As I put the last finishing touches to my collar at the glass, my feminine pulses slightly quickened to the tune of—'This was the peasant's last good-night;' and though no voice far up the height replied 'Excelsior!' yet a voice came from outside which meant in downright English very much the same thing; and my reflections were quenched in the carousal down-stairs, which I hastened to join. An unfortunate and sleepy maid was ministering to the wants of my friends in the dimly lighted salon of the Riffel-haus. Outside, the guides were impatiently stamping about in the frosty night, and complaining of the length of our delay, insinuating that the sun would soon be up. The fact is the preparations of toilet on our part were complicated. The uninitiated may not know that the feminine clothing of the present time, elegant though some may think it, is not conducive to comfort in mountain climbing. A well-tied back tablier has a restrictive influence upon the free movement of the lower limbs, and only admits of a step of a certain length. In rock-work it is felt to be peculiarly irksome, and in soft snow it is trying to the temper.
Let the imaginative reader then, if he be able, picture two young women devoid of tabliers, and so at once removed from the pale of polite society. I tremble as I write with the fear that this avowal may remove from me and my companion that feminine sympathy so dear to our hearts. But I must descend a step lower. Freedom from tablier was not sufficiently radical. Our skirts must be carefully pinned up round our waists à la washerwoman, so that our progress be perfectly unimpeded; and armed with masks and spectacles we sallied forth into the darkness—a party of six. I shall not easily forget the delicious exhilaration we felt as we hastened along towards the Gorner glacier. The dark cold air touched our faces crisply, and feelingly persuaded us of the advantage of the sun's absence.
The searching sensation of being about to commit a crime, attendant on nocturnal adventures, clung to us, and we were filled with a vague remorse, in which we felt at one with Eugene Aram. At the same time the ridiculousness of our position soon wrought upon us to such a degree that we profaned that wonderful silence with unholy bursts of laughter. Our festivity ceased when we reached the glacier, for there we broke up into line, we ladies being tenderly taken possession of each by a guide, who soon got us over a rough moraine. The glacier we found unpleasantly slippery; and it was exciting work, as at the point where we crossed it was very much crevassed, and steps had often to be cut. The nails on our marvellous boots answered admirably, and we sprang about with great sure-footedness and with exquisite enjoyment.
The leader of our party was in a rather dangerous plight, for he had had no nails put into his boots, and we felt quite anxious as through the dim light we noticed his uncertain movements. How he got across with the ice in so bad a condition, is a marvel! We had been on the glacier about an hour when the light began to creep up over the mountains, and we were in the midst of a scene of wonderful beauty. The Monte Rosa, the Lyekamm, Castor and Pollux, the Breithorn, the Matterhorn, and many another shrouded in their utter whiteness stood round us in awful calm, closing us in upon a lake of tossed and heaving ice. The moonlight which streamed down upon us on one side, and the pale yellow light of the dawn on the other, lit up the scene with a weirdness which seemed not of our world. We saw each other's phantom-like figures gliding about, and felt that we were too real to be there—a place where only ghosts had any right to be. The feeling that pressed upon me was that I had suddenly intruded into nature's holiest of holies. It seemed as if some secret of a higher life than this was being sighed through the air, and that I, with all my earth-stains on me, could not rise to the understanding of that secret. Yet on that early morning in August, in the same world far away, the same London was going on in the same old way we knew so well. Cats were even then stealing along suburban walls; cocks were beginning to practise their crescendos, tired-out citizens were tossing in oppressive four-posters, dreaming tantalising dreams of cool sea-breezes not for them; while round all must be clinging that heavy breathed-out air, which of itself is a very inferno in contrast with the mountain ether.
By the time we had reached the upper plateau of the St Théodule glacier, it was light, and we were all roped together. The process of roping in this enlightened age I feel it to be unnecessary to describe. Thus we marched along that profound and frozen solitude tied together in a long line. The snow was as hard as a road, and the cold intense. Biener is an excellent guide, but his pace is very slow, and thus we got rather benumbed. We had, however, passed the Little Matterhorn on our left, and the Théodulhorn on our right, with the little rude cabane erected on the rocks at its foot—more than eleven thousand feet above the sea, and the highest habitation in Europe—and were beginning to trail our snake-like length up the snow-slopes on the west and south of the mountain, when my friend became so unmistakably ill that we came at once to a halt and a consultation. She (to her honour) much wished to go on, in spite of sickness, giddiness, faintness, and a livid complexion; but as that was out of the question, she was untied from the rope, and sent back with our ordinary guide (a first-rate fellow, one Johann von Aa) to the hut already mentioned.
