the
place of the better man in a descent. I had some horrible moments
following on when the rope grew taut, for I had no help from it.
We zigzagged down the rock, sometimes driven to the ice of the
adjacent couloirs, sometimes on the outer ridge of the Black Stone,
sometimes wriggling down little cracks and over evil boiler-plates.
The snow did not lie on it, but the rock crackled with thin ice or
oozed ice water. Often it was only by the grace of God that I did
not fall headlong, and pull Wake out of his hold to the bergschrund
far below. I slipped more than once, but always by a miracle
recovered myself. To make things worse, Wake was tiring. I could
feel him drag on the rope, and his movements had not the precision
they had had in the morning. He was the mountaineer, and I the
novice. If he gave out, we should never reach the valley.

The fellow was clear grit all through. When we reached the foot
of the tooth and sat huddled up with our faces away from the wind,
I saw that he was on the edge of fainting. What that effort Must
have cost him in the way of resolution you may guess, but he did
not fail till the worst was past. His lips were colourless, and he was
choking with the nausea of fatigue. I found a flask of brandy in his
pocket, and a mouthful revived him.

'I'm all out,' he said. 'The road's easier now, and I can direct YOU
about the rest ... You'd better leave me. I'll only be a drag. I'll
come on when I feel better.'

'No, you don't, you old fool. You've got me over that infernal
iceberg, and I'm going to see you home.'

I rubbed his arms and legs and made him swallow some chocolate.
But when he got on his feet he was as doddery as an old man.
Happily we had an easy course down a snow gradient, which we
glissaded in very unorthodox style. The swift motion freshened
him up a little, and he was able to put on the brake with his axe to
prevent us cascading into the bergschrund. We crossed it by a snow
bridge, and started out on the seracs of the Schwarzstein glacier.

I am no mountaineer - not of the snow and ice kind, anyway -
but I have a big share of physical strength and I wanted it all now.
For those seracs were an invention of the devil. To traverse that
labyrinth in a blinding snowstorm, with a fainting companion who
was too weak to jump the narrowest crevasse, and who hung on
the rope like lead when there was occasion to use it, was more than
I could manage. Besides, every step that brought us nearer to the
valley now increased my eagerness to hurry, and wandering in that
maze of clotted ice was like the nightmare when you stand on the
rails with the express coming and are too weak to climb on the
platform. As soon as possible I left the glacier for the hillside, and
though that was laborious enough in all conscience, yet it enabled
me to steer a straight course. Wake never spoke a word. When I
looked at him his face was ashen under a gale which should have
made his cheeks glow, and he kept his eyes half closed. He was
staggering on at the very limits of his endurance ...

By and by we were on the moraine, and after splashing through a
dozen little glacier streams came on a track which led up the
hillside. Wake nodded feebly when I asked if this was right. Then
to my joy I saw a gnarled pine.

I untied the rope and Wake dropped like a log on the ground.
'Leave me,' he groaned. 'I'm fairly done. I'll come on later.'
And he shut his eyes.

My watch told me that it was after five o'clock.

'Get on my back,' I said. 'I won't part from you till I've found a
cottage. You're a hero. You've brought me over those damned
mountains in a blizzard, and that's what no other man in England
would have done. Get up.'
He obeyed, for he was too far gone to argue. I tied his wrists
together with a handkerchief below my chin, for I wanted my arms to hold
up his legs. The rope and axes I left in a cache beneath the pine-tree.
Then I started trotting down the track for the nearest dwelling.

My strength felt inexhaustible and the quicksilver in my bones
drove me forward. The snow was still falling, but the wind was
dying down, and after the inferno of the pass it was like summer.
The road wound over the shale of the hillside and then into what in
spring must have been upland meadows. Then it ran among trees,
and far below me on the right I could hear the glacier river churning
in its gorge' Soon little empty huts appeared, and rough enclosed
paddocks, and presently I came out on a shelf above the stream and
smelt the wood-smoke of a human habitation.

I found a middle-aged peasant in the cottage, a guide by
profession in summer and a woodcutter in winter.

