IN THE MOUNTAINS
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLE DAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1920
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
 
 URL 
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 July %2nd. 
 
 I want to be quiet now. 
 
 I crawled up here this morning from the 
 valley like a sick ant, struggled up to the 
 little house on the mountain side that I 
 haven't seen since the first August of the 
 war, and dropped down on the grass outside 
 it, too tired even to be able to thank God that 
 I had got home. 
 
 Here I am once more, come back alone 
 to the house that used to be so full of happy 
 life that its little wooden sides nearly burst 
 with the sound of it. I never could have 
 dreamed that I would come back to it 
 alone. Five years ago, how rich I was in 
 love; now how poor, how stripped of all 
 I had. Well, it doesn't matter. Nothing 
 matters. I'm too tired. I want to be quiet 
 now. Till I'm not so tired. If only I can 
 be quiet. . . . 
 
 3
 
 4 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 July 23rd. 
 
 Yesterday all day long I lay on the grass 
 in front of the door and watched the white 
 clouds slowly passing one after the other at 
 long, lazy intervals over the tops of the 
 delphiniums the row of delphiniums I 
 planted all those years ago. I didn't think 
 of anything; I just lay there in the hot sun, 
 blinking up and counting the intervals be- 
 tween one spike being reached and the next. 
 I was conscious of the colour of the del- 
 phiniums, jabbing up stark into the sky, and 
 of how blue they were; and yet not so blue, 
 so deeply and radiantly blue, as the sky. 
 Behind them was the great basin of space 
 filled with that other blue of the air, that 
 lovely blue with violet shades in it; for the 
 mountain I am on drops sharply away from 
 the edge of my tiny terrace-garden, and the 
 whole of the space between it and the moun- 
 tains opposite brims all day long with blue 
 and violet light. At night the bottom of the 
 valley looks like water, and the lamps in the 
 little town lying along it like quivering re- 
 flections of the stars. 
 
 I wonder why I write about these things. 
 As if I didn't know them! Why do I tell 
 myself in writing what I already so well
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 5 
 
 know? Don't I know about the mountain, 
 and the brimming cup of blue light? It is 
 because, I suppose, it's lonely to stay inside 
 oneself. One has to come out and talk. 
 And if there is no one to talk to one imagines 
 someone as though one were writing a 
 letter to somebody who loves one, and who 
 will want to know, with the sweet eagerness 
 and solicitude of love, what one does and what 
 the place one is in looks like. It makes one 
 feel less lonely to think like this to write it 
 down, as if to one's friend who cares. For 
 I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly 
 afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical 
 loneliness, for here I am, deliberately trav- 
 elled away from London to get to it, to its 
 spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful 
 loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate 
 tragedy of life. When you've got to that, 
 really reached it, without hope, without 
 escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and 
 ou die. 
 
 July 2 
 
 It's queer the urge one has to express 
 oneself, to get one's self into words. If I 
 weren't alone I wouldn't write, of course, I 
 would talk. But nearly everything I wanted
 
 6 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 to say would be things I couldn't say. Not 
 unless it was to some wonderful, perfect, 
 all-understanding listener the sort one used 
 to imagine God was in the days when one 
 said prayers. Not quite like God though, 
 either, for this listener would sometimes say 
 something kind and gentle, and sometimes 
 stroke one's hand a little to show that he 
 understood. Physically, it is most blessed 
 to be alone. After all that has happened, it 
 is most blessed. Perhaps I shall grow well 
 here, alone. Perhaps just sitting on these 
 honey-scented grass slopes will gradually 
 heal me. I'll sit and lick my wounds. I do 
 so dreadfully w r ant to get mended! I do so 
 dreadfully want to get back to confidence in 
 goodness. 
 
 July %5th. 
 
 For three days now I've done nothing but 
 lie in the sun, except \vhen meals are put in 
 the open doorway for me. Then I get up 
 reluctantly, like some sleepy animal, and go 
 and eat them and come out again. 
 
 In the evening it is too cold and dewy here 
 for the grass, so I drag a deep chair into the 
 doorway and sit and stare at the darken- 
 ing sky and the brightening stars. At ten
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 7 
 
 o'clock Antoine, the man of all work who has 
 looked after the house in its years of silence 
 during the war, shuts up everything except 
 this door and withdraws to his own room and 
 his wife; and presently I go in, too, bolting 
 the door behind me, though there is nothing 
 really to shut out except the great night, and 
 I creep upstairs and fall asleep the minute 
 I'm in bed. Indeed, I don't think I'm much 
 more awake in the day than in the night. 
 I'm so tired that I want to sleep and sleep; 
 for years and years; for ever and ever. 
 
 There was no unpacking to do. Everything 
 was here as I left it five years ago. We only 
 took, five years ago, what each could carry, 
 waving good-bye to the house at the bend of 
 the path and calling to it as the German 
 soldiers called to their disappearing homes, 
 "Back for Christmas!" So that I came again 
 to it with only what I could carry, and had 
 nothing to unpack. All I had to do was to 
 drop my little bag on the first chair I found 
 and myself on to the grass, and in that posi- 
 tion we both stayed till bedtime. 
 
 Antoine is surprised at nothing. He usedn't 
 to be surprised at my gaiety, which yet might 
 well have seemed to him, accustomed to the 
 sobriety of the peasant women here, excessive;
 
 8 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and nor is he now surprised at ray silence. He 
 has made a few inquiries as to the health and 
 whereabouts of the other members of that 
 confident group that waved good-byes five 
 years ago, and showed no surprise when the 
 answer, at nearly every name, was "Dead." 
 He has married since I went away, and hasn't 
 a single one of the five children he might have 
 had, and he doesn't seem surprised at that, 
 either. I am. I imagined the house, while 
 I was away, getting steadily fuller, and used 
 to think that when I came back I would find 
 little Swiss babies scattered all over it; for, 
 after all, there quite well might have been 
 ten, supposing Antoine had happened to pos- 
 sess a natural facility in twins. 
 
 July 26tk. 
 
 The silence here is astonishing. There are 
 hardly any birds. There is hardly any wind, 
 so that the leaves are very still and the grass 
 scarcely stirs. The crickets are busy, and 
 the sound of the bells on distant cows pas- 
 turing higher up on the mountains floats 
 down to me, but else there is nothing but a 
 great, sun-flooded silence. 
 
 When I left London it was raining. The 
 Peace Day flags, still hanging along the
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 9 
 
 streets, drooped heavy with wet in what might 
 have been November air, it was so dank and 
 gloomy. I was prepared to arrive here in 
 one of the mountain mists that settle down on 
 one sometimes for days vast wet stretches 
 of gray stuff like some cold, sodden blanket, 
 muffling one away from the mountains op- 
 posite, and the valley, and the sun. Instead 
 I found summer: beautiful clear summer, 
 fresh arid warm together as only summer up 
 on these honey-scented slopes can be, with 
 the peasants beginning to cut the grass for 
 things happen a month later here than down 
 in the valley, and if you climb higher you can 
 catch up June, and by climbing higher and 
 higher you can climb, if you want to, right 
 back into the spring. But you don't want to 
 if you're me. You don't want to do any- 
 thing but stay quiet where you are. 
 
 July 27th. 
 
 If only I don't think if only I don't think 
 and remember how can I not get well again 
 here in the beauty and the gentleness? 
 There's all next month, and September, and 
 perhaps October, too, may be warm and golden. 
 After that I must go back, because the 
 weather in this high place while it is changing
 
 10 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 A 
 from the calms of autumn to the calms of 
 
 the exquisite alpine winter is a disagreea- 
 ble, daunting thing. But I have two whole 
 months; perhaps three. Surely I'll be 
 stronger, tougher, by then? Surely I'll at 
 least be better? I couldn't face the winter 
 in London if this desperate darkness and 
 distrust of life is still in my soul. I don't 
 want to talk about my soul. I hate to. 
 But what else am I to call the innermost Me, 
 the thing that has had such wounds, that is 
 so much hurt and has grown so dim that I'm 
 in terror lest it should give up and go under, 
 go quite out, and leave me alone in the dark? 
 
 July 
 
 It is dreadful to be so much like Job. 
 Like him I've been extraordinarily stripped 
 of all that made life lovely. Like him I've 
 lost, in a time that is very short to have been 
 packed so full of disasters, nearly everything 
 I loved. And it w r asn't only the war. The 
 war passed over me, as it did over everybody, 
 like some awful cyclone, flattening out hope 
 and fruitfulness, leaving blood and ruins 
 behind it; but it wasn't only that. In the 
 losses of the war, in the anguish of losing one's 
 friends, there was the grisly comfort of
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 11 
 
 companionship in grief; but beyond and 
 besides that life has been devastated for me. 
 I do feel like Job, and I can't bear it. It is so 
 humiliating, being so much stricken. I feel 
 ridiculous as well as wretched; as if some- 
 body had taken my face and rubbed it in 
 dust. 
 
 And still, like Job, I cling on to what I can 
 of trust in goodness, for if I let that go I 
 know there would be nothing left but death. 
 
 July 29th. 
 
 Oh, what is all this talk of death? To-day 
 I suddenly noticed that each day since I've 
 been here what I've written down has been a 
 whine, and that each day while I whined I 
 was in fact being wrapped round by beautiful 
 things, as safe and as perfectly cared for 
 really as a baby fortunate enough to have been 
 born into the right sort of family. Oughtn't 
 I to be ashamed? Of course I ought; and 
 so I am. For, looking at the hours, each 
 hour as I get to it, they are all good. Why 
 should I spoil them, the ones I'm at now, by 
 the vivid remembrance, the aching misery, 
 of those black ones behind me? They, 
 anyhow, are done with; and the ones I have 
 got to now are plainly good. And as for Job
 
 12 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 who so much haunted me yesterday, I can't 
 really be completely like him, for at least 
 I've not yet had to take a potsherd and sit 
 down somewhere and scrape. But perhaps 
 I had better touch wood over that, for one 
 has to keep these days a wary eye on 
 God. 
 
 Mrs. Antoine, small and twenty-five, who 
 has been provided by Antoine, that expert 
 in dodging inconveniences, with a churn 
 suited to her size out of which she produces 
 little pats of butter suited to my size every 
 day, Switzerland not having any butter in it 
 at all for sale Mrs. Antoine looked at me 
 to-day when she brought out food at dinner 
 time, and catching my eye she smiled at me, 
 and so I smiled at her, and instantly she 
 began to talk. 
 
 Up to now she has crept about softly on 
 the tips of her toes as if she were afraid of 
 waking me, and I had supposed it to be her 
 usual fashion of moving and that it was 
 natural to her to be silent; but to-day, after 
 we had smiled at each other, she stood over 
 me with a dish in one hand and a plate in the 
 other, and held forth at length with the 
 utmost blitheness, like some carolling black - 
 -d, about her sufferings, and the sufferings
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 13 
 
 of Antoine, and the sufferings of everybody 
 during the war. The worse the sufferings 
 she described had been the blither became 
 her carollings; and with a final chirrup of 
 the most flute-like cheerfulness she finished 
 this way: 
 
 "Ah, mafoi, oui il y avail un temps ow il 
 a fallu se fier entierement au bon Dieu. C'etait 
 affreux." 
 
 July 30th. 
 
 It's true that the worst pain is the remem- 
 bering one's happiness when one is no longer 
 happy, and perhaps it may be just as true 
 that past miseries end by giving one some 
 sort of satisfaction. Just their being over 
 must dispose one to regard them com- 
 placently. Certainly I already remember 
 with a smile and a not unaffectionate shrug 
 troubles that seemed very dreadful a few 
 years back. But this this misery that has 
 got me now, isn't it too deep, doesn't it cut 
 too ruthlessly at the very roots of my life 
 ever to be something that I will smile at? 
 It seems impossible that I ever should. I 
 think the remembrance of this year will 
 always come like a knife cutting through any 
 little happiness I may manage to collect.
 
 14 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 You see, what has happened has taken away 
 my faith in goodness I don't know who you 
 are that I keep on wanting to tell things to, 
 but I must talk and tell you. Yes; that is 
 what it has done; and the hurt goes too far 
 down to be healed. Yet I know time is a 
 queer, wholesome thing. I've lived long 
 enough to have found that out. It is very 
 sanitary. It cleans up everything. It never 
 fails to sterilize and purify. Quite possibly 
 I shall end by being a wise old lady who 
 discourses with the utmost sprightliness, 
 after her regular meals, on her past agonies, 
 and extracts much agreeable entertainment 
 from them, even is amusing about them. 
 You see, they will be so far away, so safely 
 done with; never, anyhow, going to happen 
 again. Why of course in time, in years and 
 years, one's troubles must end by being 
 entertaining. But I don't believe, however 
 old I am and however wisely hilarious, I 
 shall ever be able to avoid the stab in the 
 back, the clutch of pain at the heart, that the 
 remembrance of beautiful past happiness 
 gives one. Lost. Lost. Gone. And one 
 is still alive, and still gets up carefully every 
 day, and buttons all one's buttons, and goes 
 down to breakfast.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 15 
 
 July 31st. 
 
 Once I knew a bishop rather intimately 
 oh, nothing that wasn't most creditable to us 
 both and he said to me, "Dear child, you , 
 will always be happy if you are good." 
 
 I'm afraid he couldn't have been quite 
 candid, or else he was very inexperienced, 
 for I have never been so terribly good in 
 the bishop's sense as these last three years 
 turning my back on every private wish, 
 dreadfully unselfish, devoted, a perfect mon- 
 ster of goodness. And unhappiness went 
 with me every step of the way. 
 
 I much prefer what someone else said to 
 me (not a bishop but yet wise), to whom I 
 commented once on the really extraordinary 
 bubbling happiness that used to wake up with 
 me every morning, the amazing joy of each day 
 as it came, the warm, flooding gratitude that 
 I should be so happy this was before the war. 
 He said, beginning also like the bishop but, 
 unlike him, failing in delicacy at the end, 
 "Dear child, it is because you have a sound 
 stomach." 
 
 August ]fit. 
 
 The last first of August I was here was the 
 1914 one. It was just such a day as this
 
 16 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 blue, hot, glorious of colour and light. We 
 in this house, cut off in our remoteness from 
 the noise and excitement of a world setting 
 out with cries of enthusiasm on its path of 
 suicide, cut off by distance and steepness even 
 from the valley where the dusty Swiss 
 soldiers were collecting and every sort of 
 rumour ran like flames, went as usual through 
 our pleasant day, reading, talking, clamber- 
 ing in the pine-woods, eating romantic meals 
 out in the little garden that hangs like a 
 fringe of flowers along the edge of the rock, 
 unconscious, serene, confident in life. Just 
 as to-day the delphiniums stood brilliantly 
 blue, straight, and motionless on this edge, 
 and it might have been the very same purple 
 pansies crowding at their feet. Nobody came 
 to tell us anything. We were lapped in 
 peace. Of course even up here there had 
 been the slight ruffle of the Archduke's 
 murder in June, and the slight wonder 
 toward the end of July as to what would 
 come of it; but the ruffle and the wonder 
 died away in what seemed the solid, ever- 
 enduring comfortableness of life. Such com- 
 fortableness went too deep, was too much 
 settled, too heavy, to make it thinkable that 
 it should ever really be disturbed. There
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 17 
 
 would be quarrels, but they would be local- 
 ized. Why, the mere feeding of the vast 
 modern armies would etc., etc. We were 
 very innocent and trustful in those days. 
 Looking back at it, it is so pathetic as to be 
 almost worthy of tears. 
 
 Well, I don't want to remember all that. 
 One turns with a sick weariness from the 
 recollection. At least one is thankful that 
 we're at Now and not at Then. This first 
 of August has the great advantage of having 
 all that was coming after that first of August 
 behind it instead of ahead of it. At least on 
 this first of August most of the killing, of the 
 slaughtering of young bodies and bright 
 hopes, has left off. The world is very horrible 
 still, but nothing can ever be so horrible as 
 killing. 
 
 August %nd. 
 
 The only thing to do with one's old sorrows 
 is to tuck them up neatly in their shroud and 
 turn one's face away from their grave toward 
 what is coming next. 
 
 That is what I am going to do. To-day I 
 have the kind of feelings that take hold of 
 convalescents. I hardly dare hope it, but 
 I have done things to-day that do seem
 
 18 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 convalescent; done them and liked doing 
 them; things that I haven't till to-day had 
 the faintest desire to do. 
 
 I've been for a walk. And a quite good 
 walk, up in the forest where the water tumbles 
 over rocks and the air is full of resin. And 
 then when I got home I burrowed about 
 among my books, arranging their volumes 
 and loving the feel of them. It is more than 
 ten days since I got here, and till to-day I 
 haven't moved; till to-day I've lain about 
 with no wish to move, with no wish at all 
 except to have no wish. Once or twice I 
 have been ashamed of myself; and once or 
 twice into the sleepy twilight of my mind has 
 come a little flicker of suspicion that perhaps 
 life still, after all, may be beautiful, that it 
 may perhaps, after all, be just as beautiful 
 as ever if only I will open my eyes and look. 
 But the flicker has soon gone out again, 
 damped out by the vault-like atmosphere of 
 the place it had got into. 
 
 To-day I do feel different; and oh, how 
 glad I'd be if I could be glad! I don't believe 
 there was ever anybody who loved being 
 happy as much as I did. What I mean is 
 that I was so acutely conscious of being 
 happy, so appreciative of it; that I wasn't
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS IS 
 
 ever bored, and was always and continuously 
 grateful for the whole delicious loveliness of 
 the world. 
 
 I think it must be unusual never to have 
 been bored. I realize this when I hear other 
 people talk. Certainly I'm never bored as 
 people sometimes appear to be by being 
 alone, by the absence of amusement from 
 without; and as for bores, persons who 
 obviously were bores, they didn't bore me, 
 they interested me. It was so wonderful to 
 me, their unawareness that they were bores. 
 Besides, they were usually very kind; and 
 also, shameful though it is to confess, bores 
 like me, and I am touched by being liked, 
 even by a bore. Sometimes it is true I have 
 had to take temporary refuge in doing what 
 Dr. Johnson found so convenient with- 
 drawing my attention, but this is dangerous 
 because of the inevitable accompanying 
 glazed and wandering eye. Still, much can 
 be done by practice in combining coherency 
 of response with private separate meditation. 
 
 Just before I left London I met a man whose 
 fate it has been for years to sit daily in the 
 Law Courts delivering judgments, and he 
 told me that he took a volume of poetry 
 with him preferably Wordsworth and read
 
 20 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 in it as it lay open on his knees under the 
 table, to the great refreshment and invigora- 
 tion of his soul; and yet, so skilled had he 
 become in the practice of two attentivenesses, 
 he never missed a word that was said or a 
 point that was made. There are indeed nice 
 people in the world. I did like that man. 
 It seemed such a wise and pleasant thing to 
 do, to lay the dust of those sad places, where 
 people who once liked each other go because 
 they are angry, with the gentle waters of 
 poetry. I am sure that man is the sort of 
 husband whose wife's heart gives a jump of 
 gladness each time he comes home. 
 
 August 3rd. 
 
 These burning August days, when I live in 
 so great a glory of light and colour that it is 
 like living in the glowing heart of a jewel, 
 how impossible it is to keep from gratitude. 
 I'm so grateful to be here, to have here to 
 come to. Really I think I'm beginning to 
 feel different remote from the old, unhappy 
 things that were strangling me dead; restored; 
 almost as though I might really some day be 
 in tune again. There's a moon now, and in 
 the evenings I get into a coat and lie in the 
 low chair in the doorway watching it, and
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 21 
 
 sometimes I forget for as long as a whole 
 half hour that the happiness I believed in is 
 gone for ever. I love sitting there and feeling 
 little gusts of scent cross my face every now 
 and then, as if someone had patted it softly 
 in passing by. Sometimes it is the scent of 
 the cut grass that has been baking all day in 
 the sun, but most often it is the scent from a 
 group of Madonna lilies just outside the door, 
 planted by Antoine in one of the Septembers 
 of the war. 
 
 "C'est ma maman qui me les a donnes," he 
 said; and when I had done expressing my 
 joy at their beauty and their fragrance, and 
 my appreciation of his maman s conduct in 
 having made my garden so lovely a present, 
 he said that she had given them in order that, 
 by brewing their leaves and applying the 
 resulting concoction at the right moment, 
 he and Mrs. Antoine might be cured of sup- 
 purating wounds. 
 
 "But you haven't got any suppurating 
 wounds," I said, astonished and disillusioned. 
 
 ""Ah, pour ca r?or?," said Antoine. "Mais il 
 nefaut pas attendre qiCon les a pour se procurer 
 le remcde." 
 
 Well, if he approaches every future con- 
 tingency with the same prudence he must be
 
 22 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 kept very busy; but the long winters of the 
 war up here have developed in him, I suppose, 
 a Swiss Family Robinson-like ingenuity of 
 preparation for eventualities. 
 
 What lovely long words I've just been writ- 
 ing. I can't be as convalescent as I thought. 
 I'm sure real vigour is brief. You don't say 
 Damn if your vitality is low; you trail among 
 querulous, water-blooded words like regret- 
 table and unfortunate. But I think, perhaps, 
 being in my top layers very adaptable, it was 
 really the elderly books I've been reading the 
 last day or two that made me arrange my 
 language along their lines. Not old books- 
 elderly. Written in the great Victorian age, 
 when the emotions draped themselves chastely 
 in lengths, and avoided the rude simplicities 
 of shorts. 
 
 There is the oddest lot of books in this house, 
 pitchforked together by circumstances, and 
 sometimes their accidental rearrangement by 
 Antoine after cleaning their shelves each 
 spring of my absence would make their writers, 
 if they could know, curdle between their own 
 covers. Some are standing on their heads 
 Antoine has no prejudices about the right side 
 up of an author most of those in sets have 
 their volumes wrong, and yesterday I found a
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 23 
 
 Henry James, lost from the rest of him, lost 
 even, it looked like, to propriety, held tight 
 between two ladies. The ladies were Ouida 
 and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. They would hardly 
 let him go, they had got him so tight. I 
 pulled him out, a little damaged, and restored 
 him, ruffled in spite of my careful smoothing, 
 to his proper place. It was the "Son and Bro- 
 ther"; and there he had been for months, per- 
 haps years, being hugged. Dreadful. 
 
 When I come down to breakfast, and find 
 I am a little ahead of the cafe au lait, I wander 
 into the place that has most books in it 
 though indeed books are in every place, and 
 have even oozed along the passages and 
 fill up the time till Mrs. Antoine calls me in 
 rescue work of an urgent nature. But it is 
 impossible, I find, to tidy books without 
 ending by sitting on the floor in the middle 
 of a great untidiness and reading. The 
 coffee grows cold and the egg repulsive, but 
 still I read. You open a book idly, and you 
 see: 
 
 The most glaring anomalies seemed to afford 
 them no intellectual inconvenience, neither 
 would they listen to any arguments as to the 
 waste of money and happiness ichich their folly 
 caused them. I was allowed almost to call them
 
 24 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 life-long self-deceivers fo their faces, and they 
 said it was quite true, but that it did not matter. 
 
 Naturally then you read on. 
 
 You open another book idly, and you see: 
 
 Our admiration of King Alfred is greatly 
 increased by the fact that we know very little 
 about him. 
 
 Naturally then you read on. 
 
 You open another book idly, and you see: 
 
 Organic life, we are told, has developed 
 gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, 
 and this development, we are assured, is in- 
 dubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is 
 the philosopher, not tJie protozoon, who gives 
 us this assurance. 
 
 Naturally then you read on. 
 
 You open but I could go on all day like 
 this, as I do go on being caught among the 
 books, and only the distant anxious chirps of 
 Mrs. Antoine, who comes round to the front 
 door to clear away breakfast and finds it 
 hasn't been begun, can extricate me. 
 
