V
We took rooms in a German private hotel on the shores of the Lake of Lucerne.
Marie relapsed into her former ways. She paid a great deal of attention to one of the guests, a young officer; played ninepins with him, and took melancholy walks in the garden while I worked.
I noticed at dinner that they exchanged tender glances, although no words were uttered. They seemed to caress one another with the eyes. I resolved to put them to the test at once, and, turning round sharply, looked straight into my wife’s face. She tried to throw me off the scent by letting her eyes glide along the young man’s temples until they rested on the wall, on a spot which was adorned by a huge poster advertising a brewery. She made an inane remark to cover her confusion.
“Is that a new brewery?” she stammered.
“Yes... but don’t imagine that you can hoodwink me,” I retorted.
She bent her neck, as if I had pulled in the reins, and remained silent.
Two days later, in the evening, on pretence of being tired, she kissed me good-night and left the room. I too went to bed, and after reading for a little while, fell asleep.
All of a sudden I awoke. Some one was playing the piano in the drawing-room; a voice was singing—it was Marie’s voice.
I arose and called the children’s nurse.
“Go and tell your mistress to go to bed at once,” I said. “Tell her that if she refuses I shall come down myself and shake her in the presence of the whole company.”
Marie came up-stairs at once. She seemed ashamed, and with an air of injured innocence she asked me why I had sent her so strange a message; why I would not allow her to stay in the drawing-room, although there were other ladies present?
“I don’t mind your staying in the drawing-room,” I replied angrily. “But I do object to your sly ways of getting rid of me whenever you want to be there by yourself.”
“If you insist, very well, I’ll go to bed.”
This candour, this sudden submission.... What had happened?
Winter had set in in good earnest. There was an abundance of snow; the sky was leaden, and we were cut off from all society. Everybody had left; we were the last guests in the modest hotel. The extreme cold compelled us to take our meals in the large public dining-room of the restaurant.
One morning, while we were at luncheon, a strong, thick-set man, rather nice-looking, evidently belonging to the servant class, entered, sat down at one of the tables, and asked for a glass of wine.
Marie scrutinised the stranger in her free and easy manner, took his measure, as it were, and became lost in a reverie.
The man went away, confused and flattered by her attention.
“A nice-looking man,” she remarked, turning to the host.
“He used to be my porter.”
“Was he? He really is unusually good-looking for his class! A very nice-looking man indeed!”
And she went into details, praising his virile beauty in terms which puzzled our host.
On the following morning the dashing ex-porter was already in his place when we entered. Dressed in his Sunday best, hair and beard trimmed, he appeared to be fully aware of his conquest. He bowed; my wife acknowledged his bow with a graceful bending of her head; he squared his shoulders and gave himself the airs of a Napoleon.
He returned on the third day, determined to break the ice. He started a polite conversation, reminiscent of the back-door, all the while addressing himself directly to my wife without wasting any time over the usual trick of first conciliating the husband.
It was intolerable!
Marie, in the presence of her husband and children, allowed herself to be drawn into a discussion by a stranger.
Once more I tried to open her eyes, begged her to be more careful of her reputation.
Her only answer was her usual: “You have a nasty mind!”
A second Apollo came to the rescue. He was the village tobacconist, an undersized man, at whose shop Marie was in the habit of making small purchases. More shrewd than the porter, he tried to make friends with me first; he was of a more enterprising nature. At the first meeting he stared impudently at Marie and loudly exclaimed to our host—
“I say, what a distinguished-looking family!”
Marie’s heart caught fire, and the village beau returned night after night.
One evening he was intoxicated, and therefore more insolent than usual. He approached Marie while we were playing backgammon, and asked her to explain the rules of the game to him. I answered as civilly as I could under the circumstances, and the worthy man returned to his seat, snubbed. Marie, more sensitive than I, was under the impression that she ought to make amends for my rudeness; she turned to him with the first question which came into her mind—
“Do you play billiards?” she said.
“No, madame, or rather, I play badly....”
He rose again, approached a step or two, and offered me a cigar. I declined.
