The ineffable change had begun. Soon for the moistness of the lowland there was exchanged a hint of frost—something that made outlines a little more determinate, a little crisper. Then, as we mounted higher, there was further change. For dripping twigs of the trees there were trees that showed a hard, white outline of frost; for the sullen muddy stream there was clearer water, that went on its way beneath half-formed lids of ice; and thinner and thinner above our heads grew the grey blanket of cloud.
Then that, too, was folded away, and above is was the sun and the sparkling of the unending firmament. Below it had been like a London fog, when you cannot see the tops of the shrouded houses; now we saw the roofs of the world, the Queen Anne’s mansion of Europe, all clean, all clear, just as they were when I saw this land three years ago. No tile had slipped, no chimney-pot required repairs. The top of the world was good. Oh, how good!
The clear dry air, the sunset lights on the peaks, the liquid twilight (keen as snuff to the nostril), from which the sun had gone! There was the rose-tinted Wetterhorn, black Eiger, flaming finger of Finster-Aarhorn; or, on more human plane, the hiss of skates over the perfect ice, the passage of a toboggan, with a little Swiss girl holding in front of her a baby sister, and steering with her heels, and shrilly shouting ‘Achtung!’ There was ‘Madame’ who keeps a restaurant (I do not know her name), standing to see the train-passengers come in, and shaking hands, and saying, ‘You shall have wings to-morrow, no legs’ (alluding to an amiable altercation of three years ago, when I drew a kind but firm sort of line about eating chickens’ legs for lunch on four consecutive days); and there was the beerman, whose admirable beverage I always drank at 11.30 a.m., being thirsty with skating; and there was a skater I knew, who attempted a rather swift back-bracket for the admiration of the new arrivals by the train to see, and fell down in a particularly complicated manner in the middle of it; and there was the barrack of an hotel which always smells of roasting leather, because people put their skates and boots on the hot-water pipes, and right above it was the Mettelhorn; and to the left was the Lady Wetterhorn; and to the right the smooth, steely-looking toboggan-run down into the valley. ‘Oh, world——’ I beg your pardon.
I have omitted to mention the magic word on our luggage-labels, ‘Grindelwald.’
Three years ago, I must tell you, among other foolish and futile deeds, I made a cache underneath a particular tree on the path leading to the Scheidegg, consisting, as far as I remember, of chocolate, coins, and matches. These insignificant facts I published in another place, and since then I have received every winter mysterious letters from Grindelwald, showing that other people are as absurd as myself. My cache, in fact, has been found (I gave directions which I hoped would be sufficient), and it has been, so these letters tell me, enriched by other secret and beautiful things. There has been placed there, on separate occasions, by separate passionate pilgrims, all manner of store, and the very next morning, instead of going to skate, Helen and I skulked off with a toboggan to see what we should find. A poem on the Wetterhorn, so I had been informed, was there, to form the nucleus of a library; there were a tin of potted meat and some caramels for the larder; and furniture had been added by a third person in the shape of a lead soldier and an ink-bottle; while the exchequer, I knew, also had been enriched by at least half a franc in nickel pieces. We had debated earnestly last night as to what to add to the establishment, if we found it, and eventually decided on a handkerchief, which is to be regarded by passionate pilgrims as a tablecloth, a reel of cotton, and a copy of ‘Shirley’ in the sixpenny edition, to swell the library shelves. This latter was in a small linen bag, to keep it from the wet.
Of course, we did not expect to find all the objects that I had been informed had been placed there from time to time, for the rule of the cache is that you may use what you find there, provided only you replace it with something else. The potted meat, for instance, one could not expect to go undiscussed, and I cannot personally conceive leaving caramels uneaten. But in place of those, if only passionate pilgrims had played the game, we should find other objects. Thus the cache becomes a sort of exchange and mart—a reciprocal table laid in the wilderness, where you take one dish and replace it with another.
How it all savours of romance to the childish mind! With agitated fingers you scoop away the earth and moss which form the entrance to the cache, under a pine tree on the empty, frozen hillside, and you know you will find treasure of some kind, but what it is you cannot possibly tell. And inviolable secrecy must surround and embellish your manœuvres; the cache should not be mentioned at all except discreetly to the elect, for it partakes of Freemasonry, the masons of which are those who delight in idiotic proceedings. But just as three years ago I gave the inventory of the cache as it was then, so in the minds of the idiotic there may be felt some interest as to its inventory when the founder again revisited it. Caches, of course, are socialistic in spirit, and anybody may appropriate whatever he chooses; but I should be glad if the copy of ‘Shirley’ is left there. It is such a pleasant book to read after lunch, if you are tobogganing alone. A book, at any rate, is rather a good thing to have in a cache, and the wishes of the founder will be satisfied if another book is put there instead. But let us have a book. I should prefer that it should not be the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’
The morning, I think, must have been ordered on purpose, for I can imagine nothing so exquisite being served up in the ordinary way, à la carte; such weather must have been specially chosen. Not a single ripple of air stirred; an unflecked sky was overhead, and the sun, as we set off, just topped the hills to the south-east, and sat like a huge golden bandbox on the rim of them. The frost had been severe in the night, but in this windlessness and entire absence of moisture no feeling of cold reached one. There was in the air a briskness of quality more than magical; it was as if made of ice and fire and wine, and in a sort of intoxication we slid down into the valley. Then, crossing the stream, since there was water about, it suddenly seemed desperately chill; but no sooner had we mounted a dozen yards of ascent again than the same dry kindling of the blood reasserted itself. Toboggans will not run of their own accord uphill, so I put ours under my arm, and for a hundred yards we danced a pas de quatre up the trodden snow. We both sang all the time, different tunes, when suddenly we saw a clergyman observing us from a few yards ahead. He had a wildish and severe eye, and we stopped. David before the Ark would have stopped if he had unexpectedly come on that man. He was sitting in the snow, and wore a black hat, black coat, and black trousers, but he had yellow boots. He kept his eye on us all the time that we were within sight, and seemed to have no other occupation. We neither of us dared to look round till we had left him some way behind, neither did we dare to dance again. Eventually I turned my head to look at him from behind a tree. He was still sitting in the snow, not on a rug, you understand, nor on a toboggan, nor on any of the things upon which you usually sit in the snow. He was not breakfasting or lunching or looking at the view. He was sitting in the snow, and that was all. I have no explanation of any kind to offer about this unusual incident. Helen thinks he was mad. That very likely is the case, but it is an interesting form of mania. Perhaps by-and-by we shall have an asylum for snow-sitters. Or is it a new kind of rest-cure?
It is astonishing how you can argue about things of which you know nothing. Indeed, I think that all proper arguments are based on ignorance. If you know anything whatever on the subject of which you are talking, you produce a fact of some kind, which knocks argument flat. It is only possible to reason rightly on those subjects concerning which no fact, except the phenomenon itself, is ascertainable. Had we asked the clergyman why he sat in the snow, he would probably have told us, and the subject would have ceased to interest us conversationally. As it was, we held heated debate upon him, just as if he was the Education Bill, for a long time. But the unusualness of it merited attention and conjecture. And think how divine an opening for conversation at dinner-parties, if you know nothing of your neighbour, and have not caught her name.
‘Did you ever see a clergyman sitting in the snow?’