 Perhaps I had better not get arranging 
 books before breakfast. It is too likely to 
 worry that bird-like Mrs. Antoine, who is 
 afraid, I daresay, that if I don't drink my 
 coffee while it is hot I may relapse into that 
 comatose condition that filled her evidently
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 25 
 
 with much uneasiness and awe. She hadn't 
 expected, I suppose, the mistress of the house, 
 when she did at last get back to it, to behave 
 like some strange alien slug, crawled up the 
 mountain only to lie motionless in the sun for 
 the best part of a fortnight. I heard her, 
 after the first two days of this conduct, 
 explaining it to Antoine, who, however, needed 
 no explanation because of his god-like habit 
 of never being surprised, and her explanation 
 was that cetait la guerre convenient ex- 
 planation that has been used to excuse many 
 more unnatural and horrible things during 
 the last five years than somebody's behaving 
 as if she were a slug. 
 
 But, really, the accidental juxtapositions 
 on my bookshelves ! Just now I found George 
 Moore (his "Memories of my Dead Life," with 
 its delicate unmoralities, its delicious pag- 
 anism) with on one side of him a book called 
 "Bruey : a Little Worker for Christ," by Frances 
 Ridley Havergal, and on the other an Ameri- 
 can book called "The Unselfishness of God, 
 and How I Discovered It." 
 
 The surprise of finding these three with 
 their arms, as it were, round each other's 
 necks, got me nearer to laughter than I have 
 been for months. If anybody had been with
 
 26 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 me I would have laughed. Is it possible that 
 I am so far on to-day in convalescence that 
 I begin to want a companion? Somebody 
 to laugh with? Why, if that is so . . . 
 But I'd best not be too hopeful. 
 
 August 4th. 
 
 This day five years ago! What a thrill 
 went through us up here, how proud we felt 
 of England, of belonging to England; proud 
 with that extraordinary intensified patriotism 
 that lays hold of those who are not in their 
 own country. 
 
 It is very like the renewal of affection, the 
 re-flaming up of love, for the absent. The 
 really wise are often absent; though, indeed, 
 their absences should be arranged judiciously. 
 Too much absence is very nearly as bad as 
 too little no, not really very nearly; I 
 should rather say too much has its draw- 
 backs, too, though only at first. Persisted in 
 these drawbacks turn into merits; for doesn't 
 absence, prolonged enough, lead in the end 
 to freedom? I suppose, however, for most 
 people complete freedom is too lonely a thing, 
 therefore the absence should only be just 
 long enough to make room for one to see clear 
 again. Just a little withdrawal everv now
 
 27 
 
 and then, just a little, so as to get a good 
 view once more of those dear qualities we 
 first loved, so as to be able to see that they're 
 still there, still shining. 
 
 How can you see anything if your nose is 
 right up against it? I know when we were 
 in England, enveloped in her life at close 
 quarters, bewildered by the daily din of the 
 newspapers, stunned by the cries of the 
 politicians, distracted by the denouncements, 
 accusations, revilings with which the air was 
 convulsed, and acutely aware of the back- 
 ground of sad, drizzling rain on the pavements, 
 and of places like Cromwell Road and Shaftes- 
 bury Avenue and Ashley Gardens being there 
 all the time, never different, great ugly 
 houses with the rain dripping on them, 
 gloomy, temporary lodgings for successive 
 processions of the noisy dead I know when 
 we were in the middle of all this, right up 
 tight against it, we couldn't see, and so we for- 
 got the side of England that was great. 
 
 But when she went to war we were not 
 there; we had been out of her for months, 
 and she had got focussed again patriotically. 
 Again she was the precious stone set in a 
 silver sea, the other Eden, derm-Paradise, 
 the England my England, the splendid thing
 
 28 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 that had made splendid poets, the hope and 
 heart of the world. Long before she had 
 buckled on her sword how easily one drops 
 into the old language! long before there 
 was any talk of war, just by sheer being away 
 from her we had re-acquired that peculiar ag- 
 gressive strut of the spirit that is patriotism. 
 We liked the Swiss, we esteemed them; 
 and when we crossed into Italy we liked the 
 Italians, too, though esteeming them less 
 I think because they seemed less thrifty and 
 enjoyed themselves more, and we were still 
 sealed up in the old opinion that undis- 
 criminating, joyless thrift was virtuous. But 
 though we liked and esteemed these people 
 it was from a height. At the back of our 
 minds we always felt superior, at the back of 
 our minds we were strutting. Every day of 
 further absence from England, our England, 
 increased that delicious subconscious smug- 
 ness. Then when on the 4th of August 
 she "came in," came in gloriously because 
 of her word to Belgium, really this little 
 house contained so much enthusiasm and 
 pride that it almost could be heard crack- 
 ing. 
 
 What shall we do when we all get to heaven 
 and aren't allowed to have any patriotism?
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 29 
 
 There, surely, we shall at last be forced into 
 one vast family. But I imagine that every 
 time God isn't looking the original patriotism 
 of each will break out, right along throughout 
 eternity; and some miserable English tramp, 
 who has only been let into heaven because 
 he positively wasn't man enough for hell, 
 will seize his opportunity to hiss at a neat 
 Swiss business man from Berne, whose life on 
 earth was blamelessly spent in the production 
 of cuckoo-clocks, and whose mechanical- 
 ingenuity was such that he even, so ran the 
 heavenly rumours among the mild, astonished 
 angels, had propagated his family by ma- 
 chinery, that he, the tramp, is a b Briton, 
 and if he, the b b b Swiss (I believe 
 tramps always talk in b's; anyhow news- 
 papers and books say they do), doubts it, 
 he'd b well, better come outside and he, 
 the tramp, will b well, soon show him. 
 
 To which the neat Berne gentleman, on 
 other subjects so completely pervaded by the 
 local heavenly calm, will answer with a 
 sudden furious mechanical buzzing, much 
 worse and much more cowing to the tramp 
 than any swear-words, and passionately up- 
 hold the might and majesty of Switzerland 
 in a prolonged, terrific whrrrrr.
 
 30 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 August 5th. 
 
 I want to talk. I must be better. 
 
 August 6th. 
 
 Of course, the most battered, the most 
 obstinately unhappy person couldn't hold 
 out for ever against the all-pervading bene- 
 diction of this place. I know there is just the 
 same old wretchedness going on as usual 
 outside it cruelty, people wantonly making 
 each other miserable, love being thrown 
 away or frightened into fits, the dreadful 
 betrayal of trust that is the blackest wretched- 
 ness of all I can almost imagine that if I 
 were to hang over my terrace-wall I would 
 see these well-known dreary horrors crawling 
 about in the valley below, crawling and 
 tumbling about together in a ghastly tangle. 
 But at least there isn't down there now my 
 own particular contribution to the general 
 wretchedness. I brought that up here; 
 dragged it up with me, not because I wanted 
 to, but because it would come. Surely, 
 though, I shall leave it here? Surely there'll 
 be a day when I'll be able to pack it away 
 into a neat bundle and take it up to the top 
 of some arid, never-again-to-be-visited rock, 
 and leave it there and say, "Good-bye. I'm
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 31 
 
 separate. I've cut the umbilical cord. Good- 
 bye, old misery. Now for what comes next." 
 I can't believe this won't happen. I can't 
 believe I won't go back down the mountain 
 different from what I was when I came. 
 Lighter, anyhow, and more wholesome in- 
 side. Oh, I do so want to be wholesome 
 inside again! Nicely aired, sunshiny; 
 instead of all dark, and stuffed up with black 
 memories. 
 
 August 7th. 
 
 But I am getting on. Every morning now 
 when I wake and see the patch of bright 
 sunshine on the wall at the foot of my bed 
 that means another perfect day, my heart 
 goes out in an eager prayer that I may not 
 disgrace so great a blessing by private gloom. 
 And I do think each of these last days has 
 been a little less disgraced than its yesterday. 
 Hardly a smudge, for instance, has touched 
 any part of this afternoon. I have felt as 
 though indeed I were at last sitting up and 
 taking notice. And the first thing I want to 
 do, the first use I want to make of having 
 turned the corner, is to talk. 
 
 How feminine. But I love to talk. Again 
 how feminine. Well, I also love to listen.
 
 32 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 But chiefly I love to listen to a man; there- 
 fore, once more, how feminine. Well, I'm 
 a woman, so naturally I'm feminine; and 
 a man does seem to have more to say that 
 one wants to hear than a woman. I do want 
 to hear what a woman has to say, too, but not 
 for so long a time, and not so often. Not 
 nearly so often. What reason to give for 
 this reluctance I don't quite know, except 
 that a woman when she talks seems usually 
 to have forgotten the salt. Also she is apt 
 to go on talking; sometimes for quite a little 
 while after you have begun to wish she would 
 leave off. 
 
 One of the last people who stayed here 
 with me alone in 1914, just before the ar- 
 rival of the gay holiday group of the final 
 days, was a woman of many gifts le trop est 
 rennemi du bien who started, therefore, 
 being full of these gifts and having eloquently 
 to let them out, talking at the station in the 
 valley where I met her, and didn't, to my 
 growing amazement and chagrin, for I, too, 
 wanted to say something, leave off (except 
 when night wrapped her up in blessed silence) 
 till ten days afterwards, when by the mercy 
 of providence she swallowed a crumb wrong, 
 and so had to stop.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 33 
 
 How eagerly, released for a moment, I 
 rushed in with as much as I could get out 
 during the brief time I knew she would take 
 to recover! But my voice, hoarse with dis- 
 use, had hardly said three sentences miser- 
 able little short ones when she did recover, 
 and fixing impatient and reproachful eyes on 
 me said: 
 
 "Do you always talk so much?" 
 
 Surely that was unjust? 
 
 August 8th. 
 
 Now see what Henry James wrote to me 
 to me if you please! I can't get over it, 
 such a feather in my cap. Why, I had 
 almost forgotten I had a cap to have a feather 
 in, so profound has been my humbling since 
 last I was here. 
 
 In the odd, fairy-tale like way I keep on 
 finding bits of the past, of years ago, as 
 though they were still of the present, even of 
 the last half hour, I found the letter this 
 morning in a room I wandered into after 
 breakfast. It is the only room downstairs 
 besides the hall, and I used to take refuge in 
 it from the other gay inhabitants of the house 
 so as to open and answer letters somewhere 
 cot too distractingly full of cheerful talk;
 
 34 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and there on the table, spotlessly kept clean 
 by Antoine but else not touched, were all the 
 papers and odds and ends of five years back 
 exactly as I must have left them. Even 
 some chocolate I had apparently been eating, 
 and some pennies, and a handful of cigarettes, 
 and actually a box of matches it was all 
 there, all beautifully dusted, all as it must 
 have been when last I sat there at the table. 
 If it hadn't been for the silence, the complete, 
 sunny emptiness and silence of the house, I 
 would certainly have thought I had only been 
 asleep and having a bad dream, and that not 
 five years but one uneasy night had gone 
 since I nibbled that chocolate and wrote with 
 those pens. 
 
 Fascinated and curious I sat down and 
 began eating the chocolate again. It was 
 quite good; made of good, lasting stuff in 
 that good, apparently lasting age we used 
 to live in. And while I ate it I turned over 
 the piles of papers, and there at the bottom of 
 them was a letter from Henry James. 
 
 I expect I kept it near me on the table 
 because I so much loved it and wanted to 
 re-read it, and wanted, I daresay, at intervals 
 proudly to show it to my friends and make 
 them envious, for it was written at Christmas,
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 35 
 
 1913; months before I left for England. 
 Reading it now my feeling is just astonish- 
 ment that I, 7 should ever have had such a 
 letter. But then I am greatly humbled; 
 I have been on the rocks; and can't believe 
 that such a collection of broken bits as I am 
 now could ever have been a trim bark with 
 all its little sails puffed out by the kindliness 
 and affection of anybody as wonderful as 
 Henry James. 
 
 Here it is; and it isn't any more vain of 
 me now in my lamed and bruised condition 
 to copy it out and hang on its charming com- 
 pliments than it is vain for a woman who 
 once was lovely and is now grown old to talk 
 about how pretty she used to be: 
 
 21 Carlyle Mansions, 
 Cheyne Walk, S. W., 
 December 29th, 1913. 
 
 Dear- 
 Let me tell you that I simply delight in 
 your beautiful and generous and gracious 
 little letter, and that there isn't a single 
 honeyed word of it that doesn't give me 
 the most exquisite pleasure. You fill the 
 measure and how can I tell you how I like 
 the measure to be filled? None of vour
 
 36 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 quarter-bushels or half -bushels for my insati- 
 able appetite, but the overflowing heap, 
 pressed down and shaken together and spilling 
 all over the place. So I pick up the golden 
 grains and nibble them one by one! Truly, 
 dear lady, it is the charmingest rosy flower of 
 a letter handed ine straight out of your 
 monstrous snowbank. That you can grow 
 such flowers in such conditions besides 
 growing with such diligence and elegance all 
 sorts of other lovely kinds, has for its ex- 
 planation of course only that you have such 
 a regular teeming garden of a mind. You 
 must mainly inhabit it, of course with your 
 other courts of exercise so grand, if you will, 
 but so grim. Well, you have caused me to 
 revel in pride and joy for I assure you that 
 I have let myself go; all the more that the 
 revelry of the season here itself has been so 
 far from engulfing me that till your witching 
 words came I really felt perched on a moun- 
 tain of lonely bleakness socially and sen- 
 suously speaking alike very much like one 
 of those that group themselves, as I suppose, 
 under your windows. But I have had my 
 Xmastide noiv, and am your all grateful 
 and faithful and all unforgetting old Henry 
 James.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 37 
 
 Who wouldn't be proud of getting a letter 
 like that? It was wonderful to come across 
 it again, wonderful how my chin went up in 
 the air and how straight I sat up for a bit 
 after reading it. And I laughed, too; for 
 with what an unbuttoned exuberance must 
 I have engulfed him! " Spilling all over the 
 place." I can quite believe it. I had, I 
 suppose, been reading or re-reading some- 
 thing of his, and had been swept off sobriety 
 of expression by delight, and in that condition 
 of emotional unsteadiness and molten appre- 
 ciation must have rushed impetuously to the 
 nearest pen. 
 
 How warmly, with what grateful love, one 
 thinks of Henry James. How difficult to 
 imagine any one riper in wisdom, in kindliness, 
 in wit; greater of affection; more generous 
 of friendship. And his talk, his wonderful 
 talk even more wonderful than his books. 
 If only he had been a Boswell ! I did ask him 
 one day, in a courageous after-dinner mood, 
 if he wouldn't take me on as his Boswell; a 
 Boswell so deeply devoted that perhaps 
 qualifications for the post would grow through 
 sheer admiration. I told him my coura- 
 geous levity was not greater on that occasion 
 than his patience that I would disguise
 
 38 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 myself as a man; or, better still, not being 
 quite big enough to make a plausible man and 
 unlikely to grow any more except, it might 
 be hoped, in grace, I would be an elderly boy; 
 that I would rise up early and sit up late and 
 learn shorthand and do anything in the world, 
 if only I might trot about after him taking 
 notes the strange pair we should have made! 
 And the judgment he passed on that reckless 
 suggestion, after considering its impudence 
 with much working about of his extraordinary 
 mobile mouth, delivering his verdict with a 
 weight of pretended self -depreciation intended 
 to crush me speechless which it did for 
 nearly a whole second was: "Dear lady, it 
 would be like the slow squeezing out of a big 
 empty sponge." 
 
 August 9th. 
 
 This little wooden house, clinging on to the 
 side of the mountain by its eyelashes, or 
 rather by its eyebrows, for it has enormous 
 eaves to protect it from being smothered in 
 winter in snow, that look exactly like over- 
 hanging eyebrows is so much cramped up 
 for room to stand on that the garden along 
 the edge of the rock isn't much bigger than a 
 handkerchief.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 39 
 
 It is a strip of grass, tended with devotion 
 by Antoine, whose pride it is that it should be 
 green when all the other grass on the slopes 
 round us up the mountain and down the 
 mountain are parched pale gold; which 
 leads him to spend most of his evening hours 
 watering it. There is a low wall along the 
 edge to keep one from tumbling over, for if 
 one did tumble over it wouldn't be nice for 
 the people walking about in the valley five 
 thousand feet below, and along this wall is 
 the narrow ribbon of the only flowers that 
 will put up with us. 
 
 They aren't many. There are the del- 
 phiniums, and some pansies and some pinks, 
 and a great many purple irises. The irises 
 were just over when I first got here, but 
 judging from the crowds of flower-stalks 
 they must have been very beautiful. There 
 is only one flower left; exquisite and velvety 
 and sun-warmed to kiss which I do dili- 
 gently, for one must kiss something and 
 with that adorable honey-smell that is the 
 very smell of summer. 
 
 That's all in the garden. It isn't much, 
 written down, but you should just see it. 
 Oh, yes I forgot. Round the corner, scram- 
 bling up the wall that protects the house in
 
 40 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 the early spring from avalanches, are crimson 
 ramblers, brilliant against the intense blue 
 of the sky. Crimson ramblers are, I know, 
 ordinary things, but you should just see 
 them. It is the colour of the sky that makes 
 them so astonishing here. Yes and I forgot 
 the lilies that Antoine's maman gave him. 
 They are near the front door, and next to 
 them is a patch of lavender in full flower now, 
 and all day long on each of its spikes is poised 
 miraculously something that looks like a tiny 
 radiant angel, but that flutters up into the 
 sun when I go near and is a white butterfly. 
 Antoine must have put in the lavender. N It 
 used not to be there. But I don't ask him 
 because of what he might tell me it is really 
 for, and I couldn't bear to have that patch 
 of sheer loveliness, with the little shining 
 things hovering over it, explained as a remcde 
 for something horrid. 
 
 If I could paint I would sit all day and 
 paint; as I can't I try to get down on paper 
 what I see. It gives me pleasure. It is 
 somehow companionable. I wouldn't, I 
 think, do this if I were not alone. I would 
 probably exhaust myself and my friend point- 
 ing out the beauty. 
 
 The garden, it will be seen, as gardens go,
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 41 
 
 is pathetic in its smallness and want of 
 variety. Possessors of English gardens, with 
 those immense wonderful herbaceous borders 
 and skilfully arranged processions of flowers, 
 might conceivably sniff at it. Let them. I 
 love it. And if it were smaller still, if it were 
 shrunk to a single plant with a single flower on 
 it, it would perhaps only enchant me the more, 
 for then I would concentrate on that one 
 beauty and not be distracted by the feeling 
 that does distract me here, that while I am 
 looking one way I am missing what is going 
 on in other directions. Those beasts in 
 Revelations the ones full of eyes before and 
 behind I wish I had been constructed on 
 liberal principles like that. 
 
 But one really hardly wants a garden here 
 where God does so much. It is like Italy in 
 that way, and an old wooden box of pansies or 
 a pot of lilies stuck anywhere, in a window, on 
 the end of a wall, is enough composing in- 
 stantly with what is so beautifully there al- 
 ready, the light, the colour, the shapes of the 
 mountains. Really, where God does it all 
 for you just a yard or two arranged in your 
 way is enough; enough to assert your inde- 
 pendence, and to show a proper determina- 
 tion to make something of your own.
 
 42 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 August Wth. 
 
 I don't know when it is most beautiful up 
 here in the morning, when the heat lies 
 along the valley in delicate mists, and the 
 folded mountains, one behind the other, 
 grow dimmer and dimmer beyond sight, 
 swooning away through tender gradations 
 of violets and grays, or at night when I look 
 over the edge of the terrace and see the lights 
 in the valley shimmering as though they were 
 reflected in water. 
 
 I seem to be seeing it now for the first time, 
 with new eyes. I know I used to see it when 
 I was here before, used to feel it and rejoice 
 in it, but it was entangled in other things 
 then, it was only part of the many happinesses 
 with which those days were full, claiming my 
 attention and my thoughts. They claimed 
 them wonderfully and hopefully it is true, 
 but they took me much away from what I 
 can only call for want of a better word (a 
 better word: what a thing to say!) God. 
 Now those hopes and wonders, those other 
 joys and lookings-forward and happy trusts 
 are gone; and the wounds they left, the dread- 
 ful sore places, are slowly going, too. And 
 how I see beauty now is with the new sensi- 
 tiveness, the new astonishment at it, of a per-
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 43 
 
 son who for a long time has been having awful 
 dreams, and one morning wakes up and the 
 delirium is gone, and he lies in a state of the 
 most exquisite glad thankfulness, the most 
 extraordinary minute appreciation of the dear, 
 wonderful common things of life just the 
 sun shining on his counterpane, the scents 
 from the garden coming in through his 
 window, the very smell of the coffee being 
 got ready for breakfast oh, delight, delight 
 to think one didn't die this time, that one 
 isn't going to die this time after all, but is 
 going to get better, going to live, going pres- 
 ently to be quite well again and able to go 
 back to one's friends, to the people who still 
 love one. 
 
 August ll///. 
 
 To-day is a saint's day. This is a Catholic 
 part of Switzerland, and they have a great 
 many holidays because they have a great 
 many saints. There is hardly a week without 
 some saint in it who has to be commemorated, 
 and often there are two in the same week, and 
 sometimes three. I know when we have 
 reached another saint, for then the church 
 bells of the nearest village begin to jangle, 
 and go on doing it every two hours. When
 
 44 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 this happens the peasants leave off work, and 
 the busy, saint-unencumbered Protestants 
 get ahead. 
 
 Mrs. Antoine was a Catholic before she 
 married, but the sagacious Antoine, who 
 wasn't one, foreseeing days in most of his 
 weeks when she might, if he hadn't been 
 quite kind to her, or rather if she fancied he 
 hadn't been quite kind to her and the fancies 
 of wives, he had heard, were frequent and 
 vivid the sagacious Antoine, foreseeing 
 these numerous holy days ahead of him on 
 any of which Mrs. Antoine might explain 
 as piety what was really pique and decline 
 to cook his dinner, caused her to turn Prot- 
 estant before the wedding. Which she did; 
 conscious, as she told me, that she was getting 
 a bon mari qui valait bien $a; and thus at one 
 stroke Antoine secured his daily dinners 
 throughout the year and rid himself of all 
 his wife's relations. For they, consisting I 
 gather principally of aunts, her father and 
 mother being dead, were naturally displeased 
 and won't know the Antoines; which is, I 
 am told by those who have managed it, the 
 most refreshing thing in the world: to get 
 your relations not to know you. So that not 
 only does he live now in the blessed freedom
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 45 
 
 and dignity that appears to be reserved for 
 those whose relations are angry, but he has no 
 priests about him either. Really Antoine is 
 very intelligent. 
 
 And he has done other intelligent things 
 while I have been away. For instance: 
 
 When first I came here, two or three years 
 before the war, I desired to keep the place 
 free from the smells of farmyard. "There 
 shall be no cows," I said. 
 
 "C'est bicn," said Antoine. 
 
 "Nor any chickens." 
 
 "C'est bien," said Antoine. 
 
 "Neither shall there be any pigs." 
 
 "C'est bien" said Antoine. 
 
 " Surtout" I repeated, fancying I saw in his 
 eye a kind of private piggy regret, "pas dc 
 pores."" 
 
 "C'est bien" said Antoine, the look fading. 
 
 For most of my life up to then had been 
 greatly infested by pigs; and though they 
 were superior pigs, beautifully kept, housed 
 and fed far better, shameful to relate, than 
 the peasants of that place, on the days when 
 the wind blew from where they were to where 
 we were, clean them and air them as one 
 might there did come blowing over us a 
 great volume of unmistakeable pig. Fclips-
 
 46 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 ing the lilies. Smothering the roses. Also, 
 on still days we could hear their voices, and 
 the calm of many a summer evening was 
 rent asunder by their squeals. There were 
 an enormous number of little pigs, for in that 
 part of the country it was unfortunately not 
 the custom to eat sucking-pigs, which is such 
 a convenient as well as agreeable way of 
 keeping them quiet, and they squealed atro- 
 ciously; out of sheer high spirits, I suppose, 
 being pampered pigs and having no earthly 
 reason to squeal except for joy. 
 
