I offered him
all I had in money to go on, but it was folly in me, because if I had
had enough to tempt him and if he had yielded we should both have
died. Luckily it was but a little sum. He shook his head. He would not
go on, he broke out, for all the money there was in the world. He
shouted me to eat and drink, and so we both did.
Then I understood his wisdom, for in a little while the cold began to
seize me in my thin clothes. My hands were numb, my face already gave
me intolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy. I learnt
another thing (which had I been used to mountains I should have
known), that it was not a simple thing to return. The guide was
hesitating whether to stay in this rough shelter, or to face the
chances of the descent. This terror had not crossed my mind, and I
thought as little of it as I could, needing my courage, and being near
to breaking down from the intensity of the cold.
It seems that in a _tourmente_ (for by that excellent name do the
mountain people call such a storm) it is always a matter of doubt
whether to halt or go back. If you go back through it and lose your
way, you are done for. If you halt in some shelter, it may go on for
two or three days, and then there is an end of you.
After a little he decided for a return, but he told me honestly what
the chances were, and my suffering from cold mercifully mitigated my
fear. But even in that moment, I felt in a confused but very conscious
way that I was defeated. I had crossed so many great hills and rivers,
and pressed so well on my undeviating arrow-line to Rome, and I had
charged this one great barrier manfully where the straight path of my
pilgrimage crossed the Alps - and I had failed! Even in that fearful
cold I felt it, and it ran through my doubt of return like another and
deeper current of pain. Italy was there, just above, right to my hand.
A lifting of a cloud, a little respite, and every downward step would
have been towards the sunlight. As it was, I was being driven back
northward, in retreat and ashamed. The Alps had conquered me.
Let us always after this combat their immensity and their will, and
always hate the inhuman guards that hold the gates of Italy, and the
powers that lie in wait for men on those high places. But now I know
that Italy will always stand apart. She is cut off by no ordinary
wall, and Death has all his army on her frontiers.
Well, we returned. Twice the guide rubbed my hands with brandy, and
once I had to halt and recover for a moment, failing and losing my
hold. Believe it or not, the deep footsteps of our ascent were already
quite lost and covered by the new snow since our halt, and even had
they been visible, the guide would not have retraced them. He did what
I did not at first understand, but what I soon saw to be wise. He took
a steep slant downward over the face of the snow-slope, and though
such a pitch of descent a little unnerved me, it was well in the end.
For when we had gone down perhaps 900 feet, or a thousand, in
perpendicular distance, even I, half numb and fainting, could feel
that the storm was less violent. Another two hundred, and the flakes
could be seen not driving in flashes past, but separately falling.
Then in some few minutes we could see the slope for a very long way
downwards quite clearly; then, soon after, we saw far below us the
place where the mountain-side merged easily into the plain of that cup
or basin whence we had started.
When we saw this, the guide said to me, 'Hold your stick thus, if you
are strong enough, and let yourself slide.' I could just hold it, in
spite of the cold. Life was returning to me with intolerable pain. We
shot down the slope almost as quickly as falling, but it was evidently
safe to do so, as the end was clearly visible, and had no break or
rock in it.
So we reached the plain below, and entered the little shed, and thence
looking up, we saw the storm above us; but no one could have told it
for what it was. Here, below, was silence, and the terror and raging
above seemed only a great trembling cloud occupying the mountain. Then
we set our faces down the ravine by which we had come up, and so came
down to where the snow changed to rain. When we got right down into
the valley of the Rhone, we found it all roofed with cloud, and the
higher trees were white with snow, making a line like a tide mark on
the slopes of the hills.
I re-entered 'The Bear', silent and angered, and not accepting the
humiliation of that failure. Then, having eaten, I determined in equal
silence to take the road like any other fool; to cross the Furka by a
fine highroad, like any tourist, and to cross the St Gothard by
another fine highroad, as millions had done before me, and not to look
heaven in the face again till I was back after my long detour, on the
straight road again for Rome.
But to think of it! I who had all that planned out, and had so nearly
done it!
