The Captain's Dol

great boots: their little grey jackets faced with green, and their

  green hats with the proud chamois-brush behind. They seemed to

  stray about like lost souls, and the proud chamois-brush behind

  their hats, this proud, cocky, perking-up tail, like a mountain-

  buck with his tail up, was belied by the lost-soul look of the men,

  as they loitered about with their hands shoved in the front pockets

  of their trousers. Some women also were creeping about: peasant

  women, in the funny little black hats that had thick gold under the

  brim and long black streamers of ribbon, broad, black, water-wave

  ribbon starting from a bow under the brim behind and streaming

  right to the bottom of the skirt. These women, in their thick,

  dark dresses with tight bodices and massive, heavy, full skirts,

  and bright or dark aprons, strode about with the heavy stride of

  the mountain women, the heavy, quick, forward-leaning motion. They

  were waiting for the town-day to begin.

  Hepburn had a knapsack on his back, with food for the day. But

  bread was wanting. They found the door of the bakery open, and got

  a loaf: a long, hot loaf of pure white bread, beautifully sweet

  bread. It cost seventy kronen. To Hepburn it was always a mystery

  where this exquisite bread came from, in a lost land.

  In the little square where the clock stood were bunches of people,

  and a big motor-omnibus, and a motor-car that would hold about

  eight people. Hepburn had paid his seven hundred kronen for the

  two tickets. Hannele tied up her head in a thin scarf and put on

  her thick coat. She and Hepburn sat in front by the peaked driver.

  And at seven o'clock away went the car, swooping out of the town,

  past the handsome old Tyrolese Schloss, or manor, black-and-white,

  with its little black spires pricking up, past the station, and

  under the trees by the lakeside. The road was not good, but they

  ran at a great speed, out past the end of the lake, where the reeds

  grew, out into the open valley mouth, where the mountains opened in

  two clefts. It was cold in the car. Hepburn buttoned himself up

  to the throat and pulled his hat down on his ears. Hannele's scarf

  fluttered. She sat without saying anything, erect, her face fine

  and keen, watching ahead. From the deep Pinzgau Valley came the

  river roaring and raging, a glacier river of pale, seething ice-

  water. Over went the car, over the log bridge, darting towards the

  great slopes opposite. And then a sudden immense turn, a swerve

  under the height of the mountain-side, and again a darting lurch

  forward, under the pear trees of the high-road, past the big old

  ruined castle that so magnificently watched the valley mouth, and

  the foaming river; on, rushing under the huge roofs of the

  balconied peasant houses of a village, then swinging again to take

  another valley mouth, there where a little village clustered all

  black and white on a knoll, with a white church that had a black

  steeple, and a white castle with black spires, and clustering,

  ample black-and-white houses of the Tyrol. There is a grandeur

  even in the peasant houses, with their great wide passage halls

  where the swallows build, and where one could build a whole English

  cottage.

  So the motor-car darted up this new, narrow, wilder, more sinister

  valley. A herd of almost wild young horses, handsome reddish

  things, burst around the car, and one great mare with full flanks

  went crashing up the road ahead, her heels flashing to the car,

  while her foal whinneyed and screamed from behind. But no, she

  could not turn from the road. On and on she crashed, forging

  ahead, the car behind her. And then at last she did swerve aside,

  among the thin alder trees by the wild riverbed.

  'If it isn't a cow, it's a horse,' said the driver, who was thin

  and weaselish and silent, with his ear-flaps over his ears.

  But the great mare had shaken herself in a wild swerve, and

  screaming and whinneying was plunging back to her foal. Hannele

  had been frightened.

  The car rushed on, through water-meadows, along a naked, white bit

  of mountain road. Ahead was a darkness of mountain front and pine

  trees. To the right was the stony, furious, lion-like river,

  tawny-coloured here, and the slope up beyond. But the road for the

  moment was swinging fairly level through the stunned water-meadows

  of the savage valley. There were gates to open, and Hepburn jumped

  down to open them, as if he were the footboy. The heavy Jews of

  the wrong sort, seated behind, of course did not stir.

