Arrived a friend — a botanising youth of twenty-one, a Londoner whom Gilbert had known in England and again in Munich. He was called Terry — an ardent youth of Fabian parents, who had been given a rare good time all his life, and who expected the jolly game to continue. He was of that ephemeral school of young people who were to be quite quite natural, impulsive and charming, in touch with the most advanced literature. He wore a homespun jacket and flannel trousers and an old hat and a rag of a tie, and was a nice, quaint youth, ten times more sophisticated than our pair of finches, but quite amiable, sophisticated. He swam in a fierce river, he clambered over mountains, he collected flowers and pressed them in a blotting-paper book, and he talked mysteriously and sententiously, in a hushed, cultured voice, and was never offensive.
He was a great camper-out. If they had been in the wilds of Australia it could not have been more thorough. Down they clambered to black depths between the cliffs — they got on to a bushy island in mid-stream — they roasted pieces of veal on sticks before a fire, far away down there in the gloom. Then Terry flung himself into a water-fall pool.
At night — he had a room in the same farm-house — they improvised ballets. The Russian Ballet with Anna Pavlova and Nijinsky had just come to London. Neither Gilbert nor Johanna knew it. But Terry drilled them. He was a brawny fellow. He stripped himself naked save for a pair of drawers and a great scarlet turban and sat in a corner intensely playing knuckle-stones. Gilbert, feeling rather a fool, sat on the bed in Johanna’s dressing-gown, turned the scarlet side outwards, and with a great orange and lemon scarf round his head, and being Holofernes. Johanna, handsomely rigged in shawls, was to be Judith charming the captain.
So Terry, as a slave, squatted in his corner and buried himself in his knuckle-stone business. Gilbert ana Johanna were deeply impressed. Johanna began to swim forward like a houri or a Wagner heroine, to Gilbert, who was perched cross-legged, in the scarlet-silk wadded dressing-gown, upon the large bed. But Gilbert looked so uneasy and Johanna herself felt such a fool she fell to laughing, and laughed till her shawl arrangements fell away. Then the slave in the corner grew really angry, and it was all a fiasco. But both of them wondered at Terry: he was really angry.
Next day arrived a second young man, an American, acquaintance of Johanna. He came from Odessa, where he had been vowing eternal love to a Russian girl whom he had known as a political refugee in London. This young man’s name was Stanley. He was handsome and American-aristocratic, with large dark eyes and attractive lean face and American degage elegance. He was twenty-two years old. There was something very American about his slender silk ankles and doe-skin shoes. But he had been educated in England and spoke English without trace.
Of course he was dead with fatigue after the journey. He made those dark, arch, American eyes at Johanna, rather yearning you know, and in a whimsical fashion told all about his love affair: all about it, don’t you know: rather humorously. And he wasn’t sure now whether his heart’s compass hadn’t shifted a few points. No — oh no — he was less bowled of a heap than he thought he would be.
Oh dear, that Russian life — what would his own dear mother say to it! What would his mother say when she knew he was with the errant Mrs Everard. Oh dear oh dear, he was always tipping a little fat in his dear mother’s steady if neurotic American fire. But there you are — men shouldn’t have mothers.
Stanley, however, had a mother. Gentle reader — which reminds me, I’ve not spoken to you for at least twenty pages, gentle reader. I hope you’re not sulking, and on the brink of closing this friendly book for ever. Gentle reader, we’re going from bad to worse. Never say you weren’t warned. Stanley had a nervous, cultured, dear mother away in America.
— The roses round the door Make me love mother more But when they’re in the bud She scarcely stirs my blood —
Even that bit of poetry I stole.
Stanley was always talking about his mother. But though he was quite a well-bred young man, even I daren’t transcribe his language faithfully.
“Oh, my mother!” he moaned. “She is a bitch.”
“But you love her,” said Johanna.
“Me! Love her! Not at any price. I’m her only son. She knows what I think of her.”
“I’m sure she does,” said Johanna. “She knows you can’t do without her.”
