I saw no more of Clara, but sat and read until I grew cold and tired, and wished very much that Mrs. Wilson would come. I thought she might have forgot me in the hurry, and there I should have to stay all night. After my recent escape, however, from a danger so much worse, I could regard the prospect with some composure. A full hour more must have passed; I was getting sleepy, and my candle had burned low, when at length Mrs Wilson did make her appearance, and I accompanied her gladly.
‘I am sure you want your tea, poor boy!’ she said.
‘Tea! Mrs. Wilson,’ I rejoined. ‘It’s bed I want. But when I think of it, Iamrather hungry.’
‘You shall have tea and bed both,’ she answered kindly. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had such a dull evening, but I couldnothelp it.’
‘Indeed, I’ve not been dull at all,’ I answered—‘till just the last hour or so.’
I longed to tell her all I had been about, for I felt guilty; but I would not betray Clara.
‘Well, here we are!’ she said, opening the door of her own room. ‘I hope I shall have peace enough to see you make a good meal.’
I did make a good meal. When I had done, Mrs Wilson took a rushlight and led the way. I took my sword and followed her. Into what quarter of the house she conducted me I could not tell. There was a nice fire burning in the room, and my night-apparel was airing before it. She set the light on the floor, and left me with a kind good-night. I was soon undressed and in bed, with my sword beside me on the coverlet of silk patchwork.
But, from whatever cause, sleepy as I had been a little while before, I lay wide awake now, staring about the room. Like many others in the house, it was hung with tapestry, which was a good deal worn and patched—notably in one place, where limbs of warriors and horses came to an untimely end, on all sides of a certain oblong piece quite different from the rest in colour and design. I know now that it was a piece ofGobelins,in the midst of ancient needlework. It looked the brighter of the two, but its colours were about three, with a good deal of white; whereas that which surrounded it had had many and brilliant colours, which, faded and dull and sombre, yet kept their harmony. The guard of the rushlight cast deeper and queerer shadows, as the fire sank lower. Its holes gave eyes of light to some of the figures in the tapestry, and as the light wavered, the eyes wandered about in a ghostly manner, and the shadows changed and flickered and heaved uncomfortably.
How long I had lain thus I do not know; but at last I found myself watching the rectangular patch of newer tapestry. Could it be that it moved? Itcouldbe only the effect of the wavering shadows. And yet I could not convince myself that it did not move. Itdidmove. It came forward. One side of it did certainly come forward. A kind of universal cramp seized me—a contraction of every fibre of my body. The patch opened like a door—wider and wider; and from behind came a great helmet peeping. I was all one terror, but my nerves held out so far that I lay like a watching dog—watching for what horror would come next. The door opened wider, a mailed hand and arm appeared, and at length a figure, armed cap-à-pie, stepped slowly down, stood for a moment peering about, and then began to walk through the room, as if searching for something. It came nearer and nearer to the bed. I wonder now, when I think of it, that the cold horror did not reach my heart. I cannot have been so much a coward, surely, after all! But I suspect it was only that general paralysis prevented the extreme of terror, just as a man in the clutch of a wild beast is hardly aware of suffering. At last the figure stooped over my bed, and stretched out a long arm. I remember nothing more.