He turned to Marie. “Won’t you smoke, madame?” Fortunately for her, for the tobacconist and the future of my family, she too declined, but she refused in a manner which flattered him.
How dared this man offer a lady a cigarette in a restaurant in the presence of her husband?
Was I a jealous fool? Or was my wife’s conduct so scandalous that she excited the desire of the first-comer?
We had a scene in our room, for I regarded her as a somnambulist whom it was my duty to awaken. She was walking straight to her doom, without being in the least aware of it. I gave her an epitome of her sins, old and new, and minutely criticised her conduct.
Silently, with a pale face and dream-shadowed eyes, she listened until I had finished. Then she rose and went down-stairs to bed. But this time—for the first time in my life—I fell so low as to play the spy. I crept down-stairs, found her bedroom door, and looked through the keyhole.
The rich glow of the lamp fell on the children’s nurse, who sat opposite the door right in the field of my vision. Marie was pacing the room excitedly, vehemently denouncing my unfounded suspicions; she conducted her case as a criminal conducts his defence.
And yet I was innocent, quite innocent, in spite of all my opportunities to sin....
She produced two glasses of beer, and they drank together. They sat down, side by side, and Marie looked at her caressingly. Closer and closer she moved to the girl, put her head on the shoulders of this new friend, slipped her arm round her waist and kissed her....
Poor Marie! Poor, unhappy woman, who sought comfort far from me, who alone could set her mind at rest and give her peace. All of a sudden she drew herself up, listened, and pointed towards the door.
“Some one’s there!”
I slipped away.
When I returned to my post of observation I noticed that Marie was half undressed, exposing her shoulders to the gaze of the girl, who, however, remained quite unmoved. Then she resumed her defence.
“There can be no doubt that he is mad! I shouldn’t be surprised if he tried to poison me.... I suffer unbearable pains in my inside.... But no, it’s hardly probable... perhaps I ought to fly to Finland.... What do you think?... Only it would kill him, for he loves the children....”
What was this, if not the outpourings of an evil conscience?... Stung with remorse, she was terror-stricken and sought refuge on the bosom of a woman! She was a perverted child; an unfaithful wife, a criminal; but, above all, she was an unhappy woman.
I lay awake all night, a prey to my tormenting thoughts. At two o’clock in the morning I heard her moaning in her sleep. Full of pity, I knocked on the floor to dispel the visions which terrified her. It was not the first time that I had done this.
She thanked me on the following morning for having awakened her from her nightmare. I made much of her, and begged her to tell me, her best friend, everything.
“Tell you what?... I have nothing to tell.”
I should have given her absolution for whatever crime she had confessed to me at that moment, for my heart was full of compassion. I loved her with an infinite love, despite of, or perhaps because of, all the misery she had wrought. She was but an unhappy woman. How could I raise my hand against her?
But instead of delivering me once and for all from the terrible doubts which haunted me, she offered me the most strenuous resistance. She had persuaded herself that I was insane; her instinct of self-preservation had built up a legend behind which she could shield herself from the attacks of her anguished conscience.
Sunwards
Not a single ray of sunlight had gladdened the little village of Gersau on the shore of the Lake of Lucerne for three long weeks, not, in fact, since the beginning of October, when the Foehn began to blow. There had been a dead calm; after sunset I had fallen asleep and slept until I was awakened, in the middle of the night, by the ringing of the church bells and a noise which mingled with the peculiar rushing sound of the tempest as it came sweeping across the Alps, flung itself on the southern shore of the lake, was compressed into the valley and forced into the streets of our village, where it tore at the signs, shook the window shutters, rattled the slates and howled through the branches of trees and shrubs.
The waves of the lake dashed against the dam, foamed over the border and plashed against the sides of the boats. Handfuls of storm-lashed sand were flung at our windows; the leaves, torn from their branches, went dancing and whirling by, the doors of the stoves clattered, the walls shook. I looked out of the window; the church was lighted up, and the bells were ringing to awaken those who still slept. In these parts the Foehn is accounted as full of danger as an earthquake, for it does not only sweep away the houses, but it tears the mountains to pieces and flings them into the valleys. Our house was situated at the base of a mountain which, though only fifteen hundred metres high, carried on its summit a loose litter of rocks, peculiarly adapted to stone-throwing on a large scale. The tempest raged for three hours, then the danger was over; but on the following morning everybody in the village knew that at Schwyz a rock had fallen on a farmhouse and carried away the right wing without injury to those who lived in the left.