'I have brought my Herr from Santa Chiara,' I said, 'over the
Schwarzsteinthor. He is very weary and must sleep.'

I decanted Wake into a chair, and his head nodded on his chest.
But his colour was better.

'You and your Herr are fools,' said the man gruffly, but not
unkindly. 'He must sleep or he will have a fever. The Schwarzsteinthor
in this devil's weather! Is he English?'

'Yes,' I said, 'like all madmen. But he's a good Herr, and a
brave mountaineer.'

We stripped Wake of his Red Cross uniform, now a collection of
sopping rags, and got him between blankets with a huge earthenware
bottle of hot water at his feet. The woodcutter's wife boiled
milk, and this, with a little brandy added, we made him drink. I
was quite easy in my mind about him, for I had seen this condition
before. In the morning he would be as stiff as a poker, but recovered.

'Now I'm off for St Anton,' I said. 'I must get there tonight.'

'You are the hardy one,' the man laughed. 'I will show you the
quick road to Grunewald, where is the railway. With good fortune
you may get the last train.'

I gave him fifty francs on my Herr's behalf, learned his directions
for the road, and set off after a draught of goat's milk, munching
my last slab of chocolate. I was still strung up to a mechanical
activity, and I ran every inch of the three miles to the Staubthal
without consciousness of fatigue. I was twenty minutes too soon
for the train, and, as I sat on a bench on the platform, my energy
suddenly ebbed away. That is what happens after a great exertion. I
longed to sleep, and when the train arrived I crawled into a carriage
like a man with a stroke. There seemed to be no force left in my
limbs. I realized that I was leg-weary, which is a thing you see
sometimes with horses, but not often with men.

All the journey I lay like a log in a kind of coma, and it was with
difficulty that I recognized my destination, and stumbled out of the
train. But I had no sooner emerged from the station of St Anton
than I got my second wind. Much snow had fallen since yesterday,
but it had stopped now, the sky was clear, and the moon was
riding. The sight of the familiar place brought back all my anxieties.
The day on the Col of the Swallows was wiped out of my memory,
and I saw only the inn at Santa Chiara, and heard Wake's hoarse
voice speaking of Mary. The lights were twinkling from the village
below, and on the right I saw the clump of trees which held the
Pink Chalet.

I took a short cut across the fields, avoiding the little town. I ran
hard, stumbling often, for though I had got my mental energy back
my legs were still precarious. The station clock had told me that it
was nearly half-past nine.

Soon I was on the high-road, and then at the Chalet gates. I heard
as in a dream what seemed to be three shrill blasts on a whistle.
Then a big car passed me, making for St Anton. For a second I
would have hailed it, but it was past me and away. But I had a
conviction that my business lay in the house, for I thought Ivery
was there, and Ivery was what mattered.

I marched up the drive with no sort of plan in my head, only a
blind rushing on fate. I remembered dimly that I had still three
cartridges in my revolver.

The front door stood open and I entered and tiptoed down the
passage to the room where I had found the Portuguese Jew. No
one hindered me, but it was not for lack of servants. I had the
impression that there were people near me in the darkness, and I
thought I heard German softly spoken. There was someone ahead
of me, perhaps the speaker, for I could hear careful footsteps. It
was very dark, but a ray of light came from below the door of the
room. Then behind me I heard the hall door clang, and the noise of
a key turned in its lock. I had walked straight into a trap and all
retreat was cut off.

My mind was beginning to work more clearly, though my purpose
was still vague. I wanted to get at Ivery and I believed that he
was somewhere in front of me. And then I thought of the door
which led from the chamber where I had been imprisoned. If I
could enter that way I would have the advantage of surprise.

I groped on the right-hand side of the passage and found a
handle. It opened upon what seemed to be a dining-room, for there
was a faint smell of food. Again I had the impression of people
near, who for some unknown reason did not molest me. At the far
end I found another door, which led to a second room, which I
guessed to be adjacent to the library. Beyond it again must lie the
passage from the chamber with the rack. The whole place was as
quiet as a shell.

