Hibbert,
always conscious of two worlds, was in this mountain village conscious
of three. It lay on the slopes of the Valais Alps, and he had taken a
room in the little post office, where he could be at peace to write his
book, yet at the same time enjoy the winter sports and find
companionship in the hotels when he wanted it.
The three worlds that met and mingled here seemed to his
imaginative temperament very obvious, though it is doubtful if another
mind less intuitively equipped would have seen them so well-defined.
There was the world of tourist English, civilised, quasi-educated, to
which he belonged by birth, at any rate; there was the world of peasants
to which he felt himself drawn by sympathy—for he loved and admired
their toiling, simple life; and there was this other—which he could
only call the world of Nature. To this last, however, in virtue of a
vehement poetic imagination, and a tumultuous pagan instinct fed by his
very blood, he felt that most of him belonged. The others borrowed from
it, as it were, for visits. Here, with the soul of Nature, hid his
central life.
Between all three was conflict potential conflict. On the
skating-rink each Sunday the tourists regarded the natives as intruders;
in the church the peasants plainly questioned: “Why do you come? We
are here to worship; you to stare and whisper!” For neither of these
two worlds accepted the other. And neither did Nature accept the
tourists, for it took advantage of their least mistakes, and indeed,
even of the peasant-world “accepted” only those who were strong and
bold enough to invade her savage domain with sufficient skill to protect
themselves from several forms of—death.
Now Hibbert was keenly aware of this potential conflict and want
of harmony; he felt outside, yet caught by it— torn in the three
directions because he was partly of each world, but wholly in only one.
There grew in him a constant, subtle effort—or, at least, desire—to
unify them and decide positively to which he should belong and live in.
The attempt, of course, was largely subconscious. It was the natural
instinct of a richly imaginative nature seeking the point of
equilibrium, so that the mind could feel at peace and his brain be free
to do good work.
Among the guests no one especially claimed his interest. The men
were nice but undistinguished—athletic schoolmasters, doctors
snatching a holiday, good fellows all; the women, equally various—the
clever, the would-be-fast, the dare-to-be-dull, the women “who
understood,” and the usual pack of jolly dancing girls and
“flappers.” And Hibbert, with his forty odd years of thick
experience behind him, got on well with the lot; he understood them all;
they belonged to definite, predigested types that are the same the world
over, and that he had met the world over long ago.
But to none of them did he belong. His nature was too
“multiple” to subscribe to the set of shibboleths of any one class.
And, since all liked him, and felt that somehow he seemed outside of
them—spectator, looker-on—all sought to claim him.
In a sense, therefore, the three worlds fought for him: natives,
tourists, Nature....
It was thus began the singular conflict for the soul of Hibbert. In
his own soul, however, it took place. Neither the peasants nor the
tourists were conscious that they fought for anything. And Nature, they
say, is merely blind and automatic.
The assault upon him of the peasants may be left out of account,
for it is obvious that they stood no chance of success. The tourist
world, however, made a gallant effort to subdue him to themselves. But
the evenings in the hotel, when dancing was not in order,
were—English. The provincial imagination was set upon a throne and worshipped
heavily through incense of the stupidest conventions possible. Hibbert
used to go back early to his room in the post office to work.
“It is a mistake on my part to have realised
that there is any conflict at all,” he thought, as he crunched
home over the snow at midnight after one of the dances. “It would have
been better to have kept outside it all and done my work. Better,” he
added, looking back down the silent village street to the church tower,
“and safer.”
The adjective slipped from his mind before he was aware of it. He
turned with an involuntary start and looked about him. He knew perfectly
well what it meant— this thought that had thrust its head up from the
instinctive region. He understood, without being able to express it
fully, the meaning that betrayed itself in the choice of the adjective.
For if he had ignored the existence of this conflict he would at the
same time have remained outside the arena. Whereas now he had entered
the lists. Now this battle for his soul must have issue. And he knew
that the spell of Nature was greater for him than all other spells in
the world combined—greater than love, revelry, pleasure, greater even
than study. He had always been afraid to let himself go. His pagan soul
dreaded her terrific powers of witchery even while he worshipped.
The little village already slept. The world lay smothered in
snow. The châlet roofs shone white beneath the moon, and pitch-black
shadows gathered against the walls of the church. His eye rested a
moment on the square stone tower with its frosted cross that pointed to
the sky: then travelled with a leap of many thousand feet to the
enormous mountains that brushed the brilliant stars. Like a forest rose
the huge peaks above the slumbering village, measuring the night and
heavens. They beckoned him. And something born of the snowy desolation,
born of the midnight and the silent grandeur, born of the great
listening hollows of the night, something that lay ’twixt terror and
wonder, dropped from the vast wintry spaces down into his heart—and
called him. Very softly, unrecorded in any word or thought his brain
could compass, it laid its spell upon him. Fingers of snow brushed the
surface of his heart. The power and quiet majesty of the winter’s
night appalled him. . .
