Everyone, I suppose, has moments of sheer physical enjoyment. I need mention two only: the one, getting into bed, with legs curled up, ere yet the freezing sheets can be encountered; the other, when very cold getting into a hot bath, a bath, that is to say, so hot that it is on the border between bliss and anguish, when, in fact, to move is to scream. On these occasions—for loneliness is essential,—I ‘talk French’; that is to say, streams of gibberish flow in a hushed voice from my lips, in the form of dialogue, and anyone present would hear remarkable things of this nature:
(With deep anxiety) ‘Usti Icibon?’
(Reassuringly) ‘Mimi molat isto pacher.’
(Reassured) ‘Kaparando guilli. Amatinat skolot.’
I blush to reproduce more. But I long to know if anybody else ‘talks French.’ I want to talk it with somebody, and compare vocabularies.
A long colloquy was held that afternoon, sitting in the sun, after the cache was made, and then towards sunset I started to go back through the pine-wood with dim but welcome thoughts of bears and brigands lying in wait on each side the path. One corner I remember I particularly feared, for low-growing bushes bordering the path might conceal almost anything. That I had good reason to fear it I soon found out, though I had feared it for wrong reasons, for my toboggan threw me with reckless gaiety into the middle of those same bushes. In fact, for the first half-mile the track was abominable; bare stones and tree-roots alternated with passages of breathless rapidity; never have I experienced a quicker succession of violences. But as the wood grew less dense the texture of the going became more uniform, and for the last mile I hissed downwards with ever-increasing speed and smoothness through the pallor of the snow-bright dusk. Large stars beamed luminous overhead, and from scattered cottages sprang the twinkling lights, showing that all were home from the frozen fields and safe within walls. Then, wonder of wonders! the full moon rose over the top of the Wetterhorn with a light as clear as running water and as soft as sleep, making complete with its perfection this perfect day.
The other interlude from this rage of tracing useless marks on the ice was a funeral. The funeral was that of Slam’s kitten, though the kitten was not really Slam’s at all. But, to go back to the beginning of things, it is necessary that you should know who Slam was. Her real name was Evelyn Helen Anastasia, and goodness knows what; but what matters more is that she was a child six years and one month old, freckle-faced, snub-nosed, devoted to animals and the outside edge, and by far the most popular person in the hotel. It was the outside edge originally that had brought us together, for she had told me that I didn’t do it properly, and, very kindly showing me how, she had fallen heavily on the ice. As I picked her up, she said:
‘You see what I mean, don’t you? Let me show you again.’
Under her tuition I improved, and, what was more important, our friendship ripened. I am proud to think that I was the only person who ever heard about the kitten, which had followed Slam—I am sure I don’t wonder—with pitiful mewings, down from the Happy Valley, an ownerless beast that would have touched hearts more hard than Slam’s. She kept it in a cupboard in her room and fed it with cake. This I learned on the second day of the kitten’s imprisonment. That evening it died. I will pass over Slam’s lamentations, and the wealth of falsehood by which I convinced her that a diet of cake in an airless cupboard was the only thing that could have saved it. Then, as it was dead, it had to be buried, still without the cognizance of Slam’s nurse, whom I feared.
‘I don’t want a lot of people,’ said Slam. ‘It would be much nicer if we buried her quietly. So when nurse is at dinner I will bring her down in my hat.’