Like all the little wooden inns in the higher Alps, tiny auberges
situated in the bare and rocky gorges which intersect the white summits
of the mountains, the inn of Schwarenbach is a refuge for travelers who
are crossing the Gemmi.
It is open six months in the year, and is inhabited by the family of
Jean Hauser. As soon as the snow begins to fall, and fills the valley
so as to make the road down to Loeche impassable, the father, with
mother, daughter, and the three sons depart, leaving the house in
charge of the old guide, Gaspard Hari, with the young guide, Ulrich
Kunsi, and Sam, the great mountain dog.
The two men and the dog remain till spring in their snowy prison, with
nothing before their eyes except immense, white slopes of the Balmhorn,
surrounded by light, glistening summits, and shut up, blocked up, and
buried by the snow which rises around them, enveloping and almost
burying the little house up to the eaves.
It was the day on which the Hauser family were going to return to
Loeche, as winter was approaching, and the descent was becoming
dangerous. Three mules started first, laden with baggage and led by the
three sons. Then the mother, Jeanne Hauser, and her daughter Louise
mounted a fourth mule, and set off in their turn. The father followed
them, accompanied by the two men in charge, who were to escort the
family as far as the brow of the descent. First of all they skirted the
small lake, now frozen over, at the foot of the mass of rocks which
stretched in front of the inn; then they followed the valley, which was
dominated on all sides by snow-covered peaks.
A ray of sunlight glinted into that little white, glistening, frozen
desert, illuminating it with a cold and dazzling flame. No living thing
appeared among this ocean of hills; there was no stir in that
immeasurable solitude, no noise disturbed the profound silence.
By degrees the young guide, Ulrich Kunsi, a tall, long-legged Swiss,
left daddy Hauser and old Gaspard behind, in order to catch up with the
mule which carried the two women. The younger one looked at him as he
approached, as if she would call him with her sad eyes. She was a
young, light-haired peasant girl, whose milk-white cheeks and pale hair
seemed to have lost their color by long dwelling amid the ice. When
Ulrich had caught up with the animal which carried the women, he put
his hand on the crupper, and relaxed his speed. Mother Hauser began to
talk to him, and enumerated with minutest detail all that he would have
to attend to during the winter. It was the first winter he would spend
up there, while old Hari had already spent fourteen winters amid the
snow, at the inn of Schwarenbach.
Ulrich Kunsi listened, without appearing to understand, and looked
incessantly at the girl. From time to time he replied: "Yes, Madame
Hauser"; but his thoughts seemed far away, and his calm features
remained unmoved.
They reached Lake Daube, whose broad, frozen surface reached to the
bottom of the valley. On the right, the Daubenhorn showed its black
mass, rising up in a peak above the enormous moraines of the Lommeon
glacier, which soared above the Wildstrubel. As they approached the
neck of the Gemmi, where the descent to Loeche begins, the immense
horizon of the Alps of the Valais, from which the broad, deep valley of
the Rhone separated them, came in view.
In the distance, there was a group of white, unequal, flat or pointed
mountain summits, which glistened in the sun; the Mischabel with its
twin peaks, the huge group of the Weisshorn, the heavy Brunegghorn, the
lofty and formidable pyramid of Mont Cervin, slayer of men, and the
Dent Blanche, that terrible coquette.
Then beneath them, as at the bottom of a terrible abyss, they saw
Loeche, its houses looking like grains of sand which had been thrown
into that enormous crevice which finishes and closes the Gemmi, and
which opens, down below, on to the Rhone.
The mule stopped at the edge of the path, which turns and twists
continually, zigzagging fantastically and strangely along the steep
side of the mountain, as far as the almost invisible little village at
its feet. The women jumped into the snow, and the two old men joined
them.
"Well," father Hauser said, "good-bye, and keep up your spirits till
next year, my friends," and old Hari replied: "Till next year."