“Me do without her? Her and her nerves. Why if it’s a south wind she hates me and if it’s an east wind she prays for me. Oh dear oh Lor! And nobody loves me.”
“Ah, you! Too many people love you,” said Johanna.
“None! None!”
“What about Katinka?”
“She’s a little bitch. What’s the good of her loving me? Besides, she doesn’t really. — Nobody loves me! Nobody loves me!” And he ran out and leapt on to the parapet of the bridge, and ran there riskily and funnily, like a boy, or like a dog. His black hair was brushed straight back, he had a beautiful profile, pale, with an arched nose and a well-shaped brow. His delicate ankles in their purple socks showed as he ran backwards and forwards there in the air, to the amazement of the villagers. He was looking for the postman. His letters having been forwarded to Terry’s care, he was nervously wanting some communication, something to come and reassure him.
The postman came and brought him one letter. He read it unheeding and rushed again into the house.
“Nobody loves me! Nobody’s ever going to love me,” he wailed.
Terry understood and was amused. Gilbert looked on in wonder. He did not know the spoiled, well-to-do sons of a Fabian sort of middle-class, whose parents had given them such a happy picknicky childhood and youth that manhood was simply in the way. Yet there was a charm, a wilful, spoilt charm about Stanley. He had a shrewd petulant humour, and was no fool. An engineer by training, he went into the little electric works by the stream, and examined the machinery and the dynamos. How quiet his touch was then. And what a still concentration there was in his interest. But the moment he had seen everything, and was through with it, he broke into his wails about being loved.
He liked to walk with Johanna and be half mothered by her, completely admired by her. He could be so charming in his winsome fretfulness. And, like a queer mother’s child, he understood so much of a woman’s feelings, particularly of her nerves. He discussed Everard and the children with much length and earnestness, in private with Johanna. And she unbosomed herself to him as she never could to Gilbert. About Gilbert there was something resistant, just resistant. But Stanley could be a pure sympathetic, nerve-corresponding creature. She thought any woman might love him. And besides, she knew he was rather brilliant as an engineer. Terry said so. And she had seen his quiet, potent touch on the machinery.
Like Gilbert, he was very sensitive to the crucifixes with which the valleys abounded. Either at the foot or at the head of the cross were usually the sacred initials, INRI, on a scroll.
“Inry!” said Stanley. “Another Inry! Have they none of them got any homes to go to and any mothers? Lor lummy, Hinry! Woman, what have I to do with thee?” He strayed on inconsequently, singing:
“Henery the eighth I am I am Henery the eighth I am.”
“We have a friend,” said Johanna, “a Baron Potowski. And he was an only son, and his mother adored him. But when he was a student he was very wild. So one day his mother came to Bonn to see him, and she met him in the street, and he was very drunk. ‘Ach Heinrich! Heinrich!’ — ’Weib, ich kenne dich nicht!’ he said to her solemnly, and he marched on. Poor Frau von Potowski. It nearly broke her heart.”
“Weib, ich kenne dich nicht!” repeated Stanley with joy. “Woman, I know thee not. I’ll cable it to my mother if she doesn’t send me something tomorrow.”
“But it isn’t that in the English bible,” said Johanna.
“Woman, what have I to do with thee? — But I like Weib, ich kenne dich nicht. I shall cable that to my mother.”
“You won’t be so horrid to her,” said Johanna.
“Isn’t she horrid to me? Doesn’t she pray for me, and have another bout of nerves? Doesn’t she make the house smell of valerian? Isn’t she a bitch? Has she written to me since I’m back from Odessa? Weib, ich kenne dich nicht.”
“Jawohl!” said Johanna.
Stanley’s mother was to come to London, and he was to meet her there.
“Oh my poor father, won’t he be glad to be rid of her for a bit. But fancy a woman who swallows valerian! He bears with her, he bears with her. I tell her, she’s like a sick persian cat.
Oh my poor father! And he’s stood it for nearly thirty years. Of course she’ll never die.”
“No, you’re too bad. You don’t want her to die.”
