Far, Far The Mountain Peak

by John Masters

  She said: ‘I was angry with you today. You saw. I suppose I’ve always been jealous of you, too, because since he met you you have meant more to him than--anything or anybody. I’m not angry now, because I’ve had time to think. I don’t really hate you, Peter--I admire you and wish I could be like you, just as Gerry and Peggy do. But I’ve got to speak before it is too late. Gerry simply does not have the nerve, the will-power, whatever you want to call it, that you have. He’s not like you. He’s good and gentle and considerate.’

  ‘Nothing like me,’ he said, coldly because that was his nature, but not denying her statement.

  ‘No,’ she said flatly, ‘you are different. Whatever you are, it’s not “good and gentle.” It may be something much greater, but it isn’t that. You’re tuning Gerry higher than he can go. I felt when I saw you both today that he was a ‘cello that someone, a god or a devil but not a person, had taken because he liked the shape, and was tightening the screws, stretching the strings tighter, trying to make it play the score of a violin, at the top of a violin’s range. It can’t be done! Something’s got to break, shatter, all of a sudden. His hair--at twenty-eight! You know he went out and bought some dye as soon as you went upstairs? So no one knows except us three--Peggy didn’t see, and after that he kept his hat on, even in the coffee-room. That wasn’t the result of any one day, any one incident, whatever you or he think. It was something that began the moment you met him and began to turn the screw, raise the pitch--at first so little that no one noticed; and then, when they did, it was exciting and wonderful and good, because he used to be understrung, he had no purpose at all. When are you going to Meru?’

  ‘Reconnaissance in nineteen-eleven, climb it in nineteen-thirteen,’ he said. They had talked it out thoroughly in a score of Alpine huts.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said, and she did not use the words lightly. She sat down slowly and put her head in her hands. He looked at the closed door; listened, disembodied, to the faint creak and pad of feet moving along the corridor, the lilting music of the band outside the Cervin, almost opposite. And inside this room this woman and he were talking about things that Gerry would not really understand, because they were beyond the limits of what he wanted to understand. To Gerry all was a question of duty and courage only--one was brave, or one was not; one found what one’s duty was and did it.

  ‘Why don’t you ask him to marry you?’ he said suddenly. She started violently and went pale. She said: ‘You know why.’

  ‘Because he’d have to say yes?’

  She nodded.

  He said: ‘Would you have to say yes if he asked you?’

  She stared at him, and her face became aware, alive again, but not angry. She said: ‘No.’

  He said: ‘Would Peggy have to say yes if I asked her?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And I, if Peggy asked me?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’m not talking about pressure from outside, or who is capable of standing up against convention,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said, and she did.

  He walked away from her slowly and stared out of the window at some white furnace, hanging in the darkness to the southwest, that might have been a strange cloud, or a new dim constellation in another universe, but was the Matterhorn. He returned to her.

  ‘Gerry’s my best friend,’ he began.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know,’ she said quickly.

  He said: ‘No man knows what he can do until he tries. No man knows what’s behind a door until someone opens it.’

  She was listening, but at the same time pursuing a parallel line of thought of her own, so that when she spoke she was not answering him but making a response, as in a psalm. ‘No one but me really sees what you’re doing.’ She spoke, very low, almost whispering. ‘Peggy--nothing, because it’s you. My father and mother--a little; but for every worry, for every time they notice a new line around his eyes, something different about his mouth, they see the new strength, the expertness, the decision.’

  ‘Those are real,’ he said.

  ‘Of course--but he’s not Gerry any more.’

  He felt there was nothing he could say that could lift the two of them out of the mud in which they were struggling. If he could speak with the same force that he could act or think, it would be different. That was it. He had to act.

  He said: ‘Do you want to know what’s happened to Gerry?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course. But---‘

  He said: ‘Tomorrow. Come with me tomorrow, and we’ll climb the Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn--guideless. Are you fit enough?’

  She stared at him. She said: ‘Yes. How did you know that was my dream--the Zmutt ridge, guideless. And arrive at the top by dawn.’