 Remembering all this, I determined that 
 up here at any rate we should be pure from 
 pigs. And from cows, too; and from 
 chickens. For did I not also remember 
 things both cows and chickens had done to 
 me? The hopes of a whole year in the 
 garden had often been destroyed by one 
 absent-minded, wandering cow; and though 
 we did miracles with wire-netting and the 
 concealing of wire-netting by creepers, sooner 
 or later a crowd of lustful hens, led by some 
 great bully of a cock, got in and tore up 
 the crocuses just at that early time of the 
 year when, after an endless winter, crocuses 
 seem the most precious and important things 
 in the world.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 47 
 
 Therefore this place had been kept carefully 
 empty of live-stock, and we bought our eggs 
 and our milk from the peasants, and didn't 
 have any sausages, and the iris bulbs were 
 not scratched up, and the air had nothing in 
 it but smells of honey and hay in summer, 
 and nothing in winter but the ineffable pure 
 cold smell of what, again for want of a better 
 word, I can only describe as God. But then 
 the war came, and our hurried return to 
 England; and instead of being back as we 
 had thought for Christmas, we didn't come 
 back at all. Year after year went, Christmas 
 after Christmas, and nobody came back. 
 I suppose Antoine began at last to feel as if 
 nobody ever would come back. I can't 
 guess at what moment precisely in those 
 years his thoughts began to put out feelers 
 toward pigs, but he did at last consider it 
 proper to regard my pre-war instructions as 
 finally out of date, and gathered a suitable 
 selection of live-stock about him. I expect 
 he got to this stage fairly early, for having 
 acquired a nice, round little wife he was 
 determined, being a wise man, to keep her so. 
 And having also an absentee patronc that is 
 the word that locally means me absent, 
 and therefore not able to be disturbed by
 
 48 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 live-stock, he would keep her placid by 
 keeping her unconscious. 
 
 How simple, and how intelligent. 
 
 In none of his monthly letters did the word 
 pig, cow, or chicken appear. He wrote 
 agreeably of the weather: cetait magnifique, 
 or cetait bien triste, according to the season. 
 He wrote of the French and Belgian sick 
 prisoners of war, interned in those places 
 scattered about the mountains which used 
 to be the haunts of parties catered for by 
 Lunn. He wrote appreciatively of the use- 
 fulness and good conduct of the watch-dog, 
 a splendid creature, much bigger than I am, 
 with the lap-doggy name of Mou-Mou. He 
 lengthily described unexciting objects like 
 the whiskers of the cat: favoris superbes qui 
 poussent toujours, malgre ces jours maigres de 
 guerre; and though sometimes he expressed 
 a little disappointment at the behaviour of 
 Mrs. Antoine's estomac qui lid fait beaucoup 
 d' ennuis et parait mat register aux grands 
 f raids, he always ended up soothingly: Pour 
 la maison tout va bien. Madame pent etre 
 entiercment tranquille. 
 
 Never a word, you see, about the live- 
 stock. 
 
 So there in England was Madame being
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 49 
 
 entierement tranquille about her little house, 
 and glad indeed that she could be; for what- 
 ever had happened to it or to the Antoines 
 she wouldn't have been able to do anything. 
 Tethered on the other side of the impassable 
 barrier of war, if the house had caught fire 
 she could only, over there in England, have 
 wrung her hands; and if Mrs. Antoine's 
 estomac had given out so completely that she 
 and Antoine had had to abandon their post 
 and take to the plains and doctors, she could 
 only have sat still and cried. The soothing 
 letters were her comfort for five years 
 madame pent etre entierement tranquille; how 
 sweetly the words fell, month by month, on 
 ears otherwise harassed and tormented! 
 
 It wasn't till I had been here nearly a 
 fortnight that I began to be aware of my 
 breakfast. Surely it was very nice? Such 
 a lot of milk; and every day a little jug of 
 cream. And surprising butter surprising 
 not only because it was so very fresh but 
 because it was there at all. I had been told 
 in England that there was no butter to be got 
 here, not an ounce to be bought from one end 
 of Switzerland to the other. Well, there it 
 was; fresh every day, and in a singular 
 abundance.
 
 50 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Through the somnolence of my mind, of all 
 the outward objects surrounding me I think 
 it was the butter that got in first; and my 
 awakening intelligence, after a period of 
 slow feeling about and some relapses, did at 
 last one morning hit on the conviction that 
 at the other end of that butter was a cow. 
 
 This, so far, was to be expected as the result 
 of reasoning. But where I began to be pleased 
 with myself, and feel as if Paley's Evidences 
 had married Sherlock Holmes and I was the 
 bright pledge of their loves, was when I 
 proceeded from this, without moving from 
 my chair, to discover by sheer thinking that 
 the cow was very near the butter, because 
 else the butter couldn't possibly be made 
 fresh every day so near that it must be at 
 that moment grazing on the bit of pasture 
 belonging to me; and, if that were so, the 
 conclusion was irresistible that it must be 
 my cow. 
 
 After that my thoughts leaped about the 
 breakfast table with comparative nimbleness. 
 I remembered that each morning there had 
 been an egg, and that eggy puddings had 
 appeared at the other meals. Before the 
 war it was almost impossible to get eggs up 
 here; clearly, then, I had chickens of my
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 51 
 
 own. And the honey; I felt it would no 
 longer surprise me to discover that I also had 
 bees, for this honey was the real thing not 
 your made-up stuff of the London shops. 
 And strawberries; every morning a great 
 cabbage leaf of strawberries had been on the 
 table, real garden strawberries, over long ago 
 down in the valley and never dreamed of as 
 things worth growing by the peasants in the 
 mountains. Obviously I counted these, too, 
 among my possessions in some corner out of 
 sight. The one object I couldn't proceed to by 
 inductive reasoning from what was on the 
 table was a pig. Antoine's courage had 
 failed him over that. Too definitely must 
 my repeated warning have echoed in his ears: 
 Surtout pas de pores. 
 
 But how very intelligent he had been. It 
 needs intelligence if one is conscientious to 
 disobey orders at the right moment. And me 
 so unaware all the time, and therefore so 
 unworried ! 
 
 He passed along the terrace at that moment, 
 a watering-pot in his hand. 
 
 "Antoine," I said. 
 
 " Madame," he said, stopping and taking off 
 his cap. 
 
 "This egg " I said, pointing to the shell,
 
 52 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 I said it in French, but prefer not to put my 
 French on paper. 
 
 "Ah madame a vu les ponies." 
 
 "This butter- 
 
 "Ah madame a visile la vache." 
 
 "The pig ?" I hesitated. "Is there is 
 
 there also a pig?" 
 
 "Si madame veut descendre a la cave 
 
 'You never keep a pig in the cellar?" 
 exclaimed. 
 
 "Comme jambon," said Antoine calm, per- 
 fect of manner, without a trace of emotion. 
 
 And there sure enough I was presently 
 proudly shown by Mrs. Antoine, whose 
 feelings are less invisible than her husband's, 
 hanging from the cellar ceiling on hooks that 
 which had once been pig. Several pigs; 
 though she talked as if there had never been 
 more than one. It may be so, of course, but 
 if it is so it must have had a great many legs. 
 
 " Un pore centipede," I remarked, thought- 
 fully, gazing upward at the forest of hams. 
 
 Over the thin ice of this comment she slid, 
 however, in a voluble description of how when 
 the armistice was signed she and Antoine 
 had instantly fallen upon and slain the pig- 
 pig still in the singular expecting Madame's 
 arrival after that felicitous event at any
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 53 
 
 minute, and comprehending that un pore 
 vivant pourrait der anger madame, mais que 
 mort il ne fait rien a personne que du plaisir. 
 And she, too, gazed upward, but with affection 
 and pride. 
 
 There remained then nothing to do but 
 round off these various transactions by a 
 graceful and grateful paying for them. 
 Which I did to-day, Antoine presenting the 
 bills, accompanied by complicated calcula- 
 tions and deductions of the market price of 
 the milk and butter and eggs he and Mrs. 
 Antoine would otherwise have consumed 
 during the past years. 
 
 I didn't look too closely into what the pig 
 had cost his price, as my eye skimmed over 
 it was obviously the price of something 
 plural; but my eye only skimmed, it didn't 
 dwell. Always Antoine and I have behaved 
 to each other like gentlemen. 
 
 August IQth. 
 
 I wonder why I write all this. Is it because 
 it is so like talking to a friend at the end of 
 the day, and telling him, who is interested 
 and loves to hear, everything one has done? 
 I suppose it is that; and that I want, 
 besides, to pin down these queer days as they
 
 54 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 pass days so utterly unlike any I ever had 
 before. I want to hold them a minute in 
 my hand and look at them before letting them 
 drop away for ever. Then, perhaps, in lots 
 of years, when I have half forgotten what 
 brought me up here and don't mind a bit 
 about anything except to laugh to laugh 
 with the tenderness of a wise old thing at the 
 misunderstandings and mistakes and failures 
 that brought me so near shipwreck, and yet 
 underneath were still somehow packed with 
 love I'll open this and read it, and I daresay 
 quote that Psalm about going through the 
 vale of misery and using it as a well, and be 
 quite pleasantly entertained. 
 
 August 13th. 
 
 If one sets one's face westward and goes 
 on and on along the side of the mountain, 
 refusing either to climb higher or go lower, 
 and having therefore to take things as they 
 come and somehow get through roaring 
 torrents, sudden ravines, huge trees blown 
 down in a forgotten blizzard and lying right 
 across one's way; all the things that moun- 
 tains have up their sleeve waiting for one- 
 one comes, after two hours of walk so varied 
 as to include scowling rocks and gloomy
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 55 
 
 forests, bright stretches of delicious grass 
 full of flowers, bits of hayfield, clusters of 
 fruit-trees, wide, sun-flooded spaces with 
 nothing between one apparently and the 
 great snowy mountains, narrow paths where 
 it is hardly light enough to see, smells of 
 resin and hot fir needles, smells of traveller's 
 joy, smells of just cut grass, smells of just 
 sawn wood, smells of water tumbling over 
 stones, muddy smells where the peasants 
 have turned some of the torrent away through 
 shallow channels into their fields, honey 
 smells, hot smells, cold smells after two 
 hours of this walking, which would be tiring 
 because of the constant difficulty of the 
 ground if it weren't for the odd way the air 
 has here of carrying you, of making you feel 
 as though you were being lifted along, one 
 comes at last to the edge of a steep slope 
 where there is a little group of larches. 
 
 Then one sits down. 
 
 These larches are at the very end of a long 
 tongue into which the mountain one started 
 on has somehow separated, and it is under 
 them that one eats one's dinner of hard- 
 boiled egg and bread and butter and sits 
 staring, while one does so, in much astonish- 
 ment at the view. For it is an incrediblv
 
 56 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 beautiful view from here, of an entirely 
 different range of mountains from the one 
 seen from my terrace; and the valley, with 
 its twisting, tiny silver thread that I know is 
 a great rushing river, has strange, abrupt, 
 isolated hills scattered over it that appear 
 each to have a light and colour of its own, 
 with no relation to the light and colour of the 
 mountains. 
 
 When first I happened on this place the 
 building of my house had already been 
 started, and it was too late to run to the 
 architect and say: Here and here only will 
 I live. But I did for a wild moment, so 
 great was the beauty I had found, hope that 
 perhaps Swiss houses might be like those 
 Norwegian ones one reads about that take to 
 pieces and can be put up again somewhere 
 else when you've got bored, and I remember 
 scrambling back hastily in heat and excite- 
 ment to ask him whether this were so. He 
 said it wasn't, and seemed even a little 
 ruffled, if so calm a man were capable of 
 ruffling, that I should suppose he would build 
 anything that could come undone. 
 
 'This house," he said, pointing at the 
 hopeless-looking mass that ultimately be- 
 came so adorable, "is built for posterity. It
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 57 
 
 is on a rock, and will partake of the same 
 immovability." 
 
 And when I told him of the place I had 
 found, the exquisite place, more beautiful 
 than a dream and a hundred times more 
 beautiful than the place we had started 
 building on, he, being a native of the district, 
 hardy on his legs on Sundays and accordingly 
 acquainted with every inch of ground within 
 twenty miles, told me that it was so remote 
 from villages, so inaccessible by any road, 
 that it was suited as a habitation only to 
 goats. 
 
 "Only goats," he said with finality, waving 
 his hand, "could dwell there, and for goats I 
 do not build." 
 
 So that my excitement cooled down before 
 the inevitable, and I have lived to be very 
 glad the house is where it is and not where, 
 for a few wild hours, I wanted it; for now I 
 can go to the other when I am in a beauty 
 mood and see it every time with fresh wonder, 
 while if I lived there I would have got used 
 to it long ago, and my ardour been, like other 
 ardours, turned by possession into compla- 
 cency. Or, to put it a little differently, the 
 house here is like an amiable wife to whom it 
 is comfortable to come back for meals and
 
 58 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 sleeping purposes, and the other is a secret 
 love, to be visited only on the crest of an 
 ecstasy. 
 
 To-day I took a hard-boiled egg and some 
 bread and butter and visited my secret love. 
 
 The hard-boiled egg doesn't seem much like 
 an ecstasy, but it is a very good foundation 
 for one. There is great virtue in a hard- 
 boiled egg. It holds one down, yet not too 
 heavily. It satisfies without inflaming. 
 Sometimes, after days of living on fruit and 
 bread, a slice of underdone meat put in a 
 sandwich and eaten before I knew what I 
 was doing, has gone straight to my head in 
 exactly the way wine would, and I have seen 
 the mountains double, and treble themselves, 
 besides not keeping still, in a very surprising 
 and distressing way, utterly ruinous to rap- 
 tures. So now I distrust sandwiches and 
 will not take them; and all that goes with 
 me is the hard-boiled egg. Oh, and apricots, 
 when I can get them. I forgot the apricots. 
 I took a handful to-day, big, beautiful rosy- 
 golden ones, grow 7 n in the hot villages of the 
 valley, a very apricotty place. And that 
 every part of me should have sustenance I 
 also took Law's "Serious Call." 
 
 He went because he's the thinnest book I've
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 59 
 
 got on my shelves that has at the same time 
 been praised by Dr. Johnson. I've got 
 several others that Dr. Johnson has praised, 
 such as Ogden on "Prayer," but their bulk, 
 even if their insides were attractive, makes 
 them have to stay at home. Johnson, I 
 remembered, as I weighed Law thoughtfully 
 in my hand and felt how thin he was, said of 
 the "Serious Call" that he took it up expecting 
 it to be a dull book, and perhaps to laugh at 
 it "But I found Law quite an overmatch 
 for me." He certainly would be an over- 
 match for me, I knew r , should I try to stand 
 up to him, but that was not my intention. 
 What I wanted was a slender book that yet 
 would have enough entertainment in it to 
 nourish me all day, and opening the "Serious 
 Call" I was caught at once by the story of 
 Octavius, a learned and ingenious man who, 
 feeling that he wasn't going to live much 
 longer, told the friends hanging on his lips 
 attentive to the wisdom that would, they were 
 sure, drop out, that in the decay of nature 
 in which he found himself he had left off all 
 taverns and was now going to be nice in what 
 lie drank, so that he was resolved to furnish 
 his cellar with a little of the very best what- 
 ever it might cost. And hardly had he
 
 60 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 delivered himself of this declaration than 
 "he fell ill, was committed to a nurse, and 
 had his eyes closed by her before his fresh 
 parcel of wine came in." 
 
 The effect of this on someone called 
 Eugenius was to send him home a new man, 
 full of resolutions to devote himself wholly to 
 God; for" I never," says Eugenius, "was so 
 deeply affected with the wisdom and import- 
 ance of religion as when I saw how poorly 
 and meanly the learned Octavius was to leave 
 the world through the want of it." 
 
 So Law went with me, and his vivacious 
 pages the story of Octavius is but one of 
 many; there is Matilda and her unhappy 
 daughters ("The eldest daughter lived as long 
 as she could under this discipline," but found 
 she couldn't after her twentieth year and 
 died, "her entrails much hurt by being 
 crushed together with her stays"); Eusebia 
 and her happy daughters, who were so beauti- 
 fully brought up that they had the satisfaction 
 of dying virgins; Lepidus, struck down as he 
 was dressing himself for a feast; the admir- 
 able Miranda, whose meals were carefully 
 kept down to exactly enough to give her 
 proper strength to lift eyes and hands to 
 heaven, so that "Miranda will never have her
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 61 
 
 eyes swell with fatness or pant under a heavy 
 load of flesh until she has changed her reli- 
 gion"; Mundamus, who if he saw a book of 
 devotion passed it by; Classicus, who openly 
 and shamelessly preferred learning to devo- 
 tion these vivacious pages greatly enlivened 
 and adorned my day. But I did feel as I 
 came home at the end of it that Dr. 
 Johnson, for whom no one has more love 
 and less respect than I, ought to have 
 spent some at least of his earlier years, 
 when he was still accessible to reason, with, 
 say, Voltaire. 
 
 Now I am going to bed, footsore but glad, 
 for this picnic to-day was a test. I wanted 
 to see how far on I have got in facing memo- 
 ries. When I set out I pretended to myself 
 that I was going from sheer considerateness 
 for servants, because I wished Mrs. Antoine 
 to have a holiday from cooking my dinner, 
 but I knew in my heart that I was making, 
 in trepidation and secret doubt, a test. For 
 the way to this place of larches bristles with 
 happy memories. They would be sitting 
 waiting for me, I knew, at every bush and 
 corner in radiant rows. If only they wouldn't 
 be radiant, I thought, I wouldn't mind. 
 The way, I thought, would have been easier
 
 62 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 if it had been punctuated with remembered 
 quarrels. Only then I wouldn't have gone to 
 it at all, for my spirit shudders away from 
 places where there has been unkindness. 
 It is the happy record of this little house that 
 never yet have its walls heard an unkind 
 word or a rude word, and not once has 
 anybody cried in it. All the houses I have 
 lived in except this had their sorrows, and 
 one at least had worse things than sorrows; 
 but this one, my little house of peace hung 
 up in the sunshine well on the way to heaven, 
 is completely free from stains nothing has 
 ever lived in it that wasn't kind. And I shall 
 not count the wretchedness I dragged up 
 with me three weeks ago as a break in this 
 record, as a smudge on its serenity, but only 
 as a shadow passing across the sun. Because, 
 however beaten down I was and miserable, 
 I brought no anger with me and no resent- 
 ment. Unkindness has still not come into 
 the house. 
 
 Now I am going very happy to bed, for I 
 have passed the test. The whole of the walk 
 to the larches, and the whole of the way back, 
 and all the time I was sitting there, what I 
 felt was simply gratitude gratitude for the 
 beautiful past times I have had. I found I
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 63 
 
 couldn't help it. It was as natural as 
 breathing. I wasn't lonely. Everybody I 
 have loved and shall never see again was 
 with me. And all day, the whole of the 
 wonderful day of beauty, I was able in that 
 bright companionship to forget the imme- 
 diate grief, the aching wretchedness, that 
 brought me up here to my mountains as a 
 last hope. 
 
 August 14>th. 
 
 To-day it is my birthday, so I thought I 
 would expiate it by doing some useful work. 
 
 It is the first birthday I've ever been alone, 
 with nobody to say Bless you. I like being 
 blessed on my birthday, seen off into my new 
 year with encouragement and smiles. Per- 
 haps, I thought, while I dressed, Antoine 
 would remember. After all, I used to have 
 birthdays when I was here before, and he 
 must have noticed the ripple of excitement 
 that lay along the day, how it was wreathed 
 in flowers from breakfast-time on and dotted 
 thick with presents. Perhaps he would re- 
 member and wish me luck. Perhaps if he 
 remembered he would tell his wife, and she 
 would wish me luck, too. I did very much 
 long to-day to be wished luck.
 
 64 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 But Antoine, if he had ever known, had 
 obviously forgotten. He was doing some- 
 thing to the irises when I came down, and 
 though I went out and lingered round him 
 before beginning breakfast he took no notice; 
 he just went on with the irises. So I daresay 
 I looked a little wry, for I did feel rather 
 afraid I might be going to be lonely. 
 
 This, then, I thought, giving myself a 
 hitch of determination, was the moment for 
 manual labour. As I drank nay coffee I 
 decided to celebrate the day by giving both 
 the Antoines a holiday and doing the work 
 myself. Why shouldn't my birthday be 
 celebrated by somebody else having a good 
 time? What did it after all matter who had 
 the good time so long as somebody did? 
 The Antoines should have a holiday, and I 
 would work. So would I defend my thoughts 
 from memories that might bite. So would I, 
 by the easy path of perspiration, find peace. 
 
 Antoine, however, didn't seem to want a 
 holiday. I had difficulty with him. He 
 wasn't of course surprised when I told him 
 he had got one, because he never is, but he 
 said, with that level intonation that gives his 
 conversation so noticeable a calm, that it was 
 the day for cutting the lawn.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 65 
 
 I said I would cut the lawn; I knew about 
 lawns; I had been brought up entirely on 
 lawns I believe I told him I had been born 
 on one, in my eagerness to forestall his objec- 
 tions and get him to go. 
 
 He said that such work would be too hot 
 for Madame in the sort of weather we were 
 having; and I said that no work on an object 
 so small as our lawn could be too hot. 
 Besides, I liked being hot, I explained 
 again with eagerness I wanted to be hot, 
 I was happy when I w r as hot. "J'aime beau- 
 coup,"" I said, not stopping in my hurry to 
 pick my words, and anyhow imperfect in 
 French, "La sueur." 
 
 I believe I ought to have said la tran- 
 spiration, the other word being held in slight 
 if any esteem as a word for ladies, but I still 
 more believe that I oughtn't to have said any- 
 thing about it at all. I don't know, of course, 
 because of Antoine's immobility of expres- 
 sion; but in spite of this not varying at what 
 I had said by the least shadow of a flicker I 
 yet somehow felt, it was yet somehow con- 
 veyed to me, that perhaps in French one 
 doesn't perspire, or if one does one doesn't 
 talk about it. Not if one is a lady. Not if one 
 is Madame. Not, to ascend still further the
 
 66 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 scale of my self-respect enforcing attributes, if 
 one is that dignified object the patrone. 
 
 I find it difficult to be dignified. When I 
 try, I overdo it. Always my dignity is either 
 over or under done, but its chief condition is 
 that of being under done. Antoine, however, 
 very kindly helps me up to the position he 
 has decided I ought to fill, by his own un- 
 alterable calm. I have never seen him smile. 
 I don't believe he could without cracking, of 
 so unruffled a glassiness is his countenance. 
 
 Once, before the war everything I have 
 done that has been cheerful and undesirable 
 was before the war; I've been nothing but 
 exemplary and wretched since I was un- 
 dignified. We dressed up; and on the advice 
 of my friends I now see that it was bad 
 advice I allowed myself to be dressed as 
 a devil; I, the patrone; I, Madame. It was 
 true I was only a little devil, quite one of the 
 minor ones, what the Germans would call a 
 Hausteufelchen; but a devil I was. And 
 going upstairs again unexpectedly, to fetch 
 my tail which had been forgotten, I saw 
 at the very end of the long passage down 
 which I had to go Antoine collecting the 
 day's boots. 
 
 He stood aside and waited. I couldn't
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 67 
 
 go back, because that would have looked as 
 though I were doing something I knew I 
 oughtn't to. Therefore I proceeded. 
 
 The passage was long and well lit. Down 
 the whole of it I had to go, while Antoine at 
 the end stood and waited. I tried to advance 
 with dignity. I tried to hope he wouldn't 
 recognize me. I tried to feel sure he wouldn't. 
 How could he? I was quite black, except 
 for a wig that looked like orange-coloured 
 flames. But when I got to the doors at the 
 end it was the one to my bedroom that 
 Antoine threw open, and past him I had to 
 march while he stood gravely aside. And 
 strangely enough, what I remember feeling 
 most acutely was a quite particular humili- 
 ation and shame that I hadn't got my tail on. 
 
