At a Winter's Fire Read online

  JACK AND JILL

  My friend, Monsieur ----, absolutely declines to append his name to thesepages, of which he is the virtual author. Nevertheless, he permits me topublish them anonymously, being, indeed, a little curious to ascertainwhat would have been the public verdict as to his sanity, had he givenhis personal imprimatur to a narrative on the face of it so incredible.

  "How!" he says. "Should I have believed it of another, when I have suchastonishing difficulty at this date in realizing that it was I--yes, I,my friend--this same little callow _poupon_--that was an actual hero ofthe adventure? Fidele" (by which term we cover the identity of hiswife)--"Fidele will laugh in my face sometimes, crying, 'Not thou, littlecabbage, nor yet thy faithful, was it that dived through half the worldand came up breathless! No, no--I cannot believe it. We folk, somatter-of-fact and so comical. It was of Hansel and Gretel we had beenreading hand-in-hand, till we fell asleep in the twilight and fanciedthis thing.' And then she will trill like a bird at the thought of howsolemn Herr Grabenstock, of the Hotel du Mont Blanc, would have staredand edged apart, had we truly recounted to him that which had befallen usbetween the rising and the setting of a sun. We go forth; it rains--myfaith! as it will in the Chamounix valley--and we return in the eveningsopped. Very natural. But, for a first cause of our wetting. Ah! there wemust be fastidious of an explanation, or we shall find ourselves in perilof restraint.

  "Now, write this for me, and believe it if you can. We are not in aconspiracy of imagination--I and the dear courageous."

  Therefore I _do_ write it, speaking in the person of Monsieur ----, andlargely from his dictation; and my friend shall amuse himself over thenature of its reception.

  * * * * *

  "One morning (it was in late May)," says Monsieur ----, "my Fidele and Ileft the Hotel du Mont Blanc for a ramble amongst the hills. We were alittle adventurous, because we were innocent. We took no guide but ourcommonsense; and that served us very ill--or very well, according to thepoint of view. Ours was that of the birds, singing to the sky andcareless of the snake in the grass so long as they can pipe their tune.Of a surety that is the only course. If one would make provision againstevery chance of accident, one must dematerialize. To die is the only wayto secure oneself from fatality.

  "Still, it is a wise precaution, I will admit, not to eat of all hedgefruit because blackberries are sweet. Some day, after the fiftiethstomach-ache, we shall learn wisdom, my Fidele and I.

  "'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' That, I know, comes into theEnglish gospel.

  "Well, I will tell you, I am content to be considered of the first; andmy Fidele is assuredly of the second. Yet did she fear, or I rush in? Onthe contrary, I have a little laughing thought that it was the angelinveighed against the dulness of caution when the fool would havehesitated.

  "Now, it was before the season of the Alps; and the mountain aubergisteswere, for the most part, not arrived at their desolate hill-taverns. Norwere guides at all in evidence, being yet engaged, the sturdy souls, overtheir winter occupations. One, no doubt, we could have procured, had wewished it; but we did not. We would explore under the aegis of nocicerone but our curiosity. That was native to us, if the district wasstrange.

  "Following, at first, the instructions of Herr Baedeker, we travelled andclimbed, chattering and singing as we went, in the direction of theMontenvert, whence we were to descend upon the Mer de Glace, and enjoythe spectacle of a stupendous glacier.

  "'And that, I am convinced,' said Fidele, 'is nothing more nor less thanone of those many windows that give light to the monsters of theunder-earth.'

  "'Little imbecile! In some places this window is six hundred feet thick.'

  "'So?' she said. 'That is because their dim eyes could not endure thefull light of the sun.'

  "We had brought a tin box of sandwiches with us; and this, with my largepewter flask full of wine, was slung upon my back. For we had been toldthe Hotel du Montenvert was yet closed; and, sure enough when we reachedit, the building stood black in a pool of snow, its shuttered windowsforlorn, and long icicles hung from the eaves.

  "The depression induced by this sight was momentary. We turned from it tothe panorama of majestic loveliness that stretched below and around us.The glacier--that rolling sea of glass--descended from the enormous gatesof the hills. Its source was the white furnace of the skies; itssubstance the crystal refuse of the stars; and from its margins thesplintered peaks stood up in a thousand forms of beauty. Right and left,in the hollows of the mountains, the mist lay like ponds, opal andtranslucent; and the shafts of the pine trees standing in it looked likethe reflections of themselves.

