sort of frenzy, in a frenzy to be happy, or to be thrilled. It was
a feeling that desolated the heart.
The two sat in the changing sunshine under their rock, with the
mountain flowers scenting the snow-bitter air, and they ate their
eggs and sausage and cheese, and drank the bright-red Hungarian
wine. It seemed lovely: almost like before the war: almost the
same feeling of eternal holiday, as if the world was made for man's
everlasting holiday. But not quite. Never again quite the same.
The world is not made for man's everlasting holiday.
As Alexander was putting the bread back into his shoulder-sack, he
exclaimed:
'Oh, look here!'
She looked, and saw him drawing out a flat package wrapped in
paper: evidently a picture.
'A picture!' she cried.
He unwrapped the thing and handed it to her. It was Theodor
Worpswede's Stilleben: not very large, painted on a board.
Hannele looked at it and went pale.
'It's GOOD,' she cried, in an equivocal tone.
'Quite good,' he said.
'Especially the poached egg,' she said.
'Yes, the poached egg is almost living.'
'But where did you find it?'
'Oh, I found it in the artist's studio.' And he told her how he
had traced her.
'How extraordinary!' she cried. 'But why did you buy it?'
'I don't quite know.'
'Did you LIKE it?'
'No, not quite that.'
'You could NEVER hang it up.'
'No, never,' he said.
'But do you think it is good as a work of art?'
'I think it is quite clever as a painting. I don't like the spirit
of it, of course. I'm too catholic for that.'
'No. No,' she faltered. 'It's rather horrid really. That's why I
wonder why you bought it.'
'Perhaps to prevent anyone else's buying it,' he said.
'Do you mind very much, then?' she asked.
'No, I don't mind very much. I didn't quite like it that you sold
the doll,' he said.
'I needed the money,' she said quietly.
'Oh, quite.'
There was a pause for some moments.
'I felt you'd sold ME,' she said, quiet and savage.
'When?'
'When your wife appeared. And when you DISAPPEARED.'
Again there was a pause: his pause this time.
'I did write to you,' he said.
'When?'
'Oh--March, I believe.'
'Oh yes. I had that letter.' Her voice was just as quiet, and
even savager.
So there was a pause that belonged to both of them. Then she rose.
'I want to be going,' she said. 'We shall never get to the glacier
at this rate.'
He packed up the picture, slung on his knapsack, and they set off.
She stooped now and then to pick the starry, earth-lavender
gentians from the roadside. As they passed the second of the
valley hotels, they saw the man and wife sitting at a little table
outside eating bread and cheese, while the mule-chair with its red
velvet waited aside on the grass. They passed a whole grove of
black-purple nightshade on the left, and some long, low cattle-huts
which, with the stones on their roofs, looked as if they had grown
up as stones grow in such places through the grass. In the wild,
desert place some black pigs were snouting.
So they wound into the head of the valley, and saw the steep face
ahead, and high up, like vapour or foam dripping from the fangs of
a beast, waterfalls vapouring down from the deep fangs of ice. And
there was one end of the glacier, like a great bluey-white fur just
slipping over the slope of the rock.
As the valley closed in again the flowers were very lovely,
especially the big, dark, icy bells, like harebells, that would
sway so easily, but which hung dark and with that terrible
motionlessness of upper mountain flowers. And the road turned to
get on to the long slant in the cliff face, where it climbed like a
stair. Slowly, slowly the two climbed up. Now again they saw the
valley below, behind. The mule-chair was coming, hastening, the
lady seated tight facing backwards, as the chair faced, and wrapped
in rugs. The tall, fair, middle-aged husband in knickerbockers
strode just behind, bare-headed.
Alexander and Hannele climbed slowly, slowly up the slant, under
the dripping rock-face where the white and veined flowers of the
grass of Parnassus still rose straight and chilly in the shadow,
like water which had taken on itself white flower-flesh. Above
they saw the slipping edge of the glacier, like a terrible great
paw, bluey. And from the skyline dark grey clouds were fuming up,
fuming up as if breathed black and icily out from some ice-
cauldron.