I woke in the grey of the morning. Could a faint have passed into a sleep? or was it all a dream? I lay for some time before I could recall what made me so miserable. At length my memory awoke, and I gazed fearful about the room. The white ashes of the burnt-out fire were lying in the grate; the stand of the rushlight was on the floor; the wall with its tapestry was just as it had been; the cold grey light had annihilated the fancied visions: I had been dreaming and was now awake. But I could not lie longer in bed. I must go out. The morning air would give me life; I felt worn and weak. Vision or dream, the room was hateful to me. With a great effort I sat up, for I still feared to move, lest I should catch a glimpse of the armed figure. Terrible as it had been in the night, it would be more terrible now. I peered into every corner. Each was vacant. Then first I remembered that I had been reading theCastile of Otrantoand theSeven Champions of Christendomthe night before. I jumped out of bed and dressed myself, growing braver and braver as the light of the lovely Spring morning swelled in the room. Having dipped my head in cold water, I was myself again. I opened the lattice and looked out. The first breath of air was a denial to the whole thing. I laughed at myself. Earth and sky were alive with Spring. The wind was the breath of the coming Summer: there were flakes of sunshine and shadow in it. Before me lay a green bank with a few trees on its top. It was crowded with primroses growing through the grass. The dew was lying all about, shining and sparkling in the first rays of the level sun, which itself I could not see. The tide of life rose in my heart and rushed through my limbs. I would take my sword and go for a ramble through the park. I went to my bedside, and stretched across to find it by the wall. It must have slipped down at the back of the bed. No. Where could it be? In a word, I searched everywhere, but my loved weapon had vanished. The visions of the night returned, and for a moment I believed them all. The night once again closed around me, darkened yet more with the despair of an irreparable loss. I rushed from the room and through a long passage, with the blind desire to get out. The stare of an unwashed maid, already busy with her pail and brush, brought me to my senses.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said; ‘I want to get out.’
She left her implements, led me down a stair close at hand, opened a door at its foot, and let me out into the high court. I gazed about me. It was as if I had escaped from a prison-cell into the chamber of torture: I stood the centre of a multitude of windows—the eyes of the house all fixed upon me. On one side was the great gate, through which, from the roof, I had seen the carriages drive the night before; but it was closed. I remembered, however, that Sir Giles had brought me in by a wicket in that gate. I hastened to it. There was but a bolt to withdraw, and I was free.
But all was gloomy within, and genial nature could no longer enter. Glittering jewels of sunlight and dew were nothing but drops of water upon blades of grass. Fresh-bursting trees were no more than the deadest of winter-bitten branches. The great eastern window of the universe, gorgeous with gold and roses, was but the weary sun making a fuss about nothing. My sole relief lay in motion. I roamed I knew not whither, nor how long.
At length I found myself on a height eastward of the Hall, overlooking its gardens, which lay in deep terraces beneath. Inside a low wall was the first of them, dark with an avenue of ancient trees, and below was the large oriel window in the end of the ball-room. I climbed over the wall, which was built of cunningly fitted stones, with mortar only in the top row; and drawn by the gloom, strolled up and down the avenue for a long time. At length I became aware of a voice I had heard before. I could see no one; but, hearkening about, I found it must come from the next terrace. Descending by a deep flight of old mossy steps, I came upon a strip of smooth sward, with yew trees, dark and trim, on each side of it. At the end of the walk was an arbour, in which I could see the glimmer of something white. Too miserable to be shy, I advanced and peeped in. The girl who had shown me the way to the library was talking to her mother.
‘Mamma!’ she said, without showing any surprise, ‘here is the boy who came into our room last night.’
‘How do you do?’ said the lady kindly, making room for me on the bench beside her.
I answered as politely as I could, and felt a strange comfort glide from the sweetness of her countenance.
‘What an adventure you had last night!’ she said. ‘It was well you did not fall.’
‘That wouldn’t have been much worse than having to stop where we were,’ I answered.
The conversation thus commenced went on until I had told them all my history, including my last adventure.
‘You must have dreamed it,’ said the lady.
‘So I thought, ma’am,’ I answered, ‘until I found that my sword was gone.’
‘Are you sure you looked everywhere?’ she asked.
‘Indeed, I did.’
‘It does not follow however that the ghost took it. It is more likely Mrs Wilson came in to see you after you were asleep, and carried it off.’
‘Oh yes!’ I cried, rejoiced at the suggestion; ‘that must be it. I shall ask her.’
‘I am sure you will find it so. Are you going home soon?’
‘Yes—as soon as I’ve had my breakfast. It’s a good walk from here to Aldwick.’
‘So it is.—We are going that way too?’ she added thinkingly.
‘Mr. Elder is a great friend of papa’s—isn’t he, mamma?’ said the girl.