I had guessed right. I was standing in the passage where I had
stood the night before. In front of me was the library, and there
was the same chink of light showing. Very softly I turned the
handle and opened it a crack ...

The first thing that caught my eye was the profile of Ivery. He
was looking towards the writing-table, where someone was sitting.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Underground Railway

This is the story which I heard later from Mary ...

She was at Milan with the new Anglo-American hospital when
she got Blenkiron's letter. Santa Chiara had always been the place
agreed upon, and this message mentioned specifically Santa Chiara,
and fixed a date for her presence there. She was a little puzzled by
it, for she had not yet had a word from Ivery, to whom she had
written twice by the roundabout address in France which
Bommaerts had given her. She did not believe that he would come to
Italy in the ordinary course of things, and she wondered at
Blenkiron's certainty about the date.

The following morning came a letter from Ivery in which he
ardently pressed for a meeting. It was the first of several, full of
strange talk about some approaching crisis, in which the
forebodings of the prophet were mingled with the solicitude of a lover.

'The storm is about to break,' he wrote, 'and I cannot think only of
my own fate. I have something to tell you which vitally concerns
yourself. You say you are in Lombardy. The Chiavagno valley is
within easy reach, and at its head is the inn of Santa Chiara, to
which I come on the morning of March 19th. Meet me there even if
only for half an hour, I implore you. We have already shared hopes
and confidences, and I would now share with you a knowledge
which I alone in Europe possess. You have the heart of a lion, my
lady, worthy of what I can bring you.'

Wake was summoned from the _Croce _Rossa unit with which he
was working at Vicenza, and the plan arranged by Blenkiron was
faithfully carried out. Four officers of the Alpini, in the rough dress
of peasants of the hills, met them in Chiavagno on the morning of
the 18th. It was arranged that the hostess of Santa Chiara should go
on a visit to her sister's son, leaving the inn, now in the shuttered
quiet of wintertime, under the charge of two ancient servants. The
hour of Ivery's coming on the 19th had been fixed by him for
noon, and that morning Mary would drive up the valley, while
Wake and the Alpini went inconspicuously by other routes so as to
be in station around the place before midday.
But on the evening of the 18th at the Hotel of the Four Kings in
Chiavagno Mary received another message. It was from me and
told her that I was crossing the Staub at midnight and would be at
the inn before dawn. It begged her to meet me there, to meet me
alone without the others, because I had that to say to her which
must be said before Ivery's coming. I have seen the letter. It was
written in a hand which I could not have distinguished from my
own scrawl. It was not exactly what I would myself have written,
but there were phrases in it which to Mary's mind could have come
only from me. Oh, I admit it was cunningly done, especially the
love-making, which was just the kind of stammering thing which
I would have achieved if I had tried to put my feelings on paper.
Anyhow, Mary had no doubt of its genuineness. She slipped off
after dinner, hired a carriage with two broken-winded screws and
set off up the valley. She left a line for Wake telling him to follow
according to the plan - a line which he never got, for his anxiety
when he found she had gone drove him to immediate pursuit.

At about two in the morning of the 19th after a slow and icy
journey she arrived at the inn, knocked up the aged servants, made
herself a cup of chocolate out of her tea-basket and sat down to
wait on my coming.

She has described to me that time of waiting. A home-made
candle in a tall earthenware candlestick lit up the little _salle-a-manger,
which was the one room in use. The world was very quiet, the
snow muffled the roads, and it was cold with the penetrating chill
of the small hours of a March night. Always, she has told me, will
the taste of chocolate and the smell of burning tallow bring back to
her that strange place and the flutter of the heart with which she
waited. For she was on the eve of the crisis of all our labours, she
was very young, and youth has a quick fancy which will not be
checked. Moreover, it was I who was coming, and save for the
scrawl of the night before, we had had no communication for many
weeks ... She tried to distract her mind by repeating poetry, and
the thing that came into her head was Keats's 'Nightingale', an odd
poem for the time and place.

