Once in his chilly bedroom he realised that his upper mind had
permitted him to do a foolish thing; he had drifted like a schoolboy
into an unwise situation. He had pledged himself to an expedition with
two strangers, an expedition for which normally he would have chosen
his companions with the utmost caution. Moreover, he was guide; they
looked to him for safety, while yet it was they who had arranged and
planned it. But who were these men with whom he proposed to run grave
bodily risks? He knew them as little as they knew him. Whence came,
he wondered, the curious idea that this climb was really planned by
another who was no one of them?
The thought slipped idly across his mind; going out by one door, it
came back, however, quickly by another. He did not think about it more
than to note its passage through the disorder that passed with him just
then for thinking. Indeed, there was nothing in the whole world for
which he cared a single brass farthing. As he undressed for bed, he
said to himself: ‘I shall be called at one ... but why am I going with
these two on this wild plan?... And who made the plan?’...
It seemed to have settled itself. It came about so naturally and
easily, so quickly. He probed no deeper. He didn’t care. And for the
first time he omitted the little ritual, half prayer, half adoration,
it had always been his custom to offer to his deities upon retiring to
rest. He no longer recognised them.
How utterly broken his life was! How blank and terrible and lonely! He
felt cold, and piled his overcoats upon the bed, as though his mental
isolation involved a physical effect as well. Switching off the light
by the door, he was in the act of crossing the floor in the darkness
when a sound beneath the window caught his ear. Outside there were
voices talking. The roar of falling water made them indistinct, yet he
was sure they were voices, and that one of them he knew. He stopped
still to listen. He heard his own name uttered--‘John Limasson.’ They
ceased. He stood a moment shivering on the boards, then crawled into
bed beneath the heavy clothing. But in the act of settling down, they
began again. He raised himself again hurriedly to listen. What little
wind there was passed in that moment down the valley, carrying off the
roar of falling water; and into the moment’s space of silence dropped
fragments of definite sentences:
‘They are close, you say--close down upon the world?’ It was the voice
of the priest surely.
‘For days they have been passing,’ was the answer--a rough, deep tone
that might have been a peasant’s, and a kind of fear in it, ‘for all my
flocks are scattered.’
‘The signs are sure? You know them?’
‘Tumult,’ was the answer in much lower tones. ‘There has been tumult in
the mountains....’
There was a break then as though the voices sank too low to be heard.
Two broken fragments came next, end of a question--beginning of an
answer.
‘... the opportunity of a lifetime?’
‘... if he goes of his own free will, success is sure. For acceptance
is ...’
And the wind, returning, bore back the sound of the falling water, so
that Limasson heard no more....
An indefinable emotion stirred in him as he turned over to sleep. He
stuffed his ears lest he should hear more. He was aware of a sinking of
the heart that was inexplicable. What in the world were they talking
about, these two? What was the meaning of these disjointed phrases?
There lay behind them a grave significance almost solemn. That ‘tumult
in the mountains’ was somehow ominous, its suggestion terrible and
mighty. He felt disturbed, uncomfortable, the first emotion that
had stirred in him for days. The numbness melted before its faint
awakening. Conscience was in it--he felt vague prickings--but it was
deeper far than conscience. Somewhere out of sight, in a region life
had as yet not plumbed, the words sank down and vibrated like pedal
notes. They rumbled away into the night of undecipherable things. And,
though explanation failed him, he felt they had reference somehow
to the morrow’s expedition: how, what, wherefore, he knew not; his
name had been spoken--then these curious sentences; that was all. Yet
to-morrow’s expedition, what was it but an expedition of impersonal
kind, not even planned by himself? Merely his own plan taken and
altered by others--made over? His personal business, his personal life,
were not really in it at all.
The thought startled him a moment. He had no personal life...!
Struggling with sleep, his brain played the endless game of
disentanglement without winning a single point, while the under-mind in
him looked on and smiled--because it _knew_. Then, suddenly, a great
peace fell over him. Exhaustion brought it perhaps. He fell asleep; and
next moment, it seemed, he was aware of a thundering at the door and an
unwelcome growling voice, ‘_’s ist bald ein Uhr, Herr! Aufstehen!_’
Rising at such an hour, unless the heart be in it, is a sordid and
depressing business; Limasson dressed without enthusiasm, conscious
that thought and feeling were exactly where he had left them on going
to sleep. The same confusion and bewilderment were in him; also the
same deep solemn emotion stirred by the whispering voices. Only long
habit enabled him to attend to detail, and ensured that nothing was
forgotten. He felt heavy and oppressed, a kind of anxiety about him;
the routine of preparation he followed gravely, utterly untouched
by the customary joy; it was mechanical. Yet through it ran the old
familiar sense of ritual, due to the practice of so many years,
that cleansing of mind and body for a big Ascent--like initiatory
rites that once had been as important to him as those of some priest
who approached the worship of his deity in the temples of ancient
time. He performed the ceremony with the same care as though no
ghost of vanished faith still watched him, beckoning from the air as
formerly.... His knapsack carefully packed, he took his ice-axe from
beside the bed, turned out the light, and went down the creaking wooden
stairs in stockinged feet, lest his heavy boots should waken the other
sleepers. And in his head still rang the phrase he had fallen asleep
on--as though just uttered:
‘The signs are sure; for days they have been passing--close down upon
the world. The flocks are scattered. There has been tumult--tumult in
the mountains.’ The other fragments he had forgotten. But who were
‘they’? And why did the word bring a chill of awe into his blood?