‘Yes, my dear. They were friends at college.’
‘I have heard Mr Elder speak of Mr Osborne,’ I said. ‘Do you live near us?’
‘Not very far off—in the next parish, where my husband is rector,’ she answered. ‘If you could wait till the afternoon, we should be happy to take you there. The pony-carriage is coming for us.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I answered; ‘but I ought to go immediately after breakfast. You won’t mention about the roof, will you? I oughtn’t to get Clara into trouble.’
‘She is a wild girl,’ said Mrs Osborne; ‘but I think you are quite right.’
‘How lucky it was I knew the library!’ said Mary, who had become quite friendly, from under her mother’s wing.
‘That it was! But I dare say you know all about the place,’ I answered.
‘No, indeed!’ she returned. ‘I know nothing about it. As we went to our room, mamma opened the door and showed me the library, else I shouldn’t have been able to help you at all.’
‘Then you haven’t been here often?’
‘No; and I never shall be again.—I’m going away to school,’ she added; and her voice trembled.
‘So am I,’ I said. ‘I’m going to Switzerland in a month or two. But then I haven’t a mamma to leave behind me.’ She broke down at that, and hid her head on her mother’s bosom. I had unawares added to her grief, for her brother Charley was going to Switzerland too.
I found afterwards that Mr Elder, having been consulted by Mr Osborne, had arranged with my uncle that Charley Osborne and I should go together.
Mary Osborne—I never called her Polly as Clara did—continued so overcome by her grief, that her mother turned to me and said,
‘I think you had better go, Master Cumbermede.’
I bade her good morning, and made my way to Mrs Wilson’s apartment. I found she had been to my room, and was expecting me with some anxiety, fearing I had set off without my breakfast. Alas! she knew nothing about the sword, looked annoyed, and, I thought, rather mysterious; said she would have a search, make inquiries, do what she could, and such like, but begged I would say nothing about it in the house. I left her with a suspicion that she believed the ghost had carried it away, and that it was of no use to go searching for it.
Two days after, a parcel arrived for me. I concluded it was my sword; but, to my grievous disappointment, found it was only a large hamper of apples and cakes, very acceptable in themselves, but too plainly indicating Mrs Wilson’s desire to console me for what could not be helped. Mr Elder never missed the sword. I rose high in the estimation of my schoolfellows because of the adventure, especially in that of Moberly, who did not believe in the ghost, but ineffectually tasked his poor brains to account for the disappearance of the weapon. The best light was thrown upon it by a merry boy of the name of Fisher, who declared his conviction that the steward had carried it off to add to his collection.
Will not linger longer over this part of my history—already, I fear, much too extended for the patience of my readers. My excuse is that, in looking back, the events I have recorded appear large and prominent, and that certainly they have a close relation with my after-history.
The time arrived when I had to leave England for Switzerland. I will say nothing of my leave-taking. It was not a bitter one. Hope was strong, and rooted in present pleasure. I was capable of much happiness—keenly responsive to the smallest agreeable impulse from without or from within. I had good health, and life was happiness in itself. The blowing of the wind, the shining of the sun, or the glitter of water, was sufficient to make me glad; and I had self-consciousness enough to increase the delight by the knowledge that I was glad.
The fact is I was coming in for my share in the spiritual influences of Nature, so largely poured on the heart and mind of my generation. The prophets of the new blessing, Wordsworth and Coleridge, I knew nothing of. Keats was only beginning to write. I had read a little of Cowper, but did not care for him. Yet I was under the same spell as they all. Nature was a power upon me. I was filled with the vague recognition of a present soul in Nature—with a sense of the humanity everywhere diffused through her and operating upon ours. I was but fourteen, and had only feelings, but something lay at the heart of the feelings, which would one day blossom into thoughts.
