Time was, and that not so long ago, when the Two Men had revealed to
them by their Genius a corner of Europe wherein they were promised more
surprises and delights than in any other.
It was secretly made known to them that in this place there were no
pictures, and no one had praised its people, and further that no Saint
had ever troubled it; and the rich and all their evils (so the Two Men
were assured) had never known the place at all.
It was under the influence of such a message that they at once began
walking at a great speed for the river which is called the River of
Gold, and for the valleys of Andorra; and since it seemed that other men
had dared to cross the Pyrenees and to see the Republic, and since it
seemed also, according to books, records, and what not, that may have
been truth or may have been lies, that common men so doing went always
by one way, called the Way of Hospitalet, the Two Men determined to go
by no such common path, but to march, all clothed with power, in a
straight line, and to take the main range of the mountains just where
they chose, and to come down upon the Andorrans unexpectedly and to
deserve their admiration and perhaps their fear.
They chose, therefore, upon the map the valley of that torrent called
the Aston, and before it was evening, but at an hour when the light of
the sun was already very ripe and low, they stood under a great rock
called Guie, which was all of bare limestone with façades as bare as the
Yosemite, and almost as clean. They looked up at this great rock of Guie
and made it the terminal of their attempt. I was one and my companion
was the other: these were the Two Men who started out before a sunset
in August to conquer the high Pyrenees. Before me was a very deep valley
full of woods, and reaching higher and higher perpetually so that it
reminded me of Hyperion, but as for my companion, it reminded him of
nothing, for he said loudly that he had never seen any such things
before and had never believed that summits of so astonishing a height
were to be found on earth. Not even at night had he imagined such
appalling upward and upward into the sky, and this he said though he had
seen the Alps, of which it is true that when you are close to them they
are very middling affairs; but not so the Pyrenees, which are not only
great but also terrible, for they are haunted, as you shall hear. But
before I begin to write of the spirits that inhabit the deserts of the
Aston, I must first explain, for the sake of those who have not seen
them, how the awful valleys of the Pyrenees are made.
All the high valleys of mountains go in steps, but those of the Pyrenees
in a manner more regular even than those of the Sierra Nevada out in
California, which the Pyrenees so greatly resemble. For the steps here
are nearly always three in number between the plain and the main chain,
and each is entered by a regular gate of rock. So it is in the valley of
the Ariege, and so it is in that of the Aston, and so it is in every
other valley until you get to the far end where live the cleanly but
incomprehensible Basques. Each of these steps is perfectly level,
somewhat oval in shape, a mile or two or sometimes five miles long, but
not often a mile broad. Through each will run the river of the valley,
and upon either side of it there will be rich pastures, and a high plain
of this sort is called a _jasse_, the same as in California is called a
"flat": as "Dutch Flat," "Poverty Flat," and other famous flats.
First, then, will come a great gorge through which one marches up from
the plain, and then at the head of it very often a waterfall of some
kind, along the side of which one forces one's way up painfully through
a narrow chasm of rock and finds above one The great green level of the
first jasse with the mountains standing solemnly around it. And then
when one has marched all along this level one will come to another gorge
and another chasm, and when one has climbed over the barrier of rock and
risen up another 2000 feet or so, one comes to a second jasse, smaller
as a rule than the lower one; but so high are the mountains that all
this climbing into the heart of them does not seem to have reduced their
height at all. And then one marches along this second jasse and one
comes to yet another gorge and climbs up just as one did the two others,
through a chasm where there will be a little waterfall or a large one,
and one finds at the top the smallest and most lonely of the jasses.
This often has a lake in it. The mountains round it will usually be
cliffs, forming sometimes a perfect ring, and so called cirques, or, by
the Spaniards, cooking-pots; and as one stands on the level floor of one
such last highest jasse and looks up at the summit of the cliffs, one
knows that one is looking at the ridge of the main chain. Then it is
one's business, if one desires to conquer the high Pyrenees, to find a
sloping place up the cliffs to reach their summits and to go down into
the further Spanish valleys. This is the order of the Pyrenean dale, and
this was the order of that of the Aston.
