By five o’clock they had passed the last hamlet, and seemed to be nearing the end of the valley. The stream had petered out into thin channels among marsh and stones. The path had become almost indistinct. The valley had widened into a desolate sort of bay. In the bed of this bay went the path, between huge rolled-down rocks, and over the stream again and again, and beside the last marsh. There a youth and a ragged girl were driving home two cows: the tong-tong of the melancholy cow-bells. Away in front could be seen the cliffs and inaccessible slopes that closed in the valley. Shadows seemed to be gathering. Johanna was frightened.
She asked the youth if this was the path up to the Neering hut. With great difficulty she got an answer. Which way did the path go up? — At last he waved his hand vaguely to the right. How far was the hut from the top of the path? — Perhaps an hour.
“An hour from the top!” cried Johanna. “I am dead already.”
“Probably it isn’t,” said Gilbert. “The map gives it about a quarter of a mile.”
They went on — the youth and the cows clambered up the slope towards the last hamlet: five forlorn, squalid houses which Gilbert and Johanna had seen above them perched on a little table, half an hour ago.
So they plunged on and on, across the desolate, end-of- the-world valley-head, towards the cliffs and the shutting-in slopes. It was evening, and the air was thin and cold, making the heart beat. The track, instead of swerving to the right, swerved to the left, and over a water-fall. There was the hoarse noise of water among vast, loose stones, in the pale, colourless evening. Gilbert pressed forward, Johanna began to lose her nerve.
“I shall never get up there,” she said, eyeing the rock- slopes. “How do we get out?”
“The path will take us.”
The path veered to the right, and began to climb with a vengeance. It was as Johanna had said — this was no mule- track. One had to clamber in foot-holes up rocks like the side of a house. And Johanna kept repeating:
“I shall never get up here. I tell you I’m too tired. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”
Gilbert took her knapsack and clambered up the next piece.
“Come. You must come,” he said, standing there and looking at her.
“I can’t.”
“Very well then, I shall just go on without you.”
For as a matter of fact it was not at all dangerous or even difficult. Only, with the high thin air, and the fatigue, it was terribly strenuous, the heart beat wildly, and the cold made them feel faint. Gilbert stood half-way up the slope — they had perhaps climbed the most jagged piece. The path looked plainer above.
But the moonless night was really falling. It was already dusk. And the world was desert, a cold desert of rock. He looked back, from the cliff-face on which he stood, over the stony bay of the valley-head just beneath, on towards the dim bush-scrub, into the dark valley mouth. Not a sound save water. Not a sign of life. Nothing, but the bareness of rock masses, and a sort of savage world away below. Above, the slope going up like a great bastion, a sky-line dark against a darkening sky, with the first stars.
“I can’t come. Oh I can’t come any further. I can’t come any further!” she cried like a child below, bursting into tears.
“You can come perfecdy easily. Good God, what a mardy baby. I’m going now without you.”
And he turned to clamber still up.
“Wait! Wait for me!” she wailed. And up she came, regaining her composure as she did so.
As she drew nearer, he moved on ahead.
“Wait for me. Wait for me!” she cried imperiously. “Wait! I want to tell you something.”
He stood on the stony-rocky little path on the slope-face, with the black mass of the valley-head curving round, and the gulf of the darkening valley away below. Already stars were out. But he thought he could see on the sky-line the depression where the path would emerge, over a sort of rock-studded shoulder. So he waited for her, wondering what would be over the top.
“Listen,” she said. “I want to tell you something. I want to tell you.”
“What?” said he.
“I want to tell you. Stanley had me the night before last.”
Everything went vague around them.
“Where?”
“The evening when we slept at the Gemserjoch hut.”
The vagueness deepened. Night, loneliness, danger, all merged.
“But when?”
“When we went for a walk — and you went with Terry. He had me in the hay-hut — he told me he wanted me so badly — .”
He looked at her as she stood a little below him in the dusk of that Sunday evening, there in the coldness on the face of the valley-head. She was vague in the darkening twilight. And it was such a surprise to him, that he did not know what to feel, or if he felt anything at all. It was such a complete and unexpected statement that it had not really any meaning for him. He turned vaguely and went clambering up the path, while she followed in silence behind. And so they climbed for some time.
Suddenly he turned to her — she was close behind him. He dropped her knapsack and threw his arms around her.
“Never mind, my love,” he said. “Never mind. Never mind. We do things we don’t know we’re doing.”
And he kissed her and clung to her passionately in a sudden passion of self-annihilation. His soul opened, and he gave himself up. He rose above the new thrust on wings of death. He kissed her and kissed her, and kept on saying:
“We do things we don’t know we are doing. And they don’t signify. They don’t signify really, do they? They don’t really mean anything, do they? I love you — and so what does it matter!”
“No, it doesn’t matter,” said Johanna a little testily. She was quite mute and unresponsive under his kisses, and quite unyielding under his embrace as he clasped her to his bosom.