  "It made the eyes ache--this silence of greatness; and it became a reliefto shift one's gaze to the reality of one's near neighbourhood--thegrass, and the rhododendron bushes, and even the dull walls of thedeserted auberge.

  "A narrow path dipped over the hill-side and fled into the very jaws ofthe moraine. Down the first of this path we raced, hand in hand; butsoon, finding the impetus overmastering us, we pulled up with difficulty,and descended the rest of the way circumspectly.

  "At the foot of the steep slope we came upon the little wooden hutchwhere, ordinarily, one may procure a guide (also rough socks to stretchover one's boots) for the passage of the glacier. Now, however, the shedwas closed and tenantless; and we must e'en dispense with a conductor,should we adventure further.

  "Herr Baedeker says, 'Guide unnecessary for the experienced.'

  "'Fidele, are we experienced?'

  "'We shall be, _mon ami_, when we have crossed. A guide could not alterthat.'

  "'But it is true, _ma petite_. Come, then!'

  "We clambered down amongst huge stones. Fidele's little feet went in andout of the crannies like sand-martins. Suddenly, before we realized it,we were on the glacier.

  "Fidele exclaimed.

  "'_Mon Dieu_! Is this ice--these blocks of dirty alabaster?'

  "Alas! she was justified. This torrent of majestic crystal--seen fromabove so smooth and bountiful--a flood of the milk of Nature dispensedfrom the white bosom of the hills! Now, near at hand, what do we find it?A medley of opaque blocks, smeared with grit and rubbish; a vast ruin ofavalanches hurled together and consolidated, and of the colour of rocksalt.

  "'_Peste!_' I cried. 'We must get to the opposite bank, for all that.

  "_Mignonne, allons voir si la rose, Qui ce matin avoit desclose_....'"

  "We clasped hands and set forth on our little traversee, our landmark anodd-shaped needle of spar on the further side. My faith! it was simple.The _paveurs_ of Nature had left the road a trifle rough, that was all.Suddenly we came upon a wide fissure stretched obliquely like the mouthof a sole. Going glibly, we learnt a small lesson of caution therefrom.Six paces, and we should have tumbled in.

  "We looked over fearfully. Here, in truth, was real ice at last--green asbottle-glass at the edges, and melting into unfathomable deeps of glowingblue.

  "In a moment, with a shriek like that of escaping steam, a windy demonleapt at us from the underneath. It was all of winter in a breath. Itseemed to shrivel the skin from our faces--the flesh from our bones. Westaggered backwards.

  "'_Mon ami! mon ami_!' cried Fidele, 'my heart is a stone; my eyes aretwo blisters of water!'

  "We danced as the blood returned unwilling to our veins. It was minutesbefore we could proceed.

  "Afterwards I learned that these hellish eruptions of air betoken achange of temperature. It was coming then shortly in a dense rainfall.

  "When we were recovered, we sought about for a way to circumambulate thecrevasse. Then we remarked that up a huge boulder of ice that hadseemed to block our path recent steps, or toe-holes, had been cut. In atwinkling we were over. Fidele--no, a woman never falls.

  "'For all this,' she says, shaking her head, 'I maintain that a guidehere is a sinecurist.'

  "Well, we made the passage safely, and toiled up the steep, loose morainebeyond--to find the track over which wa
s harder than crossing theglacier. But we did it, and struck the path along the hillside, whichleads by the _Mauvais Pas_ (the _mauvais quart d'heure_) to the littlecabaret called the _Chapeau_. This tavern, too, was shut and dismal.It did not matter. We sat like sparrows on a railing, and munched ouregg-sandwiches and drank our wine in a sort of glorious stupefaction. Forright opposite us was the vast glacier-fall, whose crashing foam wastowers and parapets of ice, that went over and rolled into the valleybelow, a ruin of thunder.

  "Far beyond, where the mouth of the gorge spread out littered withmonstrous destruction, we saw the hundred threads of the glacier streamscollect into a single rope of silver, that went drawn between the hills,a highway of water. It was all a majestic panorama of grey and pearlywhite--the sky, the torrents, the mountains; but the blue and rusty greenof the stone pines, flung abroad in hanging woods and coppices, broke upand distributed the infinite serenity of the snow fields.

  "Presently, having drunk deep of rich content, we rose to retrace oursteps. For, spurred by vanity, we must be returning the way we had come,to show our confident experience of glaciers.

