The Collected Novels. Anna Buchan
You might have fallen out, and I should have been left quite alone in this awful heathen country!"
After that there was no more sleep, and when daylight came filtering through the shutters I slid warily to the floor, and having washed and dressed, sat on my dressing-bag and conversed amiably with the Americans. I found them charming and most entertaining, simple, quiet people; not the shrill-voiced tourist jât at all. They had been travelling, so they told me, with a sort of dreary satisfaction, for two years, and they had still about a year to do. It sounded like hard labour! The poor dears! I can't think why they did it. They would have been so much happier at home in their own little corner of the world. I can picture them attending sewing bees, and other quaint things people do attend in old-fashioned New England storybooks. They had a servant with them whom they addressed as Ali, a bearded rascal who evidently cheated them at every turn, and who actually came into their presence with his shoes on!
I didn't know till I met these Americans that I was such a wit—or perhaps wag is a better word. I didn't try to be funny, I didn't even know I was being funny, but every word I said convulsed them.
The "Mommer" said to me:
"Child, are you married?"
"No," I said, surprised. "Why?"
"I was just thinking what a good time your husband must have!"
When we reached Siliguri I was surprised to find everything glistening with frost, and the few natives who were about had their heads wrapped up in shawls as if they were suffering from toothache. We got some breakfast in the waiting-room, and then took our places in the funniest little toy train. This is the Darjeeling-Himalaya Railway. It was all very primitive. A man banged with a stick on a piece of metal by way of a starting-bell, and we set off on our journey to cloudland.
Eagerly looked for, Darjeeling came at last, but alack! no mountains, only piled-up banks of white clouds. It was bitterly cold, and we were glad to get out and stamp up to the hotel, where we found great fires burning in our rooms.
There wasn't much to do in the hotel beyond reading back numbers of The Lady's Pictorial, and I went to bed on Saturday night rather low in my mind, fearing, after all, I was not to be accounted worthy to behold the mountains.
Some of the people in the hotel were getting up at 3.30 to go to Tiger Hill to see the sun rise on Everest. Boggley, the lazy one, wouldn't hear of going, and when I awoke in the grey dawning stiff with cold, in spite of a fire and heaps of blankets and rugs, I felt thankful that I hadn't a strenuous brother. If it had been John, I dare not think where he would have made me accompany him to in his efforts to get as near as possible to his beloved mountains. Never shall I forget the first time he took me to Switzerland to climb. I had never climbed before—unless you call scrambling on the hills at home climbing—and I was all eagerness to try till John gave me Whymper's book on Zermatt to amuse me in the train, and I read of the first ascent of the Matterhorn and its tragic sequel. It had the effect of reducing me to a state of abject terror. All through that journey, from Paris to Lausanne, from Lausanne to Visp, from Visp to Zermatt, horror of the Matterhorn hung over me like a pall. I even found something sinister in little Zermatt when we got there—Zermatt that now I love so, with the rushing, icy river, the cheerful smell of wood smoke, the goats that in the early morning wake one with the tinkle-tinkle of the bells through the street, and the quiet-eyed guides that sit on the wall in the twilight and smoke the pipe of peace.
After dinner, that first night, we walked through the village and along the winding path that leads up to the Schwarzsee, and gazed at the mighty peak, so wild, so savage in the pale purple light that follows the sunset glow—gazed at it in silence, John wrapped in adoration, I thinking of the men who had gone up this road to their death.
"Yes," said John, as we turned back, "some very scared men have come down this road."
If he had known what an exceedingly scared girl was at his side he wouldn't, I think, have chosen that moment to turn into the little graveyard that surrounds the village chapel, to look at the graves of the victims—the graves of Croz the guide, of Hudson, and the boy Hadow. The text on one stone caught my eye—"Be ye therefore also ready…" It was too much; I fled back to the hotel, locked the door of my room, shuttered the windows so that I should not see the vestige of a mountain—and wept.
It is odd to think how I hated it all that night, how to myself I maligned all climbers, calling them in my haste foolhardy—senseless—imbecile, when I had only to go up my first easy mountain to become as keen as the worst—or the best.
Sometimes in those mountaineering excursions with John to Zermatt, to Chamonix, to Grindelwald, I have found it in my heart to envy the unaspiring people who spend long days pottering about on level ground. But looking back it isn't the quiet, lazy days one likes to think about. No—rather it is the mornings when one rose at 2 a.m. and, thrusting aching feet into nailed boots, tiptoed noisily into the deserted dining-room to be supplied with coffee and rolls by a pitifully sleepy waiter.
Outside the guides wait, Joseph and Aloys, and away we tramp in single file along the little path that runs through fields full of wild flowers, drenched with dew, into a fairy-tale wood of tall, straight pine-trees. We follow the steady, slow footsteps of Joseph, the chief guide, up the winding path that turns and twists, and turns again, but rises, always rises, until we are clear of the wood, past the rough, stony ground, and on to the snow, firm and hard to the feet before the sun has melted the night's frost. When we reach the rocks, and before we rope, Aloys removes his rücksack and proceeds to lay out our luncheon; for if one breakfasts at two one is ready for the next meal at nine. Crouched in strange attitudes, we munch cold chicken, rolls and hard-boiled eggs, sweet biscuits and apples, with great content. Joseph has buried a bottle of white wine in the snow, and now pours some into a horn tumbler, which he hands to Mademoiselle with an air—a draught of nectar. It is John's turn for the tumbler next, and as he emerges from the long, ice-cold, satisfying drink he declares his firm intention, his unalterable resolve, never to drink anything but white wine again in this world. But doubtless as you know, the white wine of the Lowlands is not the white wine of the mountains. It needs to be buried in the snow by Joseph, and drunk out of a horn tumbler, at the foot of an aiguille, after a six hours' climb, to be at its best. After refreshment comes the hard work. To look at the face of the rock up which Joseph has swarmed; to say hopelessly, "I can't do it, I can't," and then gradually to find here a niche for one hand, here a foothold; to learn to cling to the rock, to use every bit of oneself, to work one's way up delicately as a cat so as not to send loose stones down on the climber below, until, panting, one lands on the ledge appointed by Joseph, there to rest while the next man climbs, it is the best of sports. And at the top to stand in the "stainless eminence of air," to look down eight—ten—a thousand feet to the toy village at the foot while John names all the other angel peaks that soar round us, tell me, you who are also a climber, is it not very good?
But the coming down! Stumbling wearily down the steep paths of the pine-woods with the skin rubbed off one's toes, and giving at the knees like an old and feeble horse, that is not so good. And yet—I don't know. For as we near the valley, puffs of hot, scented air come up to meet us, the tinkle of the cow-bell greets our ears, and we realize that it is only given to those who have braved the perils, who have searched for the deep things of the ancient mountains and found out the precious things of the lasting hills, to thoroughly appreciate the pleasant, homely quietness of the meadow-lands.
But I have wandered miles away from Sunday morning in Darjeeling.
It was still misty when we went out after breakfast, but not so solidly misty, so Boggley held out hopes it would clear.
Darjeeling is a pretty place tucked into the mountain-side. In the middle is the bazaar, and it happened to be market day, which made it more interesting. The village street was lined on both sides with open booths, some piled with fruit and vegetables, others, oddly enough, with lamps and mirrors and other cheap rubbish which bore the legend "Made in Germany," others with all sorts of curios. The place was thronged with people. A few plainsmen and Tibetans Boggley pointed out, but most of the crowd were hill-people, jolly little squat men and women hung with silver chains and heavy ear-rings set with turquoises. Their eyes are very black and all puckered