They embraced each other, and then Madame Hauser in her turn, offered
her cheek, and the girl did the same. When Ulrich Kunsi's turn came, he
whispered in Louise's ear:
"Do not forget those up yonder," and she replied: "No," in such a low
voice, that he guessed what she had said, without hearing it.
"Well, adieu," Jean Hauser repeated, "and don't fall ill." Then, going
before the two women, he commenced the descent, and soon all three
disappeared at the first turn in the road, while the two men returned
to the inn at Schwarenbach.
They walked slowly side by side, without speaking. The parting was
over, and they would be alone together for four or five months. Then
Gaspard Hari began to relate his life last winter. He had remained with
Michael Canol, who was too old now to stand it; for an accident might
happen during that long solitude. They had not been dull, however; the
only thing was to be resigned to it from the first, and in the end one
would find plenty of distraction, games and other means of whiling away
the time.
Ulrich Kunsi listened to him with his eyes on the ground, for in
thought he was with those who were descending to the village. They soon
came in sight of the inn, which was scarcely visible, so small did it
look, a mere black speck at the foot of that enormous billow of snow.
When they opened the door, Sam, the great curly dog, began to romp
round them.
"Come, my boy," old Gaspard said, "we have no women now, so we must get
our own dinner ready. Go and peel the potatoes." And they both sat down
on wooden stools, and began to put the bread into the soup.
The next morning seemed very long to Kunsi. Old Hari smoked and smoked
beside the hearth, while the young man looked out of the window at the
snow-covered mountain opposite the house. In the afternoon he went out,
and going over the previous day's ground again, he looked for the
traces of the mule that had carried the two women; then when he had
reached the neck of the Gemmi, he laid himself down on his stomach, and
looked at Loeche.
The village, in its rocky pit, was not yet buried under the snow,
although the white masses came quite close to it, balked, however, of
their prey by the pine woods which protected the hamlet. From his
vantage point the low houses looked like paving-stones in a large
meadow. Hauser's little daughter was there now in one of those
gray-colored houses. In which? Ulrich Kunsi was too far away to be able
to make them out separately. How he would have liked to go down while
he was yet able!
But the sun had disappeared behind the lofty crest of the Wildstrubel,
and the young man returned to the chalet. Daddy Hari was smoking, and,
when he saw his mate come in, proposed a game of cards to him. They sat
down opposite each other for a long time and played the simple game
called brisque; then they had supper and went to bed.
The following days were like the first, bright and cold, without any
more snow. Old Gaspard spent his afternoons in watching the eagles and
other rare birds which ventured on to those frozen heights; while
Ulrich journeyed regularly to the neck of the Gemmi to look at the
village. In the evening they played at cards, dice, or dominoes, and
lost and won trifling sums, just to create an interest in the game.
One morning Hari, who was up first, called his companion. A moving
cloud of white spray, deep and light, was falling on them noiselessly,
and burying them by degrees under a dark, thick coverlet of foam. This
lasted four days and four nights. It was necessary to free the door and
the windows, to dig out a passage, and to cut steps to get over this
frozen powder, which a twelve-hours' frost had made as hard as the
granite of the moraines.
They lived like prisoners, not venturing outside their abode. They had
divided their duties and performed them regularly. Ulrich Kunsi
undertook the scouring, washing, and everything that belonged to
cleanliness. He also chopped up the wood, while Gaspard Hari did the
cooking and attended to the fire. Their regular and monotonous work was
relieved by long games at cards or dice, but they never quarreled, and
were always calm and placid. They were never even impatient or
ill-humored, nor did they ever use hard words, for they had laid in a
stock of patience for this wintering on the top of the mountain.