Fumbling a moment with the big unwieldy key, he let himself in
and went upstairs to bed. Two thoughts went with him—apparently quite
ordinary and sensible ones:
“What fools these peasants are to sleep through such a
night!” And the other:
“Those dances tire me. I’ll never go again. My work only
suffers in the morning.” The claims of peasants and tourists upon him
seemed thus in a single instant weakened.
The clash of battle troubled half his dreams. Nature had sent her
Beauty of the Night and won the first assault. The others, routed and
dismayed, fled far away.
“Don’t go back to your dreary old post office. We’re going
to have supper in my room—something hot. Come and join us. Hurry
up!”
There had been an ice carnival, and the last party, tailing up
the snow-slope to the hotel, called him. The Chinese lanterns smoked and
sputtered on the wires; the band had long since gone. The cold was
bitter and the moon came only momentarily between high, driving clouds.
From the shed where the people changed from skates to snow-boots he
shouted something to the effect that he was “following”; but no
answer came; the moving shadows of those who had called were already
merged high up against the village darkness. The voices died away. Doors
slammed. Hibbert found himself alone on the deserted rink.
And it was then, quite suddenly, the impulse came to—stay and
skate alone. The thought of the stuffy hotel room, and of those noisy
people with their obvious jokes and laughter, oppressed him. He felt a
longing to be alone with the night, to taste her wonder all by himself
there beneath the stars, gliding over the ice. It was not yet midnight,
and he could skate for half an hour. That supper party, if they noticed
his absence at all, would merely think he had changed his mind and gone
to bed.
It was an impulse, yes, and not an unnatural one; yet even at the
time it struck him that something more than impulse lay concealed behind
it. More than invitation, yet certainly less than command, there was a
vague queer feeling that he stayed because he had to, almost as though
there was something he had forgotten, overlooked, left undone.
Imaginative temperaments are often thus; and impulse is ever weakness.
For with such ill-considered opening of the doors to hasty action may
come an invasion of other forces at the same time—forces merely
waiting their opportunity perhaps!
He caught the fugitive warning even while he dismissed it as
absurd, and the next minute he was whirling over the smooth ice in
delightful curves and loops beneath the moon. There was no fear of
collision. He could take his own speed and space as he willed. The
shadows of the towering mountains fell across the rink, and a wind of
ice came from the forests, where the snow lay ten feet deep. The hotel
lights winked and went out. The village slept. The high wire netting
could not keep out the wonder of the winter night that grew about him
like a presence. He skated on and on, keen exhilarating pleasure in his
tingling blood, and weariness all forgotten.
And then, midway in the delight of rushing movement, he saw a
figure gliding behind the wire netting, watching him. With a start that
almost made him lose his balance— for the abruptness of the new
arrival was so unlooked for—he paused and stared. Although the light
was dim he made out that it was the figure of a woman and that she was
feeling her way along the netting, trying to get in. Against the white
background of the snow-field he watched her rather stealthy efforts as
she passed with a silent step over the banked-up snow. She was tall and
slim and graceful; he could see that even in the dark. And then, of
course, he understood. It was another adventurous skater like himself,
stolen down unawares from hotel or chalet, and searching for the
opening. At once, making a sign and pointing with one hand, he turned
swiftly and skated over to the little entrance on the other side.
But, even before he got there, there was a sound on the ice
behind him and, with an exclamation of amazement he could not suppress,
he turned to see her swerving up to his side across the width of the
rink. She had somehow found another way in.
Hibbert, as a rule, was punctilious, and in these free-and-easy
places, perhaps, especially so. If only for his own protection he did
not seek to make advances unless some kind of introduction paved the
way. But for these two to skate together in the semi-darkness without
speech, often of necessity brushing shoulders almost, was too absurd to
think of. Accordingly he raised his cap and spoke. His actual words he
seems unable to recall, nor what the girl said in reply, except that she
answered him in accented English with some commonplace about doing
figures at midnight on an empty rink. Quite natural it was, and right.
She wore grey clothes of some kind, though not the customary long gloves
or sweater, for indeed her hands were bare, and presently when he skated
with her, he wondered with something like astonishment at their dry and
icy coldness.
And she was delicious to skate with —supple, sure, and light,
fast as a man yet with the freedom of a child, sinuous and steady at the
same time. Her flexibility made him wonder, and when he asked where she
had learned she murmured —-he caught the breath against his ear and
recalled later that it was singularly cold—that she could hardly tell,
for she had been accustomed to the ice ever since she could remember.