  He didn’t answer. She said: ‘It’s a dream, but it’s not actually impossible. Only, the amateurs good enough to take me wouldn’t do it because it wouldn’t be safe. I might lose my nerve.’

  ‘I’ll go with you tomorrow,’ he said, ‘but I won’t take you. We will climb the Zmutt ridge, guideless--and reach the summit at dawn, and come down the Hornli.’

  Her grey eyes began to take on an extraordinary, vivid life of their own, perhaps some reflection of the light from her hair. ‘All right,’ she said.

  He said: ‘Gerry’s got a sprained ankle.’

  She said: ‘Peggy’s got a headache--migraine.’

  He said: ‘I’ll find out in the morning who’s going up to the Hornli, and arrange to join them. That’ll fix the chaperonage. I’ll tell your father we’ve got a guide. But we’ll go to the Schonbühl.’

  ‘What about the people we’re supposed to join at the Hornli?’ she said calmly.

  ‘I’ll send a boy up with a note,’ he said, ‘telling them we’ve cried off.’

  She nodded, her eyes still aflame. She stood up suddenly. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll get into awful trouble if anyone finds me here.’

  But he hadn’t finished. He wanted to keep those eyes alight with their deep, wondering fire, to keep the lips parted in her wide, strong mouth. He said: ‘What else are your dreams, that you think you can never make come true?’ She was a flamingly beautiful young woman. How could he have known her so long, and even suspected the Spanish fire under the over-bred calm of her manner, and still have stood away and aloof? For Gerry, of course . . . She was a courtesan, one of those who have turned kings into heroes--and ruined empires. He said: ‘Haven’t you ever wanted to make the Archduke offer you one of his detached houses in Budapest?’

  Now she was breathless, and her eyes were fixed on his as though she were hypnotized. ‘Yes, yes,’ she whispered. ‘But---‘

  ‘You shall,’ he said, ‘so that you can say “No!” when he does--not angrily, but inevitably. So that he’ll know you’re going to say no, but still he must try. Have you ever heard an ice-axe humming from the electricity in the air?’

  She stood braced, as though pushing him away from her. Then she broke and hurried to the door. ‘Tomorrow,’ she whispered.

  Chapter 11

  She awoke with an almost terrifying surge of consciousness. It was midnight, and someone was scratching at the door of the women’s bunk-room. Peter. She was in the Schonbühl hut. She stepped out and up in one motion and whispered: ‘All right.’ She heard him move away as she bent down to find her boots. The midnight awakenings in huts like this should be purgatory, a sour taste in the mouth, the muscles like lead, the stomach queasy, and ahead the heavy hours of slogging across a hummocky glacier, the lantern swinging in the guide’s hand, and at the end a ‘good climb for a competent lady.’ This was different. She was aware of the night and the silence and Peter a few feet away, and over there the Zmutt ridge of the Matterhorn.

  She dressed quickly. The night air crackled against the window panes; the moon was in the third quarter; the stars powdered the sky. A long veil of silver hung in a down-arching curve from the crest of the mountain.

  She went out to him and by the light of the lantern he c
hecked her clothes, boots, rope, ice-axe, and all the articles in his own light pack.

  ‘Take your skirt off,’ he said. She obeyed quickly, turning her back, though under the skirt she wore heavy tweed breeches.

  ‘Where shall I put it?’ she asked. Usually women left their skirts under a rock near the foot of the ascent and put them on again on the way down; but they would not be returning this way.

  ‘Under the bunk,’ he said.

  Then she followed him into the moonlight and they began to walk quickly across the Zmutt glacier. Half-way across, suddenly, she found the source of the tremendous power that moved her so effortlessly across the glacier, that made every step a vivid affirmation of life. It was fear.

  She stopped and said it aloud. There was no need to pretend to Peter Savage--also, it was doubly dangerous. She said: ‘I am afraid.’