'It is going to rain,' said Alexander.
'Not much,' said Hannele shortly.
'I hope not,' said he.
And still she would not hurry up that steep slant, but insisted on
standing to look. So the dark, ice-black clouds fumed solid, and
the rain began to fly on a cold wind. The mule-chair hastened
past, the lady sitting comfortably with her back to the mule, a
little pheasant-trimming in her tweed hat, while her Tannh�user
husband reached for his dark, cape-frilled mantle.
Alexander had his dust-coat, but Hannele had nothing but a light
knitted jersey-coat, such as women wear indoors. Over the hollow
crest above came the cold, steel rain. They pushed on up the
slope. From behind came another mule, and a little old man
hurrying, and a little cart like a hand-barrow, on which were
hampers with cabbage and carrots and peas and joints of meat, for
the hotel above.
'Wird es viel sein?' asked Alexander of the little gnome. 'Will it
be much?'
'Was meint der Herr?' replied the other. 'What does the gentleman
say?'
'Der Regen, wir des lang dauern? Will the rain last long?'
'Nein. Nein. Dies ist kein langer Regen.'
So, with his mule, which had to stand exactly at that spot to make
droppings, the little man resumed his way, and Hannele and
Alexander were the last on the slope. The air smelt steel-cold of
rain, and of hot droppings. Alexander watched the rain beat on the
shoulders and on the blue skirt of Hannele.
'It is a pity you left your big coat down below,' he said.
'What good is it saying so now!' she replied, pale at the nose with
anger.
'Quite,' he said, as his eyes glowed and his brow blackened. 'What
good suggesting anything at any time, apparently?'
She turned round on him in the rain, as they stood perched nearly
at the summit of that slanting cliff-climb, with a glacier-paw hung
almost invisible above, and waters gloating aloud in the gulf
below. She faced him, and he faced her.
'What have you ever suggested to me?' she said, her face naked as
the rain itself with an ice-bitter fury. 'What have you ever
suggested to me?'
'When have you ever been open to suggestion?' he said, his face
dark and his eyes curiously glowing.
'I? I? Ha! Haven't I waited for you
to suggest something? And
all you can do is to come here with a picture to reproach me for
having sold your doll. Ha! I'm glad I sold it. A foolish barren
effigy it was too, a foolish staring thing. What should I do but
sell it. Why should I keep it, do you imagine?'
'Why do you come here with me today, then?'
'Why do I come here with you today?' she replied. 'I come to see
the mountains, which are wonderful, and give me strength. And I
come to see the glacier. Do you think I come here to see YOU? Why
should I? You are always in some hotel or other away below.'
'You came to see the glacier and the mountains WITH me,' he
replied.
'Did I? Then I made a mistake. You can do nothing but find fault
even with God's mountains.'
A dark flame suddenly went over his face.
'Yes,' he said, 'I hate them, I hate them. I hate their snow and
their affectations.'
'AFFECTATION!' she laughed. 'Oh! Even the mountains are affected
for you, are they?'
'Yes,' he said. 'Their loftiness and their uplift. I hate their
uplift. I hate people prancing on mountain-tops and feeling
exalted. I'd like to make them all stop up there, on their
mountain-tops, and chew ice to fill their stomachs. I wouldn't let
them down again, I wouldn't. I hate it all, I tell you; I hate
it.'
She looked in wonder on his dark, glowing, ineffectual face. It
seemed to her like a dark flame burning in the daylight and in the
ice-rains: very ineffectual and unnecessary.
'You must be a little mad,' she said superbly, 'to talk like that
about the mountains. They are so much bigger than you.'
'No,' he said. 'No! They are not.'
'What!' she laughed aloud. 'The mountains are not bigger than you?
