So they walked and climbed and crossed slanting slopes for two or three hours. The road was quite easy to follow — no difficulty of any sort. At length they came to a last strange and desolate hollow, a sort of pot with precipice walls on the right. Over the ridge they came, and down the long, slanting track between huge boulders and masses of rock, down into the shallow prison. How was one to get out? They scanned and scanned ahead: but only precipices, and impassable rock- masses, and a thin water-fall. The water fell into the wide, shallow summit-valley. How did it get out again. They could not see.
The sun fell into this shallow, rocky, desolate place as into a rugged bowl. There was no snow, save in patches where there was shadow, under some rocks and in some stony pits. Our four slanted still on, into the prison. It seemed impossible there was a way out. A sort of summit rock-trap.
And yet, when they got almost to the face of the precipice on the far side, suddenly the path turned to the left, and there, almost like a ladder sideways against the steep face went a slanting, stony ledge, and the road up it. They climbed, and sweated, and were excited. This must be the top.
They emerged between rocks and pools and hillocks of rock — and then, it was the top. Smooth as plates of iron, a flat summit, with great films of snow like silver plating on the black bronze-iron. And a wind, a painful cold wind. And low in the near-distance a brown shelter-hut with people there. And beyond the brow, a great peak, a magnificent wedge of iron thrust into the upper air, and slashed with snow-slashes as if it were dazzlingly alive, so brilliant and living the snow- stripes on its aloof dark body. For Gilbert, it was one of the perfect things of all his life, that peak, that single great sky- living blade of rock. He tramped across the snow-slush, he tramped across the slanting, difficult slope of deep snow, over the bare, iron and snow-bound flatfish top. He felt the awful wind, so slow yet so killing. He saw the people, guides and tourists at the hut — he passed the house itself and smelled wood-smoke. But he wanted only one thing — to come to the further, southern brink of the summit, and look across, across clear space, at that marvellous god-proud aloof pyramid of a peak, flashing its snow-stripes like some snow-beast, and bluing the clear air beyond.
They came to the rounded curve of the down-slope. Beyond, mountain tops. They went on, till they could see beneath the whole slope — where vegetation began, and shrubs, and trees, and the dense greenery. — It was a deep valley, narrow, and full of trees and verdure, far away below sinking to a still visible high-road. And it was so sunny, so sunny and warm.
So they sat in a shelter of rocks in the full sun, no wind, no wind at all. It was about midday. Gilbert had to go to a brow to look clear at his queen. She was beyond this valley — and beyond other valleys. Other, blunter peaks rose about her. Yet she lifted her marvellous dark slopes clear, a marvellous prism of substance in the ether, rayed with her snow as with lightning-strokes. Beyond — and crystal — and almost mathematically pure.
And he was satisfied — one of the eternal satisfactions that man can find on his life-way. He felt a pure, immortal satisfaction — a perfected aloneness.
So he was glad to be back in the nook of sun, eating with the others. There was not much food either. They promised themselves a meal when they were down.
They began quickly to descend into the steep narrow valley. Far below, their track could be glimpsed, going down to the pale thread of a high-road that lay between black pine-trees in the profundity. And they counted their progress: there they entered the zone of scrubby vegetation — there the first hairy little trees — there was alp-meadow — there were oak-trees, far down.
It was already another world. Sun and profusion already.
One must change one’s heart as one crosses that rock-plated, snow-sloped flat top.
Down and down, down a rocky, curving path. How tiring it is, descending. How quick one is — and yet the desired zones of the meadow alp and the oak-trees, how far still. They passed the fir-scrubs. They wound across the grassy dip, over a stream. There were alpine roses in flower still — as there had been on the other side, coming up. They went between rocks and big fir-trees. There were yellow rock-roses in flower, and comfrey. They came to the oaks. And the road broadened now into a proper bridle-path. In the warm shadow they descended. But tired — almost too tired to notice.
In the middle afternoon they emerged, over the last bank, over a stream, and on to the white wide high-road. Ah, how different it seemed. They were hot. There seemed a heat, a relaxation already in the air. And a darkness. It seemed very dark down there in the valley, in the deep cleft between the pine-trees.