At the coach-office in the county-town, I first met my future companion, with his father, who was to see us to our destination. My uncle accompanied me no further, and I soon found myself on the top of a coach, with only one thing to do—make the acquaintance of Charles Osborne. His father was on the box-seat, and we two sat behind; but we were both shy, and for some time neither spoke. Charles was about my own age, rather like his sister, only that his eyes were blue, and his hair a lightish brown. A tremulousness about the mouth betrayed a nervous temperament. His skin was very fair and thin, showing the blue veins. As he did not speak, I sat for a little while watching him, without, however, the least speculation concerning him, or any effort to discover his character. I had not even yet reached the point of trying to find people out. I take what time and acquaintance disclose, but never attempt to forestall, which may come partly from trust, partly from want of curiosity, partly from a disinclination to unnecessary mental effort. But as I watched his face, half-unconsciously, I could not help observing that now and then it would light up suddenly and darken again almost instantly. At last his father turned round, and with some severity, said:
‘You do not seem to be making any approaches to mutual acquaintance. Charles, why don’t you address your companion?’
The words were uttered in the slow tone of one used to matters too serious for common speech. The boy cast a hurried glance at me, smiled uncertainly, and moved uneasily on his seat. His father turned away and made a remark to the coachman.
Mr Osborne was a very tall, thin, yet square-shouldered man, with a pale face, and large features of delicate form. He looked severe, pure, and irritable. The tone of his voice, although the words were measured and rather stilted, led me to this last conclusion quite as much as the expression of his face; for it was thin and a little acrid. I soon observed that Charley started slightly, as often as his father addressed him; but this might be because his father always did so with more or less of abruptness. At times there was great kindness in his manner, seeming, however, less the outcome of natural tenderness than a sense of duty. His being was evidently a weight upon his son’s, and kept down the natural movements of his spirit. A number of small circumstances only led me to these conclusions; for nothing remarkable occurred to set in any strong light their mutual relation. For his side Charles was always attentive and ready, although with a promptitude that had more in it of the mechanical impulse of habit than of pleased obedience. Mr Osborne spoke kindly to me—I think the more kindly that I was not his son, and he was therefore not so responsible for me. But he looked as if the care of the whole world lay on his shoulders; as if an awful destruction were the most likely thing to happen to every one, and to him were committed the toilsome chance of saving some. Doubtless he would not have trusted his boy so far from home, but that the clergyman to whom he was about to hand him over was an old friend, of the same religious opinions as himself.
I could well, but must not, linger over the details of our journey, full to me of most varied pleasure. The constant change, not so rapid as to prevent the mind from reposing a little upon the scenes which presented themselves; the passing vision of countries and peoples, manners and modes of life, so different from our own, did much to arouse and develop my nature. Those flashes of pleasure came upon Charles’s pale face more and more frequently; and ere the close of the first day we had begun to talk with some degree of friendliness. But it became clear to me that with his father ever blocking up our horizon, whether he sat with his broad back in front of us on the coach-box, or paced the deck of a vessel, or perched with us under the hood on the top of a diligence, we should never arrive at any freedom of speech. I sometimes wondered, long after, whether Mr Osborne had begun to discover that he was overlaying and smothering the young life of his boy, and had therefore adopted the plan, so little to have been expected from him, of sending his son to foreign parts to continue his education.
I have no distinct recollection of dates, or even of the exact season of the year. I believe it was the early Summer, but in my memory the whole journey is now a mass of confused loveliness and pleasure. Not that we had the best of weather all the way. I well recollect pouring rains, and from the fact that I distinctly remember my first view of an Alpine height, I am certain we must have had days of mist and rain immediately before. That sight, however, to me more like an individual revelation or vision than the impact of an object upon the brain, stands in my mind altogether isolated from preceding and following impressions—alone, a thing to praise God for, if there be a God to praise. If there be not, then was the whole thing a grand and lovely illusion, worthy, for grandeur and loveliness, of a world with a God at the heart of it. But the grandeur and the loveliness spring from the operation of natural laws; the laws themselves are real and true—how could the false result from them? I hope yet, and will hope, that I am not a bubble filled with the mocking breath of a Mephistopheles, but a child whom his infinite Father will not hardly judge because he could not believe in him so much as he would. I will tell how the vision came.