Sometimes old Gaspard took his rifle and went after chamois, and
occasionally killed one. Then there was a feast in the inn at
Schwarenbach, and they reveled in fresh meat. One morning he went out
as usual. The thermometer outside marked eighteen degrees of frost, and
as the sun had not yet risen, the hunter hoped to surprise the animals
at the approaches to the Wildstrubel. Ulrich, being alone, remained in
bed until ten o'clock. He was of a sleepy nature, but would not have
dared to give way like that to his inclination in the presence of the
old guide, who was ever an early riser. He breakfasted leisurely with
Sam, who also spent his days and nights in sleeping in front of the
fire; then he felt low-spirited and even frightened at the solitude,
and was seized by a longing for his daily game of cards, as one is by
the domination of an invincible habit. So he went out to meet his
companion, who was to return at four o'clock.
The snow had leveled the whole deep valley, filled up the crevasses,
obliterated all signs of the two lakes and covered the rocks, so that
between the high summits there was nothing but an immense, white,
regular, dazzling, and frozen surface. For three weeks, Ulrich had not
been to the edge of the precipice, from which he had looked down on to
the village, and he wanted to go there before climbing the slopes which
led to the Wildstrubel. Loeche was now covered by the snow, and the
houses could scarcely be distinguished, hidden as they were by that
white cloak.
Turning to the right, Ulrich reached the Lammern glacier. He strode
along with a mountaineer's long swinging pace, striking the snow, which
was as hard as a rock, with his iron-shod stick, and with piercing eyes
looking for the little black, moving speck in the distance, on that
enormous, white expanse.
When he reached the end of the glacier he stopped, and asked himself
whether the old man had taken that road, and then he began to walk
along the moraines with rapid and uneasy steps. The day was declining;
the snow was assuming a rosy tint, and a dry, frozen wind blew in rough
gusts over its crystal surface. Ulrich uttered a long, shrill,
vibrating call. His voice sped through the deathlike silence in which
the mountains were sleeping; it reached into the distance, over the
profound and motionless waves of glacial foam, like the cry of a bird
over the waves of the sea; then it died away and nothing answered him.
He started off again. The sun had sunk behind the mountain tops, which
still were purpled with the reflection from the heavens; but the depths
of the valley were becoming gray, and suddenly the young man felt
frightened. It seemed to him as if the silence, the cold, the solitude,
the wintry death of these mountains were taking possession of him, were
stopping and freezing his blood, making his limbs grow stiff, and
turning him into a motionless and frozen object; and he began to run
rapidly toward the dwelling. The old man, he thought, would have
returned during his absence. He had probably taken another road; and
would, no doubt, be sitting before the fire, with a dead chamois at his
feet.
He soon came in sight of the inn, but no smoke rose from it. Ulrich ran
faster. Opening the door he met Sam who ran up to him to greet him, but
Gaspard Hari had not returned. Kunsi, in his alarm, turned round
suddenly, as if he had expected to find his comrade hidden in a corner.
Then he relighted the fire and made the soup; hoping every moment to
see the old man come in. From time to time he went out to see if
Gaspard were not in sight. It was night now, that wan night of the
mountain, a livid night, with the crescent moon, yellow and dim, just
disappearing behind the mountain tops, and shining faintly on the edge
of the horizon.
Then the young man went in and sat down to warm his hands and feet,
while he pictured to himself every possible sort of accident. Gaspard
might have broken a leg, have fallen into a crevasse, have taken a
false step and dislocated his ankle. Perhaps he was lying on the snow,
overcome and stiff with the cold, in agony of mind, lost and perhaps
shouting for help, calling with all his might, in the silence of the
night.
But where? The mountain was so vast, so rugged, so dangerous in places,
especially at that time of the year, that it would have required ten or
twenty guides walking for a week in all directions, to find a man in
that immense space. Ulrich Kunsi, however, made up his mind to set out
with Sam, if Gaspard did not return by one in the morning; and he made
his preparations.
He put provisions for two days into a bag, took his steel
climbing-irons, tied a long, thin, strong rope round his waist and
looked to see that his iron-shod stick and his ax, which served to cut
steps in the ice, were in order. Then he waited. The fire was burning
on the hearth, the great dog was snoring in front of it, and the clock
was ticking in its case of resounding wood, as regularly as a heart
beating.
