Part 12
Then we went on and on and on. The same thing, with our eyes always upward, but not far ahead. At last Biner clambered on to what was evidently a broad ledge, for he knelt on it and, leaning over, gave me his hand to help me up. It was a long reach, and as I got one knee on the ledge and started wearily to lift the rest of my weight, he gave me a pull and push that rolled me lengthwise over the brink, and to my wonderment I found a resting-place for my whole body.
“This is the summit,” said Biner. I had not known we were within five hundred feet of it.
XXIII
If Biner had known we were nearing the top, he kept it to himself. To us three it came as an entire surprise—and an unspeakably joyous one. We were still alive. That was the main point. We had surmounted that inconceivable cliff and were still alive!
However, we could not stop long to rejoice. The summit of the pass was barely big enough to stand on. The wind swept across it furiously and the cold was unbearable. Above us on either side rose the rocky, snowy peaks of the Finsteraarhorn, Lauterhorn and Schreckhorn groups, only a few thousand feet higher than we were. Behind us was the precipice we had just climbed. Before us dropped very, very steeply, yet not in a precipice, a much longer slope of snow, at the bottom of which lay a great glacier. The distance, Biner said, was three thousand feet, and we absolutely _must not_ slip, as there would be no stopping-place short of the bottom. He made Frater and Belle Soeur change places, so as to put Frater’s strength at the rear for bracing back should any of us start sliding. However, he impressed it upon us that we _must not_ slide. He told us afterwards that he was much more afraid of this part of the trip than of the climb up the cliff, but it was by no means so fear-inspiring to _us_, nor so physically exhausting.
It was a shame to leave that tremendous, awesome, Walpurgisnacht revel of glacierdom visible from the summit of the pass so soon. But flesh and blood could not endure the freezing gale.
The last night’s fall of snow added much to the danger of the descent, as it made the surface treacherous. Biner cut out each step ahead of him with his ice-axe, taking care to get down to the hard-packed surface beneath. As he put his foot in it, I put mine in the step he had just vacated. Belle Soeur took my last resting-place and Frater hers. It was slow, and we had our minds firmly fixed on not sliding. But it was heaven compared with the cliff climb!
The rest of the afternoon’s trip, between rocks and ice, was strenuous, and we should have considered it highly perilous before our last experience. But now we took everything as a matter of course. We were in the midst of very wild and magnificent scenery, of which the continued cloudiness somewhat impaired our view, while the intense cold and our knowledge of the flight of time kept us from lingering to enjoy what we _could_ see. As it was, we just barely reached the Schwarzegg hut before dark.
To our great relief, we found it empty. The other party had gone on to Grindelwald. Never, I am sure, was a refuge more gratefully and joyously entered. It was not so large as the Dollfus Pavilion, having only one room. But it was Waldorf-Astoria and Paradise all rolled into one to _us_!
We put two francs in the tin box on the wall and took a bundle of wood from the closet (at the Dollfus we had to bring our own fuel with us), and in a few minutes Biner had a fire crackling in the stove. We took off our ice-caked shoes and stood them by the stove whence arose a steaming vapor for hours. Belle Soeur and I stuffed our wooden clubhouse shoes full of straw to keep them on, and getting rid of our skirts, which were frozen stiff as boards almost to the waist, we hung them also to steam near the stove and wrapt ourselves, Indian fashion, in gray blankets. We were enduring acute physical pain as our frozen toes and fingers thawed out, but our minds were so at ease that we did not care.
Soon Biner was handing us great tin cups full of steaming coffee.—Oh, the joy of it!—And as we drank scalding gulps of it between bites of bread and cheese, we were as happy a little party as one would care to see. And then we rolled up in, oh, ever so many blankets, six pairs apiece, I think, and went to sleep in the straw on the shelf.
We did not get a very early start next morning. It was so luxurious to take things easy! The coffee was a second brewing from last night’s grounds, and the bread and cheese a little scanty, but we didn’t mind. We knew we should soon be where we could get more.
The view in the morning was very, very beautiful. At first the whole Grindelwald valley was covered with fleecy white clouds and even the glacier immediately below thrust only an ice crag here and there through the foamy mist. The hut was on a rock ledge over this great ice river, which, sweeping downward, becomes the Lower Grindelwald Glacier. Gradually the air cleared, the upper regions first, the sky above disclosing itself a dazzling and unspotted blue, while the cloud strata below us were still intact.
What a magnificent day it would have been for going over the Strahlegg, had we only waited!
We stood for a long time outside the hut, ready to start, but hating to leave the magnificent spectacle presented as the clouds below us dissolved.
There is a passage in Manfred which describes wonderfully just this scene:
“The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell.”