Although comparatively few people visited Switzerland in those days, Mr Osborne had been there before, and for some reason or other had determined on going round by Interlachen. At Thun we found a sail-boat, which we hired to take us and our luggage. At starting, an incident happened which would not be worth mentioning, but for the impression it made upon me. A French lady accompanied by a young girl approached Mr Osborne—doubtless perceiving he was a clergyman, for, being anEvangelicalof the most pure, honest, and narrow type, he was in every point and line of his countenance marked a priest and apart from his fellow-men—and asked him to allow her and her daughter to go in the boat with us to Interlachen. A glow of pleasure awoke in me at sight of his courtly behaviour, with lifted hat and bowed head; for I had never been in the company of such a gentleman before. But the wish instantly followed that his son might have shared in his courtesy. We partook freely of his justice and benevolence, but he showed us no such grace as he showed the lady. I have since observed that sons are endlessly grateful for courtesy from their fathers.
The lady and her daughter sat down in the stern of the boat; and therefore Charley and I, not certainly to our discomfiture, had to go before the mast. The men rowed out into the lake, and then hoisted the sail. Away we went careering before a pleasant breeze. As yet it blew fog and mist, but the hope was that it would soon blow it away.
An unspoken friendship by this time bound Charley and me together, silent in its beginnings and slow in its growth—not the worst pledges of endurance. And now for the first time in our journey, Charley was hidden from his father: the sail came between them. He glanced at me with a slight sigh, which even then I took for an involuntary sigh of relief. We lay leaning over the bows, now looking up at the mist blown in never-ending volumed sheets, now at the sail swelling in the wind before which it fled, and again down at the water through which our boat was ploughing its evanescent furrow. We could see very little. Portions of the shore would now and then appear, dim like reflections from a tarnished mirror, and then fade back into the depths of cloudy dissolution. Still it was growing lighter, and the man who was on the outlook became less anxious in his forward gaze, and less frequent in his calls to the helmsman. I was lying half over the gunwale, looking into the strange-coloured water, blue dimmed with undissolved white, when a cry from Charles made me start and look up. It was indeed a God-like vision. The mist yet rolled thick below, but away up, far away and far up, yet as if close at hand, the clouds were broken into a mighty window, through which looked in upon us a huge mountain peak swathed in snow. One great level band of darker cloud crossed its breast, above which rose the peak, triumphant in calmness, and stood unutterably solemn and grand, in clouds as white as its own whiteness. It had been there all the time! I sunk on my knees in the boat and gazed up. With a sudden sweep the clouds curtained the mighty window, and the Jungfrau withdrew into its Holy of Holies. I am painfully conscious of the helplessness of my speech. The vision vanishes from the words as it vanished from the bewildered eyes. But from the mind it glorified it has never vanished. I havebeenmore ever since that sight. To have beheld a truth is an apotheosis. What the truth was I could not tell; but I had seen something which raised me above my former self and made me long to rise higher yet. It awoke worship, and a belief in the incomprehensible divine; but admitted of being analysed no more than, in that transient vision, my intellect could—ere dawning it vanished—analyse it into the deserts of rock, the gulfs of green ice and flowing water, the savage solitudes of snow, the mysterious miles of draperied mist, that went to make up the vision, each and all essential thereto.
I had been too much given to the attempted production in myself of effects to justify the vague theories towards which my inborn prepossessions carried me. I had felt enough to believe there was more to be felt; and such stray scraps of verse of the new order as, floating about, had reached me, had set me questioning and testing my own life and perceptions and sympathies by what these awoke in me at second-hand. I had often doubted, oppressed by the power of these, whether I could myself see, or whether my sympathy with Nature was not merely inspired by the vision of others. Ever after this, if such a doubt returned, with it arose the Jungfrau, looking into my very soul.
‘Oh Charley!’ was all I could say. Our hands met blindly, and clasped each other. I burst into silent tears.