But her face he never properly saw. A muffler of white fur buried
her neck to the ears, and her cap came over the eyes. He only saw that
she was young. Nor could he gather her hotel or chalet, for she pointed
vaguely, when he asked her, up the slopes. “Just over there—” she
said, quickly taking his hand again. He did not press her; no doubt she
wished to hide her escapade. And the touch of her hand thrilled him more
than anything he could remember; even through his thick glove he felt
the softness of that cold and delicate softness.
The clouds thickened over the mountains. It grew darker. They
talked very little, and did not always skate together. Often they
separated, curving about in corners by themselves, but always coming
together again in the centre of the rink; and when she left him thus
Hibbert was conscious of yes, of missing her. He found a peculiar
satisfaction, almost a fascination, in skating by her side. It was quite
an adventure—these two strangers with the ice and snow and night!
Midnight had long since sounded from the old church tower before
they parted. She gave the sign, and he skated quickly to the shed,
meaning to find a seat and help her take her skates off. Yet when he
turned—she had already gone. He saw her slim figure gliding away
across the snow. . . and hurrying for the last time round the rink alone
he searched in vain for the opening she had twice used in this curious
way.
“How very queer!” he thought, referring to the wire netting.
“She must have lifted it and wriggled under...
Wondering how in the world she managed it, what in the world had
possessed him to be so free with her, and who in the world she was, he
went up the steep slope to the post office and so to bed, her promise to
come again another night still ringing delightfully in his ears. And
curious were the thoughts and sensations that accompanied him. Most of
all, perhaps, was the half suggestion of some dim memory that he had
known this girl before, had met her somewhere, more—that she knew him.
For in her voice—a low, soft, windy little voice it was, tender and
soothing for all its quiet coldness—there lay some faint reminder of
two others he had known, both long since gone: the voice of the woman he
had loved, and—the voice of his mother.
But this time through his dreams there ran no clash of battle. He
was conscious, rather, of something cold and clinging that made him
think of sifting snowflakes climbing slowly with entangling touch and
thickness round his feet. The snow, coming without noise, each flake so
light and tiny none can mark the spot whereon it settles, yet the mass
of it able to smother whole villages, wove through the very texture of
his mind—cold, bewildering, deadening effort with its clinging network
of ten million feathery touches.
In
the morning Hibbert realised he had done, perhaps, a foolish thing. The
brilliant sunshine that drenched the valley made him see this, and the
sight of his work-table with its typewriter, books, papers, and the
rest, brought additional conviction. To have skated with a girl alone at
midnight, no matter how innocently the thing had come about, was
unwise—unfair, especially to her. Gossip in these little winter
resorts was worse than in a provincial town. He hoped no one had seen
them. Luckily the night had been dark. Most likely none had heard the
ring of skates.
Deciding that in future he would be more careful, he plunged into
work, and sought to dismiss the matter from his mind.
But in his times of leisure the memory returned persistently to
haunt him. When he “skied,” “luged,” or danced in the evenings,
and especially when he skated on the little rink, he was aware that the
eyes of his mind forever sought this strange companion of the night. A
hundred times he fancied that he saw her, but always sight deceived him.
Her face he might not know, but he could hardly fail to recognise her
figure. Yet nowhere among the others did he catch a glimpse of that slim
young creature he had skated with alone beneath the clouded stars. He
searched in vain. Even his inquiries as to the occupants of the private
châlets brought no results. He had lost her. But the queer thing was
that he felt as though she were somewhere close; he knew
she had not really gone. While people came and left with every day,
it never once occurred to him that she had left. On the contrary, he
felt assured that they would meet again.
This thought he never quite acknowledged. Perhaps it was the wish
that fathered it only. And, even when he did meet her, it was a question
how he would speak and claim acquaintance, or whether she
would recognise himself. It might be awkward. He almost came to
dread a meeting, though “dread,” of course, was far too strong a
word to describe an emotion that was half delight, half wondering
anticipation.
Meanwhile the season was in full swing. Hibbert felt in perfect
health, worked hard, skied, skated, luged, and at night danced fairly
often—in spite of his decision. This dancing was, however, an act of
subconscious surrender; it really meant he hoped to find her among the
whirling couples. He was searching for her without quite acknowledging
it to himself; and the hotel-world, meanwhile, thinking it had won him
over, teased and chaffed him. He made excuses in a similar vein; but all
the time he watched and searched and—waited.
