Spinster of This Parish

by W. B. Maxwell

It was an exhausting episode. The scene had become Dantesque, terrible; they were amidst a ruin and devastation that had been wrought by countless ages, and still the work of destruction was continuing. These gigantic hills were slowly crumbling to dust; their sides, torn and split, poured down together with torrents of melting ice the very fabric of which they were composed, so that their foundation lay buried beneath a vast, ever accumulating rubbish heap. And over and through this débris the little party laboured upward; through twisting lanes of detached rocks as large as churches, under high jutting crags that looked like fortresses shattered by a titan artillery, upon shifting beaches of smooth pebbles, in refuse that time had pulverised so finely that it was here a layer of sand and there a quagmire of mud. Riding was no longer possible. One led one’s mule, one panted and gasped for breath in the increasing thinness of the air. One stopped and rested every moment that one might.

On the first and the second night of the climb Emmie suffered a little and a great deal. The cold was almost unbearable; it numbed, it stabbed, it seemed to gnaw away the envelope of flesh and then play havoc with one’s bones. Dyke took the most tender care of her, but neither wraps nor solicitude could keep her warm. Towards morning of that second night he took alarm, scared by thoughts of frost-bite, when she confessed that after considerable pain all sensation seemed to have gone from her feet. He took off her boots, woollen socks, and stockings, and for a couple of hours rubbed her bare legs and feet. She was all right; the suspended circulation restored itself; and daylight showed him the white flesh stained with dirt, but not discoloured, and quite unswollen. He put grease on her feet; and Manuel brought them a breakfast of condensed milk, some ground sugar, and a biscuit. The lamps refused to boil water for tea, and only by much coaxing had they consented to give out heat sufficient to thaw the milk. It froze again before Emmie finished her portion.

“Now let’s be off,” said Dyke; and looking at her attentively, he asked if she felt sick. “No? Well, that’s grand of you. Now, listen. The worst is really done. To-day’s climb will bring us over the top.”

They climbed long slopes of pebbles in which they sank to their ankles. At each footstep they slipped back; if they trod upon a slab of rock it slid from beneath their feet; the mules floundered and sent down cascades of loose stones upon those behind. Between the slopes came stretches of nearly bare ground. They skirted glistening fields of snow, made an immense detour above the neck of a glacier that had plunged into and been held by the gorge furrowed out by preceding torrents. And all this time the sun beat upon them with hammering strength.

Sometimes an hour was spent in climbing, with many halts, a hundred yards. One halted now without orders because one must, mules lay down and let the sound of the bell grow faint, all along the line the men were coughing. If one made a false step and stumbled, one immediately caught one’s breath and had a fit of semi-suffocation. Then, as soon as one was able to breathe again, a sort of despairing drowsiness possessed one; a weak recoil both of mind and body urged one to move no more, to escape at all hazards the anguish of further effort, to close one’s eyes, lie down, and forget the odious impossible task. On the last and longest slope Manuel Balda abruptly gave in. He was seized with mountain sickness. Two of the Indians tried to pull him to his feet, to help him on, but he went down again.

Thus all were suffering—except Dyke. Just as he had not seemed to feel any real annoyance from the cold, he appeared to find no trouble in keeping his lungs comfortably at work without a sufficient supply of air. With his arm about her waist he pulled Emmie, almost carried her, along with him till they reached the naked and nearly level table-ground that was the summit of their climb. Now he went back, leaping and sliding down the slope to the rescue of Manuel. He brought him up, and went down again to drag up the mules. He wrestled with them, pulled them, pushed them, somehow set them going, and one heard his cheery shouts from far down below while he still expended his super-human energy.

Then at last they were all up—the men lying on the ground, the poor mules side by side, their heads all one way, their nostrils widely distended as they vainly sought more air, their legs shaking, and the sweat pouring in rivers from their heaving flanks—and Dyke stood there laughing, snapping his fingers, chaffing, “jollying” his too feeble crowd. He also praised them, swearing that they had done grandly, and that they might feel proud of themselves. But it would not do to linger, he added; for the afternoon was getting far advanced, and the lower they could get before pitching their camp the better it would be. A few more minutes, and then down we go.

For these minutes he sat beside his Emmie’s prostrate form, and “jollied” her in her turn.

“You angel, you have been magnificent. You have set us all an example.” And laughingly he confessed that, after her performance on board ship, he had dreaded lest she might be sick again in the mountains. He confessed, too, that until they were fairly started and “things began to come back” to him, he had forgotten that there was this little high bit to negotiate. “We are at an elevation of sixteen thousand feet. Do you realize it? We are well above the summit of Mont Blanc. In Europe people would say we had made a remarkable ascent.”—and he laughed. “Yes, quite an ascent—something to write about to the newspapers. It is only out here, in this glorious atmosphere, that it seems such a trifle. No, I oughtn’t to have said that. It was very wrong of me. For of course I know that it must have tired you. You dear girl, you are so splendid and brave that I forget. But all easy going now—as I promised you. And, Emmie, I want you to have a good look at the view. You’ll say it’s worth all the trouble. Sit up, dear.”

She obeyed him, and looked about her with dazed eyes at the incredibly superb panorama. Truly, if one had been able to breathe painlessly, if one’s head had not seemed to be bursting, if the murderous sun had not been melting one’s spine and battering at one’s shoulders, it was a view to compensate one for the trouble of attaining it.