So they found the inn, and drank beer and ate good food, and discussed the next day. Stanley and Terry, the moment they were down on the high-road, feeling themselves beyond the Brenner, wanted to get back. They wanted to get back at once to Munich, where their goods were. They asked how far the nearest station was — twelve miles. Quite easy to do it that evening. And they looked up trains. They could catch the express from Italy. It stopped at Sterzing at ten o’clock at night.
So on the road again. There were some beautiful tufts of flowers in the shade by the stream, in that deep valley: cranesbill, and dark gentian, and yellow flowers. They went into a shrine. It was all hung with ex voto arms and legs and bits of people, in wax. And in the back sat a ghastly life-size Christ, streaked livid with blood, and with an awful, dying, almost murderous-looking face. He was so powerful too — and like a man in the flush of life who realises he has just been murdered.
“There’s Inry selling joints,” said Stanley sardonically. But Gilbert was startled, shocked, and he could not forget. Why? Why this awful thing in a fine, big new shrine? Why this.
They walked on — and Johanna complained she was tired. They lingered hap-hazard in a saw-mill by the road: watching the saw-threads eat across the sweet wood, the saw-dust fall like meal: watching the great long planks move slowly: watching the oil-sticky cog-wheels slowly turn, and the great centre beam turn from the outer wheel: watching the water in the black sluice drop on the creaking wheel: and hearing all the noises, smelling the sweet scents and the dank scents: watching the men, who were quite friendly. They seemed happy, the men in the saw-mill. They had dark eyes, and looked well. They smiled.
But yet, there was something in reserve — something at the back of their eyes. Gilbert tried to connect it with the ghastly Christ on the road behind. But it was too difficult, and he was tired.
They crossed the log bridge over the stream. It was falling dusk. They were still in the narrow valley. Johanna complained bitterly of being tired. But Gilbert had one of his nervous fevers. He felt they must reach Pfitzen that night. They must reach Pfitzen. And Johanna would not hurry. She would not walk on.
“We must get to Pfitzen, and it’s getting dark. Why do you stand there staring at the water. You must come on.”
“I won’t come on. Why should I? I won’t come on. Don’t bully.”
“We must get to Pfitzen,” persisted he.
“Leave me alone. Go yourself to Pfitzen. Leave me alone.”
She loitered, she lingered, and he chafed like a mad-man at the bit. Stanley said nothing, but meandered rather stupidly at the side of the road. It was Terry who took up the cudgels.
“Why should Johanna hurry if she’s tired? Why should she go to Pfitzen tonight if she doesn’t want to? She’s not going to Pfitzen tonight.”
“No, I don’t want to,” she said.
Gilbert was silent. The moment Terry turned on him, he realised that there was absolutely no need to get to Pfitzen. He realised that his fever, his frenzy was something unnatural. He realised that Johanna might actually be too tired. So he was silent, and wondered at himself. Yet he was angry at Terry’s interference. And from straining, urging, tugging at Johanna he became suddenly released, separate.
At nightfall they came to an inn by the road-side: quite a large inn, but no sign of any village. It was quite alone in the still narrow valley. And Gil
bert felt afraid. A distinct sense of fear possessed him.
Yet the landlord, a burly, handsome man was pleasant, even attractive. He lighted the lamp that hung from the ceiling, and promised food. He gave Johanna and Gilbert an enormous bedroom on the ground floor — a vast dark place, quite comfortable and nice: and the two young men a room above.
So the four tired ones sat round a little table in the public bar-room. No one came to the inn. They saw only the burly, genial host. And they waited and waited, and studied the map that hung on the wall. It seemed very dark outside.
There were still seven miles to the nearest station. The two youths seemed determined to leave that night. Johanna begged them to stay just one day — one day together at Sterzing. Gilbert also begged them. But no. They must go. They must go. There was a fast train stopped at Sterzing at a quarter to five in the morning. They would rise at three, and walk on. It was decided.
So the four friends sat round the table in the public-house, and talked it all out. Terry and Stanley were quite determined: they would rise at three and make good speed to the station:
and by tomorrow afternoon they would be in Munich — Johanna and Gilbert would sleep on — and then take their vague way southwards. It was all settled.