For several days the sky held clear and bright and frosty,
bitterly cold, everything crisp and sparkling in the sun; but there was
no sign of fresh snow, and the skiers began to grumble. On the mountains
was an icy crust that made “running” dangerous; they wanted the
frozen, dry, and powdery snow that makes for speed, renders steering
easier and falling less severe. But the keen east wind showed no signs
of changing for a whole ten days. Then, suddenly, there came a touch of
softer air and the weather-wise began to prophesy.
Hibbert, who was delicately sensitive to the least change in
earth or sky, was perhaps the first to feel it. Only he did not
prophesy. He knew through every nerve in his body that moisture had
crept into the air, was accumulating, and that presently a fall would
come. For he responded to the moods of Nature like a fine barometer.
And the knowledge, this time, brought into his heart a strange
little wayward emotion that was hard to account for—a feeling of
unexplained uneasiness and disquieting joy. For behind it, woven through
it rather, ran a faint exhilaration that connected remotely somewhere
with that touch of delicious alarm, that tiny anticipating “dread,”
that so puzzled him when he thought of his next meeting with his skating
companion of the night. It lay beyond all words, all telling, this queer
relationship between the two; but somehow the girl and snow ran in a
pair across his mind.
Perhaps for imaginative writing-men, more than for other workers,
the smallest change of mood betrays itself at once. His work at any rate
revealed this slight shifting of emotional values in his soul. Not that
his writing suffered, but that it altered, subtly as those changes of
sky or sea or landscape that come with the passing of afternoon into
evening—imperceptibly. A subconscious excitement sought to push
outwards and express itself. . . and, knowing the uneven effect such
moods produced in his work, he laid his pen aside and took instead to
reading that he had to do.
Meanwhile the brilliance passed from the sunshine, the sky grew
slowly overcast; by dusk the mountain tops came singularly close and
sharp; the distant valley rose into absurdly near perspective. The
moisture increased, rapidly approaching saturation point, when it must
fall in snow. Hibbert watched and waited.
And in the morning the world lay smothered beneath its fresh
white carpet. It snowed heavily till noon, thickly, incessantly,
chokingly, a foot or more; then the sky cleared, the sun came out in
splendour, the wind shifted back to the east, and frost came down upon
the mountains with its keenest and most biting tooth. The drop in the
temperature was tremendous, but the skiers were jubilant. Next day the
“running” would be fast and perfect. Already the mass was settling,
and the surface freezing into those moss-like, powdery crystals that
make the ski run almost of their own accord with the faint “sishing”
as of a bird’s wings through the air.
That night there was excitement in the little hotel-world, first
because there was a bal costumé, but chiefly because the new snow had come. And Hibbert
went—felt drawn to go; he did not go in costume, but he wanted to
talk about the slopes and skiing with the other men, and at the same
time. . . .
Ah, there was the truth, the deeper necessity that called. For
the singular connection between the stranger and the snow again betrayed
itself, utterly beyond explanation as before, but vital and insistent.
Some hidden instinct in his pagan soul—heaven knows how he phrased it
even to himself, if he phrased it at all—whispered that with the snow
the girl would be somewhere about, would emerge from her hiding place,
would even look for him.
Absolutely unwarranted it was. He laughed while he stood before
the little glass and trimmed his moustache, tried to make his black tie
sit straight, and shook down his dinner jacket so that it should lie
upon the shoulders without a crease. His brown eyes were very bright.
“I look younger than I usually do,” he thought. It was unusual, even
significant, in a man who had no vanity about his appearance and
certainly never questioned his age or tried to look younger than he was.
Affairs of the heart, with one tumultuous exception that left no fuel
for lesser subsequent fires, had never troubled him. The forces of his
soul and mind not called upon for “work” and obvious duties, all
went to Nature. The desolate, wild places of the earth were what he
loved; night, and the beauty of the stars and snow. And this evening he
felt their claims upon him mightily stirring. A rising wildness caught
his blood, quickened his pulse, woke longing and passion too. But
chiefly snow. The snow whirred softly through his thoughts like white,
seductive dreams. . . For the snow had come; and She, it seemed, had
somehow come with it—into his mind.
And yet he stood before that twisted mirror and pulled his tie
and coat askew a dozen times, as though it mattered. “What in the
world is up with me?” he thought. Then, laughing a little, he turned
before leaving the room to put his private papers in order. The green
morocco desk that held them he took down from the shelf and laid upon
the table. Tied to the lid was the visiting card with his brother’s
London address “in case of accident.” On the way down to the hotel
he wondered why he had done this, for though imaginative, he was not the
kind of man who dealt in presentiments. Moods with him were strong, but
ever held in leash.