  He stopped and faced her, the moon-glow softening his face, so that he looked like a tensed, patient Apollo. He said: ‘Look at me.’ She was looking, but now she looked harder, trying to find some kind of anxiety lurking in the lines of his face or buried in the winter blue of his eyes.

  ‘We’re not going to fail, or fall. I’ve been up here twice, and I know it--and I know you. You’re not going to lose your nerve anywhere, whatever happens. You’re not a lady’--he grinned, and his teeth flashed momentarily--’you’re a climber.’

  She considered, and knew it was true. There could be no fear today; and, in fact, looking for it again, she found that it had gone.

  They began climbing. At the difficult places he held the lantern in his teeth as the guides did, but that too he had practised. Her own legs were long; there was need, for in places the stretch was long between foot-holds.

  They came to such a place. She watched, waiting. He reached up, crept his fingers into a rugosity of the rock, and held hard. The cold seeped inside her coat and the bleak wind soughed across the face of the ridge. A steady pull; then he leaned away, held by balance alone; a short step and he was up, digging his ice-axe into the snow, anchoring the rope around a rock, the lamp set down in snow under the rock. She looked up at him, past him at the falling ridge of ice and snow, beyond again at the unreachable stars. Not tonight unreachable, though. Tonight she could touch them. Her hand went up, stretching.

  She could not reach the place where he had taken his first finger-hold. In a second she must step down and wonder: What now?

  ‘I can’t reach,’ she said, but as she spoke she felt a gentle pressure in the rope, and: ‘Now,’ his voice spoke, lifting her. A long stretch, and her fingers gripped the rock, and: ‘Now,’ he said again, and she caught the rhythm, holding the mountain away as she held a partner in the waltz, stepping quick and neatly up until she joined him.

  Oh, Gerry, she thought; poor Gerry!

  Always he was waiting for her, but as she climbed she knew that they could walk side by side--if this were not a mountain --for his waiting was not impatient, nor was his leading the leading of a guide. She was his companion, and as the blood flowed free through her veins she was his partner. The darkness below was a sea of land, of wishes, of talk, but they were on the mountain, the granite wave whose crest brushed the stars. On, on, let the minuet last for ever, a thousand feet an hour, and in the dawn they’d step on the summit and bow, and then---?

  ‘Rest,’ he said, and blew out the lantern and set it on a stone to cool. He opened his pack and handed her the bottle of cold unsweetened tea. He had a pint of brandy in there too, and half a bottle of champagne. That was the custom--the brandy to keep out the cold, the champagne for the summit.

  He put the cold lantern in his pack and stood up. They went on, for a few moments her legs stiff and inexact. Then she heard music and thought the exhilaration had actually lifted her off the mountain; but it was Peter humming an Indian tune, and when she asked him what it was he said: The Wounded Heart. Then the rhythm came back, and with each step and each light breath it was the tune of The Wounded Heart singing in her ears.

  . . . a long diagonal cleft of rock, the snow powdering his shoulders and falling in icy spangles around her head--up to him, now with him, for he took her hand and led her slowly forward. The summit.

  ‘Here,’ he said. A silent minute when she heard her own breathing, deep and steady under the wind; then the wind died, and they stood close in utter silence, and her knees began to shiver and the pit of her stomach to draw small and tight. She remembered no details of the climb, only the circle of lamplight, a little rock, she and Peter, strength and certainty.

  ‘The stars have gone,’ she whispered, her voice trembling. Six thousand feet in six hours; the Zmutt ridge, guideless; she, a woman--any one of these was enough to explain the quaking of her heart, yet all of them together could not explain it.

  He did not answer, and in the quietness the dawn marched up out of the darkness of Italy with saffron banners flying and trumpets calling and drums beating.

  The wind rose and as the light touched the mountain an avalanche began somewhere out of sight below them, among the precipices at the head of the Furgg Glacier.

  He said: ‘Ready to go down?’

  Ready? Since she could not go any farther up, here, she must be ready. She remembered the champagne and told him she wanted to share it with him, here and now.