There was a long wicker chair among the furnishings of the
room, and she lay down on it with her fur cloak muffled around
her. There were sounds of movement in the inn. The old woman
who had let her in, with the scent of intrigue of her kind, had
brightened when she heard that another guest was coming. Beautiful
women do not travel at midnight for nothing. She also was awake
and expectant.

Then quite suddenly came the sound of a car slowing down
outside. She sprang to her feet in a tremor of excitement. It was
like the Picardy chateau again - the dim room and a friend coming
out of the night. She heard the front door open and a step in the
little hall ...

She was looking at Ivery. ... He slipped his driving-coat off as he
entered, and bowed gravely. He was wearing a green hunting suit
which in the dusk seemed like khaki, and, as he was about my own
height, for a second she was misled. Then she saw his face and her
heart stopped.

'You!' she cried. She had sunk back again on the wicker chair.

'I have come as I promised,' he said, 'but a little earlier. You will
forgive me my eagerness to be with you.'

She did not heed his words, for her mind was feverishly busy.
My letter had been a fraud and this man had discovered our plans.
She was alone with him, for it would be hours before her friends
came from Chiavagno. He had the game in his hands, and of all our
confederacy she alone remained to confront him. Mary's courage
was pretty near perfect, and for the moment she did not think of
herself or her own fate. That came later. She was possessed with
poignant disappointment at our failure. All our efforts had gone to
the winds, and the enemy had won with contemptuous ease. Her
nervousness disappeared before the intense regret, and her brain set
coolly and busily to work.

It was a new Ivery who confronted her, a man with vigour and
purpose in every line of him and the quiet confidence of power. He
spoke with a serious courtesy.

'The time for make-believe is past,' he was saying. 'We have
fenced with each other. I have told you only half the truth, and you
have always kept me at arm's length. But you knew in your heart,
my dearest lady, that there must be the full truth between us some
day, and that day has come. I have often told you that I love you. I
do not come now to repeat that declaration. I come to ask you to
entrust yourself to me, to join your fate to mine, for I can promise
you the happiness which you deserve.'

He pulled up a chair and sat beside her. I cannot put down all
that he said, for Mary, once she grasped the drift of it, was busy
with her own thoughts and did not listen. But I gather from her
that he was very candid and seemed to grow as he spoke in mental
and moral stature. He told her who he was and what his work had
been. He claimed the same purpose as hers, a hatred of war and a
passion to rebuild the world into decency. But now he drew a
different moral. He was a German: it was through Germany alone
that peace and regeneration could come. His country was purged
from her faults, and the marvellous German discipline was about to
prove itself in the eye of gods and men. He told her what he had
told me in the room at the Pink Chalet, but with another colouring.
Germany was not vengeful or vainglorious, only patient and merciful.
God was about to give her the power to decide the world's
fate, and it was for him and his kind to see that the decision was
beneficent. The greater task of his people was only now beginning.

That was the gist of his talk. She appeared to listen, but her
mind was far away. She must delay him for two hours, three hours,
four hours. If not, she must keep beside him. She was the only one
of our company left in touch with the enemy ...

'I go to Germany now,' he was saying. 'I want you to come with
me - to be my wife.'

He waited for an answer, and got it in the form of a startled question.

'To Germany? How?'

'It is easy,' he said, smiling. 'The car which is waiting outside is
the first stage of a system of travel which we have perfected.' Then
he told her about the Underground Railway - not as he had told it
to me, to scare, but as a proof of power and forethought.

His manner was perfect. He was respectful, devoted, thoughtful
of all things. He was the suppliant, not the master. He offered her
power and pride, a dazzling career, for he had deserved well of his
country, the devotion of the faithful lover. He would take her to
his mother's house, where she would be welcomed like a princess. I
have no doubt he was sincere, for he had many moods, and the
libertine whom he had revealed to me at the Pink Chalet had given
place to the honourable gentleman. He could play all parts well
because he could believe in himself in them all.

Then he spoke of danger, not so as to slight her courage, but to
emphasize his own thoughtfulness. The world in which she had
lived was crumbling, and he alone could offer a refuge. She felt the
steel gauntlet through the texture of the velvet glove.