Dinner came, good soup and boiled meat and cabbage. The two young men settled with the host: he gave them an alarm clock. The four friends made plans for meeting again. Under the hanging lamp in the inn-bar they talked of the future.
“It’s been so lovely knowing you both,” said Johanna. “I feel it can’t come to an end.”
“We won’t let it,” said Gilbert. “I believe one should keep one’s friendships forever: even put a bit of eternal feeling into them.”
“There is that feeling in me,” murmured Terry rather impressively.
“Oh yes. I’m game,” said Stanley.
And so — they would all go to bed.
“Goodbye!” said Johanna to Stanley. “You’ll come and see us wherever we are, won’t you?”
“I will,” said Stanley.
“Goodbye Terry. I am so glad of you in the world,” she said to the other.
“Not as glad as I am of you,” murmured Terry, and he kissed her fingers.
“Goodbye,” said Gilbert to Stanley. “You will come and see us.”
“Yes thanks — I should like it awfully.”
“Goodbye Terry — remember me to your mother and father. Tell them what a good time we’ve had. I shall see you all again — and we’ll have a longer holiday together another time, shall we?”
“Yes. We will. Goodbye Noon. Remember I love you,” and Terry looked at Gilbert protectively. Gilbert laughed — it seemed so comic.
So, in the inn passage, they parted, and Johanna and Gilbert went with their candle into their vast bedroom, to sleep.
Chapter XXII.
A Setback.
When Gilbert and Johanna woke it was a lovely sunny morning.
“Have they gone, I wonder,” said Gilbert.
“Yes,” said Johanna. “I heard them.”
“Did you? Did you hear them go out?”
“Yes. I heard the alarum, and I heard them go past our door: ever so quietly.”
“Isn’t it queer to be without them!” said he.
“Quite. — Yes, it’s awfully queer. I miss them, don’t you? I like them awfully. Do you? Do you like Stanley?” asked Johanna.
“I like him even better than Terry. He’s more real.”
“Yes, that’s what I feel. I think he’s amazingly attractive. Now why doesn’t a young man like that do something with his life — something that matters — I’m sure he could,” said she.
“Oh yes,” he answered. “I believe he could too — if he ever got started.”
“Of course!” she cried. “What he wants is a woman behind him. What good are his silly little Katinkas to him? And really, his mother must be awful for him.”
“Yes,” said Gilbert.
It was true, he missed the two young men, particularly Stanley. He missed him almost acutely — missed the sort of heightening of life that the American youth had brought, the thrill, the excitation. It was as if Stanley’s presence sent little thrills through the air, as electricity thrills through water. And this acted as a stimulant, almost like a drug on the nerves of the pair of finches. And now it was taken away, they felt an emptiness, a wanting.
But the morning was lovely. They had coffee in the little arbour of the small garden of the inn, just across the road from the house itself. Roses were blooming on the lattice, and deep purple and crimson convolvulus, like wine-stains. Lovely to sit in the sun in the stillness. They both felt tired. The excitement gone, their energy seemed to collapse.
So they walked rather slowly, rather with difficulty, to the old town of Sterzing, where they arrived in the afternoon. The old, picturesque street, the handsome old tower, the mediaeval houses made Gilbert think again of the emperors of the Middle Ages. Sterzing is on the old imperial road. And in the sunshine, with people going lazily, and women sitting in the street under their green umbrellas selling black grapes and white grapes, and pears and peaches, and the old pointed houses rearing above the narrow, sunny flagged street, and the great tower rearing up to look, like some burly but competent feudal baron, and the shadows falling so dark and the sun so very bright — why, it all had that unspeakable charm of the real old Germany, before science came, and the horrible German theorising. The lovely old Germany that roamed along, so individualistic and vigorous under its lords, but so careless, so deep with life force. Alas and alas for Prussian officialdom — horrible scientific rectitude.
Gilbert felt rather in an alas-and-alas mood. His spirits had all gone flat. And Johanna complained of being tired — she was tired, she wanted to rest. They bought grapes in the street, and looked for a house. They soon found one: an old house in the High Street, with a thin, peeping old woman. Yes, she had a room: it cost two and six a day. Yes, they could have it for a day or two.