After this warm but terrific gale a fog descended on village and lake. The sky was overcast, but no rain fell; yet there was no sunshine. This continued for three weeks, and if the outlook had been grey to begin with, it ended by being black. The beautiful alpine landscape, the unrivalled restorer of flagging spirits, had lost its potency, for it was impossible to see further ahead than a hundred yards up the steep rocks; the heart became heavy as lead and indescribably depressed. The tourists had turned their faces homewards, the hotels were empty, November was upon us, sombre and gloomy. The hours dragged on wearily; one longed for the end of the dreary day and the cheerful light of the lamps; the dismal sky was grey, the lake was grey, the landscape was grey.
No wind, no rain, no thunder. Nature, so varied and diversified, had become monotonous, calm and quiet; so peaceful that an earthquake would have been a relief.
Wherever the light did not fall, greyness reigned; vision was dimmed, and drowsiness, akin to laziness, enveloped the soul.
One evening, when I complained to the magistrate of the long absence of the sun, he answered with the phlegm which characterises the German-Swiss—
“The sun! You can see the sun all day long on the Hochfluh!”
The Hochfluh was one of the small mountain ranges which surrounded the valley in which we lived; it was only two hundred metres lower than the Sulitelma, and consequently a favourite walk of young English tourists. Being a worshipper of the sun, I decided to make a pilgrimage to my deity, and early one November morning I set out on my travels.
The inhabitants of Gersau, living at the base of a mountain which, as I have already mentioned, every now and then transforms itself into a volcano and rains rocks and stones on the valleys, have from time immemorial cultivated the habit of preparing themselves for death by visiting their church three times a day, at morning, noon and evening. I was not surprised, therefore, to meet the church-goers now, at eight o’clock in the morning, carrying their Prayer Books in their hands. Two old women, patiently performing their daily half-mile trudge to morning prayers, were counting their beads on the highroad. One of them started the angelic salutation “Ave Maria!” and her companion joined in the burden “In sæcula sæculorum, Amen.” They kept up their monotonous’ mumbling the whole way, and though this counting of beads may not have done any actual good, it at least prevented any misuse of the tongue; I could not help thinking of the well-known anecdote of the count who made his butler whistle whenever he was busy in the wine cellar.
Soon after I had left the old women and the highroad behind, and begun the ascent, I came upon some sights which were so striking that they made a lasting impression on me. Close to the first curve of the road grew a walnut tree, to which were nailed a crucifix and a tablet; the inscription on the latter informed the passer-by that farmer Seppi, while busy with the harvest, fell from the tree and was killed. God have mercy on his soul! Pray for him! Amen!
At the next corner there was a queer little shrine built of whitewashed bricks, small like a child’s dolls’-house. A peep through the railings disclosed pictures of the Holy Family, painted, perhaps, in the sixteenth century, and a legend to the effect that criminals on their way to execution were allowed a few minutes’ respite before the shrine to utter a last prayer. I was, therefore, on the road which led to the gallows, and a few minutes later I arrived at the place of execution, a pleasant open spot on the top of an overhanging cliff which jutted out in the direction of the lake. From this point one had a magnificent view. To bid farewell to life with a last look at such a picture as greets the eye from the summit of Pilatus, Buechserhorn or Buergenstock is quite conceivably a genuine pleasure. Even Voltaire could have felt none of the repugnance which was excited in him by the idea of being hanged in secret, a contingency which filled him with such extreme disgust, that he was quite consistent in accusing Rousseau of a vanity so great that it would permit him to submit cheerfully to be hanged, if he could be sure of his name being nailed to the gallows.
In the distance, near the shore, I could dimly discern a faint outline of a haunted little church, called “Kindlimord” because a grief-stricken father is said there to have killed his starving child.
