It seemed almost certain that we should find dull weather (which means
thaw) up above, when a sudden draught from some funnel of the hills came
down, making agitation and disturbance both among the low-lying mist and
the higher clouds. The former was vanquished first, and, torn to ribbons
by the wind, and scorched up by a sudden divine gleam of sun that smote
downwards, disclosed in its vanishing the long, piney sides of an
upward-leading gorge. The higher clouds, being thicker, took longer to
disperse, I suppose, for at its farther end the gorge was still full of
scudding vapours. Then suddenly they cleared, and high, high above, a
vignette of fairyland--the Jungfrau herself, queen of the snows--stood
out in glacier, and snowfield, and peak, against a sky of incredible
blue. There she stood in full blaze of sunshine, the silver-crystal
maiden, donned in blue, enough to open the eyes of the blind and make
the dumb mouth sing.
Then afterwards, as the little Turkish bath of a train went heavenwards,
how magical and divine a change happened! Inside the steamy carriages,
smelling of railway-bags, and rugs, and forgotten sandwiches, it was not
possible to see through the condensation on the window-panes, but the
blood that trots through the body knew the change, and took a more
staccato note. Then--I suppose that travelling stupidity had seized us
both--it suddenly occurred to Helen that we might, without fear of
prosecution, put the windows down, though by a printed notice of
by-laws of the railway it was still defended that we should not agitate
ourselves out of it. Once a ticket-puncher, exactly like a figure out of
Noah’s ark, put them scowlingly up again; but with the boldness that
this whiff of mountain-air supplied, we again lowered them, after a
further consultation of the by-laws.
The ineffable change had begun. Soon for the moistness of the lowland
there was exchanged a hint of frost--something that made outlines a
little more determinate, a little crisper. Then, as we mounted higher,
there was further change. For dripping twigs of the trees there were
trees that showed a hard, white outline of frost; for the sullen muddy
stream there was clearer water, that went on its way beneath half-formed
lids of ice; and thinner and thinner above our heads grew the grey
blanket of cloud.
Then that, too, was folded away, and above is was the sun and the
sparkling of the unending firmament. Below it had been like a London
fog, when you cannot see the tops of the shrouded houses; now we saw the
roofs of the world, the Queen Anne’s mansion of Europe, all clean, all
clear, just as they were when I saw this land three years ago. No tile
had slipped, no chimney-pot required repairs. The top of the world was
good. Oh, how good!
The clear dry air, the sunset lights on the peaks, the liquid twilight
(keen as snuff to the nostril), from which the sun had gone! There was
the rose-tinted Wetterhorn, black Eiger, flaming finger of
Finster-Aarhorn; or, on more human plane, the hiss of skates over the
perfect ice, the passage of a toboggan, with a little Swiss girl holding
in front of her a baby sister, and steering with her heels, and shrilly
shouting ‘_Achtung!_’ There was ‘Madame’ who keeps a restaurant (I do
not know her name), standing to see the train-passengers come in, and
shaking hands, and saying, ‘You shall have wings to-morrow, no legs’
(alluding to an amiable altercation of three years ago, when I drew a
kind but firm sort of line about eating chickens’ legs for lunch on four
consecutive days); and there was the beerman, whose admirable beverage I
always drank at 11.30 a.m., being thirsty with skating; and there was a
skater I knew, who attempted a rather swift back-bracket for the
admiration of the new arrivals by the train to see, and fell down in a
particularly complicated manner in the middle of it; and there was the
barrack of an hotel which always smells of roasting leather, because
people put their skates and boots on the hot-water pipes, and right
above it was the Mettelhorn; and to the left was the Lady Wetterhorn;
and to the right the smooth, steely-looking toboggan-run down into the
valley. ‘Oh, world----’ I beg your pardon.
I have omitted to mention the magic word on our luggage-labels,
‘Grindelwald.’