 " C'est que fai oublie ma queue . . ." I 
 found myself stammering, with a look of 
 agonized deprecation and apology at him. 
 
 And even then Antoine wasn't surprised. 
 
 Well, where was I? Oh, yes at the 
 transpiration. Antoine let it pass over him, 
 as I have said, without a ruffle, and drew my 
 attention to the chickens who would have to 
 be fed and the cow who would have to be 
 milked. Perhaps the cow might be milked 
 on his return, but the chickens
 
 68 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Antoine was softening. 
 
 I said quickly that all he had to do would 
 be to put the chickens' food ready and I 
 would administer it, and as for the cow, why 
 not let her have a rest for once, why not let 
 her for once not be robbed of what was after 
 all her own? And to cut the conversation 
 short, and determined that my birthday 
 should not pass without somebody getting 
 a present, I ran upstairs and fetched down 
 a twenty -franc note and pressed it into 
 Antoine's hand and said breathlessly in a 
 long and voluble sentence that began with 
 Voila, but didn't keep it up at that high level, 
 that the twenty francs were for his expenses 
 for himself and Mrs. Antoine down in the 
 valley, and that I hoped they would enjoy 
 themselves, and would he remember me very 
 kindly to his maman, to whom he would no 
 doubt pay a little visit during the course of 
 what I trusted would be a long, crowded, and 
 agreeable day. 
 
 They went off ultimately, but with reluct- 
 ance. Completely undignified, I stood on the 
 low wall of the terrace and waved to them as 
 they turned the corner at the bottom of the 
 path. 
 
 " Mille felicitations /" I cried, anxious that
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS C9 
 
 somebody should be wished happiness on my 
 birthday. 
 
 "If I am going to have a lonely birthday it 
 shall be thoroughly lonely," I said grimly to 
 myself as, urged entirely by my volition, the 
 Antoines disappeared and left me to the 
 solitary house. 
 
 I decided to begin my day's work by mak- 
 ing my bed, and went upstairs full of resolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Mrs. Antoine, however, had done that; 
 no doubt while I was arguing with Antoine. 
 
 The next thing, then, I reflected, was to 
 tidy away breakfast, so I came downstairs 
 again, full of more resolution. 
 
 Mrs. Antoine, however, had done that, too; 
 no doubt while I was still arguing with 
 Antoine. 
 
 Well, then, oughtn't I to begin to do some- 
 thing with potatoes? With a view to the 
 dinner-hour? Put them on, or something? 
 I was sure the putting on of potatoes would 
 make me perspire. I longed to start my 
 transpiration in case by any chance, if I 
 stayed too long inactive and cool, I should 
 notice how very silent and empty 
 
 I hurried into the kitchen, a dear little 
 place of white tiles and copper saucepans,
 
 70 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and found pots simmering gently on the 
 stove: potatoes in one, and in the other bits 
 of something that well might be chicken. 
 Also, on a tray was the rest of everything 
 needed for my dinner. All I would have to 
 do would be to eat it. 
 
 Baulked, but still full of resolution, I set 
 out in search of the lawn-mower. It couldn't 
 be far away, because nothing is able to be 
 anything but close on my narrow ledge of 
 rock. 
 
 Mou-Mou, sitting on his haunches in the 
 shade at the back of the house, watched me 
 with interest as I tried to open the sorts of 
 outside doors that looked as if they shut in 
 lawn-mowers. 
 
 They were all locked. 
 
 The magnificent Mou-Mou, who manages 
 to imitate Antoine's trick of not being 
 surprised, though he hasn't yet quite caught 
 his air of absence of curiosity, got up after 
 the first door and lounged after me as I tried 
 the others. He could do this because, 
 though tied up, Antoine has ingeniously 
 provided for his exercise, and at the same 
 time for the circumvention of burglars, by 
 fixing an iron bar the whole length of the wall 
 behind the house and fastening Mou-Mou's
 
 71 
 
 chain to it by a loose ring. So that he can 
 run along it whenever he feels inclined; and 
 a burglar, having noted the kennel at the 
 east end of this wall and Mou-Mou sitting 
 chained up in front of it, would find, on 
 preparing to attack the house at its west 
 and apparently dogless end, that the dog 
 was nevertheless there before him. A rattle 
 and a slide, and there would be Mou-Mou. 
 Very moroZe-shaking. Very freezing in its 
 unexpectedness to the burglar's blood, and 
 paralyzing to his will to sin. Thus Antoine, 
 thinking of everything, had calculated. There 
 hasn't ever been a burglar, but, as he said of 
 his possible suppurating wounds "// ne faut 
 pas attendre quon les a pour se procurer le 
 reniede" 
 
 Mou-Mou accordingly came with me as I 
 went up and down the back of the house 
 trying the range of outside doors. I think 
 he thought at last it was a game, for as each 
 door wouldn't open and I paused a moment 
 thwarted, he gave a loud double bark, as 
 one who should in the Psalms after each 
 verse say Selah. 
 
 Antoine had locked up the lawn-mower. 
 The mowing was to be put oft' till to-morrow 
 rather than that Madame in the heat should
 
 72 
 
 mow. I appreciated the kindness of his in- 
 tentions, but for all that was much vexed 
 by being baulked. On my birthday, too. 
 Baulked of the one thing I really wanted, 
 la transpiration. It didn't seem much to ask 
 on my birthday, I who used without so much 
 as lifting a finger to acquire on such occasions 
 quite other beads. 
 
 Undecided, I stood looking round the tidy 
 yard for something I could be active over, 
 and Mou-Mou sat upright on his huge 
 haunches watching me. He is so big that 
 in this position our heads are on a level. 
 He took advantage of this by presently 
 raising his tongue it was already out, hang- 
 ing in the heat as I still didn't move or say 
 anything, and giving my face an enormous 
 lick. So then I went away, for I didn't like 
 that. Besides, I had thought of something. 
 
 In the flower-border along the terrace 
 would be weeds. Flower-borders always have 
 weeds, and weeding is arduous. Also, all 
 one wants for weeding are one's own ten 
 fingers, and Antoine couldn't prevent my 
 using those. So that was what I would do- 
 bend down and tear up weeds, and in this 
 way forget the extraordinary sunlit, gaping, 
 empty little house.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 73 
 
 So great, however, had been the unflagging 
 diligence of Antoine, and also perhaps so poor 
 and barren the soil, that after half an hour's 
 search I had only found three weeds, and 
 even those I couldn't be sure about and didn't 
 know for certain but what I might be pulling 
 up some precious bit of alpine flora put in on 
 purpose and cherished by Antoine. All I 
 really knew was that what I tore up wasn't 
 irises, and wasn't delphiniums, and wasn't 
 pansies; so that, I argued, it must be weeds. 
 Anyhow, I pulled three alien objects out and 
 laid them in a neat row to show Antoine. 
 Then I sat down and rested. 
 
 The search for them had made me hot, but 
 that of course wouldn't last. It was ages 
 before I need go and feed the chickens. I 
 sat on the terrace wall wondering what I 
 could do next. It was a pity that the 
 Antoines were so admirable. One could 
 overdo virtue. A little less zeal, the least 
 judicious neglect on their part, and I would 
 have found something useful to do. 
 
 The place was quite extraordinarily silent. 
 There wasn't a sound. Even Mou-Mou 
 round at the back, languid in the heat, didn't 
 move. The immense light beat on the 
 varnished wooden face of the house arid on
 
 74 
 
 the shut shutters of all the unused rooms. 
 Those rooms have been shut like that for five 
 years. The shutters are blistered with the 
 fierce sun of five summers and the no less 
 fierce sun of five winters. Their colour, 
 once a lively, swaggering blue, has faded to a 
 dull gray. I sat staring up at them. Sup- 
 pose they were suddenly to be opened from 
 inside, and faces that used to live in them 
 looked out? 
 
 A faint shudder trickled along my spine. 
 
 Well, but wouldn't I be glad really? 
 Wouldn't they be the dearest ghosts? That 
 room at the end, for instance, so tightly shut 
 up now, that was where my brother used to 
 sleep when he came out for his holidays. 
 Wouldn't I love to see him look out at me? 
 How gaily he used to arrive in such spirits 
 because he had got rid of work for a bit, and 
 for a series of divine weeks was going to stretch 
 himself in the sun ! The first thing he always 
 did when he got up to his room was to hurry 
 out on to its little balcony to see if the heav- 
 enly view of the valley toward the east with 
 the chain of snow mountains across the end 
 were still as heavenly as he remembered it; and 
 I could see him with his head thrown back, 
 breathing deep breaths of the lovely air,
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 75 
 
 adoring it, radiant with delight to have 
 got back to it, calling down to me to come 
 quick and look, for it could never have been 
 so beautiful as at that moment and could 
 never possibly be so beautiful again. 
 
 I loved him very much. I don't believe any- 
 body ever had so dear a brother. He was so 
 quick to appreciate and understand, so slow 
 to anger, so clear of brain and gentle of heart. 
 Of course he was killed. Such people always 
 are if there is any killing going on anywhere. 
 He volunteered at the very beginning of the 
 war, and though his fragility saved him for a 
 long time he was at last swept in. That was 
 in March, 1918. He was killed the first week. 
 I loved him very much, and he loved me. 
 He called me sweet names, and forgave me 
 all my trespasses. 
 
 And in the next room to that oh, well, 
 I'm not going to dig out every ghost. I can't 
 really write about some of them, the pain 
 hurts too much. I've not been into any of 
 the shut rooms since I came back. I couldn't 
 bear it. Here out of doors I can take a larger 
 view, not mind going to the places of memo- 
 ries; but I know those rooms will have been 
 kept as carefully unchanged by Antoine as 
 I found mine. I daren't even think of them.
 
 76 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 I had to get up off the wall and come away 
 from staring up at those shutters, for suddenly 
 I found myself right on the very edge of the 
 dreadful pit I'm always so afraid of tumbling 
 into the great, black, cold, empty pit of 
 horror, of realization. 
 
 That's why I've been writing all this, just 
 so as not to think. . . . 
 
 Bedtime. 
 
 I must put down what happened after 
 that. I ought to be in bed, but I must put 
 down how my birthday ended. 
 
 Well, there I was sitting, trying by writing 
 to defend myself against the creeping fear of 
 the silence round me and the awareness of 
 those shut rooms upstairs, when Mou-Mou 
 barked. He barked suddenly and furiously; 
 and the long screech of his chain showed that 
 he was rushing along the wall to the other 
 side of the house. 
 
 Instantly my thoughts became wholesome. 
 I jumped up. Here was the burglar at last. 
 I flew round to greet him. Anything was 
 better than those shutters and that hot, 
 sunlit silence. Between my departure from 
 the terrace and my arrival at the other side 
 of the house I had had time, so quickly did
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 77 
 
 my restored mind work, to settle that who- 
 ever it was, burglar or not, I was going to 
 make friends. If it really were a burglar I 
 would adopt the line the bishop took toward 
 Jean Valjean and save him from the sin of 
 theft by making him a present of everything 
 he wished to take conduct which perhaps 
 might save me as well, supposing he was the 
 kind of burglar who would want to strangle 
 opposition. Also, burglar or no burglar, I 
 would ask him to dinner; compel him, in 
 fact, to come in and share my birthday 
 chicken. 
 
 What I saw when I got round, standing 
 just out of reach of the leaping Mou-Mou on 
 the top of the avalanche wall, looking down 
 at him with patience rather than timidity, 
 holding their black skirts back in case an 
 extra leap of his should reach them, were two 
 women. Strangers, not natives. Perhaps 
 widows. But anyhow people who had been 
 bereaved. 
 
 I immediately begged them to come in. 
 The relief and refreshment of seeing them! 
 Two human beings of obvious respectability, 
 warm flesh and blood persons, not burglars, 
 not ghosts, not even of the sex one associates 
 with depredation just decent, alive women,
 
 78 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 complete in every detail, even to each carrying 
 an umbrella. They might have been stand- 
 ing on the curb in Oxford Street waiting to 
 hail an omnibus, so complete were they, so 
 prepared in their clothes to face the world. 
 Button boots, umbrella I hadn't seen an 
 umbrella since I got here. What you usually 
 take for a walk on the mountains is a stout 
 stick with an iron point to it; but, after all, 
 why shouldn't you take an umbrella? Then 
 if it rains you can put it up, and if the sun is 
 unbearable you can put it up, too, and it, too, 
 has a metal tip to it which you can dig into the 
 ground if you begin to slide down precipices. 
 
 "Bon jour," I said, eagerly, looking up at 
 these black silhouettes against the sky. " Je 
 vous prie de venir me voir." 
 
 They stared at me, still holding back their 
 skirts from the leaping dog. 
 
 Perhaps they were Italians. I am close 
 to Italy, and Italian women usually dress in 
 black. 
 
 I know some Italian words, and I know the 
 one you say when you want somebody to 
 come in, so I tried that. 
 
 " Avanti" I said, breatnlessly. 
 
 They didn't. They still just stood and 
 stared.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 79 
 
 They couldn't be English I thought because 
 underneath their black skirts I could see white 
 cotton petticoats with embroidery on them, 
 the kind that England has shed these fifty 
 years, and that is only now to be found in 
 remote and religious parts of abroad, like the 
 more fervent portions of Luthern Germany. 
 Could they be Germans? The thought 
 distracted me. How could I ask two Ger- 
 mans in? How could I sit at meat with 
 people whose male relations had so recently 
 been killing mine? Or been killed by them, 
 perhaps, judging from their black clothes. 
 Anyhow there was blood between us. But 
 how could I resist asking them in, when if I 
 didn't there would be hours and hours of 
 intolerable silence and solitude for me till 
 evening brought those Antoines back who 
 never ought to have been let go? On my 
 birthday, too. 
 
 I know some German words it is wonderful 
 what a lot of languages I seem to know some 
 words in so I threw one up at them between 
 two of Mou-^\Iou's barks. 
 
 "Deutsch?" I inquired. 
 
 They ignored it. 
 
 'That's all my languages," I then said in 
 despair.
 
 80 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 The only thing left that I might still try on 
 them was to talk on my fingers, which I can 
 a little; but if they didn't happen, I reflected, 
 to be deaf and dumb perhaps they wouldn't 
 like that. So I just looked up at them 
 despairingly, and spread out my hands and 
 drew my shoulders to my ears as Mrs. 
 Antoine does when she is conveying to me 
 that the butter has come to an end. 
 
 Whereupon the elder of the two neither 
 was young, but one was less young the elder 
 of the two informed me in calm English that 
 they had lost their way, and she asked me to 
 direct them and also to tell the dog not to 
 make quite so much noise, in order that they 
 might clearly understand what I said. "He 
 is a fine fellow," she said, "but we should be 
 glad if he would make less noise." 
 
 The younger one said nothing, but smiled 
 at me. She was pleasant-looking, this one, 
 flushed and nicely moist from walking in the 
 heat. The other one was more rocky; 
 considering the weather, and the angle of the 
 slope they had either come up or down, she 
 seemed quite unnaturally arid. 
 
 I seized Mou-Mou by the collar, and ran 
 him along to his kennel. 
 
 "You stay there and be good," I said to
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 81 
 
 him, though I know he doesn't understand 
 a word of English. "He won't hurt you," 
 I assured the strangers, going back to them. 
 
 "Ah," said the elder of the two; and added, 
 "I used to say that to people about my 
 dog." 
 
 They still stood motionless, holding their 
 skirts, the younger one smiling at me. 
 
 "Won't you come do\vn?" I said. "Come 
 in and rest a little? I can tell you better 
 about your road if you'll come in. Look 
 you go along that path there, and it brings 
 you round to the front door." 
 
 "Will the dog be at the front door?" 
 asked the elder. 
 
 "Oh, no besides, he wouldn't hurt a fly." 
 
 "Ah," said the elder, eyeing Mou-Mou 
 sideways, who, from his kennel, eyed her, 
 "I used to say that to people about my dog." 
 
 The younger one stood smiling at me. 
 They neither of them moved. 
 
 "I'll come up and bring you down," I said, 
 hurrying round to the path that leads from 
 the terrace on to the slope. 
 
 When they saw that this path did indeed 
 take them away from Mou-Mou they came 
 with me. 
 
 Directly they moved he made a rush along
 
 82 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 his bar, but arrived too late and could only 
 leap up and down barking. 
 
 "That's just high spirits," I said. "He is 
 really most good-natured and affectionate." 
 
 "Ah," said the elder, "I used to say that to 
 people 
 
 "Mind those loose stones," I interrupted; 
 and I helped each one down the last crumbly 
 bit on to the terrace. 
 
 They both had black kid gloves on. More 
 than ever, as I felt these warm gloves press my 
 hand, was I sure that what they really wanted 
 was an omnibus along Oxford Street. 
 
 Once on the level and out of sight of Mou- 
 Mou, they walked with an air of self-respect. 
 Especially the elder. The younger, though 
 she had it, too, seemed rather to be following 
 an example than originating an attitude. 
 Perhaps they w T ere related to a Lord Mayor, 
 I thought. Or a rector. But a Lord Mayor 
 would l)e more likely to be the cause of 
 that air of glowing private background to 
 life. 
 
 They had been up the mountain, the elder 
 told me, trying to find somewhere cool to 
 stay in, for the valley this weather was un- 
 endurable. They used to know this district 
 years ago, and recollected a pension right up
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 83 
 
 in the highest village, and after great exertions 
 and rising early that morning they had 
 reached it only to find that it had become 
 a resort for consumptives. With no pro- 
 vision for the needs of the passing tourist; 
 with no desire, in fact, in any way to minister 
 to them. If it hadn't been for me, she said, 
 as they sat on the cool side of the house 
 drinking lemonade and eating biscuits, if it 
 hadn't been for me and what she described 
 with obvious gratitude she couldn't guess 
 mv Jy a t seeing them both! as my kind- 
 ness, they would have had somehow to 
 clamber down foodless by wrong roads, 
 seeing that they had lost the right one, to the 
 valley again, and in what state they would 
 have reentered that scorching and terrible 
 place she didn't like to think. Tired as they 
 were. Disappointed, and distressingly hot. 
 How very pleasant it was up here. What a 
 truly delightful spot. Such air. Such a 
 view. And how agreeable and unexpected 
 to come across one of one's own country- 
 women. 
 
 To all this the younger in silence smiled 
 agreement. 
 
 They had been so long abroad, continued 
 the elder, that they felt greatly fatigued by
 
 84 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 foreigners, who were so very prevalent. In 
 their pension there were nothing but 
 foreigners and flies. The house wasn't by 
 any chance no, of course it couldn't be, 
 but it wasn't by any chance her voice had a 
 sudden note of hope in it a pension? 
 
 I shook my head and laughed at that, and 
 said it wasn't. The younger one smiled at me. 
 
 Ah, no of course not, continued the elder, 
 her voice fading again. And she didn't 
 suppose I could tell them of any pension 
 anywhere about, where they could get taken 
 in while this great heat lasted? Really the 
 valley was most terribly airless. The best 
 hotel, which had, she knew, some cool rooms, 
 was beyond their means, so they were staying 
 in one of the small ones, and the flies worried 
 them. Apparently I had no flies up here. 
 And what wonderful air. At night, no doubt, 
 it was quite cool. The nights in the valley 
 were most trying. It was difficult to sleep. 
 
 I asked them to stay to lunch. They 
 accepted gratefully. When I took them to 
 my room to wash their hands they sighed with 
 pleasure at its shadiness and quiet. They 
 thought the inside of the house delightfully 
 roomy, and more spacious, said the elder, 
 while the younger one smiled agreement,
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 85 
 
 than one would have expected from its 
 outside. I left them, sunk with sighs of 
 satisfaction, on the sofa in the hall, their 
 black toques and gloves on a chair beside 
 them, gazing at the view through the open 
 front door while I went to see how the pota- 
 toes were getting on. 
 
 We lunched presently in the shade just 
 outside the house, and the strange ladies 
 continued to be most grateful, the elder 
 voicing their gratitude, the younger smiling 
 agreement. If it was possible to like one 
 more than the other, seeing with what en- 
 thusiasm I liked them both, I liked the 
 younger because she smiled. I love people 
 who smile. It does usually mean sweet 
 pleasantness somewhere. 
 
 After lunch, while I cleared away, having 
 refused their polite offers of help, for they now 
 realized I was alone in the house, on which, 
 however, though it must have surprised them 
 they made no comment, they went indoors to 
 the sofa again, whose soft cushions seemed 
 particularly attractive to them; and when I 
 came back the last time for the breadcrumbs 
 and tablecloth I found they had both fallen 
 asleep, the elder one with her handkerchief 
 over her face.
 
 86 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Poor things. How tired they were. How 
 glad I was that they should be resting and 
 getting cool. A little sleep would do them 
 both good. 
 
 I crept past them on tiptoe with my final 
 armful, and was careful to move about in the 
 kitchen very quietly. It hadn't been my 
 intention, with guests to lunch, to wash up 
 and put away, but rather to sit with them 
 and talk. Not having talked for so long it 
 seemed a godsend, a particularly welcome 
 birthday present, suddenly to have two Eng- 
 lish people drop in on me from the skies. Up 
 to this moment I had been busy, first getting 
 lemonade to slake their thirst and then 
 lunch to appease their hunger, and the spare 
 time in between these activities had been 
 filled with the expression of their gratitude 
 by the elder and her expatiations on the house 
 and what she called the grounds; but I had 
 looked forward to about an hour's real talk 
 after lunch, before they would begin to want 
 to start on their long downward journey to 
 their pension talk in which, without being 
 specially brilliant any of us, for you only had 
 to look at us to see we wouldn't be specially 
 that, we yet might at least tell each other 
 amusing things about, say, Lord Mayors.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 87 
 
 It is true I don't know any Lord Mayors, 
 though I do know somebody whose brother 
 married the daughter of one; but if they could 
 produce a Lord Mayor out of up their sleeve, 
 as I suspected, I could counter him with a 
 dean. Not quite so showy, perhaps, but more 
 permanent. And I did want to talk. I 
 have been silent so long that I felt I could 
 talk about almost anything. 
 
 Well, as they were having a little nap, 
 poor things, I would tidy up the kitchen 
 meanwhile, and by the time that was done 
 they would be refreshed and ready for half an 
 hour's agreeable interchange of gossip. 
 
 Every now and then during this tidying 
 I peeped into the hall in case they were 
 awake, but they seemed if anything to be 
 sounder asleep each time. The younger one, 
 her flushed face half buried in a cushion, her 
 fair hair a little ruffled, had a pathetic look 
 of almost infantile helplessness; the elder, 
 discreetly veiled by her handkerchief, slept 
 more stiffly, with less abandonment and more 
 determination. Poor things. How glad I 
 was they should in this way gather strength 
 for the long, difficult scramble down the 
 mountain; but also presently I began to 
 wish they would wake up.
 
 88 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 I finished what I had to do in the kitchen, 
 and came back into the hall. They had been 
 sleeping now nearly half an hour. I stood 
 about uncertainly. Poor things, they must 
 be dreadfully tired to sleep like that. I 
 hardly liked to look at them, they were so 
 defenceless, and I picked up a book and tried 
 to read; but I couldn't stop my eyes from 
 wandering over the top of it to the sofa every 
 few minutes, and always I saw the same 
 picture of profound repose. 
 
 Presently I put down the book and wan- 
 dered out on to the terrace and gazed awhile 
 at the view. That, too, seemed wrapped in 
 afternoon slumber. After a bit I wandered 
 round the house to Mou-Mou. He, too, w r as 
 asleep. Then I came back to the front door 
 and glanced in at my guests. Still no change. 
 Then I fetched some cigarettes, not moving 
 this time quite so carefully, and going out 
 again sat on the low terrace-wall at a point 
 from which I could see straight on to the sofa 
 and notice any movement that might take 
 place. 
 