  He undid the gold foil from the mouth of the bottle and pressed up under the heavy cork with his thumbs. The cork flew out, and the golden wine spurted twenty feet across the snow.

  ‘Oh, Peter!’ she cried. ‘Is it all gone?’

  He held the bottle upside down, and the last drops fell on the snow. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It turned out to be a libation instead. Are you ready?’

  Now down, the rope coiled in his hand and she moving fast down the Hornli ridge ahead of him. She had been up and down here five times now--so now was the need to be doubly careful. On the north face, near here, the rope had broken that July day of 1865, and four men died, perhaps because they too, coming down from the first ascent of the mountain, were filled with wild elation.

  What now? What next? She wanted to turn and ask him, but she could not.

  Ah, but the next thing would be the Potters and their guide coming up. Some of the elation left her. They would not be alone on the mountain for long. She wondered what Gerry was thinking. From below the Solvay hut she scanned the ridge and could see nothing. The Potters would be in sight if they were coming. Then they weren’t coming. They had turned back because she and Peter had not appeared at the Hornli hut last night. In two or three hours they would reach Zermatt, and then there’d be excitement and everyone wondering what had happened to them--until the boy delivered Peter’s note to Gerry. But that wouldn’t help either, because then they would convince themselves that the pair of them lay dead somewhere below the Zmutt ridge. And everyone would be sure Peter had somehow forced her to go with him on this insane adventure, for his own glorification. It was unfair, unfair! Only Gerry would understand, and Gerry would be argued down because everyone knew he was Peter’s slave--she had said so herself. The peak was behind them, and down there in the trench of the valley was life, muddy with a swirling, heavy ground-swell of opinion, custom, and prejudice. As soon as they passed the Schwarzsee she’d be caught back into it and whirled heavily around until all this miracle was washed out of her mind, until she could believe it had never happened; or that if it had it shouldn’t have, that there was something inherently wicked about it; but it had, and there wasn’t.

  She set her jaw and moved faster still. Wait till they saw her striding into Zermatt without a skirt! Oh, just wait! For the sake of a skirt they would deny truth?

  Peter was a silent man, and she could not tell him what she wanted to. After a while she was sure that there was no need.

  At the Hornli hut they found signs--the warm ashes of a fire, some paper, a cork still smelling of fresh wine--that someone had been there the night before. In another hour they passed the Schwarzsee and entered the forests as the path zigzagged down
. The sun shone directly on their backs, throwing long shadows ahead of them, and it was morning, the cow-bells tolling slowly in the fields and little children walking silent behind the cows, and the sound of hammering as they pegged each animal to its chain and to its appointed place.

  ‘Let’s rest,’ Peter said. He turned off the path, where it ran down the steep slope above the Zmuttbach, and led back along the hillside. She followed quietly, because Zermatt was near and she was growing afraid of facing it. He stopped beside a tall tree near the edge of a low cliff, and he was looking at her as she came into the place. It was quiet there, though the stream whispered silkily at the foot of the cliff. Through the feathery, lightly moving boughs of the tree the Matterhorn filled the sky, leaning over, ready to engulf them.

  She stopped a couple of feet from him, holding her eyes steady on his face. She had something to say, and if she waited she would say it, for the words were welling up like water from an overfull spring. ‘I never knew you, Peter. I’m sorry. I understand--but Gerry doesn’t and never will.’

  He looked tired for the first time that she could remember. She was not afraid of him, and it was true, as it had always been, that he was destroying Gerry, but only because he was looking for a companion, such as he had found in her for these few hours when she had been his partner. But what now? If she took Gerry away from him, as she could, it was Peter who might be destroyed. He was diabolically brilliant--but brittle. He needed Gerry more than he knew. And in fact, could Gerry return to the cattle and the footmen at Wilcot after this man had breathed discontent into his nostrils?

  They were at an impasse, and no way out except surrender. Forget it had happened, deny it, pretend it wasn’t, because any other course was too dangerous, too bright with chances of ecstasy and passion--and hell.