Our way, it is true, did not lead us out of sight of our magnificent views, but we knew we could only give them a divided attention when we had started climbing.
The Schwarzegg hut being put in excellent order and the last two-francs-for-fuel piece dropped in the box, we bade the place a grateful farewell, adjusted the faithful rope once more and started along the trail—there really _is_ one from here on—which skirts the right bank of the glacier. Wherever there is a bad stretch of rock to be gotten up or down, iron spikes have been driven in, affording foothold and handhold. What luxuries iron spikes would have been the day before in that much more formidable cliff we had to climb!
I wouldn’t recommend the walk between the Bäregg and the Schwarzegg hut to children or invalids, nor should it be undertaken without a guide, but it presents no real difficulties or dangers to vigorous young people with steady heads and a little climbing experience. We were even able to enjoy the scenery.
The mists gradually all rolled away and revealed the green Grindelwald valley and its clustered châlets, not quite so far to the right as the Edelweiss, but still we felt very close to home.
After a couple of hours’ climbing, we were able to dispense with the rope, which we did with decided relief at regaining our individual liberty. We had been roped the day before for ten and a half consecutive hours.
Arriving at the Bäregg inn, we ordered _café complet_ served at the table outside (for the thought of a room suffocated us), removed a few layers of wraps become unnecessary at this lower level, and had a very refreshing repast.
We were objects of intense interest to a party of English tourists of both sexes who had walked up from the valley, whether wholly on account of our late mountaineering hardships and achievements, doubtless communicated from our guide to theirs, or partly because of our undeniably disreputable appearance, I do not know. But we had the prestige of the High Alps about us and did not care for the strange red glaze which the successive action of frost and sun had left on our faces or the bloodshot surface of our eyes. We bore ourselves proudly as befitted our estate, and were conscious all the way home of the interest, sometimes not unmixed with envy, which we excited.
At the turn of the road before reaching the Châlet Edelweiss, we met the Mother watching for us, who had become alarmed at the delay in our arrival. She had decided if we did not appear by two o’clock (it was then about half-past one) that she would call on the curate of the English Chapel, who is also a famous mountain-climber, and ask him to organize a search party.
XXIV
The account of our Swiss summer ought properly to end with our trip over the Strahlegg. It was certainly the climax of our experiences. I do not know that any earthly inducement could persuade us to repeat that trip (I speak with certainty in my own case). But, _having_ done it, and having come through alive, we would not for the world be without the thrilling memory of it.
Biner said that after our late trip under the existing conditions, we would find the ascent of either the Jungfrau or Wetterhorn very easy, and he would like to take us up. But we were willing—oh, quite willing—to take this easiness on faith. We had not forgotten that he had also called the Strahlegg easy in advance. And Providence does not like to be tempted too often.
There was just a week from the day of our return till the day of Frater’s leaving us to catch a steamer in Genoa, and just another week till we should all leave.
The first thing we wanted was rest in wholesale quantities and the doctoring of feet and fingers.
Emerging from this, we chose the second day for the celebrating of my birthday, which it had not been feasible to do on the proper date. I was the recipient of some very delightful gifts, including an elaborate pyramidal bouquet, with an accompanying note of pleasant sentiments from Suzanne and Anna. Belle Soeur made one of her famous cakes and the candles were sprinkled on top with appalling thickness—a perfect forest of them.
The birthday dinner turned itself, quite unexpectedly, into a fancy dress affair. I was making my toilet for it on the usual lines and had reached that point in my coiffure, when my _chevelure_ was disposed in two long ringlets hanging down each side of my face and neck. I had just picked up my comb to run through them, when the Elder Babe, coming into the room on some errand, began to call out frantically, “_Don’t_, don’t touch those curls, Mother! Leave them just as they are! Come to dinner _that_ way! You look just like a little girl!”
I smiled and picked up the comb again, but I had miscalculated the seriousness of my son’s enthusiasm. He rushed to the sitting-room door and called his grandmother, aunt and uncle to his assistance. “Come and look at Mother! Don’t let her comb out those curls! Make her come to dinner that way!” He was prancing around like a little bacchante in the joy of the thought.
The three grown-ups appealed to entered into the spirit of the occasion and backed him up. I yielded the point, gracefully I trust, but stipulated that if I was to have a little girl’s coiffure I would wear a little girl’s dress. Belle Soeur offered me her stock of lingerie to select from, it being more ornamental than mine, and I was soon arrayed in a very dainty lace-trimmed white gown with low neck, short sleeves, and a skirt slightly below the knees. With the addition of silk hose and shoon, a sash, shoulder knots and hair ribbons, all of pink, I really wasn’t such a bad-looking little girl!