And as the words rolled through him Limasson felt tumult in his
thoughts and feelings too. There had been tumult in his life, and
all his joys were scattered--joys that hitherto had fed his days.
The signs were sure. Something was close down upon his little
world--passing--sweeping. He felt a touch of terror.
Outside in the fresh darkness of very early morning the strangers stood
waiting for him. Rather, they seemed to arrive in the same instant as
himself, equally punctual. The clock in the church tower sounded one.
They exchanged low greetings, remarked that the weather promised to
hold good, and started off in single file over soaking meadows towards
the first belt of forest. The porter--mere peasant, unfamiliar of
face and not connected with the hotel--led the way with a hurricane
lantern. The air was marvellously sweet and fragrant. In the sky
overhead the stars shone in their thousands. Only the noise of falling
water from the heights, and the regular thud of their heavy boots broke
the stillness. And, black against the sky, towered the enormous pyramid
of the Tour du Néant they meant to conquer.
Perhaps the most delightful portion of a big ascent is the beginning in
the scented darkness while the thrill of possible conquest lies still
far off. The hours stretch themselves queerly; last night’s sunset
might be days ago; sunrise and the brilliance coming seem in another
week, part of dim futurity like children’s holidays. It is difficult to
realise that this biting cold before the dawn, and the blazing heat to
come, both belong to the same to-day.
There were no sounds as they toiled slowly up the zigzag path through
the first fifteen hundred feet of pine-woods; no one spoke; the clink
of nails and ice-axe points against the stones was all they heard. For
the roar of water was felt rather than heard; it beat against the ears
and the skin of the whole body at once. The deeper notes were below
them now in the sleeping valley; the shriller ones sounded far above,
where streams just born out of ponderous snow-beds tinkled sharply....
The change came delicately. The stars turned a shade less brilliant,
a softness in them as of human eyes that say farewell. Between the
highest branches the sky grew visible. A sighing air smoothed all their
crests one way; moss, earth, and open spaces brought keen perfumes; and
the little human procession, leaving the forest, stepped out into the
vastness of the world above the tree-line. They paused while the porter
stooped to put his lantern out. In the eastern sky was colour. The
peaks and crags rushed closer.
Was it the Dawn? Limasson turned his eyes from the height of sky
where the summits pierced a path for the coming day, to the faces of
his companions, pale and wan in the early twilight. How small, how
insignificant they seemed amid this hungry emptiness of desolation. The
stupendous cliffs fled past them, led by headstrong peaks crowned with
eternal snows. Thin lines of cloud, trailing half way up precipice and
ridge, seemed like the swish of movement--as though he caught the earth
turning as she raced through space. The four of them, timid riders on
the gigantic saddle, clung for their lives against her titan ribs,
while currents of some majestic life swept up at them from every side.
He drew deep draughts of the rarefied air into his lungs. It was very
cold. Avoiding the pallid, insignificant faces of his companions, he
pretended interest in the porter’s operations; he stared fixedly on the
ground. It seemed twenty minutes before the flame was extinguished, and
the lantern fastened to the pack behind. This Dawn was unlike any he
had seen before.
For, in reality, all the while, Limasson was trying to bring order
out of the extraordinary thoughts and feelings that had possessed him
during the slow forest ascent, and the task was not crowned with much
success. The Plan, made by others, had taken charge of him, he felt;
and he had thrown the reins of personal will and interest loosely upon
its steady gait. He had abandoned himself carelessly to what might
come. Knowing that he was leader of the expedition, he yet had suffered
the porter to go first, taking his own place as it was appointed to
him, behind the younger man, but before the priest. In this order, they
had plodded, as only experienced climbers plod, for hours without a
rest, until half way up a change had taken place. He had wished it,
and instantly it was effected. The priest moved past him, while his
companion dropped to the rear--the companion who forever stumbled
in his speed, whereas the older man climbed surely, confidently.
And thereafter Limasson walked more easily--as though the relative
positions of the three were of importance somehow. The steep ascent of
smothering darkness through the woods became less arduous. He was glad
to have the younger man behind him.
