Like all the wooden inns in the higher Alps, which are situated in the
rocky and bare gorges which intersect the white summits of the
mountains, the inn of Schwarenbach stands as a refuge for travelers who
are crossing the Gemmi.
It remains open for six months in the year, and is inhabited by the
family of Jean Hauser; then, as soon as the snow begins to fall, and
fills the valley so as to make the road down to Loëche impassable, the
father and his three sons go away, and leave the house in charge of the
old guide, Gaspard Hari, with the young guide, Ulrich Kunzi, and Sam,
the great mountain dog.
The two men and the dog remained till the spring in their snowy prison,
with nothing before their eyes except the immense, white slopes of the
Balmhorn; they were surrounded by light, glistening summits, and shut
up, blocked up and buried by the snow which rose around them, and which
enveloped, bound and crushed the little house, which lay piled on the
roof, reached to the windows and blocked up the door.
It was the day on which the Hauser family were going to return to
Loëche, 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, Jean Hauser and her daughter Louise mounted
a fourth mule, and set off in their turn, and 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 passed round the small
lake, which was now frozen over, at the bottom of the mass of rocks
which stretched in front of the inn, and then they followed the valley,
which was dominated on all sides by the snow covered summits.
A ray of sunlight fell into that little white, glistening, frozen
desert, and illuminated it with a cold and dazzling flame; no living
thing appeared among this ocean of hills; there was nothing more in this
immeasurable solitude, and no noise disturbed the profound silence.
By degrees the young guide Ulrich Kunzi, a tall, long legged Swiss, left
daddy Hauser and old Gaspard behind, in order to catch up to the mule,
which carried the two women. The younger one looked at him as he
approached, and appeared to be calling him, with her sad eyes. She was a
young, light haired peasant girl, whose milk white cheeks and pale hair
looked as if they had lost their color by their long abode amidst the
ice. When he had got up with the animal which carried them, he put his
hand on the crupper, and relaxed his speed. Mother Hauser began to talk
to him, and enumerated with the minutest details all that he would have
to attend to during the winter. It was the first time that he was going
to stop up there, while old Hari had already spent fourteen winters
amidst the snow, at the inn of Schwarenbach.
Ulrich Kunzi 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 extended to the
bottom of the valley. On the right, the Daubenhorn showed its black
rocks, rising up in a peak above the enormous moraines of the Lömmeon
glacier, which rose above the Wildstrubel. As they approached the neck
of the Gemmi, where the descent to Loëche begins, they suddenly beheld
the immense horizon of the Alps of the Valais, from which the broad,
deep valley of the Rhone separated them.
In the distance, there was a group of white, unequal flat or pointed
mountain summits, which glistened in the sun; the Mischabel with its two
peaks, the huge group of the Weisshorn, the heavy Brunegghorn, the lofty
and formidable pyramid of Mont Cervin, that slayer of men, and the
Dent-Blanche, that terrible coquette.
Then, beneath them, in a tremendous hole, at the bottom of a terrible
abyss, they perceived Loëche, where houses looked as grains of sand
which had been thrown in that enormous crevice, which finishes and
closes the Gemmi, and which opens, down below, onto the Rhone.
The mule stopped at the edge of the path, which goes turning and
twisting continually, and which comes back fantastically and strangely,
along the 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 Kunzi'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." And 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. It was over, and
they would be alone together for four or five months. Then Gaspard Bari
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 make up one's mind 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 Kunzi listened to him with his eyes on the ground, for in his
thoughts he was following those who were descending to the village. They
soon came in sight of the inn, which was, however, scarcely visible, so
small did it look, a black speck at the foot of that enormous billow of
snow, and 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 Kunzi. Old Hari smoked and spat
onto 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 yesterday'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 Loëche.
The village, in its rocky pit, was not yet buried under the snow,
although it came quite close to it, but it was stopped short by the pine
woods which protected it. Its low houses looked like paving stones in a
large meadow, from up there. Hauser's little daughter was there now, in
one of those gray colored houses. In which? Ulrich Kunzi 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, he proposed a game of cards to him, and
they sat down opposite each other, on either side of the table. They
played for a long time, a simple game called _brisque_, and 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 onto those frozen heights, while Ulrich
returned regularly to the neck of the Gemmi to look at the village. Then
they played at cards, dice or dominoes, and lost and won a trifle, just
to create an interest in the game.
One morning Hari, who was up first, called his companion. A moving deep
and light cloud of white spray was falling on them noiselessly, and was
by degrees burying them under a thick, dark coverlet of foam, and that
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, and did not venture outside their abode. They
had divided their duties, which they performed regularly. Ulrich Kunzi
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
interrupted by long games at cards or dice, and they never quarreled,
but 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 their wintering on the top of the mountain.
Sometimes old Gaspard took his rifle and went after chamois, and
occasionally he 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, and Ulrich, being alone, remained in
bed until ten o'clock. He was of a sleepy nature, but he 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
desire of an invincible habit, and 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 onto
the village, and he wanted to go there before climbing the slopes which
led to Wildstrubel. Loëche was now also covered by the snow, and the
houses could scarcely be distinguished, covered as they were by that
white cloak.