“It’s almost like a warning,” he thought, smiling. He drew
his thick coat tightly round the throat as the freezing air bit at him.
“Those warnings one reads of in stories sometimes . . . !”
A delicious happiness was in his blood. Over the edge of the
hills across the valley rose the moon. He saw her silver sheet the world
of snow. Snow covered all. It smothered sound and distance. It smothered
houses, streets, and human beings. It smothered—life.
In the hall there was light and bustle; people were already
arriving from the other hotels and châlets, their costumes hidden
beneath many wraps. Groups of men in evening dress stood about smoking,
talking “snow” and “skiing.” The band was tuning up. The claims
of the hotel-world clashed about him faintly as of old. At the big glass
windows of the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their way home
from the café to peer.
Hibbert thought laughingly of that conflict he used to imagine. He
laughed because it suddenly seemed so unreal. He belonged so utterly to
Nature and the mountains, and especially to those desolate slopes where
now the snow lay thick and fresh and sweet, that there was no question
of a conflict at all. The power of the newly fallen snow had caught him,
proving it without effort. Out there, upon those lonely reaches of the
moonlit ridges, the snow lay ready—masses and masses of it—cool,
soft, inviting. He longed for it. It awaited him. He thought of the
intoxicating delight of skiing in the moonlight. . . .
Thus, somehow, in vivid flashing vision, he thought of it while
he stood there smoking with the other men and talking all the “shop”
of skiing.
And, ever mysteriously blended with this power of the snow,
poured also through his inner being the power of the girl. He could not
disabuse his mind of the insinuating presence of the two together. He
remembered that queer skating-impulse of ten days ago, the impulse that
had let her in. That any mind, even an imaginative one, could pass
beneath the sway of such a fancy was strange enough; and Hibbert, while
fully aware of the disorder, yet found a curious joy in yielding to it.
This insubordinate centre that drew him towards old pagan beliefs had
assumed command. With a kind of sensuous pleasure he let himself be
conquered.
And snow that night seemed in everybody’s thoughts. The dancing
couples talked of it; the hotel proprietors congratulated one another;
it meant good sport and satisfied their guests; every one was planning
trips and expeditions, talking of slopes and telemarks, of flying speed
and distance, of drifts and crust and frost. Vitality and enthusiasm
pulsed in the very air; all were alert and active, positive, radiating
currents of creative life even into the stuffy atmosphere of that
crowded ball-room. And the snow had caused it, the snow had brought it;
all this discharge of eager sparkling energy was due primarily to
the—Snow.
But in the mind of Hibbert, by some swift alchemy of his pagan
yearnings, this energy became transmuted.
It rarefied itself, gleaming in white and crystal currents of
passionate anticipation, which he transferred, as by a species of
electrical imagination, into the personality of the girl—the Girl of
the Snow. She somewhere was waiting for him, expecting him, calling to
him softly from those leagues of moonlit mountain. He remembered the
touch of that cool, dry hand; the soft and icy breath against his cheek;
the hush and softness of her presence in the way she came and the way
she had gone again——like a flurry of snow the wind sent gliding up
the slopes. She, like himself, belonged out there. He fancied that he
heard her little windy voice come sifting to him through the snowy
branches of the trees, calling his name . . . that haunting little voice
that dived straight to the centre of his life as once, long years ago,
two other voices used to do. . . .
But nowhere among the costumed dancers did he see her slender
figure. He danced with one and all, distrait and absent, a stupid
partner as each girl discovered, his eyes ever turning towards the door
and windows, hoping to catch the luring face, the vision that did not
come . . . and at length, hoping even against hope. For the ball-room
thinned; groups left one by one, going home to their hotels and châlets;
the band tired obviously; people sat drinking lemon-squashes at the
little tables, the men mopping their foreheads, everybody ready for
bed.
It was close on midnight. As Hibbert passed through the hall to
get his overcoat and snow-boots, he saw men in the passage by the
“sport-room,” greasing their ski against an early start. Knapsack
luncheons were being ordered by the kitchen swing doors. He sighed.
Lighting a cigarette a friend offered him, he returned a confused reply
to some question as to whether he could join their party in the morning.
It seemed he did not hear it properly. He passed through the outer
vestibule between the double glass doors, and went into the night.
The man who asked the question watched him go, an expression of
anxiety momentarily in his eyes.
“Don’t think he heard you,” said another, laughing.
“You’ve got to shout to Hibbert, his mind’s so full of his
work.”
“He works too hard,” suggested the first, “full of queer
ideas and dreams.”
But Hibbert’s silence was not rudeness. He had not caught the
invitation, that was all. The call of the hotel-world had faded. He no
longer heard it. Another wilder call was sounding in his ears.
