CHAPTER XVII. AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. that instead of following them, I began at Invaded by sudden despair, I sat down, and for a moment did not even think. All at once I became aware of the abysses which surrounded the throne of my isolation. Behind me the broken ground rose ONE summer morning, we all got up very early, except Charley, who was unfit for the exertion, to have a ramble in the mountains, and see the sun rise. The fresh friendly air, full of promise, greeting us the moment we crossed the threshold; the calm light which, without visible source, lay dream-like on the hills; the brighter space in the sky whence ere long the spring of glory would burst forth trium- to an unseen height, and before me it phant; the dull white of the snow-peaks, dwelling so awful and lonely in the mid heavens, as if nothing should ever comfort them or make them acknowledge the valleys below; the sense of adventure with which we climbed the nearer heights as familiar to our feet on ordinary days as the stairs to our bedrooms; the gradual disappearance of the known regions behind us, and the dawning sense of the illimitable and awful, folding in its bosom the homely and familiar combined to produce an impression which has never faded. The sun rose in splendour, as if nothing more should hide in the darkness for ever; and yet with the light came a fresh sense of mystery, for now that which had appeared smooth, was all broken and mottled with shadows innumerable. Again and again I found myself standing still to gaze in a rapture of delight which I can only recall, not express; again and again was I roused by the voice of the master in front, shouting to me to come on, and warning me of the danger of losing sight of the rest of the company; and again I obeyed, but without any perception of the peril. sloped gently downwards, without a break to the eye, yet I felt as if, should I make one wavering movement, I must fall down one of the frightful precipices which Mr. Forest had told me as a warning, lay all about us. I actually clung to the stone upon which I sat, although I could not have been in more absolute safety for the moment had I been dreaming in bed. The old fear had returned upon me, with a tenfold feeling of reality behind it. I presume it is so all through life: it is not what is, but what may be, that oftenest blanches the cheek and paralyzes the limbs; and oftenest gives rise to that sense of the need of a God which we are told nowadays is a superstition, and which he whom we call the Saviour acknowledged and justified in telling us to take no thought for the morrow, inasmuch as God took thought for it. I strove to master my dismay, and forced myself to get up and run about; and in a few minutes the fear had withdrawn into the background, and I felt no longer an unseen force dragging me towards a frightful gulf. But it was replaced by a more spiritual horror. The sense of loneliness seized upon me, and The intention was to cross the hills into the first sense of absolute loneliness is the valley of the Lauterbrunnen, not how- awful. Independent as a man may fancy ever by the path now so well known, but himself in the heart of a world of men, he by another way, hardly a path, with which has only to be convinced that there is the master and some of the boys were neither voice nor hearing, to know that familiar enough. It was my first experi- the face from which he most recoils, is of ence of anything like real climbing. As a kind essential to his very soul. Space we passed rapidly over a moorland space, is not room; and when we complain of the broken with huge knolls and solitary rocks, overcrowding of our fellows, we are thanksomething hurt my foot, and taking off less for that which comforts us the most, my shoe, I found that a small chiropodical and de-ire its absence in ignorance of our operation was necessary, which involved deepest nature. the use of my knife. It slipped and cut my foot, and I bound the wound with a strip from my pocket-handkerchief. When I got up, I found that my companions had disappeared. This gave me little trouble at the moment, for I had no doubt of speedily overtaking them; and I set out briskly in the direction, as I supposed, in which we had been going. But I presume It Not even a bird broke the silence. lay upon my soul as the sky and the sea lay upon the weary eye of the ancient mariner. It is useless to attempt to convey the impression of my misery. It was not yet the fear of death, or of hunger or thirst, for I had as yet no adequate idea of the vast lonelinesses that lie in a mountain land; it was simply the being alone, out in the hope of recognizing some feature of the country; I could only regard the ground before me, lest at any step I might come upon an abyss. with no ear to hear and no voice to answer | every mound, one might be lying - a trap me a torture to which the soul is liable for my destruction. I no longer looked in virtue of the fact that it was not made to be alone, yea, I think, I hope, never can be alone; for that which could be fact could not be such horror. Essential horror springs from an idea repugnant to the nature of the thinker, and which therefore in reality could not be. My agony rose and rose with every moment of silence. But when it reached its height, and when, to save myself from bursting into tears, I threw myself on the ground, and began gnawing at the plants about me then first came help: I had a certain experience, as the Puritans might have called it. I fear to build any definite conclusions upon it, from the