For the impression had strengthened as they climbed in silence that
this ascent pertained to some significant Ceremony, and the idea had
grown insistently, almost stealthily, upon him. The movements of
himself and his companions, especially the positions each occupied
relatively to the other, established some kind of intimacy that
resembled speech, suggesting even question and answer. And the entire
performance, while occupying hours by his watch, it seemed to him more
than once, had been in reality briefer than the flash of a passing
thought, so that he saw it within himself--pictorially. He thought of a
picture worked in colours upon a strip of elastic. Some one pulled the
strip, and the picture stretched. Or some one released it again, and
the picture flew back, reduced to a mere stationary speck. All happened
in a single speck of time.
And the little change of position, apparently so trivial, gave point to
this singular notion working in his under-mind--that this ascent was a
ritual and a ceremony as in older days, its significance approaching
revelation, however, for the first time--now. Without language, this
stole over him; no words could quite describe it. For it came to him
that these three formed a unit, himself being in some fashion yet the
acknowledged principal, the leader. The labouring porter had no place
in it, for this first toiling through the darkness was a preparation,
and when the actual climb began, he would disappear, while Limasson
himself went first. This idea that they took part together in a
Ceremony established itself firmly in him, with the added wonder that,
though so often done, he performed it now for the first time with full
comprehension, knowledge, truth. Empty of personal desire, indifferent
to an ascent that formerly would have thrilled his heart with ambition
and delight, he understood that climbing had ever been a ritual for
his soul and of his soul, and that power must result from its sincere
accomplishment. It was a symbolical ascent.
In words this did not come to him. He felt it, never criticising. That
is, he neither rejected nor accepted. It stole most sweetly, grandly,
over him. It floated into him while he climbed, yet so convincingly
that he had felt his relative position must be changed. The younger
man held too prominent a post, or at least a wrong one--in advance.
Then, after the change, effected mysteriously as though all recognised
it, this line of certainty increased, and there came upon him the big,
strange knowledge that all of life is a Ceremony on a giant scale, and
that by performing the movements accurately, with sincere fidelity,
there may come--knowledge. There was gravity in him from that moment.
This ran in his mind with certainty. Though his thought assumed no form
of little phrases, his brain yet furnished detailed statements that
clinched the marvellous thing with simile and incident which daily
life might apprehend: That knowledge arises from action; that to do
the thing invites the teaching and explains it. Action, moreover, is
symbolical; a group of men, a family, an entire nation, engaged in
those daily movements which are the working out of their destiny,
perform a Ceremony which is in direct relation somewhere to the
pattern of greater happenings which are the teachings of the Gods. Let
the body imitate, reproduce--in a bedroom, in a wood--anywhere--the
movements of the stars, and the meaning of those stars shall sink
down into the heart. The movements constitute a script, a language.
To mimic the gestures of a stranger is to understand his mood, his
point of view--to establish a grave and solemn intimacy. Temples are
everywhere, for the entire earth is a temple, and the body, House of
Royalty, is the biggest temple of them all. To ascertain the pattern
its movements trace in daily life, _could_ be to determine the relation
of that particular ceremony to the Cosmos, and so learn power. The
entire system of Pythagoras, he realised, could be taught without a
single word--by movements; and in everyday life even the commonest
act and vulgarest movement are part of some big Ceremony--a message
from the Gods. Ceremony, in a word, is three-dimensional language, and
action, therefore, is the language of the Gods. The Gods he had denied
were speaking to him ... passing with tumult close across his broken
life.... Their passage it was, indeed, that had caused the breaking!
In this cryptic, condensed fashion the great fact came over him--that
he and these other two, here and now, took part in some great Ceremony
of whose ultimate object as yet he was in ignorance. The impact with
which it dropped upon his mind was tremendous. He realised it most
fully when he stepped from the darkness of the forest and entered the
expanse of glimmering, early light; up till this moment his mind was
being prepared only, whereas now he knew. The innate desire to worship
which all along had been his, the momentum his religious temperament
had acquired during forty years, the yearning to have proof, in a word,
that the Gods he once acknowledged were really true, swept back upon
him with that violent reaction which denial had aroused.
He wavered where he stood....
Looking about him, then, while the others rearranged burdens the
returning porter now discarded, he perceived the astonishing beauty
of the time and place, feeling it soak into him as by the very
pores of his skin. From all sides this beauty rushed upon him. Some
radiant, wingéd sense of wonder sped past him through the silent
air. A thrill of ecstasy ran down every nerve. The hair of his head
stood up. It was far from unfamiliar to him, this sight of the upper
mountain world awakening from its sleep of the summer night, but never
before had he stood shuddering thus at its exquisite cold glory,
nor felt its significance as now, so mysteriously _within himself_.
Some transcendent power that held sublimity was passing across this
huge desolate plateau, far more majestic than the mere sunrise among
mountains he had so often witnessed. There was Movement. He understood
why he had seen his companions insignificant. Again he shivered and
looked about him, touched by a solemnity that held deep awe.
Personal life, indeed, was wrecked, destroyed, but something greater
was on the way. His fragile alliance with a spiritual world was
strengthened. He realised his own past insolence. He became afraid.