For up the street he had seen a little figure moving. Close
against the shadows of the baker’s shop it glided-white, slim,
enticing.
And at once into his mind passed the hush and softness of the
snow—yet with it a searching, crying wildness for the heights. He knew
by some incalculable, swift instinct she would not meet him in the
village street. It was not there, amid crowding houses, she would speak
to him. Indeed, already she had disappeared, melted from view up the
white vista of the moonlit road. Yonder, he divined, she waited where
the highway narrowed abruptly into the mountain path beyond the châlets.
It did not even occur to him to hesitate; mad though it seemed,
and was—this sudden craving for the heights with her, at least for
open spaces where the snow lay thick and fresh—it was too imperious to
be denied. He does not remember going up to his room, putting the
sweater over his evening clothes, and getting into the fur gauntlet
gloves and the helmet cap of wool. Most certainly he has no recollection
of fastening on his ski; he must have done it automatically. Some
faculty of normal observation was in abeyance, as it were. His mind was
out beyond the village—out with the snowy mountains and the moon.
Henri Défago, putting up the shutters over his café
windows, saw him pass, and wondered mildly: “Un monsieur qui fait
du ski à cette heure! Il est Anglais, done . . .
!” He shrugged his shoulders, as though a man had the right to
choose his own way of death. And Marthe Perotti, the hunchback wife of
the shoemaker, looking by chance from her window, caught his figure
moving swiftly up the road. She had other thoughts, for she knew and
believed the old traditions of the witches and snow-beings that steal
the souls of men. She had even heard, ’twas said, the dreaded
“synagogue” pass roaring down the street at night, and now, as then,
she hid her eyes. “They’ve called to him ... and he must go,” she
murmured, making the sign of the cross.
But no one sought to stop him. Hibbert recalls only a single
incident until he found himself beyond the houses, searching for her
along the fringe of forest where the moonlight met the snow in a
bewildering frieze of fantastic shadows. And the incident was simply
this—that he remembered passing the church. Catching the outline of
its tower against the stars, he was aware of a faint sense of
hesitation. A vague uneasiness came and went— jarred unpleasantly
across the flow of his excited feelings, chilling exhilaration. He
caught the instant’s discord, dismissed it, and—passed on. The
seduction of the snow smothered the hint before he realised that it had
brushed the skirts of warning.
And then he saw her. She stood there waiting in a little clear
space of shining snow, dressed all in white, part of the moonlight and
the glistening background, her slender figure just discernible.
“I waited, for I knew you would come,” the silvery little
voice of windy beauty floated down to him. “You had
to come.”
“I’m ready,” he answered. “I knew it too.”
The world of Nature caught him to its heart in those few words—the
wonder and the glory of the night and snow. Life leaped within him. The
passion of his pagan soul exulted, rose in joy, flowed out to her. He
neither reflected nor considered, but let himself go like the veriest
schoolboy in the wildness of first love.
“Give me your hand,” he cried, “I’m coming . . . !”
“A little farther on, a little higher,” came her delicious
answer. “Here it is too near the village—and the church.”
And the words seemed wholly right and natural; he did not dream
of questioning them; he understood that, with this little touch of
civilisation in sight, the familiarity he suggested was impossible. Once
out upon the open mountains, ’mid the freedom of huge slopes and
towering peaks, the stars and moon to witness and the wilderness of snow
to watch, they could taste an innocence of happy intercourse free from
the dead conventions that imprison literal minds.
He urged his pace, yet did not quite overtake her. The girl kept
always just a little bit ahead of his best efforts. . . And soon they
left the trees behind and passed on to the enormous slopes of the sea of
snow that rolled in mountainous terror and beauty to the stars. The
wonder of the white world caught him away. Under the steady moonlight it
was more than haunting. It was a living, white, bewildering power that
deliciously confused the senses and laid a spell of wild perplexity upon
the heart. It was a personality that cloaked, and yet revealed, itself
through all this sheeted whiteness of snow. It rose, went with him, fled
before, and followed after. Slowly it dropped lithe, gleaming arms about
his neck, gathering him in. . . .
Certainly some soft persuasion coaxed his very soul, urging him
ever forwards, upwards, on towards the higher icy slopes. Judgment and
reason left their throne, it seemed, completely, as in the madness of
intoxication. The girl, slim and seductive, kept always just ahead, so
that he never quite came up with her. He saw the white enchantment of
her face and figure, something that streamed about her neck flying like
a wreath of snow in the wind, and heard the alluring accents of her
whispering voice that called from time to time: “A little farther on,
a little higher. . . . Then we’ll run home together!”