dread of fanaticism and the danger of attributing a merely physical effect to a spiritual cause. But are matter and spirit so far asunder? It is my will moves my arm, whatever first moves my will. Besides, I do not understand how, except another influence came into operation, the extreme of misery and depression should work round into such a change as I have to record. But I do not know how to describe the change. The silence was crushing or rather sucking my life out of me -up into its own empty gulfs. The horror of the great stillness was growing deathly, when all at once I rose to my feet, with a sense of power and confidence I had never had before. It was as if something divine within me awoke to outface the desolation. I felt that it was time to act, and that I could act. There is no cure for terror like action; in a few moments I could have approached the verge of any precipice at least without abject fear. The silenceno longer a horrible vacancy—appeared to tremble with unuttered thinkings. The manhood within me was alive and awake. I could not recognize a single landmark, or discover the least vestige of a path. I knew upon which hand the sun was when we started; and took my way with the sun on the other side. But a cloud had already come over him. sun. I had not walked far before the air began to grow dark. I glanced again at the The clouds had gathered thick about him. Suddenly a mountain wind blew cold in my face. I never yet can read that sonnet of Shakspere's, Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Anon permit the basest clouds to ride Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace, without recalling the gladness when I started from home and the misery that so soon followed. But my new spirits did not yet give way. I trudged on. The wind increased, and in it came by and by the trailing skirts of a cloud. In a few moments more I was wrapped in mist. It was as if the gulf from which I had just escaped had sent up its indwelling demon of fog to follow and overtake me. I dared hardly go on even with the greatest circumspection. As I grew colder, my courage declined. The mist wetted my face and sank through my clothes, and I began to feel very wretched. I sat down, not merely from dread of the precipices, but to reserve my walking powers when the mist should withdraw. I began to shiver, and was getting utterly hopeless and miserable when the fog lifted a little, and I saw what seemed a great rock near me. I crept towards it. Almost suddenly it dwindled, and I found but a stone, yet one large enough to afford me some shelter. I went to the leeward side of it, and nestled at its foot. The mist again sank and the wind blew stronger, but I was in comparative comfort, partly because my imagination was wearied. I fell fast asleep. I had not gone far before I saw in front| I awoke stiff with cold. Rain was fallof me, on the other side of a little hillook, ing in torrents, and I was wet to the skin; something like the pale blue gray fog that but the mist was much thinner, and I could broods over a mountain lake. I ascended see a good way. For a while I was very the hillock, and started back with a cry of | heartless, what with the stiffness, and the dismay; I was on the very verge of an fear of having to spend the night on the awful gulf. When I think of it, I marvel mountains. I was hungry too, not with yet that I did not lose my self-possession the appetite of desire but of need. The altogether. I only turned and strode in worst was that I had no idea in what directhe other direction-the faster for the tion I ought to go. Downwards lay precifear. But I dared not run, for I was pices-upwards lay the_surer loneliness. haunted by precipices. Over every height, I knelt, and prayed the God who dwelt in old mountain. But although the moun tain looked so silent, there came from it every now and then, a thunderous sound. At first I could not think what it was, but gazing at its surface more steadily, upon the face of a slope I caught sight of what seemed a larger stream than any of the rest; but it soon ceased to flow, and after came the thunder of its fall: it was a the silence to help me; then strode away I knew not whither up the hill in the faint hope of discovering some sign to direct me. As I climbed the hill rose. When I surmounted what had seemed the highest point, away beyond rose another. But the slopes were not over steep, and I was able to get on pretty fast. The wind being behind me, I hoped for some shelter over the highest brow, but that, for any-stream, but a solid one- an avalanche. thing I knew, might be miles away in the regions of ice and snow. Away up in the air the huge snow-summit Half way down the hill, almost right under my feet, rose a slender column of smoke, I could not see whence. Ihastened towards it, feeling as strong as when I started in the morning. I zig-zagged down the slope, for it was steep and slippery with grass, and arrived at length at a good-sized cottage, which faced the Jungfrau. It was built of great logs laid I had been walking I should think about an hour, when the mist broke away from around me, and the sun, in the midst of clouds of dull orange and gold, shone out upon the wet hill. It was like a promise of safety, and woke in me courage to climb the steep and crumbling slope which now lay before me. But the fear returned. People had died in the mountains of hunger, and I began to make up my mind to meet the worst. I had not learned that the approach of any fate is just the preparation for that fate. I troubled myself with the care of that which was