“I do! I do! I’m going to tell her I’m pining for her death.”
“She’ll only laugh.”
“No she won’t. She’ll swallow valerian, like a bewitched cat, and threaten to pray for me. Let her if she dares! I’ve promised her, if she prays for me again what’ll happen to her. — Hello Inry! You’re there again, are you? My compliments to Maria. Lord what a lot of Inrys she brought forth at a shot.
‘Ennery the eighth I am. I got married to the woman next door She’d been married seven times before And every time ‘twas an Ennery, She never had a Willie nor a Sam; I’m the eighth old man called Ennery, Ennery the Eighth I am.’“
“Aren’t you wicked!” said Johanna.
“Me? I’m mother’s little pet lamb. I’m Ennery the eighty- eighth I am I am. And you’re an adulteress you are. You’re a Scarlet Letter. So don’t you go saying nothing to me, so there.”
“I’m glad I’m a red letter. Most folks are dead letters,” said Johanna.
“Paste restantes, like my mother. She’s a blooming belated poste restante. She’s a fermo in posta she is.”
“And you love her.”
“Lor’ golly, I don’t and never did. I hate and abominate her for a bitch. I’m always telling her. But it doesn’t seem to do her much good.”
The party decided to move on. Johanna and Gilbert had been a fortnight in one place. Time to go. So they packed up once more and put their goods on the railway. Then, four together, they prepared to set off into the mountains, to cross the Gemserjoch and descend to the Imperial Road again well below the Brenner, on the southern slope.
At the last moment arrived a postcard from Stanley’s mother. She was in London — ”and have had so many headaches since I am here that I have had several nuits blanches — ”
“Lor-lummy!” cried Stanley, “hark at her! Writes a postcard to say she’s had several nuits blanches. Oh, why has nobody ever smacked it out of her. Nuits blanches\ My poor father. He married her for her beauty, and wasn’t he taken in! Got a nuit blanche instead — a damn blanched bad egg. Golly, I can’t stand that woman any longer. Here, take her postcard.”
And he tore it in bits and flung it into the stream, which now had a second set of fragments to carry towards the Danube.
So they set off, Stanley fuming about nuits blanches — his mother’s white nights of sleeplessness — Terry murmuring esoterically about the marvels of eurythmics — Johanna shocked and a little bewildered, but withal charmed by the graceless son, and Gilbert silendy wondering. Of course there were all kinds of worlds besides his own. Meanwhile the stream ran hastily on below, in the opposite direction.
They took the high-road inwards, into the knot of the valley. The high-road ended, they followed the bridle-path in the ravine. Here, in the gloom, stood one of the largest crucifixes.
“Goodbye Inry,” said Stanley to the figure. “See you later, old boy. Best wishes to Maria.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t,” said Johanna. “It really makes me unhappy.”
“There y’are, Inry!” said Stanley, turning round to the figure. “Here’s another of ‘em. Another nuit-blancher. Another Blanche newter. Lor-lummy, Blanche neuter. We’ve struck it Inry. Shake hands on it, old sport. So long. See you later, as the hymn says.
‘We’re marching to Zion Beautiful beautiful Zion “‘
They crossed the covered bridge, which always appealed to Gilbert’s fancy, and proceeded along the other side of the ravine. From time to time Terry, whose knapsack was enormous because of his blotting-paper book and press-covers, went scrambling up or scrambling down the ravine, for a yellow violet or a bit of butterwort or some other flower. Sometimes they met a couple of pack mules, sometimes a priest. Servus! Servus! came the greeting. On straggled the four. Each one had a rucksack. It was a fine day, so Johanna’s was bulky with her burberry. She had her old panama hat.
At noon they made a fire, grilled bits of meat and made scrambled eggs. Terry had a famous receipt for scrambled eggs, so he took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and altogether was as portentous as an alchemist concocting the elixir of life. Stanley did nothing, but complained and wailed whimsically. They went on to the next village where they bought food — then on till dusk, which found them in a high, shallow open valley, grassy, rather forlorn, high up under heaven. They had been climbing all the time. Behind them, about three miles back, was the village where they had bought food — the last village till they came once more to the world’s roads, over the southern slope. In front, nothing they could be sure of. But in the meadow, a block-house for hay — another hay-hut.
