VI

The next week was devoted to introducing the Mother to her new

surroundings. Our trips were limited by her tendency to get asthma when

climbing and her inability to go anywhere near the edge of a precipice.

Even when the path was several feet wide, as on the way to the Bäregg,

the consciousness of a down-drop made her “dizzy in the knees.” But

there were plenty of beautiful walks to take within these limits. And

her enthusiasm over the life and the land would have inspired the

rest of us if we had not been already profoundly convinced of the

blessedness of our lot.

We did one thing during this interval which I don’t doubt would brand

us as proper inmates for a lunatic asylum in the esteem of all the good

respectable conventional people in the world. We spent a night on the

Männlichen rolled up in steamer rugs watching the moon! Frater proposed

it first to me. He and I have a fondness for the Voices of the Night

and have roughed it enough together to know we can sleep on the ground

now and then without catching cold or feeling cross next morning. Belle

Soeur and Antonio decided that they wanted to come too, and the noble

spirit in which they bore the hardships of the occasion proved that

they were qualified for admission to the Inner Circle.

We left in the afternoon, a little later than we should have done,

for we were rather heavily loaded down with jackets and rugs and our

prospective supper, and we were going all the way on foot this time by

the direct Männlichen path, which we had only come down before, and it

takes longer to go up than to come down! However, by pressing our steps

to a slightly uncomfortable degree, we got to the summit _just_ in time

for sunset.

The scene of the next few minutes before the blood red had faded from

the west, is one of the pictures indelibly burned into my memory. We

stood there silently drinking it in, the boys for the first time, Belle

Soeur and I loving it the more for having known it before. For a while

we watched the details blurring under the on-stealing twilight. Then

hunger asserted itself, and we found a place below the summit, somewhat

sheltered from the biting winds, where we perched ourselves on a ridge

like crows and did ample justice to the contents of the paper parcels

that the boys drew from their knapsacks.

Then it occurred to us that we had better use the small remaining

aftermath of daylight to find some spots sheltered from the wind and

level enough to sleep on. It seems absurd to say that on the whole

mountain-side there was no place level enough to lie down on without

slipping off. Yet it was very nearly true. The summit was swept by a

blast of icy wind. The snow-drifts had disappeared since we were there

a month before, but it was still very cold after the warming sun had

retired for the night. On the Lauterbrunnen side there was just plain

precipice, on the Grindelwald side a very steep descent divided between

stones and grass. After much searching we established ourselves on a

little shelf, barely wide enough for a person to lie on and sloping

down just enough for one to feel as if one was about to roll off.

There was nothing to hold on to, so we dug our feet into the ground

in a more or less futile attempt to secure what Frater described as a

“toe-grip.” There was a low growth of thistles in our neighborhood,

too, which drove their prickles through our steamer rugs in a rather

unpleasant fashion.

Soon the weather began to behave badly. Great banks of clouds came

up out of the depths and covered the region where the moon was due

to rise. The stars twinkled brightly overhead, but, barring a sudden

change in cloud conditions, it was evident that no moon would be

visible before the middle of the night. We hoped against hope so long

as we could, keeping up a desultory talk and a little soft-pedal

singing. Then each rolled up in his or her steamer rug, sought six feet

of shelf room, and—eventually—fell asleep.

I was awakened by a very penetrating chill in the marrow of my spinal

column, and opening my eyes, saw that there was a dim pale radiance

over the universe that had been lacking when I went to sleep. I spoke

very low. Frater answered. We crawled out of our rugs and clambered up

to the Männlichen summit.

I wonder if human eyes ever rested on a scene of more eerie

loveliness? The moon struggled through and upward at last into the

open sky, and the clouds broke away enough so that great masses of

the Eiger-Mönch-Jungfrau group came into sight, looking even more

stupendously huge from being partly hidden. The valleys seemed

bottomless abysses—their floors four thousand feet below being utterly

lost in blackness. And on the other side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley

the billowy snow peaks, quite free from clouds, rolled away, all silver

in the moonlight.

What a scene for some stupendous cosmic drama with spirits of the earth

and air for actors! How did we dare to intrude on their vigils—mere

prying interlopers that we were?

Every once in a while we had to stamp around violently and swing our

arms to get warm. Otherwise we sat quite still and almost silent,

feeling the way one ought to feel in church, but mostly doesn’t.

At last the clouds caught up with the moon and hid it, and we stumbled

sleepily down and found our rugs and sections of ledge again.

Just before sunrise it was Antonio who was awake and ready to accompany

me to the summit. The others were sleeping the sleep of the just and

declined to be aroused. It was wonderfully beautiful again—the rebirth

of the hidden world, the mountains thrusting up their mighty shoulders

above the foamy cloud-sea that filled the valleys into the faint pink

glow which was gone almost as soon as seen. As soon as the glamour

of the sunrise had faded we knew that we were ravenously hungry, and

shaking the sleepers into a similar conviction, we started for the

Männlichen Inn and hot coffee and rolls and honey.

I do not know where the people at the Inn supposed we had dropped from

at that hour. No questions were asked and no information volunteered.

The breakfast was excellent and we set out for home much refreshed.

Little by little, as we walked, our cramped muscles limbered and our

chilled blood warmed—warmed too much, in fact, before we reached the

Châlet at midday with those ton-a-piece steamer rugs over our shoulders.

[Illustration: _Mönch and Jungfrau from the Männlichen_]

The moon had not done all we had expected of it. But we felt it was

proved that the quartette was of the “right stuff” and could safely

venture on a fortnight’s pedestrian trip.