Sometimes he saw her hand stretched out to find his own, but each
time, just as he came up with her, he saw her still in front, the hand
and arm withdrawn. They took a gentle angle of ascent. The toil seemed
nothing. In this crystal, wine-like air fatigue vanished. The sishing of
the ski through the powdery surface of the snow was the only sound that
broke the stillness; this, with his breathing and the rustle of her
skirts, was all he heard. Cold moonshine, snow, and silence held the
world. The sky was black, and the peaks beyond cut into it like frosted
wedges of iron and steel. Far below the valley slept, the village long
since hidden out of sight. He felt that he could never tire. . . . The
sound of the church clock rose from time to time faintly through the
air—more and more distant.
“Give me your hand. It’s time now to turn back.”
“Just one more slope,” she laughed. “That ridge above us.
Then we’ll make for home.” And her low voice mingled pleasantly with
the purring of their ski. His now seemed harsh and ugly by comparison.
“But I have never come so high before. It’s glorious! This
world of silent snow and moonlight—and you. You’re a child of the snow, I swear. Let me come up—closer—to
see your face—and touch your little hand.”
Her laughter answered him.
“Come on! A little higher. Here we’re quite alone
together.”
“It’s magnificent,” he cried. “But why did you hide away
so long? I’ve looked and searched for you in vain ever since we
skated—” he was going to say “ten days ago,” but the accurate
memory of time had gone from him; he was not sure whether it was days or
years or minutes. His thoughts of earth were scattered and confused.
“You looked for me in the wrong places,” he heard her murmur
just above him. “You looked in places where I never go. Hotels and
houses kill me. I avoid them.” She laughed—a fine, shrill, windy
little laugh.
‘‘I loathe them too—”
He stopped. The girl had suddenly come quite close. A breath of
ice passed through his very soul. She had touched him.
“But this awful cold!” he cried out, sharply, “this
freezing cold that takes me. The wind is rising; it’s a wind of ice.
Come, let us turn . . . !”
But when he plunged forward to hold her, or at least to look, the
girl was gone again. And something in the way she stood there a few feet
beyond, and stared down into his eyes so steadfastly in silence, made
him shiver. The moonlight was behind her, but in some odd way he could
not focus sight upon her face, although so close. The gleam of eyes he
caught, but all the rest seemed white and snowy as though he looked
beyond her—out into space. . . .
The sound of the church bell came up faintly from the valley far
below, and he counted the strokes—five. A sudden, curious weakness
seized him as he listened. Deep within it was, deadly yet somehow sweet,
and hard to resist. He felt like sinking down upon the snow and lying
there. . . . They had been climbing for five hours. . . . It was, of
course, the warning of complete exhaustion.
With a great effort he fought and overcame it. It passed away as
suddenly as it came.
“We’ll turn,” he said with a decision he hardly felt. “It
will be dawn before we reach the village again. Come at once. It’s
time for home.”
The sense of exhilaration had utterly left him. An emotion that
was akin to fear swept coldly through him. But her whispering answer
turned it instantly to terror—a terror that gripped him horribly and
turned him weak and unresisting.
“Our home is—here!” A burst
of wild, high laughter, loud and shrill, accompanied the words. It was
like a whistling wind. The wind had
risen, and clouds obscured the moon. “A little higher—where we
cannot hear the wicked bells,” she cried, and for the first time
seized him deliberately by the hand. She moved, was suddenly close
against his face. Again she touched him.
And Hibbert tried to turn away in escape, and so trying, found
for the first time that the power of the snow—that other power which
does not exhilarate but deadens effort—was upon him. The suffocating
weakness that it brings to exhausted men, luring them to the sleep of
death in her clinging soft embrace, lulling the will and conquering all
desire for life—this was awfully upon him. His feet were heavy and
entangled. He could not turn or move.
The girl stood in front of him, very near; he felt her chilly
breath upon his cheeks; her hair passed blindingly across his eyes; and
that icy wind came with her. He saw her whiteness close; again, it
seemed, his sight passed through her into space as though she had no
face. Her arms were round his neck. She drew him softly downwards to his
knees. He sank; he yielded utterly; he obeyed. Her weight was upon him,
smothering, delicious. The snow was to his waist. . . . She kissed him
softly on the lips, the eyes, all over his face. And then she spoke his
name in that voice of love and wonder, the voice that held the accent of
two others—both taken over long ago by Death—the voice of his
mother, and of the woman he had loved.
He made one more feeble effort to resist. Then, realising even
while he struggled that this soft weight about his heart was sweeter
than anything life could ever bring, he let his muscles relax, and sank
back into the soft oblivion of the covering snow. Her wintry kisses bore
him into sleep.