He waited, his ears on the alert for distant sounds, and shivered when
the wind blew against the roof and the walls. It struck twelve, and he
trembled. Then, as he felt frightened and shivery, he put some water on
the fire, so that he might have hot coffee before starting. When the
clock struck one he got up, woke Sam, opened the door and went off in
the direction of the Wildstrubel. For five hours he ascended, scaling
the rocks by means of his climbing-irons, cutting into the ice,
advancing continually, and occasionally hauling up the dog, who
remained below at the foot of some slope that was too steep for him, by
means of the rope. About six o'clock he reached one of the summits to
which old Gaspard often came after chamois, and he waited till it
should be day-light.
The sky was growing pale overhead, and suddenly a strange light,
springing, nobody could tell whence, suddenly illuminated the immense
ocean of pale mountain peaks, which stretched for many leagues around
him. It seemed as if this vague brightness arose from the snow itself,
in order to spread itself into space. By degrees the highest and most
distant summits assumed a delicate, fleshlike rose color, and the red
sun appeared behind the ponderous giants of the Bernese Alps.
Ulrich Kunsi set off again, walking like a hunter, stooping and looking
for any traces, and saying to his dog: "Seek old fellow, seek!"
He was descending the mountain now, scanning the depths closely, and
from time to time shouting, uttering a loud, prolonged familiar cry
which soon died away in that silent vastness. Then, he put his ear to
the ground, to listen. He thought he could distinguish a voice, and so
he began to run and shout again. But he heard nothing more and sat
down, worn out and in despair. Toward midday he breakfasted and gave
Sam, who was as tired as himself, something to eat also; then he
recommenced his search.
When evening came he was still walking, having traveled more than
thirty miles over the mountains. As he was too far away to return home,
and too tired to drag himself along any further, he dug a hole in the
snow and crouched in it with his dog, under a blanket which he had
brought with him. The man and the dog lay side by side, warming
themselves one against the other, but frozen to the marrow,
nevertheless. Ulrich scarcely slept, his mind haunted by visions and
his limbs shaking with cold.
Day was breaking when he got up. His legs were as stiff as iron bars,
and his spirits so low that he was ready to weep, while his heart was
beating so that he almost fell with excitement whenever he thought he
heard a noise.
Suddenly he imagined that he ALSO was going to die of cold in the midst
of this vast solitude. The terror of such a death roused his energies
and gave him renewed vigor. He was descending toward the inn, falling
down and getting up again, and followed at a distance by Sam, who was
limping on three legs. They did not reach Schwarenbach until four
o'clock in the afternoon. The house was empty, and the young man made a
fire, had something to eat, and went to sleep, so worn-out that he did
not think of anything more.
He slept for a long time, for a very long time, the unconquerable sleep
of exhaustion. But suddenly a voice, a cry, a name: "Ulrich," aroused
him from his profound slumber, and made him sit up in bed. Had he been
dreaming? Was it one of those strange appeals which cross the dreams of
disquieted minds? No, he heard it still, that reverberating cry,--which
had entered at his ears and remained in his brain,--thrilling him to
the tips of his sinewy fingers. Certainly, somebody had cried out, and
called: "Ulrich!" There was somebody there, near the house, there could
be no doubt of that, and he opened the door and shouted: "Is it you,
Gaspard?" with all the strength of his lungs. But there was no reply,
no murmur, no groan, nothing. It was quite dark, and the snow looked
wan.
The wind had risen, that icy wind which cracks the rocks, and leaves
nothing alive on those deserted heights. It came in sudden gusts, more
parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the desert, and again
Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard!" Then he waited again.
Everything was silent on the mountain! Then he shook with terror, and
with a bound he was inside the inn. He shut and bolted the door, and
then fell into a chair, trembling all over, for he felt certain that
his comrade had called him at the moment of dissolution.