Then turning to the right, he reached the Lämmern glacier. He went along
with a mountaineer's long strides, striking the snow, which was as hard
as a rock, with his iron-shod stick, and with his piercing eyes, he
looked 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 the distance, over 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 set to walk again. The sun had sunk yonder behind the mountain tops,
which were still purple with the reflection from the sky; 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 winter death of these mountains were taking possession of him, were
going to stop and to freeze his blood, to make his limbs grow stiff, and
to turn him into a motionless and frozen object; and he set off running,
fleeing towards his dwelling. The old man, he thought, would have
returned during his absence. He had taken another road; he 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
walked faster and opened the door; Sam ran up to him to greet him, but
Gaspard Hari had not returned. Kunzi, in his alarm, turned round
suddenly, as if he had expected to find his comrade hidden in a corner.
Then he re-lighted 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 he
were not coming in. It was quite night now, that wan night of the
mountains, a livid night, with the crescent moon, yellow and dim and
just disappearing behind the mountain tops, lit up on the edge of the
horizon.
Then the young man went in and sat down to warm his hands and his feet,
while he pictured to himself every possible accident. Gaspard might have
broken a leg, have fallen into a crevasse, taken a false step and
dislocated his ankle. And 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 to walk for a week in all directions, to find a man in
that immense space. Ulrich Kunzi, 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 axe, which served to cut steps in the
ice, were in order. Then he waited. The fire was burning on the hearth
and the great dog was snoring in front of it, and the clock was ticking
as regularly as a heart beating, in its case of resounding wood.
He waited, with his ears on the alert for distant sounds, and he
shivered when the wind blew against the roof and the walls. It struck
twelve, and he trembled. Then, as he felt frightened and shuddering, he
put some water on the fire, so that he might have some hot coffee before
starting, and 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
mounted, 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. It was about six o'clock when he reached one of the
summits to which old Gaspard often came after chamois, and he waited
till it should be daylight.
The sky was growing pale over head, and suddenly a strange light,
springing, nobody could tell whence, illuminated the immense ocean of
pale mountain summits, which stretched for a thousand leagues around
him. One might have said that this vague brightness arose from the snow
itself, in order to spread itself into space. By degrees the highest,
distant summits assumed a delicate, fleshlike rose color, and the red
sun appeared behind the ponderous giants of the Bernese Alps.
Ulrich Kunzi set off again, walking like a hunter, bent 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 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 shouted again, but he heard nothing more and sat down, worn out
and in despair. Towards midday, he breakfasted and gave Sam, who was as
tired as himself, something to eat also, and then he recommenced his
search.
When evening came he was still walking, and he had walked 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. And 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 cry with grief, while his
heart was beating so that he almost fell with excitement, when 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, and the terror of such a death roused his
energies and gave him renewed vigor. He was descending towards the inn,
falling down and getting up again, and followed at a distance by Sam,
who was limping on three legs, and 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, an unconquerable sleep.
But suddenly a voice, a cry, a name: "Ulrich," aroused him from his
profound torpor 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 flesh,--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 that cracks the rocks, and leaves
nothing alive on those deserted heights, and it came in sudden gusts,
which were more parching and more deadly than the burning wind of the
desert, and again Ulrich shouted: "Gaspard! Gaspard! Gaspard!" And then
he waited again. Everything was silent on the mountain! Then he shook
with terror and with a bound he was inside the inn, when he shut and
bolted the door, and then he fell into a chair, trembling all over, for
he felt certain that his comrade had called him, at the moment he was
expiring.
He was sure of that, as sure as one is of being alive, or of eating a
piece of bread. 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 have,
to haunt the living. That voiceless soul had cried to the wornout 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 lightly touches 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 to go out; he did not dare, and he should
never dare to do it 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 had not been deposited in the consecrated earth of a
churchyard.
When it was daylight, Kunzi recovered some of his courage at 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, and 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, and he walked from one end of it to the other with great
strides, listening, listening whether the terrible cry of the other
night would again break the dreary silence outside. He felt himself
alone, unhappy man, as no man had ever been alone before! He was 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 Loëche 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.
Towards midnight, tired with walking, wornout by grief and fear, he at
last fell into a doze in his chair, for he was as afraid of his bed, as
one is of a haunted spot. But suddenly the strident cry of the other
evening pierced his ears, and it was so shrill that Ulrich stretched
out his arms to repulse the ghost, and he fell onto his back with his
chair.
Sam, who was awakened by the noise, began to howl, like frightened dogs
do howl, and he walked all about the house, trying to find out where the
danger came from; but when he got to the door, he sniffed beneath it,
smelling vigorously, with his coat bristling and his tail stiff, while
he growled angrily. Kunzi, who was terrified, jumped up, and holding his
chair by one leg, he 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 and 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 he 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,
and 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 onto the ground, 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, with his neck thrown back, and his head in
the air, drank the brandy in draughts, as if it had been 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. His fixed
idea then, which had been intensified by a month of drunkenness, and
which was continually increasing in his absolute solitude, penetrated
him like a gimlet. He now walked about his house like a wild beast in
its cage, putting his ear 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, like cowards do when driven to extremities, 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, and 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 try 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,
palliasses and chairs, he stopped up the windows like one does 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 usable, 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 window 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,"
and then she shouted: "Hi! Gaspard!" A cry from the interior of the
house answered her, and a sharp cry, that one might have thought some
animal had 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, with his hair
falling onto 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 Loëche,
where the doctors found that he was mad, and 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.