So they all voted for it. It was of two storeys, with a platform round the upper storey. Up they climbed, and Terry, who always had the scientific and alchemistic theories, decided where it would be safe to cook the food, so as not to burn the place down.
Dusk had well fallen. It was cold — very cold. Part of a moon was low in the sky, and a smell of snow. There were no high peaks near — only upper, roundish rock-slopes on which lay slashes of snow. In the darkening twilight they crouched over the spirit lamps on the platform of the hay-hut, trying to keep off the cold draughts from the flame. No living creatures were in sight — nor cows nor human habitation. Only the slopes beyond, the shallow, shorn meadow near, the rocky bridle-path and a little stream between rocks and marshy places.
Terry in triumph, always more like an occult alchemist than a mere cook, mysteriously brought off the ham and eggs. They ate rapidly and rather silently, inside the hay-loft in the almost-darkness. Stanley complained because he lost his slice of sausage. Then mysteriously they packed up and prepared for sleep. Terry of course gave a brief exhibition of how to sleep in a hay-hut, in deep hay. One made a hole as deep as possible, and etc. etc. etc. and finally one was buried completely under three feet of hay.
“You don’t need any breathing hole,” said Terry in answer to Gilbert’s expostulation. “The atmosphere travels quite freely through hay, and the small amount of retardation is only just enough to ensure warmth.”
This being so, Johanna and Gilbert prepared a large matrimonial burrow for the two of them, whilst at brief distances the two men burrowed in separate holes. It was quite dark. The faintness of the moon was gone again under clouds, there was wind hissing. But heaven be praised, this hay-house was solider than that other, warmer. Gilbert, staring through his hay, could not make out the cracks in the door — it was so dark altogether.
Johanna drew him into an embrace. The other men were so near — yet it was so dark. She seemed so fierce. And he let himself go, buried there in darkness and in hay. Buried — fiercely active, but buried. Buried alive. He felt as the creatures must do, which live in lairs deep under the earth, and know their passions there. Deep under hay and darkness.
The night passed fairly well. It was warm, and therefore the irritation of hay was not intolerable. Yet by the first greyings of dawn all were up, and Terry had discovered how to make the tea safely inside the hut, among the hay near the door. It was cold and rather blowy outside. And they did not want some farmer to come and abuse them before they had had their tea and were ready to go. So they moved rather stealthily.
The dawn came grey outside. It had snowed in the night — heavy snow — but not quite down to their level. The road and the grass-alp were still free. But on the slope just above — it seemed only a few yards above — there was snow, and great snow-slopes of deep, new white snow just beyond them. Strange it was to see it, when the August morning began to be blue and the sunlight clear. It was a lovely morning after all. When they came to a stream — their own was but a trickle — they washed and were refreshed. But not inwardly warmed. So they were glad when they came to a single wooden house which provided refreshments for mountain excursionists. There they could have hot coffee and milk, plenty, and fried eggs and ham. It was good — especially the hot, rich milk: so restoring.
Other excursionists came, footing the same way.
The four went on, Gilbert and Terry usually botanising together, Johanna and Stanley talking. The sun came suddenly quite fierce, quite fiercely hot. There were little fir-trees, little woods of fir, and many cranberries, many clusters of scarlet and coral cranberries in tufts everywhere, on the rocks overhead and the rocks beneath, as they climbed the winding mule-path upwards. They ate cranberries all the afternoon, after having had a jolly lunch near another small hut for travellers, which sold some food and sweet fruit syrups.
It was about five o’clock when they came at last to the top of the climb — into a shallow last valley, where stood a house of brown wood, the accommodation for travellers this side the pass. Other walkers, mountaineers, excursionists, four or five, were here for the night. Our pedestrians got their rooms, had coffee and cake, and went out to look at the world, as the night fell.
