“Yes, Conrad,” said the little one.
After a time the lad came to a halt and said, “I don’t see any trees myself now. We must be out of the forest. Yet the road is still going up. Let’s stop a minute and look about. Perhaps we can see something.”
But they did not see anything. They stared up through wan nothingness into the sky. As during a hailstorm, when leaden striations slant downward from the massed white or greenish cloudbanks, so here; and the mute downfall continued.
The place was a circular patch of white ground, nothing else.
“You know, Sanna,” said the lad, “we are on that dry grass I have often brought you to in summer, where we used to sit and look at the grassy floor sloping up, where the beautiful herb-tufts grow. We shall turn right now, and be going downhill.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
“The days are short, as Grandmother said and as you know yourself, so we must hurry.”
“Yes, Conrad,” said the little one.
“Wait a minute, I am going to snug you up a bit,” said the lad.
He took off his hat, put it on Sanna and tied the two ribbons under her chin. The kerchief she had been wearing was too slight protection, whereas the profusion of curls on his head was so thick, snow would rest on them a long time before the wet and cold could penetrate. Then he took off his little fur jacket and drew it on his sister, up over her little arms. With only his shirt to protect him now, he tied about his shoulders the little shawl Sanna had been wearing. It would do for him, he thought, if they could just walk at a brisk pace.
He took his sister by the hand and thus they started on again.
With trustful eyes the little thing gazed up at the prevailing gray all about them and accompanied him willingly; only that her small hurrying feet could not keep up with him as he strove onward like someone bent on settling a thing once and for all.
They were going on now with the dogged endurance that children and animals have, not knowing what is ahead or when their reserves may give out.
However, as they went, they could not tell whether they were going down the mountain or not. They had soon turned downhill to the right but then came to elevations leading up. Often they encountered sheer rises they had to avoid; and a hollow in which they were walking led them around in a curve. They climbed hummocks that became steeper under their feet than they expected; and what they had deemed a descent was level ground or a depression, or went on as an even stretch.
“But where are we, Conrad?” asked the child.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “If only my eyes could make out something and I could get my bearings.”
But on every side was nothing but a blinding whiteness, white everywhere that none the less drew its ever narrowing circle about them, paling beyond into fog that came down in waves, devouring and shrouding everything till there was nothing but the voracious snow.
“Wait, Sanna,” said the lad, “let’s stand still a little and listen and see if we can’t hear something,—a sound from down there in the valley perhaps, a dog or a bell or the mill, or maybe someone calling; we ought to be able to hear something, at any rate, then we’ll know which way to go.”
They stood still, but heard nothing. They stood a little longer, but there was nothing to be heard, not a single sound, not the faintest except their breath; indeed in the stillness reigning, it was as if they could hear the snow falling on their very eyelashes. Their grandmother’s prediction had still not come true, the wind had not risen and, what was rare for those regions, not a breath stirred overhead, anywhere.
After waiting a considerable time, they went on again.
“Never mind, Sanna,” said her brother, “don’t be frightened, just follow me and I’ll get you there yet. If it would only stop snowing.”
She was not afraid but lifted her feet as well as she could and followed him. He led her on through the white fluctuating all-pervading pearly opaqueness.
After a time rocks suddenly loomed up dark and indistinct in the white luminescence—they had almost run into them—rocks that rose so sheer scarcely any snow could cling to them.
“Sanna, Sanna,” he said, “there are the rocks, let’s go on, let’s go on.”
They went on, had to, between rocks and along the base. The rocks admitted of swerving neither to right nor left, leading on in one narrow hollowed-out channel. After a time the children left them behind and could not see them any more. As unexpectedly as they had come in among them, as unexpectedly they came out. Again there was nothing about them but whiteness, with no dark obstructions looming up. It seemed just one vast volume of white and yet one could not see three feet ahead; everything was closed in, so to speak, by a mysterious white obscurity, and since there were no shadows it was impossible to judge the size of objects and the children did not know whether to step up or down until steepness raised the foot and compelled it to climb.
“My eyes hurt,” said Sanna.
“Don’t look at the snow,” answered the lad, “but at the clouds. Mine have been hurting a good while, but it doesn’t matter, I have to look at the snow anyhow, in order to watch the road. But don’t be scared. I will get you down to Gschaid yet.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
They went on again; but however they went or however they turned it didn’t seem ever as if they were beginning to go downhill. At either side steep rooflike formations led upward, and they walked between, but always up. Whenever they went outside the “roofs” and turned downhill, it became so steep immediately they had to come back; their little feet often encountered jagged objects, and they were constantly avoiding hummocks.
They noticed also that whenever their feet sank deeper in the fresh snow, they did not feel an earthy firmness beneath but something different, like already frozen, older snow. But they kept on, walking fast and steadily. If they stopped, everything was silent, unbelievably silent; when they walked they heard the shuffling of their feet, nothing else; for the pall of flakes descended without a sound, such heavy snow one could fairly see it wax deep. The children themselves were so thickly covered they did not stand out against the general whiteness and would not have been able to see each other if they had been more than a few steps apart.