When we reached the actual snow-fields of the Breithorn, I had to learn that the work of my day had scarcely begun. As the sun rose, the snow began to get very soft, and instead of going in to my knees, as I had expected, I literally waded in it up to my waist. With mighty efforts I lifted up my already wearied legs and plunged them into ever fresh pits of snow, where they frequently became so firmly imbedded that, struggle as I might, I could not move; and presented to the spectator the hapless object of half a woman masked and spectacled, striving and panting. From an æsthetic point of view I cannot say I felt myself a success; but from a moral point, I felt myself a very finger-post through the ages. Truly I had given up my all in the shape of appearance, and had offered myself up on that altar of adventure on which so many braves of my country have been sacrificed. The mode of rescue from the uncomfortable position indicated above was almost as bad as the plight itself. I feebly kicked; you can't kick boldly with your legs in tight pits; and the guide dragged at the rope which bound my waist, and then out I came like the cork out of a bottle. Two hours and a half of this sort of thing went on, varied by refreshments and occasional rests for breath-taking, but still it appeared to me that we were always at the same spot, and ever the glittering summit from afar mocked my helpless gasps. At last (ah! what an at last!) the final slope—really the final one—stretched right up before us. A party of men who were engaged in scientific experiments peered over at us; and with one last desperate effort I found myself landed amongst them at the top of the Breithorn, and thirteen thousand seven hundred feet above the sea. As we placed our feet upon the summit we groaned the groan of triumph, and gazed with awe around us upon the inexpressibly magnificent scene which spread itself out before us. A mighty circle of mountains stood in awful calm around us. Every fantastic line, every curious heaping, every wild wreck, every gleaming curve of glacier possible to mountains, seemed gathered together before us. Each peak had a proud originality of its own, which shewed through all the sameness of the uniform whiteness. But the spirit of these places is the most wonderful thing about them. The clamour, the struggle, the unrest, which make up to most of us the atmosphere of this world, seemed in these regions to have been left behind in a past state; and this in a way was illustrated by the scene itself. The contorted forms and tossed rocks spoke of struggle, gradual it may be, but still struggle. But in the sereneness surrounding those unearthly peaks there was a peace which seemed to have left struggle far behind—the repose of a wide knowledge gained only through sore fight and aspiration.
A short time of peaceful dream was allowed me, and that was rather marred by the intense glare of the light, and then we began the descent. In an evil moment of rest some little way down, I left hold of my alpenstock and leaned it against my shoulder. In a moment it was gone—down, down, sliding skittishly away, till my heart was pained by its final leap into a crevasse far away. As I looked, I imagined what a crash my skull would have come at the bottom of that crevasse. I afterwards found out that the alpenstock was not my own, as I then thought, but that I had inadvertently changed with one of our guides. Imagine my grief at the thought that I had lost the dear companion of my travels, that staff which had guided my wavering feet and upheld my tottering body through passes and up mountains, and which I intended to preserve until my death! My situation without it was rather perilous, and would have been more so had not the snow been very soft. But the guide took me entirely in charge, and lent me his axe, which I was certain I should recklessly lose after the same fashion. After a weary time, Biener the guide decided to glissade me. I was resigned. What else could I be? By that time I was very resigned. He took off his coat, and made me sit down upon it, then tied my skirts around me. A rope was attached round my waist, one end of which was grasped by Biener in front, and the other by my gentlemen friends behind. Then ensued a process in which my limbs were nearly severed from the body, and in which I suffered greatly. Biener rushed down the slope dragging me behind him; while the gentlemen, unaccustomed to this sort of thing, and not being able to go fast enough, hung a good part of their weight on to the rope behind, and so almost bisected me. I never expected to be an individual whole again; halves were my fate. Never was creature in so miserable a plight. No Procrustean bed could have produced greater tortures than those I suffered as I sped down that miserable slope. I shouted all the French I could think of to Biener to stop him, and rid me from the hideous rope, which cut me like a knife; but the air would not carry my words, and on I skimmed and floundered. At last he heard my cries, and released me from the fetters. The fact was that the gentlemen were quite unable to keep up with Biener in the deep snow, with the dismal result, as seen above, of almost cutting through my waist. The lesson to be deduced from this is the simple maxim I commend to all my feminine readers: Never, under the most favourable circumstances, glissade.
When we reached the cabane where my friend was waiting for us, we were met by Johann, who told us with a long-face that the 'leddy' would not eat anything, and was very sick. We found, to our sorrow, that she had been in a miserable condition all day, and had suffered dreadfully from mountain sickness. She was so ill that it was impossible she could walk, and we were a long time in deciding what was to be done. Now, a helpless invalid, at a height of over eleven thousand feet above the sea, is not a being easy to legislate for. At last a litter was contrived. A chair was placed on some alpenstocks; and an American gentleman whom we met at the cabane being kind enough to lend us his porter, we found hands enough to carry her part of the way at least, to Zermatt; the Riffel-haus, where we were staying, being out of the question, on account of the Gorner glacier and its moraines and rocks, which would have to be passed to get there. Our party, sad to say, had then to separate, two of us going to Zermatt and two to the Riffel. The melancholy chaise-à-porteur procession wended its way to Zermatt; and with considerably damped spirits we went on to the Riffel, which we reached at about half-past six P.M. The ambulance party did not get to their destination till eight o'clock.
All that remains now to be told of this our adventure is the sad result. The next morning, on waking from sleep, I found that my ear adhered to the pillow; and when, with much trembling I approached the glass, a spectacle presented itself to me which I can never forget. As I gazed at the grotesque reflection of myself, I inwardly vowed that no mask of London make, elegantly worked as it might be, should ever cover my face again. A large flapping cover-all mask 'of the country' let me recommend to ladies who go up snow mountains. I was swollen; I was black; I was hideous! Half of the skin of one ear was hanging by a shred, and the ear itself was a blister; while all round my neck from ear to ear was a chain of blisters. Their state was so bad that the dressing of them by one of our party (a doctor) took half an hour, and I could scarcely turn my head. It required a good deal of courage to face table-d'hôte and the young ladies who were indulging in complexions and large portmanteaus. But I did! Would that I could say I enjoyed it. I did not enjoy it. The complexions of the scornful and the scorn itself, embittered that meal, usually attended with such joys. In my travelling afterwards, I became accustomed to the searching glance at my poor tattered skin and to the remark: 'I see you have been doing glacier-work.' And it was not until a month of English life had to some extent repaired me that I could look back with delight and triumph to the ascent of the Breithorn.