They say that men who know the sleep of exhaustion in the snow
find no awakening on the hither side of death. . . . The hours passed
and the moon sank down below the white world’s rim. Then, suddenly,
there came a little crash upon his breast and neck, and Hibbert—woke.
He slowly turned bewildered, heavy eyes upon the desolate
mountains, stared dizzily about him, tried to rise. At first his muscles
would not act; a numbing, aching pain possessed him. He uttered a long,
thin cry for help, and heard its faintness swallowed by the wind. And
then he understood vaguely why he was only warm—not dead. For this
very wind that took his cry had built up a sheltering mound of driven
snow against his body while he slept. Like a curving wave it ran beside
him. It was the breaking of its over-toppling edge that caused the
crash, and the coldness of the mass against his neck that woke him.
Dawn kissed the eastern sky; pale gleams of gold shot every peak
with splendour; but ice was in the air, and the dry and frozen snow blew
like powder from the surface of the slopes. He saw the points of his ski
projecting just below him. Then he—remembered. It seems he had just
strength enough to realise that, could he but rise and stand, he might
fly with terrific impetus towards the woods and village far beneath. The
ski would carry him. But if he failed and fell. . . !
How he contrived it Hibbert never knew; this fear of death
somehow called out his whole available reserve force. He rose slowly,
balanced a moment, then, taking the angle of an immense zigzag, started
down the awful slopes like an arrow from a bow. And automatically the
splendid muscles of the practised skier and athlete saved and guided
him, for he was hardly conscious of controlling either speed or
direction. The snow stung face and eyes like fine steel shot; ridge
after ridge flew past; the summits raced across the sky; the valley
leaped up with bounds to meet him. He scarcely felt the ground beneath
his feet as the huge slopes and distance melted before the lightning
speed of that descent from death to life.
He took it in four mile-long zigzags, and it was the turning at
each corner that nearly finished him, for then the strain of balancing
taxed to the verge of collapse the remnants of his strength.
Slopes that have taken hours to climb can be descended in a short
half-hour on ski, but Hibbert had lost all count of time. Quite other
thoughts and feelings mastered him in that wild, swift dropping through
the air that was like the flight of a bird. For ever close upon his
heels came following forms and voices with the whirling snow-dust. He
heard that little silvery voice of death and laughter at his back.
Shrill and wild, with the whistling of the wind past his ears, he caught
its pursuing tones; but in anger now, no longer soft and coaxing. And it
was accompanied; she did not follow alone. It seemed a host of these
flying figures of the snow chased madly just behind him. He felt them
furiously smite his neck and cheeks, snatch at his hands and try to
entangle his feet and ski in drifts. His eyes they blinded, and they
caught his breath away.
The terror of the heights and snow and winter desolation urged
him forward in the maddest race with death a human being ever knew; and
so terrific was the speed that before the gold and crimson had left the
summits to touch the ice-lips of the lower glaciers, he saw the friendly
forest far beneath swing up and welcome him.
And it was then, moving slowly along the edge of the woods, he
saw a light. A man was carrying it. A procession of human figures was
passing in a dark line laboriously through the snow. And—he heard
the sound of chanting.
Instinctively, without a second’s hesitation, he changed his
course. No longer flying at an angle as before, he pointed his ski
straight down the mountain-side. The dreadful steepness did not frighten
him. He knew full well it meant a crashing tumble at the bottom, but he
also knew it meant a doubling of his speed—with safety at the end.
For, though no definite thought passed through his mind, he understood
that it was the village curé’ who
carried that little gleaming lantern in the dawn, and that he was taking
the Host to a châlet on the lower slopes—to some peasant in
extremis. He remembered her terror of the church and bells. She
feared the holy symbols.
There was one last wild cry in his ears as he started, a shriek
of the wind before his face, and a rush of stinging snow against closed
eyelids—and then he dropped through empty space. Speed took sight
from him. It seemed he flew off the surface of the world.
*
* *
Indistinctly he recalls the murmur of men’s voices, the touch
of strong arms that lifted him, and the shooting pains as the ski were
unfastened from the twisted ankle . . . for when he opened his eyes
again to normal life he found himself lying in his bed at the post
office with the doctor at his side. But for years to come the story of
“mad Hibbert’s” skiing at night is recounted in that mountain
village. He went, it seems, up slopes, and to a height that no man in
his senses ever tried before. The tourists were agog about it for the
rest of the season, and the very same day two of the bolder men went
over the actual ground and photographed the slopes. Later Hibbert saw
these photographs. He noticed one curious thing about them-though he
did not mention it to any one:
There was only a single track.
Champléry
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From Your Dark Side