It was a blessing the snow was dry as sand, so it shook off easily and slid from their feet and little mountain-shoes and stockings without caking and soaking them.
At last they again came to something with form, immense shapes heaped in gigantic confusion, covered with snow that was sifting everywhere into the crevices; the children had, moreover, almost stumbled on them before they had seen them. They went close to look.
Ice—nothing but ice.
There were great slabs lying, covered with snow but on the edges glassy green ice showed; there were mounds of what looked like pushed-up foam, the sides dull but with inward glimmers as if crystals and splinters of precious stones had been jumbled together; there were, besides, great rounded bosses engulfed in snow, slabs and other shapes, slanting or upright,—as high as the church steeple or houses in Gschaid. Some were eroded into cavities through which an arm, a head, a body, or a great cartload of hay could pass. All these irregular shapes had been driven into one another or upright, and stood out in the form of roofs or eaves; and overlying and overlapping them were great white cat’s-paws of snow. Even a fearsome black boulder huge as a house lay tilted up under the ice, resting on its point, so that snow could not cling to the sides. And not this stone merely, but others, and yet larger ones, locked in the ice, which one did not notice at first, formed a wall of Cyclopean debris along the ice rim.
“There must have been a great deal of water here, because there is so much ice,” said Sanna.
“No, it wasn’t made by water,” answered her brother, “it’s the ice of the mountain, and always here since God made it so.”
“Yes, Conrad,” said Sanna.
“We are as far as the ice now,” said the lad, “we are on the mountain, you know, Sanna, the one t
hat looks so white in the sun from the garden. Now think hard about this. Do you remember when we were sitting in the garden, how pleasant it was, how the bees hummed round us, how sweet the lindens smelled, and how the sun was shining so bright on us?”
“Yes, Conrad, I remember.”
“We would look at the mountain too. We saw how blue it was, blue as the gentle sky, we saw snow up there even though it was summer in the village and hot, and the wheat was getting ripe.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
“And down where the snow ends, you see all manner of colors if you look hard,—green, blue, and a whitish color—that is the ice that looks so small from down below because you are so far away, and that, as Father said, is going to be there as long as the world lasts. And then I’ve often noticed that the blue color keeps on below the ice,—probably stones, I’ve thought, or maybe ploughed ground and pastures, and then come the pine woods that go down and down, and all kinds of rocks in between, then the green meadows, then the woods with leaves, and then our own meadows and fields in the valley of Gschaid. Now you see, Sanna, we are at the ice and from here we will go down over the blue color and through the woods where the rocks are, then over the meadows and then through the woods with the leaves, and then we shall be in the valley of Gschaid and then it will be easy to find our village.”
“Yes, Conrad,” said the little one.
The children went on into the ice wherever they could find a place to step.
They were just tiny moving dots among the formidable masses.
As they peered in beneath the projecting slabs, almost as if instinct were impelling them to seek shelter, they walked along in a broad deeply-scored channel that led straight out of the ice, like the bed of a stream, dried up now and covered with new-fallen snow. Where it emerged it was vaulted over with ice, beautifully arched like a canopy. Following the channel, they went in—deeper and deeper. It was entirely dry, and they had smooth ice to walk on. But the whole cavern was blue, bluer than anything on earth, a blue deeper and finer than the vault of heaven itself, blue as azure glass with a faint light inside. There were massive ribs overhead, and more delicate ones, with pendant icicles, point lace, and tassels, the way leading further still—they knew not how far but they did not go on. It might even have been pleasant in the cave, it was warm, no snow was falling; but it was so fearsome a blue the children were frightened and ran out again. They walked on a while in the hollowed bed of the stream and then climbed up over the side.
They kept along the edge of the ice as far as they could thread through the detritus and creep between the great slabs.
“We have to get up over this and then we can run down, away from the ice,” said Conrad.
“Yes,” said Sanna, and clung tight to him.
They now struck a downward course through the snow, one that was to lead them into the valley. But they did not get far. Another river of ice, heaved up in a pile like a gigantic barricade, lay across the soft snow and seemed almost to be reaching out arms to the left and the right. Under the blanket of white that hid it there were greenish, bluish, leaden, black, even yellow and reddish glimmers from the sides.
They now had a better perspective since the unprecedented unwearying snow was thinning and flakes were coming down only as on ordinary snowy days. With the fortitude of ignorance they clambered up on the ice to cross the protruding tongue of the glacier and then descend on the farther side. They crept through slits, planted their feet on any snow-capped projection whether rock or ice, helped with their hands, crawled where they could not walk, their light bodies working on up until they had scaled the inside of the barrier and were on top.
They had intended to climb down the other side.
There was no other side.
As far as the eye could reach there was only ice. Pointed masses and irregular clumps thrusting up from the fearsome snow-encrusted ice. Instead of a barricade that could be surmounted, with snow beyond, as they had expected, yet other walls of ice rose from the buttress, cracked and fissured, with innumerable meandering blue veins, and beyond these walls, others like them; and beyond, others, until the falling snow blurred the distance in its veil of gray.
