Roundabout to Moscow: An Epicurean Journey

by John Bell Bouton

The next morning, at about the same hour, I found Corduroy standing alone, in the same place as before. He was again dressed for an outing, and had his Alpenstock still in hand. He was looking fixedly in the direction of the mighty Wetterhorn, whose snowy summit was now visible and now concealed, as the lazy clouds or mist-wreaths drifted back and forth. He puffed at a brierwood pipe calmly, and seemed engrossed in that occupation and the study of Wetterhorn’s top, until he saw me looking at him. Then he pulled the pipe from his mouth, as one who expects to speak and be spoken to, at the same time walking toward me with a look of friendly recognition.

Being the older, I was the first to break silence, and I did so with a commonplace remark upon the weather, which was a little uncertain, but promising to be fine. And I could not resist the temptation to add that it reminded me of the day I ascended the Gorner Grat, 10,000 feet above the sea, only two weeks before. That being my only really hard climb in the Alps, I was as proud of it as a boy of his first trousers.

Corduroy’s face expressed great interest. He asked me a number of questions about the state of the weather at Zermatt, and whether the hotels were crowded, and as to the condition of the road from Vispach to St. Niklaus, a bad bit generally. I answered him very fully, only too happy to show off my familiarity with the most wonderful mountain district of Switzerland. And I said patronizingly, I must confess: “Really, now, you ought to see the Matterhorn. It’s worth the trouble, I assure you. I was the second man on the Gorner Grat this year, and as the snow was then about eight feet deep, and only a foot-path broken through it part of the way, the climbing was no joke. You would find it easier next—”

“But I have already seen the Matterhorn,” said Corduroy, who had been quietly smoking his pipe during my remarks.

“From what point?” I asked.

“From the top. I made my second ascent last year. And hope to get round there in July for my third.”

I have seen, in my day, many undemonstrative Englishmen. But this one beat them all. Who could have thought he would have listened so patiently to all my brag about that ant-hill of a Gorner Grat when he had done the awful Matterhorn twice? I was astonished, and at first doubtful of Corduroy’s entire veracity, though truth seemed to ooze out of every feature of his prepossessing face. I inadvertently glanced at the Alpenstock and saw no record of any performances written there.

Corduroy read my thoughts. He cast an eye on the smooth old Alpenstock and smiled as he said: “Oh! we never do that, you know.”

Then I remembered to have heard that the people who do the least climbing generally have the most names of conquered peaks on their Alpenstocks; so that, in fact, the absence of the dreadful Matterhorn from Corduroy’s staff became a sort of proof that he was not lying to me. I blushed at my unworthy suspicion. It was now my turn to become deeply interested. I asked him many questions about his ascents of the most difficult mountain in all Europe. He answered briefly and modestly, and I also learned from him by the corkscrew process (for I never saw a man with less vanity) that he had ascended Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, the Weisshorn, Schreckhorn, and Finsteraarhorn once each, and that he was now on the point of attacking the Wetterhorn, toward which he had been gazing, but feared that the impending change of weather might compel him to give it up.