 I never smoke except when bored, and as 
 I am never bored I never smoke. But this 
 afternoon it was just that unmanageable sort 
 of moment come upon me, that kind of situa-
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 89 
 
 tion I don't know how to deal with, which 
 does bore me. I sat om the wall and smoked 
 three cigarettes, and the peace on the sofa 
 remained complete. What ought one to do? 
 What did one do, faced by obstinately sleep- 
 ing guests? Impossible deliberately to wake 
 them up. Yet I was sure they had now 
 been asleep nearly an hour that when they 
 did wake up, polite as they were, they would 
 be upset by discovering that they had slept. 
 Besides, the afternoon was getting on. They 
 had a long way to go. If only Mou-Mou 
 would wake up and bark. . . . But there 
 wasn't a sound. The hot afternoon brooded 
 over the mountains in breathless silence. 
 
 Again I went round to the back of the house, 
 and pausing behind the last corner so as to 
 make what I did next more alarming, suddenly 
 jumped out at Mou-Mou. 
 
 The horribly intelligent dog didn't bother 
 to open more than an eye, and that one he 
 immediately shut again. 
 
 Disgusted with him, I returned to my seat 
 on the wall and smoked another cigarette. 
 The picture on the sofa was the same perfect 
 peace. Oh, well, poor things but I did want 
 to talk. And after all it was my birthday. 
 
 When I had finished the cigarette I thought
 
 90 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 a moment, my face in my hands. A person 
 of tact ah, but I have no tact; it has been 
 my undoing on the cardinal occasions of life 
 that I have none. Well, but suppose I were 
 a person of tact what would I do? Instantly 
 the answer flashed into my brain: Knock, 
 by accident, against a table. 
 
 So I did. I got up quickly and crossed 
 into the hall and knocked against a table, at 
 first with gentleness, and then as there was no 
 result with greater vigour. 
 
 My elder guest behind the handkerchief 
 continued to draw deep, regular breaths, but 
 to my joy the younger one stirred and opened 
 her eyes. 
 
 "Oh, I do hope I didn't wake you?" I 
 exclaimed, taking an eager step toward the 
 sofa. 
 
 She looked at me vaguely, and fell asleep 
 again. 
 
 I went back on to the terrace and lit 
 another cigarette. That was five. I haven't 
 smoked so much before in one day in my life 
 ever. I felt quite fast. And on my birthday, 
 too. By the time I had finished it there was 
 a look about the shadows on the grass that 
 suggested tea. Even if it were a little early 
 the noise of the teacups might help to wake
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 91 
 
 up my guests, and I felt that a call to tea 
 would be a delicate and hospitable way of 
 doing it. 
 
 I didn't go through the hall on tiptoe this 
 time, but walked naturally; and I opened 
 the door into the kitchen rather noisily. 
 Then I looked round at the sofa to see the 
 effect. There wasn't any. 
 
 Presently tea was ready, out on the table 
 where we had lunched. At least six times 
 I had been backward and forward through 
 the hall, the last twice carrying things that 
 rattled and that I encouraged to rattle. But 
 on the sofa the strangers slept peacefully on. 
 
 There was nothing for it now but to touch 
 them. Short of that, I didn't think that 
 anything would wake them. But I don't 
 like touching guests; I mean, in between 
 whiles. I have never done it. Especially 
 not when they weren't looking. And still 
 more especially not when they were complete 
 strangers. 
 
 Therefore I approached the sofa with 
 reluctance, and stood uncertain in front of 
 it. Poor things, they really were most com- 
 pletely asleep. It seemed a pity to interrupt. 
 Well, but they had had a nice rest; they had 
 slept soundly now for two hours. And the
 
 9* IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 tea would be cold if I didn't wake them up, 
 and besides, how were they going to get 
 home if they didn't start soon? Still, I 
 don't like touching guests. Especially strange 
 guests. . . . 
 
 Manifestly, however, there was nothing 
 else to be done, so I bent over the younger 
 one the other one was too awe-inspiring 
 with her handkerchief over her face and 
 gingerly put my hand on her shoulder. 
 
 Nothing happened. 
 
 I put it on again, with a slightly increased 
 emphasis. 
 
 She didn't open her eyes, but to my em- 
 barrassment laid her cheek on it affection- 
 ately and murmured something that sounded 
 astonishingly like Siegfried. 
 
 I know about Siegfried, because of going 
 to the opera. He was a German. He still 
 is, in the form of Siegfried Wagner, and I 
 daresay of others; and once somebody told 
 me that when Germans wished to indulge 
 their disrespect for the Kaiser freely he was 
 not at that time yet an ex-Kaiser without 
 being run in for Icse majeste, they loudly and 
 openly abused him under the name of 
 Siegfried Meye, whose initials, S. M., also 
 represent Seine Majestat; by which simple
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 93 
 
 methods everybody was able to be pleased 
 and nobody was able to be hurt. So that 
 when my sleeping guest murmured Siegfried, 
 I couldn't but conclude she was dreaming of 
 a German; and when at the same time she 
 laid her cheek on my hand, I was forced to 
 realize that she was dreaming of him affec- 
 tionately. Which astonished me. 
 
 Imbued with patriotism the accumulated 
 patriotism of weeks spent out of England 
 I felt that this English lady should instantly 
 be roused from a dream that did her no 
 credit. She herself, I felt sure, would be the 
 first to deplore such a dream. So I drew my 
 hand away from beneath her cheek even by 
 mistake I didn't like it to be thought the 
 hand of somebody called Siegfried and, 
 stooping down, said quite loud and distinctly 
 in her ear, "Won't you come to tea?" 
 
 This, at last, did wake her. She sat up 
 with a start, and looked at me for a moment 
 in surprise. 
 
 "Oh," she said, confused, "have I been 
 asleep?" 
 
 "I'm very glad you have," I said, smiling 
 at her, for she was already again smiling at 
 me. 'Your climb this morning was enough 
 to kill you."
 
 94 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Oh, but," she murmured, getting up 
 quickly and straightening her hair, "how 
 dreadful to come to your house and go to 
 sleep 
 
 And she turned to the elder one, and again 
 astonished me by, with one swift movement, 
 twitching the handkerchief off her face and 
 saying exactly as one says when playing 
 the face-and-handkerchief game with one's 
 baby, "Peep bo." Then she turned back to 
 me and smiled and said nothing more, for I 
 suppose she knew the elder one, roused thus 
 competently, would now do all the talking; as 
 indeed she did, being as I feared greatly upset 
 and horrified when she found she had not only 
 been asleep but been it for two hours. 
 
 We had tea; and all the while, while the 
 elder one talked of the trouble she was afraid 
 she had given, and the shame she felt that 
 they should have slept, and their gratitude 
 for what she called my prolonged and patient 
 hospitality, I was wondering about the other. 
 Whenever she caught my pensive and in- 
 quiring eye she smiled at me. She had very 
 sweet eyes, gray ones, gentle and intelligent, 
 and when she smiled an agreeable dimple 
 appeared. Bringing my Paley's "Evidences" 
 and Sherlock Holmes' side to bear on her, I
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 95 
 
 reasoned that my younger guest was, or had 
 been, a mother this because of the practised 
 way she had twitched the handkerchief off 
 and said Peep bo; that she was either a 
 widow, or hadn't seen her husband for some 
 time, this because of the real affection with 
 which in her sleep she had laid her cheek on 
 my hand; and that she liked music and often 
 went to the opera. 
 
 After tea the elder got up stiffly she had 
 walked much too far already, and was clearly 
 unfit to go all that long way more and said, 
 if I would direct them, they must now set out 
 for the valley. 
 
 The younger one put on her toque obedi- 
 ently at this, and helped the elder one to pin 
 hers on straight. It was now five o'clock, 
 and if they didn't once lose their way they 
 would be at their hotel by half -past seven; 
 in time, said the elder, for the end of table- 
 d'hbte, a meal much interfered with by the 
 very numerous flies. But if they did go 
 wrong at any point it would be much later, 
 probably dark. 
 
 1 asked them to stay. 
 
 To stay? The elder, engaged in buttoning 
 her tight kid gloves, said it was most kind of 
 me, but they couldn't possibly stay any
 
 96 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 longer. It was far too late already, owing to 
 their so unfortunately having gone to sleep 
 
 "I mean stay the night," I said; and ex- 
 plained that it would be doing me a kind- 
 ness, and because of that they must please 
 overlook anything in such an invitation that 
 might appear unconventional, for certainly 
 if they did set out I should lie awake all night 
 thinking of them lost somewhere among the 
 precipices, or perhaps fallen over one, and 
 how much better to go down comfortably in 
 daylight, and I could lend them everything 
 they wanted, including a great many new 
 toothbrushes I found here in short, I not only 
 invited, I pressed; growing more eager by the 
 sheer gathering momentum of my speech. 
 
 All day, while the elder talked and I 
 listened, I had secretly felt uneasy. Here 
 was I, one woman in a house arranged for 
 family gatherings, while they for want of 
 rooms were forced to swelter in the valley. 
 Gradually, as I listened, my uneasiness in- 
 creased. Presently I began to feel guilty. 
 And at last, as I watched them sleeping in 
 such exhaustion on the sofa, I felt at the 
 bottom of my heart somehow responsible. 
 But I don't know, of course, that it is wise to 
 invite strangers to stay with one.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 97 
 
 They accepted gratefully. The moment the 
 elder understood what it was that my eager 
 words were pressing on her, she drew the pins 
 out of her toque and laid it on the chair again ; 
 and so did the other one, smiling at me. 
 
 When the Antoines came home I went out 
 to meet them. By that time my guests 
 were shut up in their bedrooms with new 
 toothbrushes. They had gone up very early, 
 both of them so stiff that they could hardly 
 walk. Till they did go up, what moments 
 I had been able to spare from my hasty 
 preparations for their comfort had been filled 
 entirely, as earlier in the day, by the elder 
 one's gratitude; there had still been no 
 chance of real talk. 
 
 "J'ai des visiles" I said to the Antoines, 
 going out to meet them when, through the 
 silence of the evening, I heard their steps 
 coining up the path. 
 
 Antoine wasn't surprised. He just said, 
 "C/V/ .srra commc autrcfois" and began to shut 
 the shutters. 
 
 But I am. I can't go to bed, I'm so much 
 surprised. I've been sitting up here scrib- 
 bling when I ought to have been in bed long 
 ago. Who would have thought that the day 
 that began so emptily would end with two of
 
 98 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 my rooms full each containing a widow? 
 For they are widows, they told me: widows 
 who have lost their husbands by peaceful 
 methods, nothing to do with the war. Their 
 names are Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Jewks at 
 least that is what the younger one's sounded 
 like; I don't know if I have spelt it right. 
 They come from Dulwich. I think the elder 
 one had a slight misgiving at the last and 
 seemed to remember what was due to the 
 Lord Mayor when she found herself going to 
 bed in a strange house belonging to somebody 
 of whom she knew nothing; for she remarked 
 a little doubtfully, and with rather a defensive 
 eye fixed on me, that the war had broken 
 down many barriers, and that people did 
 things now that they wouldn't have dreamed 
 of doing five years ago. 
 
 The other one didn't say anything, but 
 actually kissed me. I hope she wasn't again 
 mistaking me for Siegfried. 
 
 August 1 5th. 
 
 My guests have gone again, but only to 
 fetch their things and pay their hotel bill, 
 and then they are coming back to stay with 
 me till it is a little cooler. They are coining 
 back to-morrow, not to-day. They are
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 99 
 
 entangled in some arrangement with their 
 pension that makes it difficult for them to 
 leave at once. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes appeared at breakfast with 
 any misgivings she may have had last night 
 gone, for when I suggested they should spend 
 this hot weather up here she immediately 
 accepted. I hadn't slept for thinking of 
 them. How could I possibly not ask them 
 to stay, seeing their discomfort and my 
 roominess? Toward morning it was finally 
 clear to me that it wasn't possible: I would 
 ask them. Though, remembering the look 
 in Mrs. Barnes's eye the last thing last night, 
 I couldn't be sure she would accept. She 
 might want to find out about me first, after 
 the cautious and hampering way of women 
 oh, I wish women wouldn't always be so 
 cautious, but simply get on with their friend- 
 ships! She might first want assurances that 
 there was some good reason for my being 
 here all by myself. Alas, there isn't a good 
 reason; there is only a bad one. But 
 fortunately to be alone is generally regarded 
 as respectable, in spite of what Seneca says 
 a philosopher said to a young man he saw 
 walking by himself: "Have a care," said he, 
 "of lewd company."
 
 100 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 However, I don't suppose Mrs. Barnes 
 knew about Seneca. Anyhow, she didn't 
 hesitate. She accepted at once, and said 
 that under these circumstances it was cer- 
 tainly due to me to tell me a little about 
 themselves. 
 
 At this I got my dean ready to meet the 
 Lord Mayor, but after all I was told nothing 
 more than that my guests are sisters; for at 
 this point, very soon arrived at, the younger 
 one. Mrs. Jewks, who had slipped away on our 
 getting up from breakfast, reappeared with the 
 toques and gloves, and said she thought they 
 had better start before it got any hotter. 
 v So they went, and the long day here 
 has been most beautiful so peaceful, so 
 quiet, with the delicate mountains like opals 
 against the afternoon sky, and the shadows 
 lengthening along the valley. 
 
 I don't feel to-day as I did yesterday, that 
 I want to talk. To-day I am content with 
 things exactly as they are: the sun, the 
 silence, the caresses of the funny little white 
 kitten with the smudge of black round its 
 left eye that makes it look as though it 
 must be somebody's wife, and the pleasant 
 knowledge that my new friends are coming 
 back again.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 101 
 
 I think that knowledge makes to-day more 
 precious. It is the last day for some time, 
 for at least a week judging from the look of 
 the blazing sky, of what I see now that they are 
 ending have been wonderful days. Up the 
 ladder of these days I have climbed slowly 
 away from the blackness at the bottom. 
 It has been like finding some steps under 
 water just as one was drowning, and crawling 
 up them to air and light. But now that I 
 have got at least most of myself back to air 
 and light, and feel hopeful of not slipping 
 down again, it is surely time to arise, shake 
 myself, and begin to do something active and 
 fruitful. And behold, just as I realize this, 
 just as I realize that I am, so to speak, ripe 
 for fruit-bearing, there appear on the scene 
 Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Jewks, as it were the 
 mid wives of Providence. 
 
 Well, that shall be to-morrow. Meanwhile 
 there is still to-day, and each one of its quiet 
 hours seems very precious. I wonder what 
 my new friends like to read. Suppose I 
 was going to say suppose it is "The Rosary"; 
 but I won't suppose that, for when it comes 
 to supposing, why not suppose something that 
 isn't "The Rosary?" Why not, for instance, 
 suppose they like "Eminent Victorians," and
 
 102 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 that we three are going to sit of an evening 
 delicately tickling each other with quotations 
 from it, and gently squirming in our seats 
 for pleasure? It is just as easy to suppose 
 that as to suppose anything else, and as I'm 
 not yet acquainted with these ladies' tastes 
 one supposition is as likely to be right as 
 another. 
 
 I don't know, though I forgot their petti- 
 coats. I can't believe any friends of Mr. 
 Lytton Strachey wear that kind of petti- 
 coat, eminently Victorian even though it 
 be; and although he wouldn't, of course, 
 have direct ocular proof that they did unless 
 he had stood with me yesterday at the bottom 
 of that wall while they on the top held up 
 their skirts, still what one has on underneath 
 does somehow ooze through into one's be- 
 haviour. I know once, when impelled by 
 a heat wave in America to cast aside the 
 undergarments of a candid mind and buy 
 and put on pink chiffon, the pink chiffon 
 instantly got through all my clothes into 
 my conduct, which became curiously dash- 
 ing. Anybody can tell what a woman has 
 got on underneath by merely watching her 
 behaviour. I have known just the con- 
 sciousness of silk stockings, worn by one
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 103 
 
 accustomed only to wool, produce dictatorial- 
 ness where all before had been submission. 
 
 August 19th. 
 
 I haven't written for three days because 
 I have been so busy settling down to my 
 guests. 
 
 They call each other Kitty and Dolly. 
 They explained that these were inevitably 
 their names because they were born, one 
 fifty, the other forty years ago. I inquired 
 why this was inevitable, and they drew my 
 attention to fashions in names, asserting that 
 people's ages could generally be guessed by 
 their Christian names. If, they said, their 
 birth had taken place ten years earlier they 
 would have been Ethel and Maud; if ten 
 years later they would have been Muriel and 
 Gladys; and if twenty years only ago they 
 had no doubt but what they would have been 
 Elizabeth and Pamela. It is always Mrs. 
 Barnes who talks; but the effect is as though 
 they together were telling me things, because 
 of the way Mrs. Jewks smiles I conclude 
 in agreement. 
 
 "Our dear parents, both long since dead," 
 said Mrs. Barnes, adjusting her eyeglasses 
 more comfortably on her nose, " didn't seem
 
 104 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 to remember that we would ever grow old, 
 for we weren't even christened Katherine and 
 Dorothy, to which we might have reverted 
 when we ceased being girls, but we were 
 Kitty and Dolly from the very beginning, 
 and actually in that condition came away 
 from the font." 
 
 "I like being Dolly," murmured Mrs. 
 Jewks. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes looked at her with what I 
 thought was a slight uneasiness, and rebuked 
 her. "You shouldn't," she said. "After 
 thirty-nine no w r oman should willingly be 
 Dolly." 
 
 "I still feel exactly like Dolly," murmured 
 Mrs. Jewks. 
 
 "It's a misfortune," said Mrs. Barnes, 
 shaking her head. 'To be called Dolly after 
 a certain age is bad enough, but it is far 
 worse to feel like it. What I think of," she 
 said, turning to me, "is when we are really 
 old in bath chairs, unable to walk, and no 
 doubt being spoon fed, yet obliged to con- 
 tinue to be called by these names. It will 
 rob us of dignity." 
 
 "I don't think I'll mind," murmured Mrs. 
 Jewks. "I shall still feel exactly like Dolly." 
 
 Mrs. Barnes looked at her, again I thought
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 105 
 
 with uneasiness with, really, an air of rather 
 anxious responsibility. 
 
 And afterward, when her sister had gone 
 indoors for something, she expounded a 
 theory she said she held, the soundness of 
 which had often been proved to her by events, 
 that names had much influence on behaviour. 
 
 "Not half as much," I thought (but didn't 
 say), "as underclothes." And indeed I have 
 for years been acquainted with somebody 
 called Trixy, who for steady gloom and heavi- 
 ness of spirit would be hard to equal. Also 
 I know an Isolda; a most respectable married 
 woman, of a sprightly humour and much 
 nimbleness in dodging big emotions. 
 
 "Dolly," said Mrs. Barnes, "has never, I 
 am sorry to say, shared my opinion. If she 
 had, many things in her life would have been 
 different, for then she would have been on 
 her guard as I have been. I am glad to say 
 there is nothing I have ever done since I 
 ceased to be a child that has been even re- 
 motely compatible with being called Kitty." 
 
 I said I thought that was a great deal to 
 be able to say. It suggested, I said, quite 
 an unusually blameless past. Through my 
 brain ran for an instant the vision of that 
 devil who, seeking his tail, met Antoine in
 
 106 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 the passage. I blushed. Fortunately Mrs. 
 Barnes didn't notice. 
 
 "What did Dol what did Mrs. Jewks do," 
 I said, "that you think was the direct result 
 of her Christian name? Don't tell me if my 
 question is indiscreet, which I daresay it is, 
 because I know I often am, but your theory 
 interests me." 
 
 Mrs. Barnes hesitated a moment. She 
 was, I think, turning over in her mind 
 whether she \vould give herself the relief of 
 complete unreserve, or continue for a few 
 more days to skim round on the outskirts of 
 confidences. This w r as yesterday. After all, 
 she had only been with me two days. 
 
 She considered awhile, then decided that 
 two days wasn't long enough, so only said: 
 "My sister is sometimes a little rash or 
 perhaps I should say has been. But the 
 effects of rashness are felt for a long time; 
 usually for the rest of one's life." 
 
 ; 'Yes," I agreed; and thought ruefully of 
 some of my own. 
 
 This, however, only made me if anything 
 more inquisitive as to the exact nature and 
 quality of Dolly's resemblance to her name. 
 We all, I suppose (except Mrs. Barnes, who 
 I am sure hasn't), have been rash, and if we
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 107 
 
 could induce ourselves to be frank much 
 innocent amusement might be got by com- 
 paring the results of our rashnesses. But Mrs. 
 Barnes was unable at the moment to induce 
 herself to be frank, and she returned to the sub- 
 ject she has already treated very fully since her 
 arrival, the wonderful bracing air up here 
 and her great and grateful appreciation of it. 
 
 To-day is Tuesday; and on Saturday even- 
 ing the day they arrived back again, com- 
 plete with their luggage, which came up 
 in a cart round by the endless zigzags of the 
 road while they with their peculiar dauntless- 
 ness took the steep short cuts we had what 
 might be called an exchange of cards. Mrs. 
 Barnes told me what she thought fit for me 
 to know about her late husband, and I 
 responded by telling her and her sister what 
 I thought fit for them to know of my uncle 
 the Dean. 
 
 There is such a lot of him that is fit to 
 know that it took some time. He was a 
 great convenience. How glad I am I've got 
 him. A dean, after all, is of an impressive 
 respectability as a relation. His apron covers 
 a multitude of family shortcomings. You 
 can hold him up to the light, and turn him 
 round, and view him from every angle, and
 
 108 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 there is nothing about him that doesn't bear 
 inspection. All my relations aren't like that. 
 One at least, though he denies it, wasn't even 
 born in wedlock. We're not sure about the 
 others, but we're quite sure about this one, 
 that he wasn't born altogether as he ought 
 to have been. Except for his obstinacy in 
 denial he is a very attractive person. My 
 uncle can't be got to see that he exists. This 
 makes him not able to like my uncle. 
 
 I didn't go beyond the Dean on Saturday 
 night, for he had a most satisfying effect 
 on my new friends. Mrs. Barnes evidently 
 thinks highly of deans, and Mrs. Jewks, 
 though she said nothing, smiled very pleas- 
 antly while I held him up to view. No 
 Lord Mayor was produced on their side. I 
 begin to think there isn't one. I begin to 
 think their self-respect is simply due to the 
 consciousness that they are British. Not 
 that Mrs. Jewks says anything about it, 
 but she smiles while Mrs. Barnes talks on 
 immensely patriotic lines. I gather they 
 haven't been in England for some time, so 
 that naturally their affection for their country 
 has been fanned into a great glow. I know 
 all about that sort of glow. I have had it 
 each time I've been out of England.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 109 
 
 August 20th. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes elaborated the story of him 
 she speaks of always as Mr. Barnes to- 
 day. 
 
 He was, she said, a business man, and went 
 to the city every day, where he did things 
 with hides: dried skins, I understood, that 
 he bought and resold. And though Mr. 
 Barnes drew 7 his sustenance from these hides 
 with what seemed to Mrs. Barnes great ease 
 and abundance while he was alive, after his 
 death it was found that, through no fault of 
 his own but rather, she suggested, to his 
 credit, he had for some time past been living 
 on his capital. This capital came to an end 
 almost simultaneously with Mr. Barnes, and 
 all that was left for Mrs. Barnes to live 
 on was the house at Dulwich, handsomely 
 furnished, it was true, with everything of the 
 best; for Mr. Barnes had disliked what Mrs. 
 Barnes called fandangles, and was all for 
 mahogany and keeping a good table. But 
 you can't live on mahogany, said Mrs. 
 Barnes, nor keep a good table with nothing 
 to keep it on, so she wished to sell the 
 house and retire into obscurity on the pro- 
 ceeds. Her brother-in-law, however, sug- 
 gested paying guests; so would she be able to
 
 110 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 continue in her home, even if on a slightly 
 different basis. Many people at that period 
 were beginning to take in paying guests. 
 She would not, he thought, lose caste. Es- 
 pecially if she restricted herself to real gentle- 
 folk, who wouldn't allow her to feel her 
 position. 
 