Three years ago, I must tell you, among other foolish and futile deeds,
I made a _cache_ underneath a particular tree on the path leading to the
Scheidegg, consisting, as far as I remember, of chocolate, coins, and
matches. These insignificant facts I published in another place, and
since then I have received every winter mysterious letters from
Grindelwald, showing that other people are as absurd as myself. My
_cache_, in fact, has been found (I gave directions which I hoped would
be sufficient), and it has been, so these letters tell me, enriched by
other secret and beautiful things. There has been placed there, on
separate occasions, by separate passionate pilgrims, all manner of
store, and the very next morning, instead of going to skate, Helen and I
skulked off with a toboggan to see what we should find. A poem on the
Wetterhorn, so I had been informed, was there, to form the nucleus of a
library; there were a tin of potted meat and some caramels for the
larder; and furniture had been added by a third person in the shape of a
lead soldier and an ink-bottle; while the exchequer, I knew, also had
been enriched by at least half a franc in nickel pieces. We had debated
earnestly last night as to what to add to the establishment, if we found
it, and eventually decided on a handkerchief, which is to be regarded by
passionate pilgrims as a tablecloth, a reel of cotton, and a copy of
‘Shirley’ in the sixpenny edition, to swell the library shelves. This
latter was in a small linen bag, to keep it from the wet.
Of course, we did not expect to find all the objects that I had been
informed had been placed there from time to time, for the rule of the
_cache_ is that you may use what you find there, provided only you
replace it with something else. The potted meat, for instance, one could
not expect to go undiscussed, and I cannot personally conceive leaving
caramels uneaten. But in place of those, if only passionate pilgrims had
played the game, we should find other objects. Thus the _cache_ becomes
a sort of exchange and mart--a reciprocal table laid in the wilderness,
where you take one dish and replace it with another.
How it all savours of romance to the childish mind! With agitated
fingers you scoop away the earth and moss which form the entrance to the
_cache_, under a pine tree on the empty, frozen hillside, and you know
you will find treasure of some kind, but what it is you cannot possibly
tell. And inviolable secrecy must surround and embellish your manœuvres;
the _cache_ should not be mentioned at all except discreetly to the
elect, for it partakes of Freemasonry, the masons of which are those who
delight in idiotic proceedings. But just as three years ago I gave the
inventory of the _cache_ as it was then, so in the minds of the idiotic
there may be felt some interest as to its inventory when the founder
again revisited it. _Caches_, of course, are socialistic in spirit, and
anybody may appropriate whatever he chooses; but I should be glad if the
copy of ‘Shirley’ is left there. It is such a pleasant book to read
after lunch, if you are tobogganing alone. A book, at any rate, is
rather a good thing to have in a _cache_, and the wishes of the founder
will be satisfied if another book is put there instead. But let us have
a book. I should prefer that it should not be the ‘Encyclopædia
Britannica.’
The morning, I think, must have been ordered on purpose, for I can
imagine nothing so exquisite being served up in the ordinary way, _à la
carte_; such weather must have been specially chosen. Not a single
ripple of air stirred; an unflecked sky was overhead, and the sun, as we
set off, just topped the hills to the south-east, and sat like a huge
golden bandbox on the rim of them. The frost had been severe in the
night, but in this windlessness and entire absence of moisture no
feeling of cold reached one. There was in the air a briskness of
quality more than magical; it was as if made of ice and fire and wine,
and in a sort of intoxication we slid down into the valley. Then,
crossing the stream, since there was water about, it suddenly seemed
desperately chill; but no sooner had we mounted a dozen yards of ascent
again than the same dry kindling of the blood reasserted itself.
Toboggans will not run of their own accord uphill, so I put ours under
my arm, and for a hundred yards we danced a _pas de quatre_ up the
trodden snow. We both sang all the time, different tunes, when suddenly
we saw a clergyman observing us from a few yards ahead. He had a wildish
and severe eye, and we stopped. David before the Ark would have stopped
if he had unexpectedly come on that man. He was sitting in the snow, and
wore a black hat, black coat, and black trousers, but he had yellow
boots. He kept his eye on us all the time that we were within sight, and
seemed to have no other occupation. We neither of us dared to look round
till we had left him some way behind, neither did we dare to dance
again. Eventually I turned my head to look at him from behind a tree.