Up the gorge then we went, my companion and I; the day fell as we
marched, and there was a great moon out, filling the still air, when we
came to the first chasm, and climbing through it saw before us, spread
with a light mist over its pastures, the first jasse under the
moonlight. And up we went, and up again, to the end of the second jasse,
having before us the vast wall of the main range, and in our hearts a
fear that there was something unblessed in the sight of it. For though
neither I told it to my companion nor he to me, we had both begun to
feel a fear which the shepherds of these mountains know very well. It
was perhaps midnight or a little more when we made our camp, after
looking in vain for a hut which may once have stood there, but now stood
no longer. We lit a fire, but did not overcome the cold, which tormented
us throughout the night, for the wind blew off the summits; and at last
we woke from our half-sleep and spent the miserable hours in watching
the Great Bear creeping round the pole, and in trying to feed the dying
embers with damp fuel. And there it was that I discovered what I now
make known to the world, namely, that gorse and holly will burn of
themselves, even while they are yet rooted in the ground. So we sat
sleepless and exhausted, and not without misgiving, for we had meant
that night before camping to be right under the foot of the last cliffs,
and we were yet many miles away. We were glad to see the river at last
in the meadows show plainly under the growing light, the rocks turning
red upon the sky-line, and the extinction of the stars. As we so looked
north and eastward the great rock of Guie stood up all its thousands of
feet enormous against the rising of the sun.
We were very weary, and invigorated by nothing but the light, but,
having that at least to strengthen us, we made at once for the main
range, knowing very well that, once we were over it, it would be
downhill all the way, and seeing upon our maps that there were houses
and living men high in the further Andorran valley, which was not
deserted like this vale of the Aston, but inhabited: full, that is, of
Catalans, who would soon make us forget the inhuman loneliness of the
heights, for by this time we were both convinced, though still neither
of us said it to the other, that there was an evil brooding over all
this place.
It was noon when, after many hours of broken marching and stumbling,
which betrayed our weakness, we stood at last beside the tarn in which
the last cliffs of the ridge are reflected, and here was a steep slope
up which a man could scramble. We drank at the foot of it the last of
our wine and ate the last of our bread, promising ourselves refreshment,
light, and peace immediately upon the further side, and thus lightened
of our provisions, and with more heart in us, we assaulted the final
hill; but just at the summit, where there should have greeted us a great
view over Spain, there lowered upon us the angry folds of a black cloud,
and the first of the accidents that were set in order by some enemy to
ruin us fell upon my companion and me.
For a storm broke, and that with such violence that we thought it would
have shattered the bare hills, for an infernal thunder crashed from one
precipice to another, and there flashed, now close to us, now vividly
but far off, in the thickness of the cloud, great useless and blinding
glares of lightning, and hailstones of great size fell about us also,
leaping from the bare rocks like marbles. And when the rain fell it was
just as though it had been from a hose, forced at one by a pressure
instead of falling, and we two on that height were the sole objects of
so much fury, until at last my companion cried out from the rock beneath
which he was cowering, "This is intolerable!" And I answered him, from
the rock which barely covered me, "It is not to be borne!" So in the
midst of the storm we groped our way down into the valley beneath, and
got below the cloud; and when we were there we thought we had saved the
day, for surely we were upon the southern side of the hills, and in a
very little while we should see the first roofs of the Andorrans.
For two doubtful hours we trudged down that higher valley, but there
were no men, nor any trace of men except this, that here and there the
semblance of a path appeared, especially where the valley fell rapidly
from one stage to another over smooth rocks, which, in their least
dangerous descent, showed by smooth scratches the passage of some lost
animal. For the rest, nothing human nor the memory of it was there to
comfort us, though in one place we found a group of cattle browsing
alone without a master. There we sat down in our exhaustion and
confessed at last what every hour had inwardly convinced us of with
greater strength, that we were not our own masters, that there was
trouble and fate all round us, that we did not know what valley this
might be, and that the storm had been but the beginning of an unholy
adventure. We had been snared into Fairyland.
We did not speak much together, for fear of lowering our hearts yet more
by the confession one to the other of the things we knew to be true. We
did not tell each other what reserve of courage remained to us, or of
strength. We sat and looked at the peaks immeasurably above us, and at
the veils of rain between them, and at the black background of the sky.
Nor was there anything in the landscape which did not seem to us
unearthly and forlorn.
It was, in a manner, more lonely than had been the very silence of the
further slope: there was less to comfort and support the soul of a man;
but with every step downward we were penetrated more and more with the
presence of things not mortal and of influences to which any desolation
is preferable. At one moment voices called to us from the water, at
another we heard our names, but pronounced in a whisper so slight and so
exact that the more certain we were of hearing them the less did we dare
to admit the reality of what we had heard. In a third place we saw twice
in succession, though we were still going forward, the same tree
standing by the same stone: for neither tree nor stone were natural to
the good world, but each had been put there by whatever was mocking us
and drawing us on.