He was certain of that, as certain as one is of conscious life or of
taste when eating. Old Gaspard Hari had been dying for two days and
three nights somewhere, in some hole, in one of those deep, untrodden
ravines whose whiteness is more sinister than subterranean darkness. He
had been dying for two days and three nights and he had just then died,
thinking of his comrade. His soul, almost before it was released, had
taken its flight to the inn where Ulrich was sleeping, and it had
called him by that terrible and mysterious power which the spirits of
the dead possess. That voiceless soul had cried to the worn-out soul of
the sleeper; it had uttered its last farewell, or its reproach, or its
curse on the man who had not searched carefully enough.
And Ulrich felt that it was there, quite close to him, behind the wall,
behind the door which he had just fastened. It was wandering about,
like a night bird which skims a lighted window with his wings, and the
terrified young man was ready to scream with horror. He wanted to run
away, but did not dare go out; he did not dare, and would never dare in
the future, for that phantom would remain there day and night, round
the inn, as long as the old man's body was not recovered and deposited
in the consecrated earth of a churchyard.
Daylight came, and Kunsi recovered some of his courage with the return
of the bright sun. He prepared his meal, gave his dog some food, and
then remained motionless on a chair, tortured at heart as he thought of
the old man lying on the snow. Then, as soon as night once more covered
the mountains, new terrors assailed him. He now walked up and down the
dark kitchen, which was scarcely lighted by the flame of one candle. He
walked from one end of it to the other with great strides, listening,
listening to hear the terrible cry of the preceding night again break
the dreary silence outside. He felt himself alone, unhappy man, as no
man had ever been alone before! Alone in this immense desert of snow,
alone five thousand feet above the inhabited earth; above human
habitations, above that stirring, noisy, palpitating life, alone under
an icy sky! A mad longing impelled him to run away, no matter where, to
get down to Loeche by flinging himself over the precipice; but he did
not even dare to open the door, as he felt sure that the other, the
DEAD, man would bar his road, so that he might not be obliged to remain
up there alone.
Toward midnight, tired with walking, worn-out by grief and fear, he
fell into a doze in his chair, for he was afraid of his bed, as one is
of a haunted spot. But suddenly the strident cry of the preceding
evening pierced his ears, so shrill that Ulrich stretched out his arms
to repulse the ghost, and he fell on to his back with his chair.
Sam, who was awakened by the noise, began to howl as frightened dogs
do, and trotted all about the house trying to find out where the danger
came from. When he got to the door, he sniffed beneath it, smelling
vigorously, with his coat bristling and his tail stiff while he growled
angrily. Kunsi, who was terrified, jumped up, and holding his chair by
one leg, cried: "Don't come in, don't come in, or I shall kill you."
And the dog, excited by this threat, barked angrily at that invisible
enemy who defied his master's voice. By degrees, however, he quieted
down, came back and stretched himself in front of the fire. But he was
uneasy, and kept his head up, and growled between his teeth.
Ulrich, in turn, recovered his senses, but as he felt faint with
terror, he went and got a bottle of brandy out of the sideboard, and
drank off several glasses, one after another, at a gulp. His ideas
became vague, his courage revived, and a feverish glow ran through his
veins.
He ate scarcely anything the next day, and limited himself to alcohol;
so he lived for several days, like a drunken brute. As soon as he
thought of Gaspard Hari he began to drink again, and went on drinking
until he fell on to the floor, overcome by intoxication. And there he
remained on his face, dead drunk, his limbs benumbed, and snoring with
his face to the ground. But scarcely had he digested the maddening and
burning liquor, than the same cry, "Ulrich," woke him like a bullet
piercing his brain, and he got up, still staggering, stretching out his
hands to save himself from falling, and calling to Sam to help him. And
the dog, who appeared to be going mad like his master, rushed to the
door, scratched it with his claws, and gnawed it with his long white
teeth, while the young man, his neck thrown back, and his head in the
air, drank the brandy in gulps, as if it were cold water, so that it
might by and by send his thoughts, his frantic terror, and his memory,
to sleep again.
