The powers of the
air, that hate to have their kingdom disturbed, watched me as I began.
I had not been engaged upon it a dozen yards when I was seized with
terror.
I have much to say further on in this book concerning terror: the
panic that haunts high places and the spell of many angry men. This
horrible affection of the mind is the delight of our modern
scribblers; it is half the plot of their insane 'short stories', and
is at the root of their worship of what they call 'strength', a
cowardly craving for protection, or the much more despicable
fascination of brutality. For my part I have always disregarded it as
something impure and devilish, unworthy of a Christian. Fear I think,
indeed, to be in the nature of things, and it is as much part of my
experience to be afraid of the sea or of an untried horse as it is to
eat and sleep; but terror, which is a sudden madness and paralysis of
the soul, that I say is from hell, and not to be played with or
considered or put in pictures or described in stories. All this I say
to preface what happened, and especially to point out how terror is in
the nature of a possession and is unreasonable.
For in the crossing of this bridge there was nothing in itself
perilous. The sleepers lay very close together - I doubt if a man
could have slipped between them; but, I know not how many hundred feet
below, was the flashing of the torrent, and it turned my brain. For
the only parapet there was a light line or pipe, quite slender and low
down, running from one spare iron upright to another. These rather
emphasized than encouraged my mood. And still as I resolutely put one
foot in front of the other, and resolutely kept my eyes off the abyss
and fixed on the opposing hill, and as the long curve before me was
diminished by successive sharp advances, still my heart was caught
half-way in every breath, and whatever it is that moves a man went
uncertainly within me, mechanical and half-paralysed. The great height
with that narrow unprotected ribbon across it was more than I could
bear.
I dared not turn round and I dared not stop. Words and phrases began
repeating themselves in my head as they will under a strain: so I know
at sea a man perilously hanging on to the tiller makes a kind of
litany of his instructions. The central part was passed, the
three-quarters; the tension of that enduring effort had grown
intolerable, and I doubted my ability to complete the task. Why? What
could prevent me? I cannot say; it was all a bundle of imaginaries.
Perhaps at bottom what I feared was sudden giddiness and the fall -
At any rate at this last supreme part I vowed one candle to Our Lady
of Perpetual Succour if she would see that all went well, and this
candle I later paid in Rome; finding Our Lady of Succour not hung up
in a public place and known to all, as I thought She would be, but
peculiar to a little church belonging to a Scotchman and standing
above his high altar. Yet it is a very famous picture, and extremely
old.
Well, then, having made this vow I still went on, with panic aiding
me, till I saw that the bank beneath had risen to within a few feet of
the bridge, and that dry land was not twenty yards away. Then my
resolution left me and I ran, or rather stumbled, rapidly from sleeper
to sleeper till I could take a deep breath on the solid earth beyond.
I stood and gazed back over the abyss; I saw the little horrible strip
between heaven and hell - the perspective of its rails. I was made ill
by the relief from terror. Yet I suppose railway-men cross and recross
it twenty times a day. Better for them than for me!
There is the story of the awful bridge of the Mont Terrible, and it
lies to a yard upon the straight line - _quid dicam_ - the segment of
the Great Circle uniting Toul and Rome.
The high bank or hillside before me was that which ends the gorge of
the Doubs and looks down either limb of the sharp bend. I had here not
to climb but to follow at one height round the curve. My way ran by a
rather ill-made lane and passed a village. Then it was my business to
make straight up the farther wall of the gorge, and as there was wood
upon this, it looked an easy matter.
But when I came to it, it was not easy. The wood grew in loose rocks
and the slope was much too steep for anything but hands and knees, and
far too soft and broken for true climbing. And no wonder this ridge
seemed a wall for steepness and difficulty, since it was the watershed
between the Mediterranean and the cold North Sea. But I did not know
this at the time. It must have taken me close on an hour before I had
covered the last thousand feet or so that brought me to the top of the
ridge, and there, to my great astonishment, was a road. Where could
such a road lead, and why did it follow right along the highest edge
of the mountains? The Jura with their unique parallels provide twenty
such problems.
Wherever it led, however, this road was plainly perpendicular to my
true route, and I had but to press on my straight line. So I crossed
it, saw for a last time through the trees the gorge of the Doubs, and
then got upon a path which led down through a field more or less in
the direction of my pilgrimage.