But you are extraordinary.'
'They are not bigger than me,' he cried. 'Any more than you are
bigger than me if you stand on a ladder. They are not bigger than
me. They are less than me.'
'Oh! Oh!' she cried in wonder and ridicule.' The mountains are
less than you.'
'Yes,' he cried, 'they are less.'
He seemed suddenly to go silent and remote as she watched him. The
speech had gone out of his face again, he seemed to be standing a
long way off from her, beyond some border-line. And in the midst
of her indignant amazement she watched him with wonder and a touch
of fascination. To what country did he belong then?--to what dark,
different atmosphere?
'You must suffer from megalomania,' she said. And she said what
she felt.
But he only looked at her out of dark, dangerous, haughty eyes.
They went on their way in the rain in silence. He was filled with
a passionate silence and imperiousness, a curious, dark, masterful
force that supplanted thought in him. And she, who always
pondered, went pondering: 'Is he mad? What does he mean? Is he a
madman? He wants to bully me. He wants to bully me into
something. What does he want to bully me into? Does he want me to
love him?'
At this final question she rested. She decided that what he wanted
was that she should love him. And this thought flattered her
vanity and her pride and appeased her wrath against him. She felt
quite mollified towards him.
But what a way he went about it! He wanted her to love him. Of
this she was sure. He had always wanted her to love him, even from
the first. Only he had not made up his MIND about it. He had not
made up his mind. After his wife had died he had gone away to make
up his mind. Now he had made it up. He wanted her to love him.
And he was offended, mortally offended because she had sold his
doll.
So, this was the conclusion to which Hannele came. And it pleased
her, and it flattered her. And it made her feel quite warm towards
him, as they walked in the rain. The rain, by the way, was
abating. The spume over the hollow crest to which they were
approaching was thinning considerably. They could again see the
glacier paw hanging out a little beyond. The rain was going to
pass. And they were not far now from the hotel, and the third
level of Lammerboden.
He wanted her to love him. She felt again quite glowing and
triumphant inside herself, and did not care a bit about the rain on
her shoulders. He wanted her to love him. Yes, that was how she
had to put it. He didn't want to LOVE her. No. He wanted HER to
love HIM.
But then, of course, woman-like, she took his love for granted. So
many men had been so very ready to love her. And this one--to her
amazement, to her indignation, and rather to her secret
satisfaction--just blackly insisted that SHE must love HIM. Very
well--she would give him a run for his money. That was it: he
blackly insisted that SHE must love HIM. What he felt was not to
be considered. SHE must love HIM. And be bullied into it. That
was what it amounted to. In his silent, black, overbearing soul,
he wanted to compel her, he wanted to have power over her. He
wanted to make her love him so that he had power over her. He
wanted to bully her, physically, sexually, and from the inside.
And she! Well, she was just as confident that she was not going to
be bullied. She would love him: probably she would: most probably
she did already. But she was not going to be bullied by him in any
way whatsoever. No, he must go down on his knees to her if he
wanted her love. And then she would love him. Because she DID
love him. But a dark-eyed little master and bully she would never
have.
And this was her triumphant conclusion. Meanwhile the rain had
almost ceased, they had almost reached the rim of the upper level,
towards which they were climbing, and he was walking in that silent
diffidence which made her watch him because she was not sure what he
was feeling, what he was thinking, or even what he was. He was a
puzzle to her: eternally incomprehensible in his feelings and even
his sayings. There seemed to her no logic and no reason in what he
felt and said. She could never tell what his next mood would come
out of. And this made her uneasy, made her watch him. And at the
same time it piqued her attention. He had some of the fascination
of the incomprehensible. And his curious inscrutable face--it
wasn't really only a meaningless mask, because she had seen it half
an hour ago melt with a quite incomprehensible and rather, to her
mind, foolish passion. Strange, black, inconsequential passion.