When I looked up, Charley was staring into the mist again. His eyes, too, were full of tears, but some troubling contradiction prevented their flowing: I saw it by the expression of that mobile but now firmly-closed mouth.
Often ere we left Switzerland I saw similar glories: this vision remains alone, for it was the first.
I will not linger over the tempting delight of the village near which we landed, its houses covered with quaintly-notched wooden scales like those of a fish, and its river full to the brim of white-blue water, rushing from the far-off bosom of the glaciers. I had never had such a sense of exuberance and plenty as this river gave me—especially where it filled the planks and piles of wood that hemmed it in like a trough. I might agonize in words for a day and I should not express the delight. And, lest my readers should apprehend a diary of a tour, I shall say nothing more of our journey, remarking only that if Switzerland were to become as common to the mere tourist mind as Cheapside is to a Londoner, the meanest of its glories would be no whit impaired thereby. Sometimes, I confess, in these days of overcrowded cities, when, in periodical floods, the lonely places of the earth are from them inundated, I do look up to the heavens and say to myself that there at least, between the stars, even in thickest of nebulous constellations, there is yet plenty of pure, unadulterated room—not even a vapour to hang a colour upon; but presently I return to my better mind and say that any man who loves his fellow will yet find he has room enough and to spare.
During our journey, Mr Osborne had seldom talked to us, and far more seldom in speech sympathetic. If by chance I came out with anything I thought or felt, even if he did not disapprove altogether, he would yet first lay hold of something to which he could object, coming round only by degrees, and with differences, to express consent. Evidently with him objection was the first step in instruction. It was better in his eyes to say you were wrong than to say you were right, even if you should be much more right than wrong. He had not the smallest idea of siding with the truth in you, of digging about it and watering it until it grew a great tree in which all your thought-birds might nestle and sing their songs; but he must be ever against the error—forgetting that the only antagonist of the false is the true. ‘What,’ I used to think in after-years, ‘is the use of battering the walls to get at the error, when the kindly truth is holding the postern open for you to enter, and pitch it out of window.’
The evening before we parted, he gave us a solemn admonishment on the danger of being led astray by what men called the beauties of Nature—for the heart was so desperately wicked that, even of the things God had madeto show his power, it would make snares for our destruction. I will not go on with his homily, out of respect for the man; for there was much earnestness in him, and it would utterly shame me if I were supposed to hold that up to the contempt which the forms it took must bring upon it. Besides, he made such a free use of the most sacred of names, that I shrink from representing his utterance. A good man I do not doubt he was; but he did the hard parts of his duty to the neglect of the genial parts, and therefore was not a man to help others to be good. His own son revived the moment he took his leave of us—began to open up as the little red flower called the Shepherd’s Hour-Glass opens when the cloud withdraws. It is a terrible thing when the father is the cloud, and not the sun, of his child’s life. If Charley had been like the greater number of boys I have known, all this would only have hardened his mental and moral skin by the natural process of accommodation. But his skin would not harden, and the evil wrought the deeper. From his father he had inherited a conscience of abnormal sensibility; but he could not inherit the religious dogmas by means of which his father had partly deadened, partly distorted his; and constant pressure and irritation had already generated a great soreness of surface.
When he began to open up, it was after a sad fashion at first. To resume my simile of the pimpernel—it was to disclose a heart in which the glowing purple was blanched to a sickly violet. What happiness he had, came in fits and bursts, and passed as quickly, leaving him depressed and miserable. He was always either wishing to be happy, or trying to be sure of the grounds of the brief happiness he had. He allowed the natural blessedness of his years hardly a chance: the moment its lobes appeared above ground, he was handling them, examining them, and trying to pull them open. No wonder they crept underground again! It may seem hardly credible that such should be the case with a boy of fifteen, but I am not mistaken in my diagnosis. I will go a little further. Gifted with the keenest perceptions, and a nature unusually responsive to the feelings of others, he was born to be an artist. But he was content neither with his own suggestions, nor with understanding those of another; he must, by the force of his own will, generate his friend’s feeling in himself, not perceiving the thing impossible. This was one point at which we touched, and which went far to enable me to understand him. The original in him was thus constantly repressed, and he suffered from the natural consequences of repression. He suffered also on the physical side from a tendency to disease of the lungs inherited from his mother.