We had a very merry, foolish, light-hearted evening, the children being in ecstasies over this new effect in mothers, and the servants almost equally so.
This sportive little festival seems to me now like something that happened in another incarnation. It required the absolutely perfect physical condition we had all reached by then and the effervescence of the mountain air to make it possible. But it was the last exuberance.
The season was nearly over. We were soon going back to the world of commonplace. With what reluctant melancholy we clung to those last days, trying to stretch out the hours past their natural limit!
One day Frater and I went to Interlaken for some shopping. He walked both ways, but I went down by train. We were late starting back and wasted a mile or so by attempting a short cut as we left the town. During the summer the long, long twilight had been a noticeable feature. It was still daylight at nine o’clock. But now it got dark by seven or before and the last hour of our walk was in such inky darkness that we could scarcely make out the highroad in front of our feet. We saw the lights of the village glimmering a welcome long before we reached it, and had developed a wonderful appetite for our belated dinner by the time we arrived at the châlet.
Another day we made our long-projected trip to the Lauterbrunnen valley. It was one of those things so perfectly easy to do that all summer long we had not done it. Frater and I walked over the divide by way of the Männlichen, where we ate our lunch and bade an affectionate farewell to that grandest of panoramas, passing down the other side through Byron’s Wengern Alp to the village of Lauterbrunnen, where at tea-time we met the Mother, Belle Soeur and the Elder Babe, who had come by train. The Mother was the only member of the crowd who felt wealthy enough to take the trip to Mürren, a summer resort on a great cliff overlooking the Lauterbrunnen valley on the far side, commanding a fine view of the Jungfrau, with the deep valley well in the foreground. It is reached by a very steep-grade cable and electric railway. The rest of us contented ourselves with walking to the Staubbach Falls.
The waterfalls of the Lauterbrunnen valley have a great reputation, as they drop over a cliff about a thousand feet high and turn to spray long before they reach the bottom. But their volume is so insignificant that they are little more than a silver ribbon, and while interesting, they are certainly not equal to their reputation. The great falls of the Yosemite (to which they are often compared) would dwarf them utterly.
We all walked together down the Interlaken highroad, turning back frequently to watch the sunset lights on the Jungfrau, to the joining of the Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald valleys, where we boarded the train for home.
This was our very last excursion. There were a few things we had meant to do and hadn’t had time for, chief of them the ascent of the Schwarzhorn, a nine-thousand-foot peak behind us, to the east of the Faulhorn. It might at this time have been more appropriately named Weisshorn, for the autumn snows had covered all its black rock ledges. Belle Soeur and I had a notion we might still do it alone during the week after Frater left. But we didn’t. And there had been a great many things that we had intended to do over again, but found no time for.
Before we knew it, it was October 3rd, and we were seeing off Frater at the station.
I must not forget about the conveyance of his baggage thither. He and Antonio had brought no trunks with them, but each had a large telescope bag, which held as much as a small steamer trunk. When Antonio left, he had hired a lad with a hand cart, who lived in a châlet to the rear of us and was one of a large and impecunious family who liked odd jobs and old clothes and the left-overs from our table, to take it to the station for him. The day before Frater’s departure, we told Anna to engage the lad again. What was our surprise, as the time drew near to leave for the station, when there appeared, instead of the boy and his cart, his fourteen-year-old sister with a rack on her back. She explained that her brother and the cart had an all-day’s job, and she had come in his place to take the gentleman’s valise to the station. The poor girl already had her shoulders curved by the carrying of burdens. It seemed brutal to let her do it, yet even more so to deny her the chance of earning a little money. Besides, it was quite too late to get any one else, and Frater admitted that _he_ was unequal to carrying the thing a mile and a half. So off we trudged in a procession, the young portress bringing up the rear, and we told Frater this little service from a member of the “housely herd” furnished the fitting last touch of “local color” to his Swiss summer.
Our last week was given over to packing and paying bills and cleaning house and all sorts of prosaic last things. I do not remember that we went anywhere except to the Upper Glacier and the village. I do remember the snow though. We had said many times during the season that we wished we could see our beloved Grindelwald valley in its winter dress, but we hardly expected our wish to be granted. It was, though, most fully, and with effects unspeakably beautiful. We had a regular roaring blizzard for about three days, during which we kept the cylinder stove in the lower hall burning furiously, and abandoned the second story as uninhabitable. I fancy the owners do the same in the winter. The little hall stove and the kitchen stove can hardly be said to have kept the lower story comfortable. We could still see our frosted breath. But they made life endurable.