Already had we stumbled twice and thrice the distance that should have
separated us from the first Andorran village, but we had seen nothing,
not a wall, nor smoke from a fire, let alone the tower of a Christian
church, or the houses of men. Nor did any length of the way now make us
wonder more than we had already wondered, nor did we hope, however far
we might proceed, that we should be saved unless some other influence
could be found to save us from the unseen masters of this place. For by
this time we had need of mutual comfort, and openly said it to one
another--but in low tones--that the valley was Faëry. The river went on
calling to us all the while. In places it was full of distant cheering,
in others crowded with the laughter of a present multitude of tiny
things, and always mocking us with innumerable tenuous voices. It grew
to be evening. It was nearly two days since we had seen a man.
There stood in the broader and lower part of the valley to which we had
now come, numerous rocks and boulders; for our deception some one of
them or another would seem to be a man. I heard my companion call
suddenly, as though to a stranger, and as he called I thought that he
had indeed perceived the face of a human being, and I felt a sort of
sudden health in me when I heard the tone of his voice; and when I
looked up I also saw a man. We came towards him and he did not move.
Close up beside his form we put out our hands: but what we touched was a
rough and silent stone.
After that we spoke no more. We went on through the gathering twilight,
determined to march downwards to the end, but knowing pretty well what
the end would be. Once only did we again fall into the traps that were
laid about us, when we went and knocked at the hillside where we thought
we had seen a cottage and its oaken door, and after the mockery of that
disappointment we would not be deceived again, nor make ourselves again
the victims of the laughter that perpetually proceeded from the torrent.
The path led us onwards in a manner that was all one with the plot now
woven round our feet. We could but follow the path, though we knew with
what an evil purpose it was made: that it was as phantom as the rest. At
one place it invited us to cross, upon two shaking pine trunks, the
abyss of a cataract; in another it invited us to climb, in spite of our
final weariness, a great barrier of rock that lay between an upper and a
lower jasse. We continued upon it determinedly, with heads bent, barely
hoping that perhaps at last we should emerge from this haunted ground,
but the illusions which had first mocked us we resolutely refused. So
much so, that where at one place there stood plainly before us in the
gathering darkness a farm-house with its trees and its close, its
orchard and its garden gate, I said to my companion, "All this place is
cursed, and I will not go near." And he applauded me, for he knew as
well as I that if we had gone a few steps towards that orchard and that
garden close, they would have turned into the bracken of the hillside,
bare granite and unfruitful scree.
The main range, where it appeared in revelations behind us through the
clouds, was far higher than mountains ever seem to waking men, and it
stood quite sheer as might a precipice in a dream. The forests upon
either side ran up until they were lost miles and miles above us in the
storm.
Night fell and we still went onward, the one never daring to fall far
behind the other, and once or twice in an hour calling to each other to
make sure that another man was near; but this we did not continue,
because as we went on each of us became aware under the midnight of the
presence of a Third.
There was a place where the path, now broad and plain, approached a sort
of little sandy bay going down towards the stream, and there I saw, by a
sudden glimpse of the moon through the clouds, a large cave standing
wide. We went down to it in silence, we gathered brushwood, we lit a
fire, and we lay down in the cave. But before we lay down I said to my
companion: "I have seen the moon--she is in the _north_. Into what place
have we come?" He said to me in answer, "Nothing here is earthly," and
after he had said this we both fell into a profound sleep in which we
forgot not only cold, great hunger, and fatigue, but our own names and
our very souls, and passed, as it were, into a deep bath of
forgetfulness.
When we woke at the same moment, it was dawn.
We stood up in the clear and happy light and found that everything was
changed. We poured water upon our faces and our hands, strode out a
hundred yards and saw again the features of a man. He had a kind face of
some age, and eyes such as are the eyes of mountaineers, which seem to
have constantly contemplated the distant horizons and wide plains
beneath their homes. We heard as he came up the sound of a bell in a
Christian church below, and we exchanged with him the salutations of
living men. Then I said to him: "What day is this?" He said "Sunday,"
and a sort of memory of our fear came on us, for we had lost a day.