Mr Forest’s house stood high on the Grindelwald side of the Wengern Alp, under a bare grassy height full of pasture both Summer and Winter. In front was a great space, half meadow, half common, rather poorly covered with hill-grasses. The rock was near the surface, and in places came through, when the grass was changed for lichens and mosses. Through this rocky meadow now roamed, now rushed, now tumbled one of those Alpine streams the very thought of whose ice-born plenitude makes me happy yet. Its banks were not abrupt, but rounded gently in, and grassy down to the water’s brink. The larger torrents of Winter wore the channel wide, and the sinking of the water in Summer let the grass grow within it. But peaceful as the place was, and merry with the constant rush of this busy stream, it had, even in the hottest Summer day, a memory of the Winter about it, a look of suppressed desolation; for the only trees upon it were a score of straggling pines—all dead, as if blasted by lightning, or smothered by snow. Perhaps they were the last of the forest in that part, and their roots had reached a stratum where they could not live. All I know is that there they stood, blasted and dead every one of them.
Charley could never bear them, and even disliked the place because of them. His father was one whom a mote in his brother’s eye repelled. The son suffered for this in twenty ways—one of which was that a single spot in the landscape was to him enough to destroy the loveliness of exquisite surroundings.
A good way below lay the valley of the Grindelwald. The Eiger and the Matterhorn were both within sight. If a man has any sense of the infinite, he cannot fail to be rendered capable of higher things by such embodiments of the high. Otherwise, they are heaps of dirt, to be scrambled up and conquered, for scrambling and conquering’s sake. They are but warts, Pelion and Ossa and all of them. They seemed to oppress Charley at first.
‘Oh, Willie,’ he said to me one day, ‘if I could but believe in those mountains, how happy I should be! But I doubt, I doubt they are but rocks and snow.’
I only half understood him. I am afraid I never did understand him more than half. Later I came to the conclusion that this was not the fit place for him, and that if his father had understood him, he would never have sent him there.
It was some time before Mr Forest would take us any mountain ramble. He said we must first get accustomed to the air of the place, else the precipices would turn our brains. He allowed us, however, to range within certain bounds.
One day soon after our arrival, we accompanied one of our schoolfellows down to the valley of the Grindelwald, specially to see the head of the snake-glacier, which having crept thither can creep no further. Somebody had even then hollowed out a cave in it. We crossed a little brook which issued from it constantly, and entered. Charley uttered a cry of dismay, but I was too much delighted at the moment to heed him. For the whole of the white cavern was filled with blue air, so blue that I saw the air which filled it. Perfectly transparent, it had no substance, only blueness, which deepened and deepened as I went further in. All down the smooth white walls evermore was stealing a thin veil of dissolution; while here and there little runnels of the purest water were tumbling in tiny cataracts from top to bottom. It was one of the thousand birthplaces of streams, ever creeping into the day of vision from the unlike and the unknown, unrolling themselves like the fronds of a fern out of the infinite of God. Ice was all around, hard and cold and dead and white; but out of it and away went the water babbling and singing in the sunlight.
‘Oh, Charley!’ I exclaimed, looking round in my transport for sympathy. It was now my turn to cry out, for Charley’s face was that of a corpse. The brilliant blue of the cave made us look to each other most ghastly and fearful.
‘Do come out, Wilfrid,’ he said; ‘I cannot bear it.’
I put my arm in his, and we walked into the sunlight. He drew a deep breath of relief, and turned to me with an attempt at a smile, but his lip quivered.
‘It’s an awful place, Wilfrid. I don’t like it. Don’t go in again. I should stand waiting to see you come out in a winding-sheet. I think there’s something wrong with my brain. That blue seems to have got into it. I see everything horribly dead.’