When it cleared off, we looked out at a veritable fairyland. All the world was buried under at least a foot of the purest white snow imaginable. Every tree was bending its branches beneath the burden of it. The mountains were dazzling. Even the rocky cliffs of Wetterhorn and Mettenberg had the soft white powder adhering to their perpendicular surfaces. If we had had any way of keeping ourselves even half-way comfortable indoors, I do not see how we could have torn ourselves away from it!
I regret to have to chronicle that our last hours were marred, beyond the inevitable sadness of parting and the inevitable fatigue of packing, by the inexplicable conduct of the Herr Secundärlehrer and his Frau. It is the well-known habit of landlords on the continent to run up a bill on their tenants for breakage, wear and tear, and “extras” limited only by their idea of the workableness of the persons they are dealing with. But the Herr Secundärlehrer and his wife had seemed so utterly honest and straightforward, so trusting and unmercenary, that I had no anticipation of anything of the sort from them. They had not wanted a lease or an inventory or their money in advance or any of the things the typical landlord looks out for. They had declined payment for ever so many things that they might legitimately have taken it for. So it _was_ a shock when the bill came in.
I had had great difficulty in getting it. They were evidently saving it for the last moment. Finally, after repeated requests and messages on my part, it was handed through the kitchen window by the Frau to the cook late Saturday evening, the Frau immediately vanishing into the darkness.
The Mother, Belle Soeur and the Elder Babe were leaving Sunday morning early with most of the baggage. Suzanne, the Younger Babe, and I, after the last house-cleaning, were to leave by the same early train Monday, rejoining the others at Lucerne. All day Sunday I tried to get hold of either the Secundärlehrer or his wife. I was told that he was sick—that he was asleep—that his wife was busy. Finally, after an especially emphatic message, late in the afternoon, the Secundärlehrer appeared, looking very much the worse for wear (as was sometimes the case with him on Sunday, I regret to say, after a convivial Saturday evening with cronies in the village) and in a very bearish humor.
I have always been of the opinion that his wife did not approve of the bill and kept away because she was ashamed. Certainly she never appeared again on our horizon to say good-bye, and I had to send the keys to her by Anna when we left. I am also of the opinion that the Secundärlehrer had been put up to that bill by some of his worldly-wise friends in the village and coached what to say when I objected.
The bill was about three-quarters of a yard long, and though it was not very enormous in its sum total (the extras were inside of a hundred francs), many of the items were so preposterously unjust that one could hardly accept them meekly.
One of the foremost was the bath tub. I think it was twenty francs that was put down for the use of it. The bath tub was a full-sized porcelain-lined one which the Herr had ordered in a spasm of modernness before he rented the house to us, but which arrived only after our installation. They put it down outside the house and left it there for some days till I made inquiries. The Herr explained to me that he thought every progressive family should own a bath tub and that he had intended putting it in the little room opening off the kitchen. This was the only place we had to keep provisions in, the kitchen itself being quite too tiny, and I really couldn’t give it up, but my soul yearned for that bath tub. The Herr then suggested that it could be put up on the porch (the one we did not take our meals on), connected with the water faucet in the kitchen by a length of garden hose, and surrounded by curtains. He said his wife would see to the curtain part if we would permit them to bring their children over once a week for a bath. It was so arranged, and a very funny out-door bathroom it was. The children of the neighborhood were so much interested in its workings that one felt little privacy inside, even after having sent Anna out to shoo them away and expended a paper of safety pins on the blowing curtains. When I objected to being charged for this luxury, the Herr informed me that at a hotel we would have had to pay a franc apiece for every bath we took, at which rate it would have amounted, in the course of the season, to much more than twenty francs. He knew this was so, because he had once taken a bath at a hotel and been charged a franc.
The item of cellar rent was another which I objected to. There was a small cellar under the rear part of our house which I had said I must have the use of when negotiating. It was much encumbered with many things which they said they could not move out, but we were quite welcome to use it too. After about a month they told Anna that this joint use was inconvenient to them and that they would give us a cellar room to ourselves under the neighboring school-house. It gave Anna a great many extra steps going over there for milk and other supplies, but she bore it patiently in order to be obliging. But to be charged extra for the discomfort was trying!
When I voiced this sentiment, the Herr Secundärlehrer launched forth into a most extraordinary tirade about having lost several hundred francs from the wine he had bought to sell to me, which I had not purchased, and his great magnanimity in not putting this on the bill. This was so unaccountable that I could hardly believe my ears. “But I never authorized you to buy any wine for me,” I naturally protested. “Of course you didn’t,” was his astounding reply, “you were entirely too clever to do that.” Considering that this was the first time the subject of his selling wine to me had ever been broached, this was to say the least puzzling. Was it just plain bluff and bluster to divert attention from the items on the bill, or is there some unwritten law in the Oberland that you buy wine from your landlord when you rent a house?