  At a house on a knoll the driver sounded his horn, and out rushed

  children crying Papa! Papa!--then a woman with a basket. A few

  brief words from the weaselish man, who smiled with warm, manly

  blue eyes at his children, then the car leaped forward. The whole

  bearing of the man was so different when he was looking at his own

  family. He could not even say thank you when Hepburn opened the

  gates. He hated and even despised his human cargo of middle-class

  people. Deep, deep is class hatred, and it begins to swallow all

  human feeling in its abyss. So, stiff, silent, thin, capable, and

  neuter towards his fares, sat the little driver with the flaps over

  his ears, and his thin nose cold.

  The car swept round, suddenly, into the trees: and into the ravine.

  The river shouted at the bottom of a gulf. Bristling pine trees

  stood around. The air was black and cold and forever sunless. The

  motor-car rushed on, in this blackness under the rock-walls and the

  fir trees.

  Then it suddenly stopped. There was a huge motor-omnibus ahead,

  drab and enormous-looking. Tourists and trippers of last night

  coming back from the glacier. It stood like a great rock. And the

  smaller motor-car edged past, tilting into the rock gutter under

  the face of stone.

  So, after a while of this valley of the shadow of death, lurching

  in steep loops upwards, the motor-car scrambling wonderfully,

  struggling past trees and rock upwards, at last they came to the

  end. It was a huge inn or tourist hotel of brown wood: and here

  the road ended in a little wide bay surrounded and overhung by

  trees. Beyond was a garage and a bridge over a roaring river: and

  always the overhung darkness of trees and the intolerable steep

  slopes immediately above.

  Hannele left her big coat. The sky looked blue above the gloom.

  They set out across the hollow-sounding bridge, over the

  everlasting mad rush of ice-water, to the immediate upslope of the

  path, under dark trees. But a little old man in a sort of sentry-

  box wanted fifty or sixty kronen: apparently for the upkeep of the

  road, a sort of toll.

  The other tourists were coming--some stopping to have a drink

  first. The second omnibus had not yet arrived. Hannele and

  Hepburn were the first two, treading slowly up that dark path,

  under the trees. The grasses hanging on the rock face were still

  dewy. There were a few wild raspberries, and a tiny tuft of

  bilberries with bla
ck berries here and there, and a few tufts of

  unripe cranberries. The many hundreds of tourists who passed up

  and down did not leave much to pick. Some mountain harebells, like

  bells of blue water, hung coldly glistening in their darkness.

  Sometimes the hairy mountain-bell, pale-blue and bristling, stood

  alone, curving his head right down, stiff and taut. There was an

  occasional big, moist, lolling daisy.

  So the two climbed slowly up the steep ledge of a road. This

  valley was just a mountain cleft, cleft sheer in the hard, living

  rock, with black trees like hair flourishing in this secret, naked

  place of the earth. At the bottom of the open wedge for ever

  roared the rampant, insatiable water. The sky from above was like

  a sharp wedge forcing its way into the earth's cleavage, and that

  eternal ferocious water was like the steel edge of the wedge, the

  terrible tip biting in into the rocks' intensity. Who could have

  thought that the soft sky of light, and the soft foam of water

  could thrust and penetrate into the dark, strong earth? But so it

  was. Hannele and Hepburn, toiling up the steep little ledge of a

  road that hung half-way down the gulf, looked back, time after

  time, back down upon the brown timbers and shingle roofs of the

  hotel, that now, away below, looked damp and wedged in like

  boulders. Then back at the next tourists struggling up. Then down

  at the water, that rushed like a beast of prey. And then, as they

  rose higher, they looked up also at the livid great sides of rock,

  livid, bare rock that sloped from the sky-ridge in a hideous sheer

  swerve downwards.

  In his heart of hearts Hepburn hated it. He hated it, he loathed

  it, it seemed almost obscene, this livid, naked slide of rock,

  unthinkably huge and massive, sliding down to this gulf where

  bushes grew like hair in the darkness and water roared. Above,

  there were thin slashes of snow.