On the way back he started several times, and looked, round as if with involuntary apprehension, but mastered himself with an effort, and joined again in the conversation. Before we reached home he was much fatigued, and complaining of head-ache, went to bed immediately on our arrival.
We slept in the same room. When I went up at the usual hour, he was awake.
‘Can’t you sleep, Charley?’ I said.
‘I’ve been asleep several times,’ he answered, ‘but I’ve had such a horrible dream every time! We were all corpses that couldn’t get to sleep, and went about pawing the slimy walls of our marble sepulchre—so cold and wet! It was that horrible ice-cave, I suppose. But then you know that’s just what it is, Wilfrid.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, instinctively turning from the subject, for the glitter of his blue eyes looked bodeful. I did not know then how like he and I were, or how like my fate might have been to his, if, instead of finding at once a fit food for my fancy, and a safety-valve for its excess, in those old romances, I had had my regards turned inwards upon myself, before I could understand the phenomena there exhibited. Certainly I too should have been thus rendered miserable, and body and soul would have mutually preyed on each other.
I sought to change the subject. I could never talk to him about his father, but he had always been ready to speak of his mother and his sister. Now, however, I could not rouse him. ‘Poor mamma!’ was all the response he made to some admiring remark; and when I mentioned his sister Mary, he only said, ‘She’s a good girl, our Mary,’ and turned uneasily towards the wall. I went to bed. He lay quiet, and I fell asleep.
When I woke in the morning, I found him very unwell. I suppose the illness had been coming on for some time. He was in a low fever. As the doctor declared it not infectious, I was allowed to nurse him. He was often delirious, and spoke the wildest things. Especially, he would converse with the Saviour after the strangest fashion.
He lay ill for some weeks. Mr Forest would not allow me to sit up with him at night, but I was always by his bedside early in the morning, and did what I could to amuse and comfort him through the day. When at length he began to grow better, he was more cheerful than I had known him hitherto; but he remained very weak for some time. He had grown a good deal during his illness, and indeed never looked a boy again.
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 triumphant; 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 and again I obeyed, but without any perception of the peril.
The intention was to cross the hills into the valley of the Lauterbrunnen, not, however, by the path now so well known, but by another way, hardly a path, with which the master and some of the boys were familiar enough. It was my first experience of anything like real climbing. As we passed rapidly over a moorland space, broken with huge knolls and solitary rocks, something hurt my foot, and taking off my shoe, I found that a small chiropodical operation was necessary, which involved 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 that, instead of following them, I began at once to increase the distance between us. At all events, I had not got far before a pang of fear shot through me—the first awaking doubt. I called—louder—and louder yet; but there was no response, and I knew I was alone.
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 to an unseen height, and before me it 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 first sense of absolute loneliness is awful. Independent as a man may fancy himself in the heart of a world of men, he is only to be convinced that there is neither voice nor hearing, to know that the face from which he most recoils is of a kind essential to his very soul. Space is not room; and when we complain of the over-crowding of our fellows, we are thankless for that which comforts us the most, and desire its absence in ignorance of our deepest nature.
Not even a bird broke the silence. It 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, with no ear to hear and no voice to answer me—a torture to which the soul is liable in virtue of the fact that it was not made to be alone, yea, I think, I hope, nevercanbe alone; for that which could be fact could not be such horror. Essential horror springs from an idea repugnant to thenatureof 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 certainexperience, 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, unless 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 silence—no 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.
I had not gone far before I saw in front of me, on the other side of a little hillock, something like the pale blue grey fog that broods over a mountain lake. I ascended the hillock, and started back with a cry of dismay: I was on the very verge of an awful gulf. When I think of it, I marvel yet that I did not lose my self-possession altogether. I only turned and strode in the other direction—the faster for the fear. But I dared not run, for I was haunted by precipices. Over every height, every mound, one might be lying—a trap for my destruction. I no longer looked 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.
I had not walked far before the air began to grow dark. I glanced again at the sun. 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,