Asserting with that curious dark ferocity that he was bigger than
the mountains. Madness! Madness! Megalomania.
But because he gave himself away, she forgave him and even liked
him. And the strange passion of his, that gave out incomprehensible
flashes, WAS rather fascinating to her. She felt just a tiny bit
sorry for him. But she wasn't going to be bullied by him. She
wasn't going to give in to him and his black passion. No, never.
It must be lo
ve on equal terms or nothing. For love on equal terms
she was quite ready. She only waited for him to offer it.
XVII
In the hotel was a buzz of tourists. Alexander and Hannele sat in
the restaurant drinking hot coffee and milk, and watching the
maidens in cotton frocks and aprons and bare arms, and the fair
youths with maidenly necks and huge voracious boots, and the many
Jews of the wrong sort and the wrong shape. These Jews were all
being very Austrian, in Tyrol costume that didn't sit on them,
assuming the whole gesture and intonation of aristocratic Austria,
so that you might think they WERE Austrian aristocrats, if you
weren't properly listening, or if you didn't look twice. Certainly
they were lords of the Alps, or at least lords of the Alpine hotels
this summer, let prejudice be what it might. Jews of the wrong
sort. And yet even they imparted a wholesome breath of sanity,
disillusion, unsentimentality to the excited 'Bergheil' atmosphere.
Their dark-eyed, sardonic presence seemed to say to the maidenly-
necked mountain youths: 'Don't sprout wings of the spirit too
much, my dears.'
The rain had ceased. There was a wisp of sunshine from a grey sky.
Alexander left the knapsack, and the two went out into the air.
Before them lay the last level of the up-climb, the Lammerboden.
It was a rather gruesome hollow between the peaks, a last shallow
valley about a mile long. At the end the enormous static stream of
the glacier poured in from the blunt mountain-top of ice. The ice
was dull, sullen-coloured, melted on the surface by the very hot
summer: and so it seemed a huge, arrested, sodden flood, ending in
a wave-wall of stone-speckled ice upon the valley bed of rocky
d�bris. A gruesome descent of stone and blocks of rock, the little
valley bed, with a river raving through. On the left rose the grey
rock, but the glacier was there, sending down great paws of ice.
It was like some great, deep-furred ice-bear lying spread upon the
top heights, and reaching down terrible paws of ice into the
valley: like some immense sky-bear fishing in the earth's solid
hollows from above. Hepburn it just filled with terror. Hannele
too it scared, but it gave her a sense of ecstasy. Some of the
immense, furrowed paws of ice held down between the rock were vivid
blue in colour, but of a frightening, poisonous blue, like crystal
copper sulphate. Most of the ice was a sullen, semi-translucent
greeny grey.
The two set off to walk through the massy, desolate stone-bed,
under rocks and over waters, to the main glacier. The flowers were
even more beautiful on this last reach. Particularly the dark
harebells were large and almost black and ice-metallic: one could
imagine they gave a dull ice-chink. And the grass of Parnassus
stood erect, white-veined big cups held terribly naked and open to
their ice air.
From behind the great blunt summit of ice that blocked the distance
at the end of the valley, a pale-grey, woolly mist or cloud was
fusing up, exhaling huge, like some grey-dead aura into the sky,
and covering the top of the glacier. All the way along the valley
people were threading, strangely insignificant, among the grey
dishevel of stone and rock, like insects. Hannele and Alexander
went ahead quickly, along the tiring track.
'Are you glad now that you came?' she said, looking at him
triumphant.
'Very glad I came,' he said. His eyes were dilated with excitement
that was ordeal or mystic battle rather than the Bergheil ecstasy.
The curious vibration of his excitement made the scene strange,
rather horrible to her. She too shuddered. But it still seemed to
her to hold the key to all glamour and ecstasy, the great silent,
living glacier. It seemed to her like a grand beast.
As they came near they saw the wall of ice: the glacier end, thick
The Captain's Dol Page 9