“Sanna, we cannot go over there,” said the lad.
“No,” said the little one.
“We shall just turn around and get down somewhere else.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
The children then tried to climb down at the place where they had clambered up, but were not able. There was nothing but ice, as if they had missed the direction from which they had come up. They turned this way and that and could not get away from the ice; it was as if they were clasped in it. They worked down and came to more ice. Finally when the lad went as he thought always in the direction from which they had come, they came to other deformed fragments but larger and more intimidating for the most part than along the ice-margin, and by crawling and clambering, they managed to get out. At the edge of the moraine were gigantic boulders heaped up in a way the two children had never seen in all their lives. Many were shrouded in white; others on the under sides or where they slanted up had a smooth high-polished surface as if they had been shoved forward on it; some were tilted together like houses or the sides of a roof; some lay one upon the other like misshapen clods. Not far from the children, several were slanted together, and lying on them were great wide slabs like a roof. A little house had thus been formed, open at the front but closed at both sides and the back. It was dry inside since the snow had been falling straight down and not a flake had drifted in.
The children were thankful not to be in the midst of ice any longer but to be standing on solid ground again.
By this time it had grown very dark.
“Sanna,” said the lad, “we cannot go down any farther because it’s night, and we might fall, or even stumble into a crevasse. Let’s go in under the stones where it’s so dry and warm, and wait there. The sun will come up again and then we’ll run down the mountain. Don’t cry, please don’t cry, you can have all the things to eat that Grandmother gave us to bring along.”
She did not cry. But when they had both gone in under the projecting stone roof where there was even room to sit, stand or walk about, she sat down close to him and was still as a mouse.
“Mother is not going to be displeased with us,” said Conrad. “We shall tell her all about the heavy snow that has kept us and she won’t say anything; neither will Father. If we are cold, remember, slap your body with your hands the way the foresters do, and then you’ll feel warmer.”
“Yes, Conrad,” said the little thing.
Sanna was not disheartened at not being able to go down the mountain and run home, as he might have expected, for the severe strain—the children had not realized how heavy it was—made it seem good to sit down, inexpressibly good, and they gladly gave in to their weariness.
But now hunger too made itself felt. At almost the same instant, they took out their pieces of bread and ate them. They ate the other things too, bits of cake, almonds and nuts and little things their grandmother had slipped into their pockets.
“Now, Sanna, we must get the snow off us,” said the lad, “so we’ll not be wet.”
“Yes, Conrad,” answered Sanna.
They went out in front of their little house, and Conrad first got the snow off his sister. He shook her things by the corners, removed his hat that he had put on her and emptied it of snow and brushed off with a kerchief the snow that was left. Then he got off, as best he could, the snow collected on himself.
It had stopped snowing altogether by this time.
The children felt not a flake.
They went back into the stone house and sat down. Getting up had shown them how tired they really were, and they readily sat down again. Conrad took off his calfskin bag. He got out the cloth that had been wrapped by his grandmother around the cardboard box and paper-covered packages, and laid it about his shoulders for warmth. He also took the two rolls from the bag and gave
them to Sanna. The child ate eagerly,—one and then part of the second. But the rest she gave back to Conrad when she saw that he was not eating. He took it and ate it.
Then both sat and gazed straight ahead.
As far as they could see in the dusk, glimmering snow lay upon everything, separate tiny facets scintillating curiously here and there as if, after absorbing the light all day, they were now reflecting it again.
Darkness fell with the suddenness usual in high altitudes. Soon it was dark all around; only the snow continued to shine with its pallid glimmer. Not only had it stopped snowing but the obscuring mist had begun to lift and was parting here and there, for the children caught the twinkle of a little star. Since the snow shed an actual radiance, as it were, and a veil no longer hung from the clouds, they could see from their refuge the mounds of snow sharply silhouetted against the sombre sky. As it was much warmer in the hut than it had been elsewhere, they rested huddling close against each other, and even forgot to be afraid of the dark. Soon the stars came out in greater numbers, one here, one there, until it seemed not a cloud was left in the sky.
It was the moment when people in the valleys were lighting candles. At first but one is lit and placed on the table to light the room, or just a pine-splinter or a fire in the hearth, and a brightness from all the windows where the family is gathered shines out into the snowy night but on this evening above all—Holy Night—there would be many more lights to shine upon the presents lying spread on tables for the children, or hanging from Christmas trees; countless numbers would be lit, since in every house, every cot, every room, there were one or more children for whom the Christ-child would have brought something on which the candles must shine. The lad had expected they would soon be down off the mountain, yet of all the many lights in the valley that night, not a candle-beam made its way up to them; they looked out upon nothingness, the blankness of the snow, the sombre sky; everything else was lost in impenetrable distance. At this hour, in all the valleys, children were receiving gifts from the Christ-child; only these two sat alone by the glacier; and the finest gifts they might have received were lying in little sealed packages in the calfskin bag at the back of their shelter.
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