  So the two climbed slowly on, up the eternal side of that valley,

  sweating with the exertion. Sometimes the sun, now risen high,

  shone full on their side of the gulley. Tourists were trickling

  downhill too: two maidens with bare arms and bare heads and huge

  boots: men tourists with great knapsacks and edelweiss in their

  hats: giving Bergheil for a greeting. But the captain said Good-

  day. He refused this Bergheil business. People swarming touristy

  on these horrible mountains made him feel almost sick.

  He and Hannele also were not in good company together. There was a

  sort of silent hostility between them. She hated the effort of

  climbing; but the high air, the cold in the air, the savage cat-

  howling sound of the water, those awful flanks of livid rock, all

  this thrilled and excited her to another sort of savageness. And

  he, dark, rather slender and feline, with something of the physical

  suavity of a delicate-footed race, he hated beating his way up the

  rock, he hated the sound of the water, it frightened him, and the

  high air hit him in the chest, like a viper.

  'Wonderful! Wonderful!' she cried, taking great breaths in her

  splendid chest.

  'Yes. And horrible. Detestable,' he said.

  She turned with a flash, and the high strident sound of the

  mountain in her voice.

  'If you don't like it,' she said, rather jeering, 'why ever did you

  come?'

  'I had to try,' he said.

  'And if you don't like it,' she said, 'why should you try to spoil

  it for me?'

  'I hate it,' he answered.

  They were climbing more into the height, more into the light, into

  the open, in the full sun. The valley cleft was sinking below

  them. Opposite was only the sheer, livid slide of the naked rock,

  tipping from the pure sky. At a certain angle they could see away

  beyond the lake lying far off and small, the wall of those other

  rocks like a curtain of stone, dim and diminished to the horizon.

  And the sky with curdling clouds and blue sunshine intermittent.

  'Wonderful, wonderful, to be high up,' she said, breathing great

  breaths.

  'Yes,' he said. 'It IS wonderful. But very detestable. I want to

  live near the sea-level. I am no mountain-topper.'

  'Evidently not,' she said.

  'Bergheil!' cried a youth with bare arms and bare chest, bare head,

  terrific fanged boots, a knapsack and an alpenstock, and all the

  bronzed wind and sun of the mountain snow in his skin and his

  faintly bleached hair. With his great heavy knapsack, his rumpled

  thick stockings, his ghastly fanged boots, Hepburn found him

  repulsive.

  'Guten Tag' he answered coldly.

  'Gruss Gott,' said Hannele.

  And the young Tannh?user, the young Siegfried, this young Balder

  beautiful strode climbing down the rocks, marching and swinging

  with his alpenstock. And immediately after the youth came a

  maiden, with hair on the wind and her shirt-breast open, striding

  in corduroy breeches, rumpled worsted stockings, thick boots, a

  knapsack and an alpenstock. She passed without greeting. And our

  pair stopped in angry silence and watched her dropping down the

  mountain-side.

  XV

  Ah, well, everything comes to an end, even the longest up-climb.

  So, after much sweat and effort and crossness, Hepburn and Hannele

  emerged on to the rounded bluff where the road wound out of that

  hideous great valley cleft into upper regions. So they emerged

  more on the level, out of the trees as out of something horrible,

  on to a naked, great bank of rock and grass.

  'Thank the Lord!' said Hannele.

  So they trudged on round the bluff, and then in front of them saw

  what is always, always wonderful, one of those shallow, upper

  valleys, naked, where the first waters are rocked. A flat,

  shallow, utterly desolate valley, wide as a wide bowl under the

  sky, with rock slopes and grey stone-slides and precipices all

  round, and the zig-zag of snow-stripes and ice-roots descending,

  and then rivers, streams and rivers rushing from many points

  downwards, down out of the ice-roots and the snow-dagger-points,

  waters rushing in newly-liberated frenzy downwards, down in

  waterfalls and cascades and threads, down into the wide, shallow

  bed of the valley, strewn with rocks and stones innumerable, and

  not a tree, not a visible bush.