Johanna did not at all care for the conclusion “that it did not matter.” Those marvellous pearls of spiritual love. “I love you — and so what does it matter!” fell on completely stony ground. She felt rather caught-out by his passionate spiritual forgiveness: put in a falser position than ever. So she took up her own knapsack, and they resumed their scramble up the hill-face. It really was not very far now. In about ten minutes they wound their way out on to the shoulder, between wild rocks. It was quite dark, save for the stars. And perfectly silent and summit-stern. And very cold, extremely cold.
But he could still make out the path. So he pushed on, and in a few minutes, to his great relief, saw a yellow light shining in the darkness ahead.
“There — that’s it,” he said.
And his chief anxiety fell away from him.
“Thank God,” said Johanna.
It was nearly nine o’clock when they reached the wooden rest-house. They ate and went to bed in the ice-cold bedroom. And there he loved her with a wild self-abandon. But she kept something hard against him in the middle of her heart. She could not forgive him for his forgiveness of her. After all, forgiveness is a humiliating thing to the one forgiven. And she did not choose such humiliation. Moreover she did not like his convulsion of selflessness by means of which he soared above a fact which she faced him with: thereby leaving her still saddled with the self-same burdening fact. He seemed to have put her more in the wrong, and assumed a further innocent glory himself. She could not sleep, because her brain was hard.
He however slept the sleep of the innocent and the exalted. He woke rather late, feeling still exalted. It was another sunny morning. He thought of Johanna’s piece of news, but still did not have any clear feelings about it. He did not attempt to realise it imaginatively. On the contrary, he left it as a mere statement, without real emotional force. And he liked Stanley — he had liked him all along: so why pretend to hate him now? And he believed people must do what they want to do. And he knew that Johanna believed in much love, a la Magdalen. “For she hath loved much.” And he himself, Gilbert, he could stand aside for a moment.
“Didn’t you know? Did
n’t you suspect anything?” said Johanna, rather gloomy.
“No,” he answered, with his strange clear face of innocence. “No — never. It wouldn’t have occurred to me.”
And half she felt enmeshed, even a little fascinated by his clear, strange, beautiful look of innocent exaltation. And half she hated him for it. It seemed so false and unmanly. Hateful unmanly unsubstantial look of beauty!
“Well,” she said. “It wasn’t much, anyhow. It meant nothing to me. I believe he was impotent.”
Gilbert looked at her. This brought him to earth a little. And for the first time he felt a pang of hate and contempt for Stanley.
“It meant nothing to me,” she said gloomily.
He did not answer. The words fell into the deep geysers of his soul, leaving it apparently untroubled. But in the end the irritable waters would boil up over this same business.
They decided to take the high-road to Meran. There it ran, the looping white mountain high-road, in a loop past the hut. It was the Meran road. Gilbert looked back over the path they had come last night. It was a sort of moor-track between low heath and great standing boulders. It came from over the brow of nowhere.
So they took the high-road in the opposite direction. It looped and looped across the broad slope of the pass-head. And in one place there was a little, wind-withered crucifix. And one leg of the grey old wood had broken at the knee, and hung swinging in the wind from its nail. Funny the Christ looked, like a one-legged soldier: but pitiful, forlorn, the ancient, snow-harried little crucifix, all falling to bits, standing back among moor-like heath from the road.
As the day went on, as they wound and wound round the long, many loops of the road, seeing the sun-dim country away below, with its valley and other hills, a certain heaviness, darkness came over Gilbert. As a heaviness and an inert darkness follows most exaltations. He felt he could not see the world. His soul was rather dreary and hard. And he wished he could get back his own real, genuine self.
So they tramped on the whole day. He watched for newnesses in the landscape. The one pleasure still was the new world ahead. He liked the southern plumage of the trees, the feeling of sun and luxuriance.
But about four in the afternoon he suddenly stopped. They had come to a river side — and in front was a forge where a cart was standing. The river was pale-green and full.
“Why!” he said, and his heart fell bang down into his boots. She looked at him.
“Haven’t we come back to Sterzing?” he said.
“No! How can we! How can we!”
But they had. They walked along the road — and they were made certain. They reached the woods, and the place where yesterday’s bridle-path branched off. They had come back to Sterzing.
In the overclouded evening, grey and dismal, they trudged back the long familiar mile-and-a-half into the familiar town. It was really a bitter blow — really a bitter blow . With shame and ignominy Gilbert crept along the High Street, and past their lodging-house. He had a horror lest the landlady should see them.
“Well,” said Johanna. “We’d better go back to our old room.”
“I couldn’t stop in Sterzing,” he said, with that peculiar pallid finality there was no answering.
“What will you do then?”
“Take the train to Bozen.”
So they passed through the town and along the embankment to the station. There was a train at half-past six. He bought second class tickets, because they were both so tired. And soon they sat in the warm, brilliant, beautifully-appointed train — it was the Rome express, running swiftly and smoothly south.