It was a wonderful place — the last upland cradle where the summer grass grew. At the end, about a mile off, was a vast precipice, like a wall, and beyond that a cluster of mountain peaks, in heaven alone, snow and sky-rock. That was the end.
But nearer, on the flanks, were the last fir-trees, rather wispy and cold-shrivelled, growing in patches. Between these, and around them, the rock avalanches, like terrific arrested floods of rock and stones. Then smoothish rocky-grassy slopes. While in the valley bed itself, great rocks cropped out naked, there was the inevitable hay-house like another rock all alone, there were strange marshes with vegetation, that curious cold-bitten, cold-shrunk vegetation.
Gilbert went botanising with Terry up one of the rock rivers round the corner of the trees. And what looked like a slope of stones, when they clambered up amongst it was a jagged mass of great broken rocks that had wedged and ceased to slip. It was rather terrifying, as the silent, icy twilight drew on, to be jumping one’s way across these jagged massive avalanches. Even the fir-trees and some of the green growth that Terry was exploring grew out of the hollows between the blocks of avalanche rock. And the tiny stream-bed was so deep and difficult in the side of the great slope, once one was in it.
Gilbert was really rather frightened. There was something terrific about this upper world. Things which looked small and near were rather far, and when one reached them, they were big, great masses where one expected stones, jagged valley where one saw just a hollow groove. He had climbed alone rather high — and he suddenly realised how tiny he was — no bigger than a fly. Such terrible, such raw, such stupendous masses of the rock-element heaved and confused. Such terrible order in it all. He looked at the inaccessible, dread-holy peaks of snow and black rock beyond the precipice — and the vast slopes opposite, the vast slope on which he was overwhelmed, the fir-trees just below like a hairy fringe. It all looked of a comfortable human size. And now that he was scrambling between fierce rocks which had looked to him like stones, now he felt all the suspended mass of unutterably fierce rocks round him, he knew it was not human, not life- size. It was all bigger than life-size, much bigger, and fearful.
He clambered and jumped down again, hastening to get back. He wanted to get back, back to the level of the cranberries and the grass, back to the path, to the house. He had lost Terry, and was alone.
It did not take him very long to get down. He seemed to be climbing down out of the light into a trough of substantial shadow. He threaded his way through the marshy place, where some hay was still hung out like washing to dry, upon the cross-sticks. As he got near the house he heard the tong- tong of the cow-bells, and saw the cows being driven into their house. At the front door of the accommodation house stood a mule whose packs were being unladen. Somebody was playing a zither.
He went upstairs, but Johanna was not there. Stooping to look out of the window, he saw the flush of evening on the peaks. Strange and icy the heart became — without human emotion — up here: abstracted, in the eternal loneliness. The eternal and everlasting loneliness. And the beauty of it, and the richness of it. The everlasting isolation in loneliness, while the sun comes and goes, and night falls and rises. The heart in its magnificent isolation like a peak in heaven, forever. The beauty, the beauty of fate, which decrees that in our supremacy we are single and alone, like peaks that finish off in their perfect isolation in the ether. The ultimate perfection of being quite alone.
It seemed to be getting dark. Yellow lamp-light streamed out below, from the doorway. Where was Johanna? He went downstairs to look. She was not in the one public- room — where was a bar and the tables at which one ate. Terry was there with his almighty blotting-paper book. Gilbert went to the door. There was Johanna sauntering up with Stanley.
“Where have you been?” said Gilbert.
“We went a walk — that way — ” and she pointed across the grass to the left, through rocks, towards the hay-house in the darkening distance. “Where did you go?”
“I climbed to get up.”
“Isn’t it wonderful!”
“Yes. Do you like it here, Stanley?” asked Gilbert.
“Marvellous!” said Stanley. “Marvellous.”
“Can we eat soon?” asked Johanna.
“I don’t know,” said Gilbert.
Before long they were eating hot broth, and lumps of boiled beef — and after that an omelette with jam — at one of the little tables in the public-room that was just the bar-room of a public-house, quite bare of ornament, but warmed by a big glazed stove. It was warm, and they ate and were happy.