He was still sitting in the snow, not on a rug, you understand, nor on a
toboggan, nor on any of the things upon which you usually sit in the
snow. He was not breakfasting or lunching or looking at the view. He was
sitting in the snow, and that was all. I have no explanation of any kind
to offer about this unusual incident. Helen thinks he was mad. That very
likely is the case, but it is an interesting form of mania. Perhaps
by-and-by we shall have an asylum for snow-sitters. Or is it a new kind
of rest-cure?
It is astonishing how you can argue about things of which you know
nothing. Indeed, I think that all proper arguments are based on
ignorance. If you know anything whatever on the subject of which you are
talking, you produce a fact of some kind, which knocks argument flat. It
is only possible to reason rightly on those subjects concerning which no
fact, except the phenomenon itself, is ascertainable. Had we asked the
clergyman why he sat in the snow, he would probably have told us, and
the subject would have ceased to interest us conversationally. As it
was, we held heated debate upon him, just as if he was the Education
Bill, for a long time. But the unusualness of it merited attention and
conjecture. And think how divine an opening for conversation at
dinner-parties, if you know nothing of your neighbour, and have not
caught her name.
‘Did you ever see a clergyman sitting in the snow?’
That, in fact, was the outcome of our argument. No theory about him
would really hold water. He was probably a conversational gambit, which
might lead to much. For instance, in answer to your question, your
interlocutor might reply in five obvious ways:
1. ‘I once saw a clergyman, but he was not sitting in the snow.’
2. ‘I have seen snow, but I never saw a clergyman sitting in it.’
3. ‘I once saw a clergyman being snowballed.’
4. ‘Yes. What are your views about the best treatment for the insane?’
5. ‘Such strange things happen at Grindelwald. Did you know----’
Yes; he was probably a conversational opening made manifest to mortal
eyes. Anyhow, when we returned he was not sitting there. If he had been
real, he probably would have been--at least, if you once sit in the snow
there is no reason why you should ever get up. Obviously it is your
_métier_.
Now, everybody who lives in fogs and rainy places will fail to
understand anything of these last deplorable pages. But if they go to
the thin clear air of Alps in winter, they will know that this sort of
thing (given you have the luck to see a clergyman sitting in the snow)
is invested with supreme importance. When the hot sun shines on ice, it
produces some kindly confusion of the brain; there is no longer any
point in trying to be clever or well-informed, or witty, or any of those
things that are supposed to convey distinction down below to their
fortunate possessors: you go back to mere existence and joy of life. It
is a trouble to be consecutive or conduct a reasonable argument;
instead, you open your mouth and say anything that happens to come out
of it. Most frequently what issues is laughter, but apart from that, the
only conversation you can indulge in is preposterous and the only
behaviour possible is childish. That is why I love these roofs of the
world. The intoxication of interstellar space is in the air. Everything
is so light--you, your body, your mind, your tongue, your aims and
objects. The only things that you take seriously are the things that do
not matter: the snow-sitter was one, the _cache_ was another. But as we
got nearer the _cache_, we became even more solemn than on the question
of the snow-sitter. There was no telling what we should find there, even
if we found the place at all. The tree might have been cut down since
last year; the whole _cache_ might have been rifled by some imperceptive
hand. There was no end to the list of untoward circumstances that might
have despoiled us.
And so we went through the wood: we came to the end of it, and there was
a tree--‘of many one,’ as Mr. Wordsworth prophetically remarked. On its
roots were cut my humble initials: it was certainly The Tree.
‘Oh, quick, quick!’ said Helen; ‘let us know the worst!’
The root had arched a little since I saw it last. Moss and snow were
plastered on it in a manner scarcely natural. I plucked the bandage
away with hands that trembled. We found:
1. A pencil.
2. Something sticky, which I believe to have been the caramels.
3. An empty potted-meat tin, with a wisp of paper inside it, on which
was written: ‘I ate it. Quite excellent.’
4. A candle-end.
5. The famous poem on the Wetterhorn done up in canvas. (How laudable!)
6. A Jock-Scot, salmon-trout size.
7. A paper on which was written: ‘What’s the point?’
8. A cigarette, very sloppy.
9. A five-franc piece, wrapped up in paper, on which was written: ‘I
took 4.50 away.’