  "All went well. Actually we had passed over near two-thirds of theice-bed, when a touch on my arm stayed me, and _ma mie_ looked into myeyes, very comical and insolent.

  "'Little cabbage,' she said; 'will you not put your new knowledge toaccount?'

  "'But how, my soul?'

  "She laughed and pressed my arm to her side. Her heart fluttered like anestling after its first flight.

  "'To rest on the little prowess of a small adventure! No, no! Shall hewho has learnt to swim be always content to bathe in shallow water?'

  "I was speechless as I gazed on her.

  "'Behold, then!' she cried. 'We have opposed ourselves to this problem ofthe ice, and we have mastered it. See how it rears itself to theinaccessible peaks, the which to reach the poor innocents expendthemselves over rocks and drifts. But why should one not climb themountain by way of the glacier?'

  "'Fidele!' I gasped.

  "'Ah!' she exclaimed, nodding her head; 'but poor men! They are mules.They spill their blood on the scaling ladders when the town gate isopen.'

  "Again I cried 'Fidele!'

  "'But, yes,' she said, 'it needs a woman to see. It is but two o'clock.Let us ascend the glacier, like a staircase; and presently we shall standupon the summit of the mountain. Those last little peaks above the icecan be of no importance.'

  "I was touched, astounded by the sublimity of her idea. Had no one, then,ever thought of this before?

  "We began the ascent.

  "I swear we must have toiled upwards half a mile, when the catastrophetook place.

  "It was raining then--a dense small mist; and the ice was as if ithad been greased. We were proceeding with infinite care, arm in arm,tucked close together. A little doubt, I think, was beginning to oppressus. We could move only with much caution and difficulty; and there werenoises--sounds like the clapping of great hands in those rocky atticsabove us. Then there would come a slamming report, as if the window ofthe unknown had been burst open by demons; and the moans of the lostwould issue, surging down upon the world.

  "These thunders, as we were afterwards told, are caused by the splittingof the ice when there comes a fall in the barometer. Then the glacierwill yawn like a sliced junket.

  "My faith! what a simile! But again the point of view, my friend.

  "All in a moment I heard a little cluck. I looked down. Alas! the finespirit was obscured. Fidele was weeping.

  "'_Chut! chut!_' I exclaimed in consternation. 'We will go back at once.'

  "She struggled to smile, the poor _mignonne_.

  "'It is only that my knees are sick,' she said piteously.

  "I took her in my strong arms tenderly.

  "We had paused on a ridge of hard snow.

  "There came a tearing clang--an enormous sucking sound, as of wet lipsopening. The snow sank under our feet.

  "'My God!' shrieked Fidele.

  "I held her convulsively. It happened in an instant, before one couldleap aside. The bed of snow on which we were standing broke down intothe crevasse it had bridged, and let us through to the depths.

  "Will you believe what follows? Pinch your nose and open your mouth. Youshall take the whole draught at a breath. _The ice at the point where weentered was five hundred feet thick; and we fell to the very bottom ofit._

  "Ha! ha! Is it difficult to swallow? But it is true--it is quite true.Here I sit, sound and safe, and eminently sane, and that after a fall offive hundred feet.

  "Now, listen.

  "We went down, welded together, with a rush and a buzz like acannon-ball. Thoughts? Ah! my friend, I had none. Who can think evenin a high wind? And here the wind of our going would have brained an ox.Only one desperate instinct I had, one little forlorn remnant ofhumanity--to shield the love of my heart. So my arms never left her; andwe fell together. I dreaded nothing, feared nothing, foresaw no terrorin the inevitable mangling crash of the end. For time, that is necessaryto emotion, was annihilated. We had outstripped it, and left sense andreason sluggishly following in our wake.

  "Sense, yes; but not altogether sensation. Flashingly I was conscioushere of incredibly swift transitions, from cold to deeper wells of frost;thence down through a stratum of death and negation, between mere blindwalls of frigid inhumanity, to have been stayed a moment by which wouldhave pointed all our limbs as stiff as icicles, as stiff as those offrogs plunged into boiling water. But we passed and fell, still crashingupon no obstruction; and thought pursued us, tailing further behind.