After supper Johanna walked for a few minutes with Gilbert, holding his arm. Stars were in the sky, big, bright, splendid.
“It’s so marvellous,” she said, “it frightens me.”
“So it does me.”
They went soon indoors, and to bed. Somebody, somewhere at the back, was playing a zither — and making love. The sound was unmistakeable. Everybody went to bed by nine o’clock. The upstairs was icy cold: the bedrooms just bare cells, two single beds in the finches’ room. Gilbert felt he had never got into such a thoroughly cold bed. Johanna cried to him to come and help her to get warm. But it was impossible to sleep two in one small bed. So after a while he hopped back. And once one was warm one was very warm under the huge down bolster, which seemed to rise like a balloon above the sleepers’ noses.
The morning came clear and sunny. Our four were rather excited at the thought of crossing the Gemserjoch, over the ridge to the south slope. This side still was Germany, with the north behind it. The other side was the southern Tyrol, all Italy in front. Even geographically, one can pass so definite a turning-point.
There were various other pedestrians, tourists, setting off from the wooden rest-house to cross the pass. They had guides too. The guides said there was much snow: that the boots and shoes of the four were too thin. But if people walked over a pass quite easily in thick boots they could walk in thinner ones. Our four would not saddle themselves with a guide: they had no belief in any difficulties.
So, in the first sunshine, they set off, climbing gently the rocky, roundish slope. Flat iron peaks, slashed fierce with snow, stood away to the right. There was a thin but a very cold wind under a sharp sun.
It was a long, high-up, naked slope, not very steep. There were no more trees, the Alp-roses were tiny shrubs — then they left off. The road was almost pure rock, with pockets and patches of snow here and there. The first great pads of snow, silvery edged. And still the road wound, dipped into a scooped hollow, and inclined up again, naked among the great harsh rocks, over tracts of snow, over iron-bare rock surfaces, always aloft under a clear blue heaven. It was cold in the wind, hot in the sun. But they all felt light and excited. Every little crest ahead seemed the summit.
In a hollow of rock was a last little crucifix — the small wooden Christ all silvery-naked, a bit of old oak, under his hood. And neither Stanley nor Gilbert made any jokes. He was so old and rudimentary.
So they walked and climbed and crossed slanting slopes for two or three hours. The road was quite easy to follow — no difficulty of any sort. At length they came to a last strange and desolate hollow, a sort of pot with precipice walls on the right. Over the ridge they came, and down the long, slanting track between huge boulders and masses of rock, down into the shallow prison. How was one to get out? They scanned and scanned ahead: but only precipices, and impassable rock- masses, and a thin water-fall. The water fell into the wide, shallow summit-valley. How did it get out again. They could not see.
The sun fell into this shallow, rocky, desolate place as into a rugged bowl. There was no snow, save in patches where there was shadow, under some rocks and in some stony pits. Our four slanted still on, into the prison. It seemed impossible there was a way out. A sort of summit rock-trap.
And yet, when they got almost to the face of the precipice on the far side, suddenly the path turned to the left, and there, almost like a ladder sideways against the steep face went a slanting, stony ledge, and the road up it. They climbed, and sweated, and were excited. This must be the top.
They emerged between rocks and pools and hillocks of rock — and then, it was the top. Smooth as plates of iron, a flat summit, with great films of snow like silver plating on the black bronze-iron. And a wind, a painful cold wind. And low in the near-distance a brown shelter-hut with people there. And beyond the brow, a great peak, a magnificent wedge of iron thrust into the upper air, and slashed with snow-slashes as if it were dazzlingly alive, so brilliant and living the snow- stripes on its aloof dark body. For Gilbert, it was one of the perfect things of all his life, that peak, that single great sky- living blade of rock. He tramped across the snow-slush, he tramped across the slanting, difficult slope of deep snow, over the bare, iron and snow-bound flatfish top. He felt the awful wind, so slow yet so killing. He saw the people, guides and tourists at the hut — he passed the house itself and smelled wood-smoke. But he wanted only one thing — to come to the further, southern brink of the summit, and look across, across clear space, at that marvellous god-proud aloof pyramid of a peak, flashing its snow-stripes like some snow-beast, and bluing the clear air beyond.