All the while she had been furiously thinking, with her chin in
her hand in the old way ... She might refuse to go. He could
compel her, no doubt, for there was no help to be got from the old
servants. But it might be difficult to carry an unwilling woman
over the first stages of the Underground Railway. There might be
chances ... Supposing he accepted her refusal and left her. Then
indeed he would be gone for ever and our game would have closed
with a fiasco. The great antagonist of England would go home
rejoicing, taking his sheaves with him.

At this time she had no personal fear of him. So curious a thing
is the human heart that her main preoccupation was with our
mission, not with her own fate. To fail utterly seemed too bitter.
Supposing she went with him. They had still to get out of Italy and
cross Switzerland. If she were with him she would be an emissary
of the Allies in the enemy's camp. She asked herself what could she
do, and told herself 'Nothing.' She felt like a small bird in a very
large trap, and her chief sensation was that of her own powerlessness.
But she had learned Blenkiron's gospel and knew that
Heaven sends amazing chances to the bold. And, even as she made
her decision, she was aware of a dark shadow lurking at the back of
her mind, the shadow of the fear which she knew was awaiting her.
For she was going into the unknown with a man whom she hated,
a man who claimed to be her lover.
It was the bravest thing I have ever heard of, and I have lived
my life among brave men.

'I will come with you,' she said. 'But you mustn't speak to me,
please. I am tired and troubled and I want peace to think.'

As she rose weakness came over her and she swayed till his arm
caught her. 'I wish I could let you rest for a little,' he said tenderly,
'but time presses. The car runs smoothly and you can sleep there.'

He summoned one of the servants to whom he handed Mary.
'We leave in ten minutes,' he said, and he went out to see to the car.

Mary's first act in the bedroom to which she was taken was to
bathe her eyes and brush her hair. She felt dimly that she must keep
her head clear. Her second was to scribble a note to Wake, telling
him what had happened, and to give it to the servant with a tip.

'The gentleman will come in the morning,' she said. 'You must
give it him at once, for it concerns the fate of your country.'
The woman grinned and promised. It was not the first time she had
done errands for pretty ladies.

Ivery settled her in the great closed car with much solicitude, and
made her comfortable with rugs. Then he went back to the inn for
a second, and she saw a light move in the _salle-a-manger. He returned
and spoke to the driver in German, taking his seat beside him.

But first he handed Mary her note to Wake. 'I think you left this
behind you,' he said. He had not opened it.

Alone in the car Mary slept. She saw the figures of Ivery and the
chauffeur in the front seat dark against the headlights, and then
they dislimned into dreams. She had undergone a greater strain
than she knew, and was sunk in the heavy sleep of weary nerves.

When she woke it was daylight. They were still in Italy, as her
first glance told her, so they could not have taken the Staub route.
They seemed to be among the foothills, for there was little snow,
but now and then up tributary valleys she had glimpses of the high
peaks. She tried hard to think what it could mean, and then
remembered the Marjolana. Wake had laboured to instruct her in the
topography of the Alps, and she had grasped the fact of the two
open passes. But the Marjolana meant a big circuit, and they would
not be in Switzerland till the evening. They would arrive in the
dark, and pass out of it in the dark, and there would be no chance
of succour. She felt very lonely and very weak.

Throughout the morning her fear grew. The more hopeless her
chance of defeating Ivery became the more insistently the dark
shadow crept over her mind. She tried to steady herself by watching
the show from the windows. The car swung through little villages,
past vineyards and pine-woods and the blue of lakes, and over the
gorges of mountain streams. There seemed to be no trouble about
passports. The sentries at the controls waved a reassuring hand
when they were shown some card which the chauffeur held between
his teeth. In one place there was a longish halt, and she could hear
Ivery talking Italian with two officers of Bersaglieri, to whom he
gave cigars. They were fresh-faced, upstanding boys, and for a
second she had an idea of flinging open the door and appealing to
them to save her. But that would have been futile, for Ivery was
clearly amply certificated. She wondered what part he was now playing.

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