I left these four melancholy landmarks behind me in the grey morning light, and hastened my ascent to those happier heights where the sun was shining.
Very soon beeches took the place of chestnut and walnut trees. I rested for a while in a dairy cottage in the company of fine cattle and a horrible cur, and then entered cloudland. I seemed to be walking in a dense fog, which grew in density and almost completely blotted out the landscape. The effort to see made my eyes ache; trees and shrubs loomed indistinctly through a cloud of smoke; the millions of cobwebs which festooned the branches were richly studded with raindrops; it looked as if the old woman of the wood, if there is such a being, had hung up thousands of lace handkerchiefs to dry.
It was difficult to breathe; the fog hung on my coat, hair, beard and eyebrows, gave out a stale, sickly smell, and rendered the rocks so smooth and slippery that I could hardly keep my footing; it darkened the heart of the wood, where the trunks were quickly swallowed up in a monotonous grey, which limited the range of vision to a few yards.
I had to climb up through this layer of fog, extending about a thousand metres upwards, a cold and damp purgatory, before I could reach the sun; and I struggled on, with sublime faith in the magistrate’s word of honour that the fog would cease before the mountain ceased and grey space began.
I had no barometer with me, but I felt that I was ascending, that the fog was growing less dense, and that I was approaching a purer atmosphere.
A feeling of intoxication seized me—a faint glimmer from above dimly illuminated the narrow pass, like the first dawn of day shining through the picture of a landscape painted on a window-blind; the trees stood out more distinctly, the field of vision increased, the tinkling of cowbells—from above—fell on my ear. And now, right on the summit, there hung a golden cloud; a few more steps and the stunted beeches and brushwood shone and glittered, dazzling splashes of gold, copper, bronze and silver, wherever a stream of broken sunlight fell on the faded foliage which was still clinging to the branches. I was standing in an autumn landscape looking out into a sun-bathed summerland; through my mind flashed the memory of a sail on the Lake of Mälar; I remembered how I was sitting in the sunshine, watching the passing of a black hail-storm no further off than a cable-length to leeward. And now I, too, stood in the sunlight, gazing at a northern landscape made up of firs and birch trees, green fields and red cattle, little brown cottages with old women on the thresholds, knitting socks for father, who was toiling far down in the canton of Tessin; my eyes rested on potato fields and lavender bushes, dahlias and marigolds.
The sun dried my hair and coat, and warmed my shivering limbs; I bared my head before the glowing orb, source and preserver of all there is, completely indifferent whether I was worshipping unquenchable flames of burning hydrogen, or the not yet scientifically acknowledged primordial substance, helium. Was it not the All-Father, who had given birth to the Cosmos, the Almighty, the Lord of life and death, ice and heat, summer and winter, dearth and plenty?
My eyes, which had been feasting on summer joy and green fields, plunged into the gloom of the abyss whence I had climbed. The mantle of cold and darkness which had been lying on the surface of the lake was cold and dark no longer; dazzling clouds, like snowy, sunlit piles of wool, hid from my gaze the twilight and the polluted earth; above them rose snow-clad peaks, glistening and sparkling, fashioned of condensed silver fog, a crystallised solution of air and sunlight, drift-ice on a sea of newly fallen snow. It was a vision of transcendent beauty, compared to which the cowbell-idyll under the birch trees was commonplace.
The dead silence was suddenly broken by a sound from below, where melancholy men and women toiled and trembled in the grey gloom. It was a splashing sound which approached deliberately; so deliberately that my eyes unconsciously tried to follow its course under the cloud-cover. It sounded like a millstream, a brook swollen with rain, a tidal wave. Then a scream rent the air, loud and wild, as if all the dwellers in the four cantons were calling for help against Uri-Rotstock; it was the shrill whistle of the paddle-boat which, penetrating the layer of clouds, gained in volume in the pure air and was caught up and tossed from rock to rock by the redundant echo of the Hochfluh.
It was noon! Time to begin my descent through the fog down to the greyness, the darkness, the damp, the dirt, and wait for another three weeks, perhaps, for another glimpse of the sun.