They came to the rounded curve of the down-slope. Beyond, mountain tops. They went on, till they could see beneath the whole slope — where vegetation began, and shrubs, and trees, and the dense greenery. — It was a deep valley, narrow, and full of trees and verdure, far away below sinking to a still visible high-road. And it was so sunny, so sunny and warm.
So they sat in a shelter of rocks in the full sun, no wind, no wind at all. It was about midday. Gilbert had to go to a brow to look clear at his queen. She was beyond this valley — and beyond other valleys. Other, blunter peaks rose about her. Yet she lifted her marvellous dark slopes clear, a marvellous prism of substance in the ether, rayed with her snow as with lightning-strokes. Beyond — and crystal — and almost mathematically pure.
And he was satisfied — one of the eternal satisfactions that man can find on his life-way. He felt a pure, immortal satisfaction — a perfected aloneness.
So he was glad to be back in the nook of sun, eating with the others. There was not much food either. They promised themselves a meal when they were down.
They began quickly to descend into the steep narrow valley. Far below, their track could be glimpsed, going down to the pale thread of a high-road that lay between black pine-trees in the profundity. And they counted their progress: there they entered the zone of scrubby vegetation — there the first hairy little trees — there was alp-meadow — there were oak-trees, far down.
It was already another world. Sun and profusion already.
One must change one’s heart as one crosses that rock-plated, snow-sloped flat top.
Down and down, down a rocky, curving path. How tiring it is, descending. How quick one is — and yet the desired zones of the meadow alp and the oak-trees, how far still. They passed the fir-scrubs. They wound across the grassy dip, over a stream. There were alpine roses in flower still — as there had been on the other side, coming up. They went between rocks and big fir-trees. There were yellow rock-roses in flower, and comfrey. They came to the oaks. And the road broadened now into a proper bridle-path. In the warm shadow they descended. But tired — almost too tired to notice.
In the middle afternoon they emerged, over the last bank, over a stream, and on to the white wide high-road. Ah, how different it seemed. They were hot. There seemed a heat, a relaxation already in the air. And a darkness. It seemed very dark down there in the valley, in the deep cleft between the pine-trees.
So they found the inn, and drank beer and ate good food, and discussed the next day. Stanley and Terry, the moment they were down on the high-road, feeling themselves beyond the Brenner, wanted to get back. They wanted to get back at once to Munich, where their goods were. They asked how far the nearest station was — twelve miles. Quite easy to do it that evening. And they looked up trains. They could catch the express from Italy. It stopped at Sterzing at ten o’clock at night.
So on the road again. There were some beautiful tufts of flowers in the shade by the stream, in that deep valley: cranesbill, and dark gentian, and yellow flowers. They went into a shrine. It was all hung with ex voto arms and legs and bits of people, in wax. And in the back sat a ghastly life-size Christ, streaked livid with blood, and with an awful, dying, almost murderous-looking face. He was so powerful too — and like a man in the flush of life who realises he has just been murdered.
“There’s Inry selling joints,” said Stanley sardonically. But Gilbert was startled, shocked, and he could not forget. Why? Why this awful thing in a fine, big new shrine? Why this.
They walked on — and Johanna complained she was tired. They lingered hap-hazard in a saw-mill by the road: watching the saw-threads eat across the sweet wood, the saw-dust fall like meal: watching the great long planks move slowly: watching the oil-sticky cog-wheels slowly turn, and the great centre beam turn from the outer wheel: watching the water in the black sluice drop on the creaking wheel: and hearing all the noises, smelling the sweet scents and the dank scents: watching the men, who were quite friendly. They seemed happy, the men in the saw-mill. They had dark eyes, and looked well. They smiled.