 It was a little difficult at first, but she got 
 used to it and was doing very well when the 
 war broke out. Then, of course, she had to 
 stand by Dolly. So she gave up her house 
 and guests, and her means were now very 
 small; for somehow, remarked Mrs. Barnes, 
 directly one wants to sell nobody seems to 
 want to buy, and she had had to let her 
 beautiful house go for very little 
 
 "But why I interrupted; and pulled 
 
 myself up. 
 
 I was just going to ask why Dolly hadn't 
 gone to Mrs. Barnes and helped with the 
 paying guests, instead of Mrs. Barnes giving 
 them up and going to Dolly; but I stopped 
 because I thought perhaps such a question, 
 seeing that they quite remarkably refrain 
 from asking me questions, might have been 
 a little indiscreet at our present stage of 
 intimacy. No, I can't call it intimacy- 
 friendship, then. No, I can't call it friend-
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 111 
 
 ship either, yet; the only word at present is 
 acquaintanceship. 
 
 August 
 
 The conduct of my guests is so extraor- 
 dinarily discreet, their careful avoidance 
 of curiosity, of questions, is so remarkable, 
 that I can but try to imitate. They haven't 
 asked me a single thing. I positively thrust 
 the Dean on them. They make no comment 
 on anything, either, except the situation and 
 the view. We seem to talk if not only 
 certainly chiefly about that. We haven't 
 even got to books yet. I still don't know 
 about "The Rosary." Once or twice when I 
 have been alone with Mrs. Barnes she has 
 begun to talk of Dolly, who appears to fill 
 most of her thoughts, but each time she has 
 broken off in the middle and resumed her 
 praises of the situation and the view. I 
 haven't been alone at all yet with Dolly; 
 nor, though Mr. Barnes has been dwelt upon 
 in detail, have I been told anything about 
 Mr. Jewks. 
 
 August 
 
 Impetuosity sometimes gets the better of 
 me, and out begins to rush a question; but
 
 112 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 up to now I have succeeded in catching it 
 and strangling it before it is complete. For 
 perhaps my new friends have been very 
 unhappy, just as I have been very unhappy, 
 and they may be struggling out of it just as 
 I am, still with places in their memories that 
 hurt too much for them to dare to touch. 
 Perhaps it is only by silence and reserve that 
 they can manage to be brave. 
 
 There are no signs, though, of anything of 
 the sort on their composed faces; but then, 
 neither, I think, would they see any signs of 
 such things on mine. The moment as it 
 passes is, I find, somehow a gay thing. Some- 
 body says something amusing, and I laugh; 
 somebody is kind, and I am happy. Just the 
 smell of a flower, the turn of a sentence, any- 
 thing, the littlest thing, is enough to make the 
 passing moment gay to me. I am sure my 
 guests can't tell by looking at me that I have 
 ever been anything but cheerful; and so I, by 
 looking at them, wouldn't be able to say that 
 they have ever been anything but composed- 
 Mrs. Barnes composed and grave, Mrs. Jewks 
 composed and smiling. 
 
 But I refuse now to jump at conclusions in 
 the nimble way I used to. Even about 
 Mrs. Barnes, who would seem to be an
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 113 
 
 untouched monument of tranquillity, a cave 
 of calm memories, I can no longer be sure. 
 And so we sit together quietly on the terrace, 
 and are as presentable as so many tidy, white- 
 curtained houses in a decent street. We 
 don't know w r hat we've got inside us each of 
 disorder, of discomfort, of anxieties. Per- 
 haps there is nothing; perhaps my friends 
 are as tidy and quiet inside as out. Any- 
 how up to now we have kept ourselves to 
 ourselves, as Mrs. Barnes w r ould say, and we 
 make a most creditable show. 
 
 Only I don't believe in that keeping oneself 
 to oneself attitude. Life is too brief to waste 
 any of it being slow in making friends. I 
 have a theory Mrs. Barnes isn't the only 
 one of us three who has theories that 
 reticence is a stuffy, hampering thing. Ex- 
 cept about one's extremest bitter grief, which 
 is, like one's extremest joy of love, too deeply 
 hidden away with God to be told of, one 
 should be without reserves. And if one 
 makes mistakes, and if the other person turns 
 out to have been unworthy of being treated 
 frankly and goes away and distorts, it can't 
 be helped one just takes the risk. For 
 isn't anything better than distrust and the 
 slowness and selfish fear of caution? Isn't
 
 114 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 anything better than not doing one's fellow 
 creatures the honour of taking it for granted 
 that they are, women and all, gentlemen? 
 Besides, how lonely . . . 
 
 August %3rd. 
 
 The sun goes on blazing, and we go on 
 sitting in the shade in a row. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes does a great deal of knitting. 
 She knits socks for soldiers all day. She got 
 into this habit during the war, when she sent 
 I don't know how many pairs a year to the 
 trenches, and now she can't stop. I suppose 
 these will go to charitable institutions, for al- 
 though the war has left off there are, as Mrs. 
 Jewks justly said, still legs in the world. This 
 remark I think came under the heading 
 Dolly in Mrs. Barnes's mind, for she let her 
 glance rest a moment on her sister in a kind 
 of affectionate concern. 
 
 Mrs. Jewks hasn't said much yet, but each 
 time she has said anything I have liked it. 
 Usually she murmurs, almost as if she didn't 
 want Mrs. Barnes to hear, yet couldn't help 
 saying what she says. She, too, knits, but 
 only, I think, because her sister likes to see 
 her sitting beside her doing it, and never 
 for long at a time. Her chief occupation, I
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 115 
 
 have discovered, is to read aloud to Mrs. 
 Barnes. 
 
 This wasn't done in my presence the first 
 four days out of consideration for me, for 
 everybody doesn't like being read to, Mrs. 
 Barnes explained afterward; but they went 
 upstairs after lunch to their rooms to sleep, 
 as I supposed, knowing how well they do that, 
 and it was only gradually that I realized, 
 from the monotonous gentle drone coming 
 through the window to where I lay below on 
 the grass, that it wasn't Mrs. Barnes giving long 
 drawn-out counsel to Mrs. Jewks on the best 
 way to cope with the dangers of being Dolly, 
 but that it was Mrs. Jewks reading aloud. 
 
 After that I suggested they should do this 
 on the terrace, where it is so much cooler 
 than anywhere else in the afternoon; so 
 now, reassured that it in no way disturbs me 
 Mrs. Barnes's politeness and sense of duty 
 as a guest never flags for a moment this is 
 what happens, and it happens in the mornings 
 also. For, says Mrs. Barnes, how much better 
 it is to study what persons of note have said 
 than waste the hours of life saying things 
 oneself. 
 
 They read biographies and histories, but 
 only those, I gather, that are not recent;
 
 116 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and sometimes, Mrs. Barnes said, they lighten 
 what Mrs. Jewks described in a murmur as 
 these more solid forms of fiction by reading 
 a really good novel. 
 
 I asked Mrs. Barnes with much interest 
 about the novel. What were the really good 
 ones they had read? And I hung on the 
 answer, for here was something we could talk 
 about that wasn't either the situation or the 
 view and yet was discreet. 
 
 "Ah," she said, shaking her head, "there 
 are very few really good novels. We don't 
 care, of course, except for the very best, 
 and they don't appear to be printed nowa- 
 days." 
 
 "I expect the very best are unprintable," 
 murmured Mrs. Jewks, her head bent over 
 her knitting, for it was one of the moments 
 when she, too, was engaged on socks. 
 
 'There used to be very good novels," 
 continued Mrs. Barnes, who hadn't I think 
 heard her, "but of recent years they have 
 indeed been few. I begin to fear we shall 
 never again see a Thackeray or a Trollope. 
 And yet I have a theory and surely these 
 two writers prove it that it is possible to be 
 both wholesome and clever." 
 
 "I don't want to see any more Thackerays
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 117 
 
 and Trollopes," murmured Mrs. Jewks. "I've 
 seen them. Now I want to see something 
 different." 
 
 This sentence was too long for Mrs. Barnes 
 not to notice, and she looked at me as one 
 who should say, "There. What did I tell 
 you? Her name unsettles her." 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 "Our father," then said Mrs. Barnes, with 
 so great a gravity of tone that for a moment 
 I thought she was unaccountably and at 
 eleven o'clock in the morning going to em- 
 bark on the Lord's Prayer, "knew Thackeray. 
 He mixed with him." 
 
 And as I wasn't quite sure whether this 
 was a rebuke for Dolly or information for me, 
 I kept quiet. 
 
 As, however, Mrs. Barnes didn't continue, 
 I began to feel that perhaps I was expected 
 to say something. So I did. 
 
 'That," I said, "must have been very 
 
 I searched round for an enthusiastic word, 
 but couldn't find one. It is unfortunate 
 how I can never think of any words more 
 enthusiastic than what I am feeling. They 
 seem to disappear; and urged by politeness, 
 or a desire to please, I frantically hunt for 
 them in a perfectly empty mind. The near-
 
 118 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 est approach to one that I found this morn- 
 ing was Enjoyable. I don't think much of 
 Enjoyable. It is a watery word; but it 
 was all I found, so I said it. "That must 
 have been very enjoyable," I said; and even 
 I could hear that my voice was without 
 excitement. 
 
 Mrs. Jewks looked at me and smiled. 
 
 "It was more than enjoyable," said Mrs. 
 Barnes, "it was elevating. Dolly used to 
 feel just as I do about it," she added, her 
 eye reproachfully on her sister. "It is 
 not Thackeray's fault that she no longer 
 does." 
 
 "It's only because I've finished with him," 
 said Mrs. Jewks, apologetically. "Now I 
 want something different." 
 
 "Dolly and I," explained Mrs. Barnes to 
 me, "don't always see alike. I have a theory 
 that one doesn't finish with the Immortals." 
 
 "Would you put Thackeray " I began, 
 diffidently. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes stopped me at once. 
 
 "Our father," she said again my hands 
 instinctively wanted to fold "who was an 
 excellent judge, indeed a specialist if I may 
 say so, placed him among the Immortals. 
 Therefore I am content to leave him there."
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 119 
 
 "But isn't that filial piety rather than 
 I began again, still diffident but also obstinate. 
 
 "In any case," interrupted Mrs. Barnes, 
 raising her hand as though I were the traffic, 
 "I shall never forget the influence he and the 
 other great writers of the period had upon the 
 boys." 
 
 'The boys?" I couldn't help inquiring, 
 in spite of this being an interrogation. 
 
 "Our father educated boys. On an unusual 
 and original system. Being devoid of the 
 classics, which he said was all the better 
 because then he hadn't to spend any time 
 remembering them, he was a devoted Eng- 
 lish linquist. Accordingly he taught boys 
 English foreign boys, because English boys 
 naturally know it already, and his method 
 was to make them minutely acquainted with 
 the great novels the great wholesome novels 
 of that period. Not a French, or Dutch, or 
 Italian boy but went home 
 
 "Or German," put in Mrs. Jewks. "Most 
 of them were Germans." 
 
 Mrs. Barnes turned red. "Let us forget 
 them," she said, with a wave of her hand. 
 "It is my earnest desire," she continued, 
 looking at me, "to forget Germans." 
 
 "Do let us," I said, politely.
 
 120 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Not one of the boys," she then went on, 
 "but returned to his country with a knowl- 
 edge of the colloquial English of the best 
 period, and of the noble views of that period 
 as expressed by the noblest men, unobtain- 
 able by any other method. Our father called 
 himself a Non-Grammarian. The boys went 
 home knowing no rules of grammar, yet 
 unable to talk incorrectly. Thackeray him- 
 self was the grammar, and his characters the 
 teachers. And so was Dickens, but not 
 quite to the same extent, because of people 
 like Sam Weller who might have taught 
 the boys slang. Thackeray was immensely 
 interested when our father wrote and told 
 him about the school, and once when he was 
 in London he invited him to lunch." 
 
 Not quite clear as to who was in London 
 and which invited which, I said, "Who?" 
 
 "It was our father who went to London," 
 said Mrs. Barnes, "and was most kindly 
 entertained by Thackeray." 
 
 "He went because he wasn't there already," 
 explained Mrs. Jewks. 
 
 "Dolly means," said Mrs. Barnes, "that he 
 did not live in London. Our father was an 
 Oxford man. Not in the narrow, technical 
 meaning that has come to be attached to the
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 term, but in the simple, natural sense of living 
 there. It was there that we were born, and 
 there that we grew up in an atmosphere of 
 education. We saw it all round us going on 
 in the different colleges, and we saw it in 
 detail and at first hand in our own home. 
 For we, too, were brought up on Thackeray 
 and Dickens, in whom our father said we 
 would find everything girls needed to know 
 and nothing that they had better not." 
 
 "I used to have a perfect itch," murmured 
 Mrs. Jewks, "to know the things I had better 
 not." 
 
 And Mrs. Barnes again looked at me as one 
 who should say, "There. \Vhat did I tell 
 you? Such a word, too. Itch." 
 
 There was a silence. I could think of 
 nothing to say that wouldn't appear either 
 inquisitive or to be encouraging Dolly. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes sits between us. This arrange- 
 ment of our chairs on the grass happened 
 apparently quite naturally the first day, and 
 now has become one that I feel I mustn't 
 disturb. For me to drop into the middle 
 chair would somehow now be impossible. 
 It is Mrs. Barnes's place. Yet I do want to 
 sit next to Mrs. Jewks and talk to her. Or, 
 better still, go for a walk with her. But
 
 122 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Mrs. Barnes always goes for the walks, either 
 with or without me, but never without 
 Mrs. Jewks. She hasn't yet left us once 
 alone together. If anything needs fetching 
 it is Mrs. Jewks who fetches it. They don't 
 seem to want to write letters, but if they did 
 I expect they would both go in to write them 
 at the same time. 
 
 I do think, though, that we are growing a 
 little more intimate At least to-day we 
 have talked of something that wasn't the 
 view. I shouldn't be surprised if in another 
 week, supposing the hot weather lasts so long, 
 I shall be asking Mrs. Barnes outright what 
 it is Dolly did that has apparently so per- 
 manently unnerved her sister. 
 
 But suppose she retaliated by asking me 
 oh, there are so many things she could ask 
 me that I couldn't answer! Except with 
 the shameful, exposing answer of beginning 
 very helplessly to cry. . . . 
 
 August %4<th. 
 
 Last night I ran after Mrs. Jewks just as 
 she was disappearing into her room and said, 
 "I'm going to call you Dolly. I don't like 
 Jewks. How do you spell it?" 
 
 "What Dolly?" she asked, smiling.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 123 
 
 "No Jewks." 
 
 But Mrs. Barnes came out of her bedroom 
 and said, "Did we forget to bid you good- 
 night? How very remiss of us." 
 
 And we all smiled at each other, and went 
 into our rooms, and shut the doors. 
 
 August %5th. 
 
 The behaviour of time is a surprising thing. 
 I can't think how it manages to make weeks 
 sometimes seem like minutes and days some- 
 times seem like years. Those weeks I was 
 here alone seemed not longer than a few 
 minutes. These days since my guests came 
 seem to have gone on for months. 
 
 I suppose it is because they have been so 
 tightly packed. Nobody coming up the path 
 and seeing the three figures sitting quietly on 
 the terrace, the middle one knitting, the right- 
 hand one reading aloud, the left-hand one 
 sunk apparently in stupor would guess that 
 these creatures' days were packed. Many 
 an honest slug stirred by creditable desires 
 has looked more animate than we. Yet the 
 days are packed. Mine, at any rate, are- 
 packed tight with an immense monotony. 
 
 Every day we do exactly the same things: 
 breakfast, read aloud; lunch, read aloud;
 
 124 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 tea, go for a walk; supper, read aloud; exhaus- 
 tion; bed. How quick and short it is to 
 write down, and how endless to live. At 
 meals we talk, and on the walk we talk, or 
 rather we say things. At meals the things 
 w r e say are about food, and on the walk they 
 are about mountains. The rest of the time 
 we don't talk, because of the reading aloud. 
 That fills up every gap; that muzzles all 
 conversation. 
 
 I don't know whether Mrs. Barnes is afraid 
 I'll ask questions, or whether she is afraid 
 Dolly will start answering questions that I 
 haven't asked; I only know that she seems 
 to have decided that safety lies in putting 
 an extinguisher on talk. At the same time 
 she is most earnest in her endeavours to be 
 an agreeable guest, and is all politeness; 
 but so am I, most earnest for my part in my 
 desire to be an agreeable hostess, and we are 
 both so dreadfully polite and so horribly 
 considerate that things end by being exactly 
 as I would prefer them not to be. 
 
 For instance, finding Merivale it is Mer- 
 i vale's "History of the Romans under the 
 Empire" that is being read finding him too 
 much like Gibbon gone sick and filled with 
 water, a Gibbon with all the kick taken out
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 125 
 
 of him, shorn of his virility and his foot-notes, 
 yesterday I didn't go and sit on the terrace 
 after breakfast, but took a volume of the 
 authentic Gibbon and departed by the back 
 door for a walk. 
 
 It is usually, I know, a bad sign when a 
 hostess begins to use the back door, but it 
 wasn't a sign of anything in this case except 
 a great desire to get away from Merivale. 
 After lunch, when, strengthened by my 
 morning, I prepared to listen to some more 
 of him, I found the chairs on the terrace 
 empty, and from the window of Mrs. Barnes's 
 room floated down the familiar, muffled drone 
 of the first four days. 
 
 So then I went for another walk, and 
 thought. And the result was polite, affec- 
 tionate protests at tea-time, decorated with 
 some amiable untruths about domestic affairs 
 having called me away God forgive me, 
 but I believe I said it was the laundress and 
 such real distress on Mrs. Barnes's part at 
 the thought of having driven me off my own 
 terrace, that now so as to shield her from 
 thinking anything so painful to her I must 
 needs hear Merivale to the end. 
 
 "Dolly," I said, meeting her by some 
 strange chance alone on the stairs going
 
 126 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 down to supper invariably the sisters go 
 down together "do you like reading aloud?" 
 
 I said it very quickly and under my breath, 
 for at the bottom of the stairs would certainly 
 be Mrs. Barnes. 
 
 "No," she said, also under her breath. 
 
 "Then why do you do it?" 
 
 "Do you like listening?" she whispered, 
 smiling. 
 
 "No," I said. 
 
 "Then why do you do it?" 
 
 " Because " I said. "Well, because 
 
 She nodded and smiled. 'Yes," she whis- 
 pered, "that's my reason, too." 
 
 August %6th. 
 
 All day to-day I have emptied myself of 
 any wishes of my own and tried to be the 
 perfect hostess. I have given myself up to 
 Mrs. Barnes, and on the walk I followed 
 where she led, and I made no suggestions 
 when paths crossed though I have secret 
 passionate preferences in paths, and I rested 
 on the exact spot she chose in spite of know- 
 ing there was a much prettier one just round 
 the corner, and I joined with her in admiring a 
 view I didn't really like. In fact, I merged 
 myself in Mrs. Barnes, sitting by her on the
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 127 
 
 mountain side in much the spirit of Words- 
 worth when he sat by his cottage fire without 
 ambition, hope, or aim. 
 
 August 21th. 
 
 The weather blazes along in its hot beauty. 
 Each morning, the first thing I see when I 
 open my eyes is the great patch of golden 
 light on the w r all near my bed that means 
 another perfect day. Nearly always the sky 
 is cloudless a deep, incredible blue. Once 
 or twice, when I have gone quite early to my 
 window toward the east, I have seen what 
 looked to my sleepy eyes like a flock of little 
 angels floating slowly along the tops of the 
 mountains, or at any rate, if not the angels 
 themselves, delicate bright tufts of feathers 
 pulled out of their wings. These objects, 
 on waking up more completely, I have per- 
 ceived to be clouds; and then I have thought 
 that perhaps that day there would be 
 rain. But there never has been rain. The 
 clouds have floated slowly away to Italy, and 
 left us to another day of intense, burning 
 heat. 
 
 I don't believe the weather will ever break 
 up. Not anyhow for a long time. Not any- 
 how before I have heard Merivale to the end.
 
 128 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 August %8th. 
 
 In the morning when I get up and go and 
 look out of my window at the splendid east 
 I don't care about Merivale. I defy him. 
 And I make up my mind that though my 
 body may be present at the reading of him 
 so as to avoid distressing Mrs. Barnes and 
 driving her off the terrace we are minute 
 in our care not to drive each other off the 
 terrace my ears shall be deaf to him and 
 my imagination shall wander. Who is Mer- 
 ivale, that he shall burden my memory 
 with even shreds of his unctuous imitations? 
 And I go down to breakfast with a fortified 
 and shining spirit, as one who has arisen 
 refreshed and determined from prayer, and 
 out on the terrace I do shut my ears. But I 
 think there must be chinks in them, for 
 I find my mind is much hung about, after 
 all, with Merivale. Bits of him. Bits like 
 this: 
 
 Propertius is deficient in that light touch and 
 exquisitely polished taste which volatilize the 
 sensuality and flattery of Horace. The play- 
 fulness of the Sabine bard is that of the lapdog, 
 while the Umbrian reminds us of the pranks of 
 a clumsier and less tolerated quadruped. 
 
 This is what you write if you want to write
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 129 
 
 like Gibbon, and yet remain at the same 
 time a rector and chaplain to the Speaker 
 of the House of Commons; and this bit kept 
 on repeating itself in my head like a tune 
 during luncheon to-day. It worried me that 
 I couldn't decide what the clumsier and less 
 tolerated quadruped was. 
 
 "A donkey," said Mrs. Jewks, on my asking 
 my guests what they thought. 
 
 " Surely, yes an ass," said Mrs. Barnes, 
 whose words are always picked. 
 
 "But why should a donkey be less tolerated 
 than a lapdog?" I asked. "I would tolerate 
 it more. If I might tolerate only one, it 
 would certainly be the donkey." 
 
 "Perhaps he means a flea," suggested 
 Mrs. Jewks. 
 
 "Dolly," said Mrs. Barnes. 
 
 "But fleas do go in for pranks, and are less 
 tolerated than lapdogs," said Mrs. Jewks. 
 
 "Dolly," said Mrs. Barnes again. 
 
 "Except that," I said, not heeding Mrs. 
 Barnes for a moment in my pleasure at 
 having got away from the usual luncheon- 
 table talk of food, "haven't fleas got more 
 than four legs?" 
 
 'That's centipedes," said Dolly. 
 
 "Then it's two legs that they've got."
 
 130 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "That's birds," said Dolly. 
 
 We looked at each other and began to 
 laugh. It was the first time we had laughed, 
 and once we had begun we laughed and 
 laughed, in that foolish way one does about 
 completely idiotic things when one knows one 
 oughtn't to and hasn't for a long while. 
 
 There sat Mrs. Barnes, straight and rocky, 
 with worried eyes. She never smiled; and 
 indeed why should she. But the more she 
 didn't smile the more we laughed helplessly, 
 ridiculously. It was dreadful to laugh, dread- 
 ful to mention objects that distressed her 
 as vulgar; and because it was dreadful and 
 we knew it was dreadful, we couldn't stop. 
 So was I once overcome with deplorable 
 laughter in church, only because a cat came 
 in. So have I seen an ill-starred woman fall a 
 prey to unseasonable mirth at a wedding. We 
 laughed positively to tears. We couldn't 
 stop. I did try to. I was really greatly 
 ashamed. For I was doing what I now feel 
 in all my bones is the thing Mrs. Barnes 
 dreads most I was encouraging Dolly. 
 
 Afterward, when we had settled down to 
 Merivale, and Dolly finding she had left the 
 book upstairs went in to fetch it, I begged 
 Mrs. Barnes to believe that I wasn't often
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 131 
 
 quite so silly and didn't suppose I would be 
 like that again. 
 
 She was very kind, and laid her hand for a 
 moment on mine such a bony hand, marked 
 all over, I thought as I looked down at it, 
 with the traces of devotion and self-sacrifice. 
 That hand had never had leisure to get fat. 
 It may have had it in the spacious days of 
 Mr. Barnes, but the years afterward had 
 certainly been lean ones; and since the war, 
 since the selling of her house and the begin- 
 ning of the evidently wearing occupation of 
 what she had called standing by Dolly, the 
 years, I understand, have been so lean that 
 they were practically bone. 
 