  Only, of course, two hotels or restaurant places. But these no

  more than low, sprawling, peasant-looking places lost among the

  stones, with stones on their roofs so that they seemed just a part

  of the valley bed. There was the valley, dotted with rock and

  rolled-down stone, and these two house-places, and woven with

  innumerable new waters, and one hoarse stone-tracked river in the

  desert, and the thin road-track winding along the desolate flat,

  past first one house, then the other, over one stream, then

  another, on to the far rock-face above which the glacier seemed to

  loll like some awful great tongue put out.

  'Ah, it is wonderful!' he said, as if to himself.

  And she looked quick
ly at his face, saw the queer, blank, sphinx-

  look with which he gazed out beyond himself. His eyes were black

  and set, and he seemed so motionless, as if he were eternal facing

  these upper facts.

  She thrilled with triumph. She felt he was overcome.

  'It IS wonderful,' she said.

  'Wonderful. And forever wonderful,' he said.

  'Ah, in WINTER--' she cried.

  His face changed, and he looked at her.

  'In winter you couldn't get up here,' he said.

  They went on. Up the slopes cattle were feeding: came that

  isolated tong-tong-tong of cow-bells, dropping like the slow clink

  of ice on the arrested air. The sound always woke in him a

  primeval, almost hopeless melancholy. Always made him feel navr?.

  He looked round. There was no tree, no bush, only great grey rocks

  and pale boulders scattered in place of trees and bushes. But yes,

  clinging on one side like a dark, close beard were the alpenrose

  shrubs.

  'In May,' he said, 'that side there must be all pink with

  alpenroses.'

  'I MUST come. I MUST come!' she cried.

  There were tourists dotted along the road: and two tiny low carts

  drawn by silky, long-eared mules. These carts went right down to

  meet the motor-cars, and to bring up provisions for the Glacier

  Hotel: for there was still another big hotel ahead. Hepburn was

  happy in that upper valley, that first rocking cradle of early

  water. He liked to see the great fangs and slashes of ice and snow

  thrust down into the rock, as if the ice had bitten into the flesh

  of the earth. And from the fang-tips the hoarse water crying its

  birth-cry, rushing down.

  By the turfy road and under the rocks were many flowers: wonderful

  harebells, big and cold and dark, almost black, and seeming like

  purple-dark ice: then little tufts of tiny pale-blue bells, as if

  some fairy frog had been blowing spume-bubbles out of the ice: then

  the bishops-crosier of the stiff, bigger, hairy mountain-bell: then

  many stars of pale-lavender gentian, touched with earth colour: and

  then monkshood, yellow, primrose yellow monkshood and sudden places

  full of dark monkshood. That dark-blue, black-blue, terrible

  colour of the strange rich monkshood made Hepburn look and look and

  look again. How did the ice come by that lustrous blue-purple

  intense darkness?--and by that royal poison?--that laughing-snake

  gorgeousness of much monkshood.

  XVI

  By one of the loud streams, under a rock in the sun, with scented

  minty or thyme flowers near, they sat down to eat some lunch. It

  was about eleven o'clock. A thin bee went in and out the scented

  flowers and the eyebright. The water poured with all the lust and

  greed of unloosed water over the stones. He took a cupful for

  Hannele, bright and icy, and she mixed it with the red Hungarian

  wine.

  Down the road strayed the tourists like pilgrims, and at the closed

  end of the valley they could be seen, quite tiny, climbing the cut-

  out road that went up like a stairway. Just by their movements you

  perceived them. But on the valley-bed they went like rolling

  stones, little as stones. A very elegant mule came stepping by,

  following a middle-aged woman in tweeds and a tall, high-browed man

  in knickerbockers. The mule was drawing a very amusing little

  cart, a chair, rather like a round office-chair upholstered in red

  velvet, and mounted on two wheels. The red velvet had gone gold

  and orange and like fruit-juice, being old: really a lovely colour.

  And the muleteer, a little shabby creature, waddled beside

  excitedly.

  'Ach' cried Hannele, 'that looks almost like before the war: almost

  as peaceful.'

  'Except that the chair is too shabby, and that they all feel

  exceptional,' he remarked.

  There in that upper valley there was no sense of peace. The rush

  of the waters seemed like weapons, and the tourists all seemed in a