But yet, there was something in reserve — something at the back of their eyes. Gilbert tried to connect it with the ghastly Christ on the road behind. But it was too difficult, and he was tired.
They crossed the log bridge over the stream. It was falling dusk. They were still in the narrow valley. Johanna complained bitterly of being tired. But Gilbert had one of his nervous fevers. He felt they must reach Pfitzen that night. They must reach Pfitzen. And Johanna would not hurry. She would not walk on.
“We must get to Pfitzen, and it’s getting dark. Why do you stand there staring at the water. You must come on.”
“I won’t come on. Why should I? I won’t come on. Don’t bully.”
“We must get to Pfitzen,” persisted he.
“Leave me alone. Go yourself to Pfitzen. Leave me alone.”
She loitered, she lingered, and he chafed like a mad-man at the bit. Stanley said nothing, but meandered rather stupidly at the side of the road. It was Terry who took up the cudgels.
“Why should Johanna hurry if she’s tired? Why should she go to Pfitzen tonight if she doesn’t want to? She’s not going to Pfitzen tonight.”
“No, I don’t want to,” she said.
Gilbert was silent. The moment Terry turned on him, he realised that there was absolutely no need to get to Pfitzen. He realised that his fever, his frenzy was something unnatural. He realised that Johanna might actually be too tired. So he was silent, and wondered at himself. Yet he was angry at Terry’s interference. And from straining, urging, tugging at Johanna he became suddenly released, separate.
At nightfall they came to an inn by the road-side: quite a large inn, but no sign of any village. It was quite alone in the still narrow valley. And Gilbert felt afraid. A distinct sense of fear possessed him.
Yet the landlord, a burly, handsome man was pleasant, even attractive. He lighted the lamp that hung from the ceiling, and promised food. He gave Johanna and Gilbert an enormous bedroom on the ground floor — a vast dark place, quite comfortable and nice: and the two young men a room above.
So the four tired ones sat round a little table in the public bar-room. No one came to the inn. They saw only the burly, genial host. And they waited and waited, and studied the map that hung on the wall. It seemed very dark outside.
There were still seven miles to the nearest station. The two youths seemed determined to leave that night. Johanna begged them to stay just one day — one day together at Sterzing. Gilbert also begged them. But no. They must go. They must go. There was a fast train stopped at Sterzing at a quarter to five in the morning. They would rise at three, and walk on. It was decided.
So the four friends sat round the table in the public-house, and talked it all out. Terry and Stanley were quite determined: they would rise at three and make good speed to the station:
and by tomorrow afternoon they would be in Munich — Johanna and Gilbert would sleep on — and then take their vague way southwards. It was all settled.
Dinner came, good soup and boiled meat and cabbage. The two young men settled with the host: he gave them an alarm clock. The four friends made plans for meeting again. Under the hanging lamp in the inn-bar they talked of the future.
“It’s been so lovely knowing you both,” said Johanna. “I feel it can’t come to an end.”
“We won’t let it,” said Gilbert. “I believe one should keep one’s friendships forever: even put a bit of eternal feeling into them.”
“There is that feeling in me,” murmured Terry rather impressively.
“Oh yes. I’m game,” said Stanley.
And so — they would all go to bed.
“Goodbye!” said Johanna to Stanley. “You’ll come and see us wherever we are, won’t you?”
“I will,” said Stanley.
“Goodbye Terry. I am so glad of you in the world,” she said to the other.
“Not as glad as I am of you,” murmured Terry, and he kissed her fingers.
“Goodbye,” said Gilbert to Stanley. “You will come and see us.”
“Yes thanks — I should like it awfully.”
“Goodbye Terry — remember me to your mother and father. Tell them what a good time we’ve had. I shall see you all again — and we’ll have a longer holiday together another time, shall we?”
“Yes. We will. Goodbye Noon. Remember I love you,” and Terry looked at Gilbert protectively. Gilbert laughed — it seemed so comic.
So, in the inn passage, they parted, and Johanna and Gilbert went with their candle into their vast bedroom, to sleep.