not horizontally one above the other, all with impending over me. I tried to contemplate the death-struggle with equanimity, but could not. Had I been wearier and fainter, it would have appeared less dreadful. Then, in the horror of the slow death of hunger, strange as it may appear, that which had been the special horror of my childish dreams returned upon me changed into a thought of comfort: I could, ere my strength failed me utterly, seek the verge of a precipice, lie down there, and when the suffering grew strong enough to give me courage, roll myself over the edge, and cut short the agony. - At length I gained the brow of the height, and at last the ground sank beyond. There was no precipice to terrify, only a somewhat steep descent into a valley large and wide. But what a vision arose on the opposite side of that valley!an upright wilderness of rocks, slopes, precipices, snow, glaciers, avalanches! Weary and faint as I was, I was filled with a glorious awe, the terror of which was the opposite of fear, for it lifted instead of debasing the soul. Not a pine-tree softened the haggard waste; not a single stray sheep of the wind's flock, drew one trail of its thin-drawn wool behind it; all was hard and bare. The glaciers lay like the skins of cruel beasts, with the green veins yet visible, nailed to the rocks to harden in the sun; and the little streams which ran down from their claws looked like the knife-blades they are, keen and hard and shining, sawing away at the bones of the notches half through near the end, by which notches, lying into each other, the sides of the house were held together at the corners. I soon saw it must be a sort of roadside inn. There was no one about the place, but passing through a dark vestibule, in which were stores of fodder and various utensils, I came to a room in which sat a mother and her daughter, the former spinning, the latter making lace on a pillow. In at the windows looked the great Jungfrau. The room was lined with planks; the floor was boarded; the ceiling too was of boards-pine-wood all around. The women rose when I entered. I knew enough of German to make them understand my story, and had learned enough of their patois to understand them a little in return. They looked concerned, and the older woman passing her hands over my jacket, turned to her daughter and commenced a talk much too rapid and no doubt idiomatic for me to follow. It was in the end mingled with much laughter, evidently at some proposal of the mother. Then the daughter left the room, and the mother began to heap wood on the fire. In a few minutes, the daughter returned still laughing, with some garments, which the mother took from her. I was watching everything from a corner of the hearth, where I had seated myself wearily. The mother came up to me, and without speaking, put something over my head, which I found to be a short petticoat such as the I looked about. There was a great press in the room. I went behind it and pulled off my clothes; and having managed to put on some of the girl's garments, issued from my concealment. The kindly laughter was renewed, and mother and daughter busied themselves in arranging my apparel, evidently seeking to make the best of me as a girl, an attempt favoured by my pale face. When I seemed to myself completely arrayed, the girl said to her mother what I took to mean "Let us finish what we have begun;" and leaving the room, returned presently with the velvet collar embroidered with silver and the pendant chains which the women of most of the cantons wear, and put it on me, hooking the chains and leaving them festooned under my arms. The mother was spreading out my clothes before the fire to dry. Neither was pretty, but both looked womanly and good. The daughter had the attraction of youth and bright eyes; the mother of goodwill and experience; but both were sallow, and the mother very wrinkled for what seemed her years. Now," I said, summoning my German, "you've almost finished your work. Make my short hair as like your long hair as you can, and then I shall be a Swiss girl." I was but a boy, and had no scruple concerning a bit of fun of which I might have been ashamed a few years later. The girl took a comb from her own hair and arranged mine. When she had finished, "One girl may kiss another," I said; and doubtless she understood me, for she returned my kiss with a fresh laugh. I sat down by the fire, and as its warmth crept into my limbs, I rejoiced over comforts which yesterday had been a matter of course. up yourself, Annel." Then she moved the little table towards me, and proceeded to set out the meal. "Ah! I see you have got something to eat," said one of the strangers, in a voice I fancied I had heard before. "Will you please to share it?" returned the woman, moving the table again towards the middle of the room. I thought with myself that, if I kept silent, no one could tell I was not a girl; and, the table being finally adjusted, I moved my seat towards it. Meantime the man was helping his companion to take off her outer garments, and put them before the fire. I saw the face of neither until they approached the table and sat down. Great was my surprise to discover that the man was the same I had met in the wood on my way to Moldwarp Hall, and that the girl was Clara- a good deal grown-in fact looking almost a woman. From after facts, the meeting became less marvellous in my eyes than it then appeared. I felt myself in an awkward position-indeed I felt almost guilty, although any notion of having the advantage of them never entered my head. I was more