10. A little wooden pill-box containing a very small moonstone.
I think we were very moderate in our exchanges, which is right, since
you must always leave the _cache_ richer for your presence, and we
merely took away the pencil and the poem on the Wetterhorn, leaving our
handkerchief, the reel of cotton, and the copy of ‘Shirley.’ Below the
question ‘What’s the point?’ we wrote, ‘None, if you can’t see it,’ and
added, ‘The founder and his wife visited the _cache_ on January 12,
1907. They saw a clergyman sitting in the snow. Selah.’
Then an awful thing happened. Even while these treasures were openly and
sumptuously spread round us, down the path there came a merry Swiss
peasant about a hundred years old. He looked at us and the treasures
with curiosity and contempt, and then burst into a perfect flood of
speech, of which neither of us understood one single word. When he
stopped, I said politely, ‘Ich weiss nicht,’ just like Parsifal, and he
began it, or something like it, all over again, with gesticulations
added, and in a rather louder tone, as if he was talking to a deaf man.
Until this torrent of gibberish was let loose on me, I had no idea how
much there was in the world that I did not know; so with the desire to
reduce _his_ opinion of himself also, I addressed him in English. I said
‘God save the King’ right through, as much as I could remember of ‘To be
or not to be’ from the play called ‘Hamlet,’ and had just begun on ‘When
the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,’ when he suddenly turned
pale, crossed himself (though it was a Protestant canton), and fairly
fled down the path. I make no doubt that he thought he had met the
devil. Anyhow, he had met his match at unintelligible conversation.
But it was clearly no use running risks, for more of the merry Swiss
might come down the path, who, it was conceivable, might not be so much
impressed by unintelligible sounds, and we hurriedly reburied the
treasure, ate our lunch, and turned the bow of the toboggan homewards,
since we proposed to skate all afternoon. It was a year since I had been
shod with steel. I burned for the frozen surface. But it was right to
see to the _cache_ first. There are some things you cannot wait for.
We spent three weeks in these divine futilities, if anything so utterly
enjoyable can be considered futile. For my part, I do not believe it
can, since, as I have already said, to enjoy a thing very much,
supposing always that it does not injure anybody else, is a gilt-edged
investment of your time; for enjoyment is not (as is falsely supposed)
finished with when the thing itself is done and over, for it is just
then that the high interest of it (though gilt-edged) begins to be paid.
Until one forgets about it (and by a merciful dispensation one remembers
what is pleasant far longer and far more keenly than what is painful),
subsequent days and hours are all enriched, and therefore made more
productive, by these pleasurable memories. It is here, I think, that a
wonderfully fresh and vivid student of the human mind--namely, R. L.
Stevenson--goes all wrong when he says that the past is all of one
texture. It seems to me--one is only responsible for one’s own
experience--to be of two textures, one strong and the other weak; and
the strong one is the memory of things you have enjoyed, of happy days;
the other of times when, for some reason or other--pain, or anxiety, or
fear--the lights have been low, and the sound of the grinding not low,
but loud. The human mind, in fact, is more retentive of its pleasures
than of its pain. In the moment of the happening either may seem the top
note of acuteness, but the echoes of the one indisputably live longer
than the echoes of the other; and though our consciousness, if you care
to look at it that way, is largely a haunted house of the dead hours,
yet happy ghosts are in preponderance, and seem solider than the shadows
of its dark places; also (and this, I think, too, is indubitable) the
anticipation of happiness is more acute than the anticipation of a
corresponding pain. In the future there are two textures also, as in the
past.
Since our return this contrast has been rather markedly brought before
me. There are many things I much look forward to; at the same time,
there is something ahead which I am dreading. What it is I do not know.
I think I should dread it less if I did. But it is, though quite
certain, quite vague. I connect it, however, with that evening in
September when I heard my name called, and when Legs saw something which
has since been expunged from his memory. And here is the contrast: the
happiness that lies stored for me in the hive of the future is more
potent than the bitterness that is there. Both are coming--of that I am
sure--and among the many very happy things which I know and expect, I
feel there is something I do not yet know which is happier than any. It
is futile to guess at it. One might make a hundred guesses, and each
would seem feasible of accomplishment. But there, at the back of my
mind, are these two transparencies, so to speak--one sunlit, the other
stormy--and it is through them that the events of the day are seen by
me. They colour--both of them--all I do; but the happy one is the
predominant one. They do not neutralize each other; they are both there
to their full. But I despair at giving coherently so elusive a picture
as they make in my own mind. But, though elusive, it is intensely real,
and for the first time I neither can, nor do I desire to, speak to Helen
about this thing which is so often in my mind. It is incommunicable.