  "It was the passage of the eternal night--frozen, self-contained; awfulas any fancied darkness that is without one tradition of a star. Yet,struggling hereafter to, in some shadowy sense, renew my feelings of themoment, it seemed to me that I had not fallen through darkness at all;but rather that the friction of descent had kindled an inner radiance inme that was independent of the vision of the eyes, and full of promise ofa sudden illumination of the soul.

  "Now, after falling what depths God knows, I become numbly aware of alittle griding sensation at my back, that communicated a whistling smallvibration to my whole frame. This intensified, became more pronounced.Perceptibly, in that magnificent refinement of speed, our enormous pace Ifelt to decrease ever so little. Still we had so far outstrippedintelligence as that I was incapable of considering the cause of thechange.

  "Suddenly, for the first time, pain made itself known; and immediatelyreason, plunging from above, overtook me, and I could think.

  "Then it was I became conscious that, instead of falling, we wererising, rising with immense swiftness, but at a pace that momentlyslackened--rising, slipping over ice and in contact with it,

  "The muscles of my arms, clasped still about Fidele, involuntarilyswelled to her. My God! there was a tiny answering pressure. I could havescreamed with joy; but physical anguish overmastered me. My back seemedbursting into flame.

  "The suffering was intolerable. When, at last, I thought I should go mad,in a moment we took a surging swoop, shot down an easy incline, and_stopped_.

  "There had been noise in our descent, as only now I knew by itscessation--a hissing sound as of wire whirring from a draw-plate. In theprofound enormous silence that, at last, enwrapped us, the bliss offreedom from that metallic accompaniment fell on me like a balm. Myeyelids closed. Possibly I fainted.

  "All in a moment I came to myself, to an undefinable sense of thetremendous pressure of nothingness. Darkness! it was not that; yet it wasas little light. It was as if we lay in a dim, luminous chaos, ourselvesan integral part of its self-containment. I did not stir; but I spoke:and my strange voice broke the enchantment. Surely never before or sincewas speech exchanged under such conditions.

  "'Fidele!'

  "'I can speak, but I cannot look. If I hide so for ever I can diebravely.'

  "'_Ma petite!_ oh, my little one! Are you hurt?'

  "'I don't know. I think not.'

  "Her voice, her dear voice wa
s so odd; but, _Mon Dieu_! how wonderful inits courage! That, Heaven be praised! is no monopoly of intellect.Indeed, it is imagination that makes men cowards; and to the lack of thispossibly we owed our salvation.

  "Now, calm and freed of that haunting jar of descent, I became consciousthat a sound, that I had at first taken for the rush of my own arteries,had an origin apart from us. It was like the wash and thunder of watersin a deep sewer.

  "'Fidele!' I said again.

  "'I am listening.'

  "'Hear, then! Canst thou free my right arm, that I may feel for thelucifers in my pocket?'

  "She moved at once, never raising her face from my breast. I groped forthe box, found it; and manipulating with one hand, succeeded in strikinga match. It flamed up--a long wax vesta.

  "A glory of sleek fires sprang on the instant into life. We layimprisoned in a house of glass at the foot of a smooth incline risingbehind us to unknown heights. A wall of porous and opaque ice-rubbish,into which our feet had plunged deep, had stayed our progress.

  "I placed the box by my side ready for use. Our last moments should belavish of splendour. Stooping for another match, to kindle from the flameof the near-expired one, a thought struck me. Why had we not been at oncefrozen to death? Yet we lay where we had brought up, as snug and glowingas if we were wrapped in bedclothes.

  "The answer came to me in a flash. We had fallen sheer to the glacierbed, which, warmed by subterraneous heat, was ever in process of melting.Possibly, but a comparatively thin curtain of perforated ice separated usfrom the under torrent.

  "The enforced conclusion was astounding; but as yet it inspired no hope.We were none the less doomed and buried.

  "I lit a second match, turned about, and gave a start of terror. There,imbedded in the transparent wall at my very shoulder, was something--thebody of a man.

  "A horrible sight--a horrible, horrible sight--crushed, flattened--acaricature; the very gouts of blood that had burst from him held poisedin the massed congelations of water.

  "For how long ages had he been travelling to the valley, and from whatheights? He was of a bygone generation, by his huge coat cuffs, his metalbuttons, by his shoe buckles and the white stockings on his legs, whichwere pressed thin and sharp, as if cut out of paper. Had he been aclimber, an explorer--a contemporary, perhaps, of Saussure and a rival?And what had been his unrecorded fate? To slip into a crevasse, and sofor the parted ice to snap upon him again, like a hideous jaw? Its workdone, it might at least have opened and dropped him through--not held himintact to jog us, out of all that world of despair, with his batteredelbow!