So they installed themselves, and Johanna lay on the bed, and he sat and looked out of the window. Then he walked again in the town, to buy food. There was such a charm about the High Street itself — the meandering, magical charm of the Middle Ages, when the world was still full of unknown potencies and undiscovered worlds and undefined deities. But alas — Gilbert looked at it all through the greenish glass of spirits gone flat and meagre. — Also here was the first ripening touch of the south — Italy, the warring Italy of Popes and Emperors. He felt how glamorous, how blood-rich it had been. — But alas, walk towards the station you saw the new, thin-spirited scientific world: the big new tenement buildings, the gasometers, the factory. You felt the North German with his inhuman cold-blooded theorising and mechanising.
They stayed their few days in Sterzing: never very happy. Johanna was disinclined to move — and Gilbert went mad if he had to sit long in the bedroom. It was clean and pleasant. But the sense of the dark, unknown house all around him, with its lurking inmates of whom he saw nothing, its unreveal- ing silence and its truly mediaeval gloom, its passages, its formlessness, all this he could not bear. At least he could not bear to be shut up in it.
Most typical was the privy: one could not call it a W.C. This was a little cupboard on the same floor as the bedrooms, right in the centre of the house. It had absolutely no communication with the air outside, and at midday was completely dark, so that one must take a candle. It was very like those stair-cupboards on the landing under the stairs of the upper floor, where the dirty linen basket stands: so dark, so shut in. But it was not under any stairs. Heaven knows how it was let in between the bedroom walls. But there it was. It had no water — nothing: but consisted simply of a long shaft which descended into unknown and unknowable depths. And most peculiar was the smell. It was not so ordinarily offensive. It was rather such an acute ammonia as to make one catch the breath — like breathing smelling-salts. Gilbert always felt that it really might explode if one went in with a light: a
nd how go in without a light.
This privy was typical of the Tyrol, in so far as it consisted of a long dark pit-shaft from the upper floor down to unknown depths. But its absolute buried darkness in the core of the house was a more city-like, and perhaps mediaeval feature. Anyhow our friends never forgot it.
Do not grumble, gentle reader, at this description. Don’t talk to me about bad taste. You will only reveal your own. Strange are the ways of men. And since these are the ways we have to follow, why make any pretence.
As much as possible Gilbert and Johanna went out into the country. It was queer, rather formless country, among mountains that seemed suddenly to have become low. And there were one or two factories — and great new macadamised roads — and further out, a big sanatorium among woods and among giant rhododendron bushes. Sterzing too seemed to lie in a wide, shallow round pot. Far off, one could see pine- forests on the up-slope, and white roads, far off, trailing upwards and into the unknown.
After a few days they set off again with their knapsacks on their backs. They were recovering, and instead of half-faint reelings of spirit, backward towards Munich and Stanley and England, they set their breasts forward towards the unknown.
Gilbert did not want to follow the modern road to Bozen. Neither did he want to take the great high-road to Meran. He made out a path up a long valley, and decided that in one long day’s walk they could do the twenty-five miles to the rest-house on top of the Neering pass. Then from the summit of the pass down to Meran.
It was Sunday, and the bells were ringing for Mass in the fresh morning when they set out. They took a path across the water-meadows, past a strange old ruined church — then the high-road by the river, on till they came to a Sunday-morning village. The women were at the water-fountain with their brass pails, the men were in their black Sunday clothes. Men were out with guns and dogs.
Then they left the high-road and took the bridle-path. It climbed under trees from one side to the other of the valley. By midday they found themselves fairly high up. Shy, wildish, wondering mountain peasants went along the road, queer thin men. High up on the opposite mountain flank, beyond the trees, they could see a little village clustered like stones, with broad roofs on which large stones rested. So they continued, always following the same stream, apparently, through the afternoon. The air became wilder, the mountain hamlets more desolate: just little bunches of houses set down among manure heaps and grassy springs and stones, without any semblance of street, any unity. And the peasants up here — always tall, thin, somewhat bird-like, inhuman creatures, stared hard at our two travellers, and gave no greeting. Johanna felt rather frightened. Nobody wore Sunday clothes. It was like a weekday, save for a certain Sabbath emptiness of feeling — work being half-gripped.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 300