In three weeks he had consumed all his stock of ardent spirits. But his
continual drunkenness only lulled his terror, which awoke more
furiously than ever, as soon as it was impossible for him to calm it by
drinking. His fixed idea, which had been intensified by a month of
drunkenness, and which was continually increasing in his absolute
solitude? pene-trated him like a gimlet. He now walked about his house
like a wild beast in its cage, putting his eat to the door to listen if
the other were there, and defying him through the wall. Then as soon as
he dozed, overcome by fatigue, he heard the voice which made him leap
to his feet.
At last one night, as cowards do when driven to extremity, he sprang to
the door and opened it, to see who was calling him, and to force him to
keep quiet. But such a gust of cold wind blew into his face that it
chilled him to the bone. He closed and bolted the door again
immediately, without noticing that Sam had rushed out. Then, as he was
shivering with cold, he threw some wood on the fire, and sat down in
front of it to warm himself. But suddenly he started, for somebody was
scratching at the wall, and crying. In desperation he called out: "Go
away!" but was answered by another long, sorrowful wail.
Then all his remaining senses forsook him, from sheer fright. He
repeated: "Go away!" and turned round to find some corner in which to
hide, while the other person went round the house still crying, and
rubbing against the wall. Ulrich went to the oak sideboard, which was
full of plates and dishes and of provisions, and lifting it up with
superhuman strength, he dragged it to the door, so as to form a
barricade. Then piling up all the rest of the furniture, the
mattresses, paillasses, and chairs, he stopped up the windows as men do
when assailed by an enemy.
But the person outside now uttered long, plaintive, mournful groans, to
which the young man replied by similar groans, and thus days and nights
passed without their ceasing to howl at each other. The one was
continually walking round the house and scraped the walls with his
nails so vigorously that it seemed as if he wished to destroy them,
while the other, inside, followed all his movements, stooping down, and
holding his ear to the walls, and replying to all his appeals with
terrible cries. One evening, however, Ulrich heard nothing more, and he
sat down, so overcome by fatigue that he went to sleep immediately, and
awoke in the morning without a thought, without any recollection of
what had happened, just as if his head had been emptied during his
heavy sleep. But he felt hungry, and he ate.
The winter was over, and the Gemmi pass was practicable again, so the
Hauser family started off to return to their inn. As soon as they had
reached the top of the ascent, the women mounted their mule, and spoke
about the two men who they would meet again shortly. They were, indeed,
rather surprised that neither of them had come down a few days before,
as soon as the road became passable, in order to tell them all about
their long winter sojourn. At last, however, they saw the inn, still
covered with snow, like a quilt. The door and the windows were closed,
but a little smoke was coming out of the chimney, which reassured old
Hauser; on going up to the door, however, he saw the skeleton of an
animal which had been torn to pieces by the eagles, a large skeleton
lying on its side.
They all looked closely at it, and the mother said: "That must be Sam."
Then she shouted: "Hi! Gaspard!" A cry from the interior of the house
answered her, so sharp a cry that one might have thought some animal
uttered it. Old Hauser repeated: "Hi! Gaspard!" and they heard another
cry, similar to the first.
Then the three men, the father and the two sons, tried to open the
door, but it resisted their efforts. From the empty cow-stall they took
a beam to serve as a battering-ram, and hurled it against the door with
all their might. The wood gave way, and the boards flew into splinters;
then the house was shaken by a loud voice, and inside, behind the
sideboard which was overturned, they saw a man standing upright, his
hair falling on to his shoulders and a beard descending to his breast,
with shining eyes and nothing but rags to cover him. They did not
recognize him, but Louise Hauser exclaimed: "It is Ulrich, mother." And
her mother declared that it was Ulrich, although his hair was white.
He allowed them to go up to him, and to touch him, but he did not reply
to any of their questions, and they were obliged to take him to Loeche,
where the doctors found that he was mad. Nobody ever knew what had
become of his companion.
Little Louise Hauser nearly died that summer of decline, which the
medical men attributed to the cold air of the mountains.