But Gilbert’s soul was full of bitterness. Not the news of Johanna, but the taking the wrong road, the finding himself back on his own traces was bitter to him. He felt, somehow, foiled, cast back, thrown down again. He would never walk from the Neering pass to Meran — he would never see Meran — there was some part of his life lost to him. There was some part of his life lost to him. There was some part of his life lost to him. He felt it with hateful fatality. Because he had taken the wrong road. He had made a mistake. He hated now, with deep, acid hatred, to think of the scene on the path of the pass-head: Johanna’s confession and his passionate getting over it. He hated to think of it. His soul was all gone acid and hard.
Johanna was hungry, and insisted on having dinner on the train. So they sat amid smart people, who eyed them in their shabbiness. And they ate their swaying soup on the luxurious train. And Gilbert paid, and begrudged the money, and begrudged the tip he had to leave for the superior waiter.
For the joint stock of money was getting low — it was getting seriously low. And here was another thing that tightened his nerves and irritated his spirit. They had hardly any money — and yet they were spinning south in a luxurious dining car — whither — and why, God alone knew.
Bozen was quite dark. They found themselves walking under huge high walls — railway embankment walls, or something like that. But enormous, stupendous walls in the darkness, under which they crept.
They came into the streets. Question of finding a room. This, in a town, was always a great bugbear to both of them. Each hated asking: simply hated it. And yet they had to look for a room in a house. If they went to hotels, their money would fizzle into nothing.
This night Gilbert had one of his paralysed stupid fits. He would not, could not ask. Behold then Johanna going into a sort of public-house, and asking the old harridan. Four shillings. — ”But that is too much,” said Johanna.
“Go and find something cheaper,” yelled the old harridan, while the drinking men laughed.
Nice recollections of Bozen.
However, after three shots they found a room — more or less all right — for three shillings. How much better and cleaner, besides infinitely cheaper, rooms were before the war!
Chapter XXIII.
They arrived in Trento — by train — to find all at once that no one understood them. It was really the southern slope now. From the train they had watched the grapes hanging so black under the leaves, and women and men among the vines looking up. Vintage had begun. The world had changed.
One felt it immediately. The station at Trento was still Austrian — there one was still on Germanic ground. But the moment one was outside, in the piazza with its gaudy flowers, and in the streets of the town, one knew one had passed the mysterious dividing line. It was a sunny afternoon. But the streets had that dark, furtive air, as if everybody were watching like suspicious animals from the depths of cavernous houses. The shops indeed were open: but seemed to be abandoned, neglected. That secret, forlorn, suspicious atmosphere that pervades all southern towns the moment one leaves the main street was very evident in Trento. Gilbert and Johanna both felt it for the first time. And Gilbert was thrilled, and Johanna all at once felt homeless, like a waif.
They had not much money, and they wanted to eat, having had no midday meal. So they entered a small, simple-looking cafe, and asked for eggs and milk. The man looked at them with a negative look and answered:
“Non parliamo tedesco.”
Johanna repeated her question in German.
“Non si capisce. Non facciamo mangiare.”
The man shook his head, and stood there blank, neuter, negative: a hostile cypher in the atmosphere.
Neither Gilbert nor Johanna understood one single word of Italian. The waiter made not the faintest attempt to understand or to cope with them. He just presented a dead negation of anything they might be or request. Which so bewildered them that they sat at a little table.
“Che cosa desidera?” said the neutral native, in a way that would put you off desiring anything.
Johanna tried French, and asked for milk. Was there milk? And since no Italian could be considered anything but a perfect Frenchman as far as the sister language is concerned, the native replied:
“Oui, il y est du lait.”
Whereupon Johanna ordered two glasses of milk — which came. Then she proceeded to eggs — there were no
eggs: — bread — there was no bread. The waiter brought two biscuits each. So the pair of finches sat in perfect bewilderment and ate this most unsatisfactory lunch.
“What do they mean by it?” cried Johanna. “It’s an Austrian town.”
“They don’t want to understand,” said Gilbert, who remembered the black, big-nosed French inn-keeper at the village outside Detsch.
“But how monstrous!” cried Johanna. “One must eat.”
They set out to try again: a rather superior cafe this time, with a clean German fresh-air look about it. Here there must be something. In they went.
The first waiter, a boy, mumbled something in Italian: the marble-topped tables looked arid: was the scene going to repeat itself. But no: a clean little man in a white jacket, and what did they want? To eat. He was sorry, but there was nothing to eat. Not even eggs and bread? He was sorry, but they didn’t have eggs, and the morning bread was finished, and the afternoon bread had not come yet. — Could one then get nothing to eat in this holy town of Trento? — Yes, one must go to the large restaurant there — there — he pointed to the corner. Danke schon! and Bitte! — and they departed again.
“Anyhow he was nice,” said Johanna.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 301