 "I think," she said, "I have perhaps got 
 into the way of being too serious. It is 
 because Dolly, I consider, is not serious 
 enough. If she were more so I would be less 
 so, and that would be better for us both. 
 Oh, you mustn't suppose," she added, "that 
 I cannot enjoy a joke as merrily as anybody." 
 And she smiled broadly and amazingly at 
 me, the rockiest, most determined smile. 
 
 'There wasn't any joke, and we were just 
 absurd," I said, penitently, in my turn lay- 
 ing my hand on hers. "Forgive me. I'm 
 always sorry and ashamed when I have
 
 132 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 behaved as though I were ten. I do try not 
 to, but sometimes it comes upon one un- 
 expectedly 
 
 "Dolly is a little old to behave as though 
 she were ten," said Mrs. Barnes, in sorrow 
 rather than in anger. 
 
 "And I'm a little old, too. It's very 
 awkward when you aren't so old inside as you 
 are outside. For years I've been trying to 
 be dignified, and I'm always being tripped 
 up by a kind of apparently incurable natural 
 effervescence." 
 
 Mrs. Barnes looked grave. 
 ^ "That is what is the matter with Dolly," 
 she said. "Just that. How strange that 
 you should have met. For it isn't usual. 
 I cannot believe it is usual. All her troubles 
 have been caused by it. I do not, however, 
 regard it as incurable. On the contrary 
 I have helped her to check it, and she is much 
 better than she was." 
 
 "But what are you afraid she will do now ?" 
 I asked; and Dolly, coming out with the 
 book under her arm and that funny little air 
 of jauntiness that triumphs when she walks 
 over her sobering black skirt and white cotton 
 petticoat, prevented my getting an answer. 
 
 But I felt in great sympathy with Mrs.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 133 
 
 Barnes. And when, starting for our walk 
 after tea, something happened to Dolly's 
 boot I think the heel came off and she had 
 to turn back, I gladly went on alone with 
 her sister, hoping that perhaps she would 
 continue to talk on these more intimate lines. 
 And so she did. 
 
 "Dolly," she said almost immediately, 
 almost before we had got round the turn of 
 the path, "is the object of my tenderest 
 solicitude and love." 
 
 "I know. I see that," I said, sympathet- 
 ically. 
 
 "She was the object of my love from the 
 moment when she was laid, a new-born baby, 
 in the arms of the little ten-year-old girl I 
 was then, and she became, as she grew up 
 and developed the characteristics I associate 
 with her name, the object of my solicitude. 
 Indeed, of my concern." 
 
 "I wish," I said, as she stopped and I began 
 to be afraid this once more was to be all and 
 the shutters were going to be shut again, 
 "we might be real friends." 
 
 "Are we not?" asked Mrs. Barnes, looking 
 anxious, as though she feared she had failed 
 somewhere in her duties as a guest. 
 
 "Oh, yes we are friends, of course, but I
 
 134 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 meant by real friends people who talk to- 
 gether about anything and everything. Al- 
 most anything and everything," I amended. 
 " People who tell each other things," I went 
 on, hesitatingly. "Most things," I amended. 
 
 "I have a great opinion of discretion," said 
 Mrs. Barnes. 
 
 "I am sure you have. But don't you 
 think that sometimes the very essence of real 
 friendship consists in 
 
 "Mr. Barnes always had his own dressing- 
 room." 
 
 This was unexpected and it silenced me. 
 After a moment I said, lamely, "I'm sure he 
 did. But you were saying about Dol 
 about Mrs. Jewks 
 
 "Yes." Mrs. Barnes sighed. "Well, it 
 cannot harm you or her," she went on after a 
 pause, "for me to tell you that the first thing 
 Dolly did as soon as she was grown up was 
 to make an impetuous marriage." 
 
 "Isn't that rather what most of us begin 
 with?" 
 
 " Few are so impetuous. Mine, for instance, 
 was not. Mine w r as the considered union of 
 affection with regard, entered into properly 
 in the eye of all men, and accompanied by the 
 good wishes of relations and friends. Dolly's
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 135 
 
 well, Dolly's was impetuous. I cannot 
 say ill-advised, because she asked no one's 
 advice. She plunged it is not too strong a 
 word, and unfortunately can be applied to 
 some of her subsequent movements into 
 a misalliance, and in order to contract it 
 she let herself down secretly at night from 
 her bedroom window by means of a sheet." 
 
 Mrs. Barnes paused. 
 
 "How very how very spirited," I couldn't 
 help murmuring. 
 
 Indeed I believe I felt a little jealous. 
 Nothing in my own past approaches this in 
 enterprise. And I not only doubted if I 
 would ever have had the courage to commit 
 myself to a sheet, but I felt a momentary 
 vexation that no one had ever suggested that 
 on his account I should. Compared to Dolly, 
 I am a poor thing. 
 
 "So you can understand," continued Mrs. 
 Barnes, "how earnestly I wish to keep my 
 sister to lines of normal conduct. She has 
 been much punished for her departures from 
 them. I am very anxious that nothing should 
 be said to her that might seem well, that 
 might seem to be even slightly in sympathy 
 with actions or ways of looking at life that 
 have in the past brought her unhappiness,
 
 136 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and can only in the future bring her yet 
 more." 
 
 "But why," I asked, still thinking of the 
 sheet, "didn't she go out to be married 
 through the front door?" 
 
 "Because our father would never have 
 allowed his front door to be used for such a 
 marriage. You forget that it was a school, 
 and she was running away with somebody 
 who up till a year or two previously had been 
 one of the pupils." 
 
 "Oh? Did she marry a foreigner?" 
 
 Mrs. Barnes flushed a deep, painful red. 
 She is brown and weather-beaten, yet through 
 the brownness spread unmistakeably this 
 deep red. Obviously she had forgotten what 
 she told me the other day about the boys 
 all being foreigners. 
 
 "Let us not speak evil of the dead," she 
 said with awful solemnity; and for the rest 
 of the walk would talk of nothing but the 
 view. 
 
 But in my room to-night I have been 
 thinking. There are guests and guests, and 
 some guests haunt one. These guests are 
 that kind. They wouldn't haunt me so 
 much if only we could be really friends; 
 but we'll never be reallv friends as long as I
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 137 
 
 am kept from talking to Dolly and between 
 us is fixed the rugged and hitherto un- 
 scaleable barrier of Mrs. Barnes. Perhaps 
 to-morrow, if I have the courage, I shall 
 make a great attempt at friendship at what 
 Mrs. Barnes would call being thoroughly 
 indiscreet. For isn't it senseless for us three 
 women, up here alone together, to spend the 
 precious days when we might be making 
 friends for life hiding away from each other? 
 Why can't I be told outright that Dolly 
 married a German? Evidently she did; 
 and if she could bear it I am sure I can. 
 Twenty years ago it might have happened 
 to us all. Twenty years ago I might have 
 done it myself, except that there wasn't the 
 German living who would have got me to go 
 down a sheet for him. And anyhow Dolly's 
 German is dead; and doesn't even a German 
 leave off being one after he is dead? 
 Wouldn't he naturally incline, by the sheer 
 action of time, to dissolve into neutrality? 
 It doesn't seem humane to pursue him into 
 the recesses of eternity as an alien enemy. 
 Besides, I thought the war was over. 
 
 For a long while to-night I have been 
 leaning out of my window thinking. When 
 I look at the stars I don't mind about Ger-
 
 138 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 mans. It seems impossible to. I believe 
 if Mrs. Barnes would look at them she 
 wouldn't be nearly so much worried. It is 
 a very good practice, I think, to lean out 
 of one's window for a space before going to 
 bed and let the cool darkness wash over one. 
 After being all day with people, how blessed 
 a thing it is not to be with them. The night 
 to-night is immensely silent, and I've been 
 standing so quiet, so motionless that I would 
 have heard the smallest stirring of a leaf. 
 But nothing is stirring. The air is quite 
 still. There isn't a sound. The mountains 
 seem to be brooding over a valley that has 
 gone to sleep. 
 
 August 
 
 Antoine said to me this morning that he 
 thought if ces dames so he always speaks 
 of Mrs. Barnes and Dolly were going to stay 
 any time, perhaps an assistant for Mrs. 
 Antoine had better be engaged; because Mrs. 
 Antoine might otherwise possibly presently 
 begin to find the combination of heat and 
 visitors a little 
 
 "Of course," I said. "Naturally she might. 
 I regret, Antoine, that I did not think of this. 
 Why did you not point it out sooner? I
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 139 
 
 will go myself this very day and search for 
 an assistant." 
 
 Antoine said that such exertions were not 
 for Madame, and that it was he who would 
 search for the assistant. 
 
 I said he couldn't possibly leave the chick- 
 ens and the cow, and that it was I who would 
 search for the assistant. 
 
 So that is what I have been doing all day- 
 having a most heavenly time wandering 
 from village to village along the mountain 
 side, my knapsack over my arm and freedom 
 in my heart. The knapsack had food in it 
 and a volume of Crabbe, because it was 
 impossible to tell how long the search might 
 last, and I couldn't not be nourished. I 
 explained to my guests how easily I mightn't 
 be back till the evening, I commended them 
 to the special attentiveness of the Antoines, 
 and off I went, accompanied by Mrs. Barnes's 
 commiseration that I should have to be 
 engaged on so hot a day in what she with 
 felicitous exactness called a domestic pursuit, 
 and trying very hard not to be too evidently 
 pleased. 
 
 I went to the villages that lie in the direc- 
 tion of my lovely place of larches, and having 
 after some search found the assistant I
 
 140 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 continued on toward the west, walking fast, 
 almost as if people would know I had accom- 
 plished what I had come out for, and might 
 catch me and take me home again. 
 
 As I walked it positively was quite difficult 
 not to sing. Only hostesses know this pure 
 joy. To feel so deep and peculiar an ex- 
 hilaration you must have been having guests 
 and still be having them. Before my guests 
 came I might and did roam about as I chose, 
 but it was never like to-day, never with that 
 holiday feeling. Oh, I have had a wonderful 
 day! Everything was delicious. I don't re- 
 member having smelt the woods so good, and 
 there hasn't ever been anything like the deep, 
 cool softness of the grass I lay on at lunch- 
 time. I And Crabbe the delightful why don't 
 people talk more about Crabbe? Why don't 
 they read him more? I have him in eight 
 volumes; none of your little books of selec- 
 tions, which somehow take away all his true 
 flavour, but every bit of him from beginning 
 to end. Nobody ever made so many couplets 
 that fit into so many occasions of one's life. 
 I believe I could describe my daily life with 
 Mrs. Barnes and Dolly entirely in couplets 
 from Crabbe. It is the odd fate of liis 
 writings to have turned by the action of
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 141 
 
 time from serious to droll. He decomposes, 
 as it were, hilariously. I lay for hours this 
 afternoon enjoying his neat couplets. He 
 enchants me. I forget time when I am with 
 him. It was Crabbe who made me late for 
 supper. But he is the last person one takes 
 out for a walk with one if one isn't happy. 
 Crabbe is a barometer of serenity. You 
 have to be in a cloudless mood to enjoy him. 
 I w r as in that mood to-day. I had escaped. 
 
 Well, I have had my outing, I have had 
 my little break, and have come back filled 
 with renewed zeal to my guests. When I 
 said good-night to-night I was so much 
 pleased with everything and felt so happily 
 and comfortably affectionate that I not only 
 kissed Dolly but embarked adventurously on 
 an embrace of Mrs. Barnes. 
 
 She received it with surprise but kindliness. 
 
 I think she considered I was perhaps being 
 a little impulsive. 
 
 I think perhaps I was. 
 
 August 30th. 
 
 In the old days before the war this house 
 was nearly always full of friends guests, 
 for they were invited, but they never were in 
 or on my mind as guests, and I don't remem-
 
 142 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 her ever feeling that I was hostess. The 
 impression I now have of them is that they 
 were all very young; but of course they 
 weren't. Some were quite as old as Mrs. 
 Barnes, and once or twice came people 
 even older. They all, however, had this in 
 common, that whatever their age was when 
 they arrived by the time they left they were 
 not more than twenty. 
 
 I can't explain this. It couldn't only have 
 been the air, invigorating and inspiriting 
 though it is, because my present guests are 
 still exactly the same age as the first day. 
 That is, Mrs. Barnes is. Dolly is of no age- 
 she never was and never will be forty; but 
 Mrs. Barnes is just as firmly fifty as she was a 
 fortnight ago, and it only used to take those 
 other guests a week to shed every one of 
 their years except the first twenty. 
 
 Is it this static, rock-like quality in Mrs. 
 Barnes that makes her remain so unchange- 
 ably a guest, that makes her unable to 
 develop into a friend? Why must I, be- 
 cause she insists on remaining a guest, be 
 kept so firmly in my proper place as hostess? 
 I want to be friends. I feel as full of friendli- 
 ness as a brimming cup. Why am I not let 
 spill some of it? I should love to be friends
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 143 
 
 with Dolly, and I would like very much to 
 be friends with Mrs. Barnes. Not that I 
 think she and I would ever be intimate in 
 the way I am sure Dolly and I would be after 
 ten minutes together alone, but we might 
 develop a mutually indulgent affection. I 
 would respect her prejudices, and she would 
 forgive me that I have so few, and perhaps 
 find it interesting to help me to increase them. 
 But the anxious care with which Mrs. 
 Barnes studies to be her idea of a perfect 
 guest forces me to a corresponding anxious 
 care to be her idea of a perfect hostess. I 
 find it wearing. There is no easy friendliness 
 for us, no careless talk, no happy go-as-you- 
 please and naturalness. And ought a guest 
 to be so constantly grateful? Her gratitude 
 is almost a reproach. It makes me ashamed 
 of myself; as if I were a plutocrat, a profiteer, 
 a bloated possessor of more than my share, 
 a bestower of favours of all odious things to 
 be! Now I perceive that I never have had 
 guests before, but only friends. For the 
 first time I am really entertaining; or rather, 
 owing to the something in Mrs. Barnes that 
 induces in me a strange submissiveness, a 
 strange acceptance of her ordering of our 
 days, I am for the first time, not only in my
 
 144 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 own house, but in any house that I can re- 
 member where I have stayed, being enter- 
 tained. 
 
 What is it about Mrs. Barnes that makes 
 Dolly and me sit so quiet and good? I 
 needn't ask: I know. It is because she is 
 single-minded, unselfish, genuinely and deeply 
 anxious for everybody's happiness and welfare, 
 and it is impossible to hurt such goodness. 
 Accordingly we are bound hand and foot to 
 her wishes, exactly as if she were a tyrant. 
 
 Dolly, of course, must be bound by a thou- 
 sand reasons for gratitude. Hasn't Mrs. 
 Barnes given up everything for her? Hasn't 
 she given up home, and livelihood, and country 
 and friends to come and be with her? It is she 
 who magnanimously bears the chief burden of 
 Dolly's marriage. Without having had any 
 of the joys of Siegfried I can't think Dolly 
 would mutter a name in her sleep that wasn't 
 her husband's she has spent these years of 
 war cheerfully accepting the results of him, 
 devoting herself to the forlorn and stranded 
 German w r idow, spending her life and what 
 substance she has in keeping her company in 
 the dreary pensions of a neutral country, un- 
 able either to take her home to England or to 
 leave her where she is bv herself.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 145 
 
 Such love and self-sacrifice is a very binding 
 thing. If these conjectures of mine are 
 right, Dolly is indeed bound to Mrs. Barnes, 
 and not to do everything she wished would 
 be impossible. Naturally she wears those 
 petticoats, and those long, respectable black 
 clothes: they are Mrs. Barnes's idea of how 
 a widow should be dressed. Naturally she 
 goes for excursions in the mountains with an 
 umbrella: it is to Mrs. Barnes both more 
 prudent and more seemly than a stick. In 
 the smallest details of her life Dolly's grati- 
 tude must penetrate and be expressed. Yes; 
 I think I understand her situation. J The 
 good do bind one very heavily in chains. / 
 
 To an infinitely less degree Mrs. Barnes's 
 goodness has put chains on me, too. I have 
 to walk very carefully and delicately among 
 her feelings. I could never forgive myself if 
 I were to hurt any one kind, and if the kind 
 person is cast in an entirely different mould 
 from oneself, has different ideas, different 
 tastes, a different or no sense of fun, why 
 then God help one one is ruled by a rod of 
 iron. 
 
 Just the procession each morning after 
 breakfast to the chairs and Merivale is the 
 measure of Dolly's and my subjection. First
 
 146 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 goes Dolly with the book, then comes Mrs. 
 Barnes with her knitting, and then comes 
 me, casting my eyes about for a plausible 
 excuse for deliverance and finding none that 
 wouldn't hurt. If I lag, Mrs. Barnes looks 
 uneasily at me with her, "Am I driving you 
 off your own terrace?" look; and once when 
 I lingered indoors on the pretext of house- 
 keeping she came after me, anxiety on her 
 face, and begged me to allow her to help me, 
 fo it is she and Dolly, she explained, who of 
 course cause the extra housekeeping, and it 
 distressed her to think that owing to my 
 goodness in permitting them to be here I 
 should be deprived of the leisure I would 
 otherwise be enjoying. 
 
 "In your lovely Swiss home," she said, her 
 face puckered with earnestness. "On your 
 summer holiday. After travelling all this 
 distance for the purpose." 
 
 "Dear Mrs. Barnes I murmured, 
 
 ashamed; and assured her it was only an order 
 I had to give, and that I was coming out 
 immediately to the reading aloud. 
 
 August 31 st. 
 
 This morning I made a great effort to be 
 simple.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 147 
 
 Of course I will do everything in my power 
 to make Mrs. Barnes happy I'll sit, walk, 
 be read to, keep away from Dolly, arrange 
 life for the little time she is here in the way 
 that gives her mind most peace; but why 
 mayn't I at the same time be natural? It 
 is so natural to me to be natural. I feel so 
 uncomfortable, I get such a choked sensation 
 of not enough air, if I can't say what I want 
 to say. /Abstinence from naturalness is easily 
 managed if it isn't to last long; every grace- 
 fulness is possible for a little while. But 
 shut up for weeks together in the close com- 
 panionship of two other people in an isolated 
 house on a mountain one must, sooner or later, 
 be natural or one will, sooner or later, die.,y 
 
 So this morning I went down to breakfast 
 determined to be it. More than usually deep 
 sleep had made me wake up with a feeling 
 of more than usual enterprise. I dressed 
 quickly, strengthening my determination by 
 many good arguments, and then stood at the 
 window waiting for the bell to ring. 
 
 At the first tinkle of the bell I hurry down- 
 stairs, because if I am a minute late, as I 
 have been once or twice, I find my egg wrap- 
 ped up in my table napkin, the coffee and 
 hot milk swathed in a white woollen shawl
 
 148 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Mrs. Barnes carries about with her, a plate 
 over the butter in case there should be dust, a 
 plate over the honey in case there should be 
 flies, and Mrs. Barnes and Dolly, carefully 
 detached from the least appearance of re- 
 proach or waiting, at the other end of the 
 terrace being tactfully interested in the view. 
 This has made me be very punctual. The 
 bell tinkles, and I appear. I don't appear 
 before it tinkles, because of the peculiar 
 preciousness of all the moments I can legiti- 
 mately spend in my bedroom; but, if I were 
 to, I would find Mrs. Barnes and Dolly already 
 there. I don't know when they go down, 
 but they are always there; and always I am 
 greeted with the politest solicitude from 
 Mrs. Barnes as to how I slept. This, of course, 
 draws forth a corresponding solicitude from 
 me as to how Mrs. Barnes slept; and the 
 first part of breakfast is spent in answers to 
 these inquiries and in the eulogies to which 
 Mrs. Barnes then proceeds of the bed and the 
 pure air that make the satisfactoriness of her 
 answers possible. From this she goes on to 
 tell me how grateful she and Dolly are for my 
 goodness. She tells me this every morning. 
 It is like a kind of daily morning prayer. At 
 first I was overcome, and not knowing how
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 149 
 
 to ward off such repeated blows of thankful- 
 ness stumbled about awkwardly among pro- 
 tests and assurances. Now I receive them in 
 silence, copying the example of the heavenly 
 authorities; but, more visibly embarrassed than 
 they, I sheepishly smile. 
 
 After the praises of my goodness come 
 those of the goodness of the coffee and the 
 butter, though this isn't any real relief to me, 
 because their goodness is so much tangled up 
 in mine. I am the Author of the coffee and 
 the butter; without me they wouldn't be 
 there at all. 
 
 Dolly, while this is going on, says nothing 
 but just eats her breakfast. I think she might 
 help me out a little, seeing that it happens 
 every morning and that she must have noticed 
 my store of deprecations is exhausted. 
 
 This morning, having made up my mind to 
 be natural, I asked her straight out why she 
 didn't talk. 
 
 She was in the middle of her egg, and 
 Mrs. Barnes was in the middle of praising 
 the great goodness of the eggs, and therefore, 
 inextricably, of my great goodness, so that 
 there was no real knowing where the eggs left 
 off and I began; and taking the opportunity 
 offered by a pause of coffee-drinking on
 
 150 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Mrs. Barnes's part, I said to Dolly, "Why do 
 you not talk at breakfast?" 
 
 "Talk?" repeated Dolly, looking up at me 
 with a smile. 
 
 "Yes. Say things. How are we ever to 
 be friends if we don't say things? Don't 
 you want to be friends, Dolly?" 
 
 "Of course," said Dolly, smiling. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes put her cup down hastily. 
 
 " But are we not " she began, as I knew she 
 
 would. 
 
 "Real friends," I interrupted. "Why not," 
 I said, "let us have a holiday from Merivale 
 to-day, and just sit together and talk. Say 
 things," I went on, still determined to be 
 natural yet already a little nervous. "Real 
 things." 
 
 "But has the reading is there any other 
 book you would pref do you not care about 
 Merivale?" asked Mrs. Barnes, in deep con- 
 cern. 
 
 "Oh, yes," I assured her, leaving off being 
 natural for a moment in order to be polite, 
 "I like him very much indeed. I only 
 thought I do think it would be pleasant 
 for once to have a change. Pleasant just to 
 sit and talk. Sit in the shade and oh, well, 
 say things."
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 151 
 
 "Yes," said Dolly. "I'd love to." 
 
 "We might tell each other stories, like the 
 
 people in the 'Earthly Paradise.' But real 
 
 stories. Out of our lives." 
 
 "Yes," said Dolly again. "Yes. I'd love 
 to." 
 
 "We shall be very glad, I am sure," said 
 Mrs. Barnes, politely, "to listen to any stories 
 you may like to tell us." 
 
 "Ah, but you must tell some, too we 
 must play fair." 
 
 "I'd love to," said Dolly again, her dimple 
 flickering. 
 
 "Surely we in any case Dolly and I are 
 too old to play at anything," said Mrs. Barnes 
 with dignity. 
 
 "Not really. You'll like it once you've 
 begun. And anyhow I can't play by myself, 
 can I?" I said, still trying to be gay and 
 simple. ''You wouldn't want me to be 
 lonely, would you?" 
 
 But I was faltering. Mrs. Barnes's eye 
 was on me. Impossible to go on being gay 
 and simple beneath that eye. 
 
 1 faltered more and more. "Sometimes I 
 think," I said, almost timidly, "that we're 
 wasting time." 
 
 "Oh, no, do you really?" exclaimed Mrs.
 
 152 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Barnes, anxiously. "Do you not consider 
 Merivale " (here if I had been a man I would 
 have said Damn Merivale and felt better) 
 "very instructive? Surely to read a good 
 history can never be wasting time? And he 
 is not heavy. Surely you do not find him 
 heavy? His information is always imparted 
 picturesquely remarkably so. And though 
 one may be too old for games one is fortu- 
 nately never too old for instruction. 
 