than half inclined to run out and help Annel with the horses, but I was very hungry, and not at all willing to postpone my meal, simple as it was- bread and butter, eggs, cheese, milk, and a bottle of the stronger wine of the country, tasting like a coarse sherry. The twofather and daughter evidently-talked about their journey, and hoped they should reach the Grindelwald without more rain. "By the way," said the gentleman, "it's somewhere not far from here young Cumbermede is at school. I know Mr. Forest well enough-used to know him at least. We may as well call upon him." Cumbermede ". said Clara, "who is he?" "Oh that boy-Wilfrid. Yes; I told you myself. Don't you remember what a bit of fun we had the night of the ball? We were shut out on the leads, you know." Meantime they were busy getting me something to eat. Just as they were setting it on the table, however, a loud call outside took them both away. In a few moments two other guests entered, and then first I found myself ashamed of my costume. With them the mother re- "Oh! I don't know. Much like other entered, calling behind her, "There's no- boys. I did think he was a coward at body at home; you must put the horses' first, but he showed some pluck at last. "Yes, to be sure, you did tell me. What sort of a boy is he?" I shouldn't wonder if he turns out a good sort of fellow! We were in a fix!" "You're a terrible madcap, Clara! If you don't settle down as you grow, you'll be getting yourself into worse scrapes." "Not with you to look after me, papa dear," answered Clara, smiling. "It was the fun of cheating old Goody Wilson, you know!" Her father grinned with his whole mouthful of teeth, and looked at her with amusement almost sympathetic roguery, which she evidently appreciated, for she laughed heartily. Meantime I was feeling very uncomfortable. Something within told me I had no right to overhear remarks about myself; and, in my slow way, I was meditating how to get out of the scrape. "What a nice-looking girl that is!" said Clara, without lifting her eyes from her plate"I mean for a Swiss, you know. but I do like the dress. I wish you would buy me a collar and chains like those, рара." "Always wanting to get something out of your old dad, Clara! Just like the rest of you! always wanting something - eh?" "No, papa; it's you gentlemen always want to keep everything for yourselves. We only want you to share." "Well, you shall have the collar, and I shall have the chains. Will that do?” was getting more and more miserable ashamed of revealing who I was, and ashamed of hearing what the speakers supposed I did not understand. I sat on irresolute. In a little while however, either the wine having got into my head, or the food and warmth having restored my courage, I began to contemplate the bolder stroke of suddenly revealing_myself by some unexpected remark. They went on talking about the country, and the road they had come. "But we have hardly seen anything worth calling a precipice," said Clara. "You'll see hundreds of them if you look out of the window," said her father. "Oh! but I don't mean that," she returned. "It's nothing to look at them like that. I mean from the top of them to look down, you know." "Like from the flying buttress at Moldwarp Hall, Clara?" I said. The moment I began to speak, they began to stare. Clara's hand was arrested on its way towards the bread, and her father's wine-glass hung suspended between the table and his lips. Í laughed. "By Jove! said Mr. Coninghamand added nothing, for amazement, but looked uneasily at his daughter, as if asking whether they had not said something awkward about me. "It's Wilfrid!" exclaimed Clara, in the tone of one talking in her sleep. Then she laid down her knife, and laughed aloud. Yes, thank you, papa," she returned, nodding her head. "Meantime hadn't you better give me your diamond pin? It "What a guy you are!" she exclaimed. would fasten this troublesome collar so "Who would have thought of finding nicely!" you in a Swiss girl? Really it was too "There child!" he answered, proceed- bad of you to sit there and let us go on ing to take it from his shirt. Anything as we did. I do believe we were talking about your precious self! At least papa was.' else?" 66 "No, no, papa dear. I didn't want it. I expected you, like everybody el e, to decline carrying out your professed principles." "What a nice girl she is," I thought, "after all!" "My love," said her father, "you will know some day that I would do more for you even than give you my pet diamond. If you are a good girl, and do as I tell you, there will be grander things than diamond pins in store for you. But you may have this if you like." He looked fondly at her as he spoke. “Oh, no, papa!—not now at least. should not know what to do with it. should be sure to lose it." I I If my clothes had been dry, I would have slipped away, put them on, and appeared in my proper guise. As it was, I' Again her merry laugh rang out. She could not have taken a better way of relieving us. 66 I'm very sorry," I said; "but I felt so awkward in this costume that I couldn't bring myself to speak before. I tried very hard." "Poor boy!" she returned, rather more mockingly than I liked, her violets swimming in the dews of laughter. By this time Mr. Coningham had apparently recovered his self-possession. I say apparently, for I doubt if he had ever lost it. He had only, I think, been running over their talk in his mind to see if he had said anything unpleasant, and now, reassured, I think, he stretched his hand across the table. "At all events, Mr. Cumbermede," he |