  "Perhaps to witness in others the fate he had himself suffered!

  "I dropped the match I was holding. I tightened my clasp convulsivelyabout Fidele. Thank God she, at any rate, was blind to this horror withina horror!

  "All at once--was it the start I had given, or the natural process ofdissolution beneath our feet?--we were moving again. Swift--swifter!Fidele uttered a little moaning cry. The rubbish of ice crashed below us,and we sank through.

  "I knew nothing, then, but that we were in water--that we had fallen froma little height, and were being hurried along. The torrent, now deep, nowso shallow that my feet scraped its bed, gushed in my ears and blinded myeyes.

  "Still I hugged Fidele, and I could feel by her returning grasp that shelived. The water was not unbearably cold as yet. The air that camethrough cracks and crevasses had not force to overcome the under warmth.

  "I felt something slide against me--clutched and held on. It was a bravepine log. Could I recover it at this date I would convert it into aflagstaff for the tricolour. It was our raft, our refuge; and it carriedus to safety.

  "I cannot give the extravagant processes of that long journey. It was alla rushing, swirling dream--a mad race of mystery and sublimity, towhich the only conscious periods were wild, flitting glimpses ofwonderful ice arabesques, caught momentarily as we passed under fissuresthat let the light of day through dimly.

  "Gradually a ghostly radiance grew to encompass us; and by a likegradation the water waxed intensely cold. Hope then was blazing in ourhearts; but this new deathliness went nigh to quench it altogether. Yet,had we guessed the reason, we could have foregone the despair. For, intruth, we were approaching that shallower terrace of the glacier beyondthe fall, through which the light could force some weak passage, and theair make itself felt, blowing upon the beds of ice.

  "Well, we survived; and still we survive. My faith, what a couple!Sublimity would have none of us. The glacier rejected souls socommonplace as not to be properly impressed by its inexorability.

  "This, then, was the end. We swept into a huge cavern of ice--throughit--beyond it, into the green valley and the world that we love. Andthere, where the torrent splits up into a score of insignificant streams,we grounded and crawled to dry land and sat down and laughed.

  "Yes, we could do it--we could laugh. Is that not bathos? But Fidele andI have a theory that laughter is the chief earnest of immortality.

  "To _dry_ land I have said. _Mon Dieu!_ the torrent was no wetter. Itrains in the Chamounix valley. We looked to see whence we had fallen, andnot even the _Chapeau_ was visible through the mist.

  "But, as I turned, Fidele uttered a little cry.

  "'The flask, and the sandwich-box, and your poor coat!'

  "'_Comment?_' I said; and in a moment was in my shirt-sleeves.

  "I stared, and I wondered, and I clucked in my throat.

  "Holy saints! I was adorned with a breastplate on my back. The frictionof descent, first welding together these, the good ministers to ourappetite, had worn the metal down in the end to a mere skin or badge, theheat generated from which had scorched and frizzled the cloth beneath it.

  "I needed not to seek further explanation of the pain I had suffered--wassuffering then, indeed, as I had reason to know when ecstasy permitted areturn of sensation. My back bears the scars at this moment.

  "'It shall remain there for ever!' I cried, 'like the badge of a _cocherde fiacre_, who has made the fastest journey on record. 'Coachman! fromthe glacier to the valley.' '_Mais oui, monsieur_. Down this crevasse, ifyou please.'

  "And that is the history of our adventure.

  "Why we were not dashed to pieces? But that, as I accept it, is easy ofelucidation. Imagine a vast crescent moon, with a downward nick from theend of the tail. This form the fissure took, in one enormous sweep anddrop towards the mouth of the valley. Now, as we rushed headlong, thegentle curve received us from space to substance quite gradually, untilwe were whirring forward wholly on the latter, my luggage suffering thebrunt of the friction. The upward sweep of the crescent diminished ourprogress--more and yet more--until we switched over the lower point andshot quietly down the incline beyond. And all this in ample room, andwithout meeting with a single unfriendly obstacle.

  "'_Voila, mes chers amis, ce qui me met en peine_.'

  "Fidele laughs, the rogue!

  "'Ta, ta, ta!' she says. 'But they will not believe a word of it all.'"