But after these Swiss weeks there was not much time for me to think
about this, as it was imperatively demanded, by reasons over which I
have no control, that I should exercise my mind on the extremely
difficult art of the composition of English prose, which incidentally
implies doing two things at once; for not only have you to invent your
lively and inspiring tale, but you have to tell it in a certain way. You
may choose at the beginning any way of the hundreds that there are of
telling it; but in the key in which it is originally pitched, in that
key it has to remain all the time. As a matter of fact, it probably does
not, and goes wandering about in other modes and scales; but every book
ought to be in the one key in which it opens, just as a picture ought to
be in one key. It is within the writer’s liberties, of course, to write
other books in other keys, and I think he is perfectly justified in
largely contradicting in one work what he has unhesitatingly affirmed in
another, but in each his point of view has to be consistent throughout.
The thing is not quite so easy as it sounds, and it is further
complicated by a very real difficulty. Every story that is worth reading
at all is bound to record change in the characters and general attitude
of the people with whom it deals. The jaded author has to keep his eye
on each, and see that he behaves after some atrocious battering with
which fate has visited him in a different manner than before this
visitation took place. If he is living in any sense of the word, the
event will have altered him. He will view things differently, and
therefore behave differently. Yet all the time he is the same
personality. It were better for him that he should be as adamant to the
blows of circumstance than that the inner essence which is individuality
should be uncertainly rendered; and, like the dexterous Mr. Maskelyne
with his spinning-plates, the scribe has to keep his eye on all his
puppets to see that none lapse into stagnation, and to poke them up with
his industrious pen.
It is here that the complicated question of consistency comes in which
just now is worrying me to bewilderment. Dreadful and stinging events
are happening to a most favourite puppet of mine. Providence is dealing
with her in a cruelly ironical manner, in a way that makes the poor
distracted lady take quite fresh views of a world she thought so warm
and kindly. Yet it must be the same personality which has to be shown
sitting behind these changed feelings and directing them all. That is
the consistency that has to be observed. Otherwise it ceases to be one
story, but becomes a series of really unconnected short stories, with
the technical absurdity that the heroine in each has the same name.
Yet there is this also: it takes all sorts to make a world (at least, a
world otherwise constructed would be an extremely dull one), but It, It
itself, Life, lies somewhere in the middle of us all, and is the centre
to which we approach. We, the all sorts which make the world, view it
very differently, though we are all looking at the same object. And here
a simile, a thing usually unconvincing, may assist. What if in the
centre there is something like a great diamond, blazing in the rays of
the sun? I, from the south, see soft blue lights in it; you, from the
west, see a great ruby ray coming out of the heart of it; another on the
north says, ‘This diamond is emerald green’; while from the east it
seems of transcendent orange. So far, it is quite certain that we are
all right, for the world, so to speak, refracts God, making Him
many-hued, even as white light is refracted by the triangle of a prism.
And then let us suppose circumstances enter and shift me, who have been
on the south, where I saw blue, to the west, where I see red. The whole
colour of the world is changed to me, and yet there is no
inconsistency. The same Ego honestly sees a changed colour. There would,
on the other hand, when my place was shifted by circumstance, be grave
inconsistency if I continued to declare that I still saw blue. I do not.
My eyes tell me it is red. Just now my eyes told me it was blue. But _I_
have not changed, nor has the great diamond changed; it is merely that
the refracted light has taken another colour.
It is just that which one must perceive in the telling of a story. A
person who sees blue all his life probably sees nothing at all, nothing,
anyhow, in the least worth recording. He is bound as the wheel of
circumstances goes round to see things in other lights. But that is not
inconsistency; it is the truly consistent. Who wants, after all, for
ever to draw the same conclusion from the same premises? Only fossils,
and possibly molluscs.