 "I don't feel too old for games," said Dolly, 
 
 "Feeling has nothing to do with reality," 
 said Mrs. Barnes, sternly, turning on her. 
 
 "I only thought," I said, "that to-day we 
 might talk together instead of reading. Just 
 for once just for a change. If you don't 
 like the idea of telling stories out of our lives 
 let us just talk. Tell each other what we 
 think of things of the big things like well, 
 like love and death for instance. Things," 
 I reassured her, "that don't really touch us 
 at this moment." 
 
 "I do not care to talk about love and 
 death," said Mrs. Barnes, frostily. 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 'They are most unsettling." 
 
 "But why? We would only be specu- 
 lating-
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 153 
 
 She held up her hand. "I have a horror 
 of the word. All speculation is abhorrent to 
 me. My brother-in-law said to me, Never 
 speculate." 
 
 "But didn't he mean in the business 
 
 ?5 
 ^.^. 
 
 "He meant it, I am certain, in every sense. 
 Physically and morally." 
 
 "Well, then, don't let us speculate. Let us 
 talk about experiences. We've all had them. 
 I am sure it would be as instructive as Mer- 
 ivale, and we might perhaps perhaps we 
 might even laugh a little. Don't you think 
 it would be pleasant to to laugh a little?" 
 
 "I'd love to," said Dolly, her eyes shining. 
 
 "Suppose instead of being women we were 
 three men- 
 Mrs. Barnes, who had been stiffening for 
 some minutes, drew herself up at this. 
 
 "I am afraid I cannot possibly suppose 
 that," she said. 
 
 "Well, but suppose we were 
 
 "I do not wish to suppose it," said Mrs. 
 Barnes. 
 
 "Well, then, suppose it wasn't us at all, 
 but three men here, spending their summer 
 holidays together can't you imagine how 
 tlicv would talk?"
 
 154 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "I can only imagine it if they were nice 
 men," said Mrs. Barnes, "and even so but 
 dimly." 
 
 "Yes. Of course. Well, let us talk to- 
 gether this morning as if we were nice men 
 about anything and everything. I can't 
 think" I finished, plaintively, "why we 
 shouldn't talk about anything and every- 
 thing." 
 
 Dolly looked at me with dancing eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes sat very straight. She was 
 engaged in twisting the honey-spoon round 
 and round so as to catch its last trickling 
 neatly. Her eyes were fixed on this, and if 
 there was a rebuke in them it was hidden 
 from me. 
 
 "You must forgive me," she said, carefully 
 winding up the last thread of honey, "but as 
 I am not a nice man I fear I cannot join in. 
 Nor, of course, can Dolly, for the same 
 reason. But I need not say," she added, 
 earnestly, "that there is not the slightest 
 reason why you, on your own terrace, 
 shouldn't, if you wish, imagine yourself to 
 be a nice 
 
 "Oh, no," I broke in, giving up. "Oh, no, 
 no. I think perhaps you are right. I do 
 think perhaps it is best to goon with Men vale."
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 155 
 
 We finished breakfast with the usual 
 courtesies. 
 
 I didn't try to be natural any more. 
 
 September 1st. 
 
 Dolly forgot herself this morning. 
 
 On the first of the month I pay the bills. 
 Antoine reminded me last month that this 
 used to be my practice before the war, and I 
 remember how languidly I roused myself 
 from my meditations on the grass to go 
 indoors and add up figures. But to-day I 
 liked it. I went in cheerfully. 
 
 'This is my day for doing the accounts," 
 I said to Mrs. Barnes, as she was about to 
 form the procession to the chairs. 'They 
 take me most of the morning, so I expect 
 we won't see each other again till luncheon." 
 
 "Dear me," said Mrs. Barnes, sympatheti- 
 cally, "how very tiresome for you. Those 
 terrible settling up days. How well I know 
 them, and how I used to dread them." 
 
 "Yes," said Dolly: 
 
 " Reines Gliick geniesst dock nie 
 Wer zahlen soil und weiss nicht wie. 
 
 Poor Kitty. We know all about that, don't 
 we." And she put her arm round her sister.
 
 156 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Dolly had forgotten herself. 
 
 I thought it best not to linger, but to go in 
 quickly to my bills. 
 
 Her accent was perfect. I know enough 
 German to know that. 
 
 September %nd. 
 
 We've been a little strained all day in 
 our relations because of yesterday. Dolly 
 drooped at lunch, and for the first time 
 didn't smile. Mrs. Barnes, I think, had 
 been rebuking her with more than ordinary 
 thoroughness. Evidently Mrs. Barnes is des- 
 perately anxious I shouldn't know about 
 Siegfried. I wonder if there is any way of 
 delicately introducing Germans into the con- 
 versation, and conveying to her that I have 
 guessed about Dolly's husband and don't mind 
 him a bit. Why should I mind somebody 
 else's husband? A really nice woman only 
 minds her ow r n. But I know of no two sub- 
 jects more difficult to talk about tactfully than 
 Germans and husbands; and when both are 
 united, as in this case, my courage rather fails. 
 
 We went for a dreary walk this afternoon. 
 Mrs. Barnes was watchful, and Dolly was 
 meek. I tried to be sprightly, but one can't 
 be sprightly by oneself.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 157 
 
 September 3rd. 
 
 In the night there was a thunderstorm, and 
 for the first time since I got here I woke up to 
 rain and mist. The mist was pouring in in 
 waves through the open windows, and the 
 room w r as quite cold. When I looked at the 
 thermometer hanging outside, I saw it had 
 dropped twenty degrees. 
 
 \Ve have become so much used to fine 
 weather arrangements that the sudden change 
 caused an upheaval. I heard much hurrying 
 about downstairs, and when I went down to 
 breakfast found it was laid in the hall. It 
 was like breakfasting in a tomb, after the rad- 
 iance of our meals out of doors. The front 
 door was shut; the rain pattered on the win- 
 dows; and right up against the panes, between 
 us and the world like a great gray flannel 
 curtain, hung the mist. It might have been 
 some particularly odious December morning in 
 England. 
 
 "CV.s-/ Tcndonine" said Antoine, bringing in 
 three cane chairs and putting them round the 
 tea-table on which the breakfast was laid. 
 
 "C'cst un avertissement" said Mrs. Antoine, 
 bringing in the coffee. 
 
 Antoine then said that he had conceived it 
 possible that Madame and ces dames might
 
 158 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 like a small wood fire. To cheer. To en- 
 liven. 
 
 "Pray not on our account," instantly said 
 Mrs. Barnes to me, very earnestly. "Dolly 
 and I do not feel the cold at all, I assure you. 
 Pray do not have one on our account." 
 
 "But wouldn't it be cozy ' I began, 
 who am like a cat about warmth. 
 
 "I would far rather you did not have one," 
 said Mrs. Barnes, her features puckered. 
 "Think of all the wood!" 
 
 "But it would only be a few logs 
 
 "What is there nowadays so precious as 
 logs? And it is far, far too early to begin fires. 
 Why, only last week it was still August. Still 
 the dog-days." 
 
 "But if we're cold 
 
 "We should indeed be poor creatures, Dolly 
 and I, if the moment it left off being warm we 
 were cold. Please do not think we don't 
 appreciate your kindness in wishing to give 
 us a fire, but Dolly and I would feel it very 
 much if our being here were to make you begin 
 fires so early." 
 
 "But- 
 
 "Keep the logs for later on. Let me beg 
 you." 
 
 So we didn't have a fire; and there we sat.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 159 
 
 Mrs. Barnes with the white shawl at last put 
 to its proper use, and all of us trying not to 
 shiver. 
 
 After breakfast, which was taken away 
 bodily, table and all, snatched from our midst 
 by the Antoines, so that we were left sitting 
 facing each other round empty space with a 
 curious sensation of sudden nakedness, I sup- 
 posed that Merivale would be produced, so I 
 got up and pushed a comfortable chair con- 
 veniently for Dolly, and turned on the light. 
 
 To my surprise I found Mrs. Barnes actually 
 preferred to relinquish the reading aloud rather 
 than use my electric light in the daytime. It 
 would be an unpardonable extravagance, she 
 said. Dolly could work at her knitting. 
 Neither of them needed their eyes for knitting. 
 
 I was greatly touched. From the first she 
 has shown a touching, and at the same time 
 embarrassing, concern not to cause me avoid- 
 able expense, but never yet such concern as 
 this. I know what store she sets by the read- 
 ing. Why, if we just sat there in the gloom 
 we might begin to say things. I really was 
 was very much touched. 
 
 But indeed Mrs. Barnes is touching. It is 
 because she is so touching in her desire not to 
 give trouble, to make us happy, that one so
 
 1GO IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 continually does exactly what she wishes. I 
 would do almost anything sooner than hurt 
 Mrs. Barnes. Also I would do almost any- 
 thing to calm her. And as for her adhesive- 
 ness to an unselfish determination, it is such 
 that it is mere useless fatigue to try to separate 
 her from it. 
 
 I have learned this gradually. 
 
 At first, most of my time at meals was spent 
 in reassuring her that things hadn't been got 
 specially on her and Dolly's account, and as 
 the only other account they could have been 
 got on was mine, my assurances had the effect 
 of making me seem very greedy. I thought 
 I lived frugally up here, but Mrs. Barnes must 
 have lived so much more frugally that almost 
 everything is suspected by her to be a luxury 
 provided by my hospitality. 
 
 She was, for instance, so deeply persuaded 
 that the apricots were got, as she says, spe- 
 cially, that at last to calm her I had to tell Mrs. 
 Antoine to buy no more. And we all liked 
 apricots. And there was a perfect riot of 
 them down in the valley. After that we had 
 red currants because they, Mrs. Barnes knew, 
 came out of the garden; but we didn't eat them 
 because we didn't like them. 
 
 Then there was a jug of lemonade sent in
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 161 
 
 every day for lunch that worried her. During 
 this period her talk was entirely of lemons and 
 sugar, of all the lemons and sugar that wouldn't 
 be being used if she and Dolly were not here; 
 and again, in order to calm her, and rather 
 than that she should be made unhappy, I told 
 Mrs. Antoine to send in only water. 
 
 Cakes disappeared from tea a week ago. 
 Eggs have survived at breakfast, and so has 
 honey, because Mrs. Barnes can hear the 
 chickens and has seen the bees and knows they 
 are not things got specially. She will eat 
 potatoes and cabbages and anything else that 
 the garden produces with serenity, but grows 
 restive over meat; and a leg of mutton made 
 her miserable yesterday, for nothing would 
 make her believe that if I had been here alone 
 it wouldn't have been a cutlet. 
 
 "Let there be no more legs of mutton," I 
 said to Mrs. Antoine afterward. "Let there 
 instead be three cutlets." 
 
 I'm afraid Mrs. Antoine is scandalized at 
 the inhospitable rigours she supposes me to 
 be applying to my guests. My order to 
 Antoine this morning not to light the fire will 
 have increased her growing suspicion that I 
 am developing into a cheese-paring Madame. 
 She must have expressed her fears to Antoine;
 
 162 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 for the other day, when I told her to leave the 
 sugar and lemons out of the lemonade and 
 send in only the water, she looked at him, and 
 as I went away I heard her saying to him in 
 a low voice he no doubt having told her I 
 usedn't to be like this, and she being unable 
 to think of any other explanation " C'est la 
 guerre." 
 
 About eleven, having done little good by 
 my presence in the hall whose cheerlessness 
 wrung from me a thoughtless exclamation 
 that I wished I smoked a pipe, upon which 
 Dolly instantly said, "Wouldn't it be a 
 comfort," and Mrs. Barnes said, "Dolly," I 
 went away to the kitchen pretending I 
 wanted to ask what there was for dinner, 
 but really so as to be for a few moments where 
 there was a fire. 
 
 Mrs. Antoine watched me warming myself 
 with respectful disapproval. 
 
 "Madame devrait faire faire un pen de feu 
 dans la halle" she said. "Ces dames auronf 
 bien froid." 
 
 " Ces dames won't let me," I tried to explain 
 in the most passionate French I could think 
 of. " Ces dames implore me not to have a 
 fire. Ces dames reject a fire. Ces dames 
 defend themselves against a fire. I perish
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 163 
 
 because of the resolve of ces dames not to have 
 a fire." 
 
 But Mrs. Antoine plainly didn't believe 
 me. She thought, I could see, that I was 
 practising a repulsive parsimony on defence- 
 less guests. It was the sorrows of the war, 
 she concluded, that had changed Madame's 
 nature. This was the kindest, the only 
 possible, explanation. 
 
 Evening. 
 
 There was a knock at my door just then. 
 I thought it must be Mrs. Antoine come to ask 
 me some domestic question, and said Entrez, 
 and it was Mrs. Barnes. 
 
 She has not before this penetrated into my 
 bedroom. I hope I didn't look too much 
 surprised. I think there could hardly have 
 been a gap of more than a second between my 
 surprise and my recovered hospitality. 
 
 "Oh do come in," I said. "How nice of 
 you." 
 
 N Thus do the civilized clothe their real 
 sensations in splendid robes of courtesy. 
 
 "Dolly and I haven't driven you away 
 from the hall, I hope?" began Mrs. Barnes 
 in a worried voice. 
 
 " I only came up here for a minute," I
 
 164 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 explained, "and was corning down again 
 directly." 
 
 "Oh, that relieves me. I was afraid per- 
 haps- 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't so often be afraid 
 you're driving me away," I said, pleasantly. 
 "Do I look driven?" 
 
 But Mrs. Barnes took no notice of my 
 pleasantness. She had something on her 
 mind. She looked like somebody who is 
 reluctant and yet impelled. 
 
 "I think," she said, solemnly, "that if you 
 have a moment to spare it might be a good 
 opportunity for a little talk. I would like to 
 talk with you a little." 
 
 And she stood regarding me, her eyes full 
 of reluctant but unconquerable conscientious- 
 ness. 
 
 "Do," I said, with polite enthusiasm. 
 "Do." 
 
 This was the backwash, I thought, of 
 Dolly's German outbreak the other day, and 
 Siegfried was going at last to be explained 
 to inc. 
 
 "Won't you sit down in this chair?" I 
 said, pushing a comfortable one forward, 
 and then sitting down myself on the edge of 
 the sofa.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 165 
 
 "Thank you. What I wish to say is- 
 
 She hesitated. I supposed her to be finding 
 it difficult to proceed with Siegfried, and 
 started off impulsively to her rescue. 
 
 "You know, I don't mind a bit about 
 I began. 
 
 "What I wish to say is," she went on again, 
 before I had got out the fatal word, "what 
 I wish to point out to you is that the weather 
 has considerably cooled." 
 
 This was so remote from Siegfried that I 
 looked at her a moment in silence. Then I 
 guessed what was coming, and tried to put 
 it off. 
 
 "Ah," I said for I dreaded the grateful 
 things she would be sure to say about having 
 been here so long "you do want a fire in the 
 hall after all, then." 
 
 "No, no. We are quite warm enough, I 
 assure you. A fire would distress us. What 
 I wish to say is Again she hesitated, 
 
 then went on more firmly, "Well, I wish to 
 say that the weather having broken and the 
 great heat having come to an end, the reasons 
 \vhich made you extend your kind, your de- 
 lightful hospitality to us, have come to an end 
 also. I need hardly tell you that we never, 
 never shall be able to express to you
 
 166 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Oh, but you're not going to give me 
 notice?" I interrupted, trying to be sprightly 
 and to clamber over her rock-like persistence 
 in gratitude with the gaiety of a bright, 
 autumnal creeper. This was because I was 
 nervous. I grow terribly sprightly when I 
 am nervous. 
 
 But indeed I shrink from Mrs. Barnes's 
 gratitude. It abases me to the dust. It 
 leaves me mourning in much the same way 
 that Simon Lee's gratitude left Wordsworth 
 mourning. I can't bear it. What a world it 
 is, I want to cry out what a miserable, 
 shameful, battering, crushing world, when 
 so dreadfully little makes people so dread- 
 fully glad! 
 
 Then it suddenly struck me that the 
 expression giving notice might not be taken 
 by Mrs. Barnes, she being solemn, in the spirit 
 in which it was offered by me, I being 
 sprightly; and, desperately afraid of having 
 possibly offended her, I seized on the first 
 thing I could think of as most likely to soothe 
 her, which was an extension, glowing and 
 almost indefinite, of my invitation. "Be- 
 cause, you know," I said, swept along by 
 this wish to prevent a wound, "I won't accept 
 the notice. I'm not going to let you go.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 167 
 
 That is, of course," I added, "if you and Dolly 
 don't mind the quiet up here and the mo- 
 notony. Won't you stay on here till I go away 
 myself?" 
 
 Mrs. Barnes opened her mouth to speak, 
 but I got up quickly and crossed over to her 
 and kissed her. Instinct made me go and 
 kiss her, so as to gain a little time, so as to 
 put off the moment of having to hear what- 
 ever it was she was going to say; for whether 
 she accepted the invitation or refused it, I 
 knew there would be an equally immense, un- 
 bearable number of grateful speeches. 
 
 But when I went over and kissed her 
 Mrs. Barnes put her arm round my neck and 
 held me tight; and there was something in 
 this sudden movement on the part of one so 
 chary of outward signs of affection that made 
 my heart give a little leap of response, and I 
 found myself murmuring into her ear amaz- 
 ing that I should be murmuring into Mrs. 
 Barnes's ear "Please don't go away and 
 leave me please don't please stay 
 
 And as she didn't say anything I kissed her 
 again, and again murmured, "'Please 
 
 And as she still didn't say anything I 
 murmured, "Won't you? Say you will 
 
 And then I discovered to my horror that
 
 168 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 why she didn't say anything was because she 
 was crying. 
 
 I have been slow and unimaginative about 
 Mrs. Barnes. Having guessed that Dolly 
 was a German widow I might so easily have 
 guessed the rest: the poverty arising out of 
 such a situation, the vexations and humili- 
 ations of the attitude of people in the pensions 
 she has dragged about in during and since the 
 war places in which Dolly's name must 
 needs be registered and her nationality known ; 
 the fatigue and loneliness of such a life, with 
 no home anywhere at all, forced to wander and 
 wander, her little set at Dulwich probably 
 repudiating her because of Dolly, or scolding 
 her, in rare letters, for the folly of her sacrifice; 
 with nothing to go back to and nothing to 
 look forward to, and the memory stabbing 
 her always of the lost glories of that ordered 
 life at home in her well-found house, with the 
 church bells ringing on Sundays, and every- 
 body polite, and a respectful crossing-sweeper 
 at the end of the road. 
 
 All her life Mrs. Barnes has been luminously 
 respectable. Her respectability has been, I 
 gather from things she has said, her one 
 great treasure. To stand clear and plain 
 before her friends, without a corner in her
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 169 
 
 actions that needed defending or even ex- 
 plaining, was what the word happiness meant 
 to her. And now here she is, wandering 
 about in a kind of hiding. With Dolly. 
 With the beloved, the difficult, the unex- 
 plainable Dolly. Unwelcomed, unwanted, 
 and I daresay quite often asked by the many 
 pension proprietors who are angrily anti- 
 German to go somewhere else. 
 
 I have been thick-skinned about Mrs. 
 Barnes. I am ashamed. And whether I 
 have guessed right or wrong she shall keep 
 her secrets. I shall not try again, however 
 good my silly intentions may seem to me, 
 however much I may think it would ease our 
 daily intercourse, to blunder in among things 
 about which she wishes to be silent. When 
 she cried like that this morning, after a 
 moment of looking at her bewildered and 
 aghast, I suddenly understood. I knew what 
 I have just been writing as if she had told me. 
 And I stroked her hand, and tried to pretend 
 I didn't notice anything, because it was so 
 dreadful to see how she, for her part, was 
 trying so very hard to pretend she wasn't 
 crying. And I kept on saying for indeed I 
 didn't know what to say 'Then you'll stay 
 how glad I am then that's settled "
 
 170 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 And actually I heard myself expressing 
 pleasure at the certainty of my now hearing 
 Merivale to a finish! 
 
 How the interview ended was by my con- 
 ceiving the brilliant idea of going away on 
 the pretext of giving an order, and leaving 
 Mrs. Barnes alone in my room till she should 
 have recovered sufficiently to appear down- 
 stairs. 
 
 "I must go and tell Mrs. Antoine some- 
 thing," I suddenly said, "something I've 
 forgotten." And I hurried a\vay. 
 
 For once I had been tactful. Wonderful. 
 I couldn't help feeling pleased at having been 
 able to think of this solution to the situation. 
 Mrs. Barnes wouldn't want Dolly to see she 
 had been crying. She would stay up quietly 
 in my room till her eyes had left off being red, 
 and would then come down as calm and as 
 ready to set a good example as ever. 
 
 Continuing to be tactful I avoided going 
 into the hall, because in it was Dolly all by 
 herself, offering me my very first opportunity 
 for the talk alone with her that I have so long 
 been wanting; but of course I wouldn't do 
 anything now that might make Mrs. Barnes 
 uneasy; I hope I never may again. 
 
 To avoid the hall, however, meant finding
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 171 
 
 myself in the servants' quarters. I couldn't 
 take shelter in the kitchen and once more 
 warm myself, because it was their dinner 
 hour. There remained the back door, the 
 last refuge of a hostess. It was open; and 
 outside was the yard, the rain, and Mou- 
 Mou's kennel looming through the mist. 
 
 I went and stood in the door, contemplating 
 what I saw, waiting till I thought Mrs. Barnes 
 would have had time to be able to come out of 
 my bedroom. I knew she would stay there 
 till her eyes were ready to face the world again, 
 so I knew I must have patience. Therefore 
 I stood in the door and contemplated what I 
 saw from it, while I sought patience and 
 ensued it. * But it is astonishing how cold 
 and penetrating these wet mountain mists 
 are. They seem to get right through one's 
 body into one's very spirit, and make it cold, 
 too and doubtful of the future. 
 
 September 4th. 
 
 Dolly looked worried, I thought, yesterday 
 when Mrs. Barnes, as rocky and apparently 
 arid as ever but I knew better told her at 
 tea-time in my presence that I had invited 
 them to stay on as long as I did. 
 
 There were fortunately few expressions of
 
 172 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 gratitude this time decorating Mrs. Barnes's 
 announcement. I think she still wasn't quite 
 sure enough of herself to be anything but 
 brief. Dolly looked quickly at me, without 
 her usual smile. I said what a great pleasure 
 it was to know they weren't going away. 
 "You do like staying, don't you, Dolly?" 
 Ij asked, breaking off suddenly in my speech, 
 for her serious eyes were not the eyes of the 
 particularly pleased. 
 
 She said she did; of course she did; and 
 added the proper politenesses. But she went 
 on looking thoughtful, and I believe she wants 
 to tell me, or have me told by Mrs. Barnes, 
 about Siegfried. I think she things I ought 
 to know what sort of guest I've got before 
 deciding whether I really want her here any 
 longer or not. 
 
 I wish I could somehow convey to Dolly, 
 without upsetting Mrs. Barnes, that I do 
 know and don't mind. I tried to smile re- 
 assuringly at her, but the more I smiled the 
 more serious she grew. 
 
 As for Mrs. Barnes, there is now between 
 her and me the shyness, the affection, of a 
 secret understanding. She may look as arid 
 and stiff as she likes, but we have kissed each 
 other with real affection and I have felt her
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 173 
 
 arm tighten round my neck. How much 
 more enlightening, how much more efficacious 
 than any words, than any explanations, is 
 that very simple thing, a kiss. I believe if 
 we all talked less and kissed more we should 
 arrive far quicker at comprehension. I give 
 this opinion with diffidence. It is rather 
 a conjecture than an opinion. I have not 
 found it shared in literature in conversation 
 I would omit it except once, and then by a 
 German. He wrote a poem whose first line 
 was: 
 
 schwore nicht und kiisse nur ! 
 
 And I thought it sensible advice. 
 
 September 5th. 
 
 The weather after all hasn't broken. We 
 have had the thunderstorm and the one bad 
 day, and then it cleared up. It didn't clear 
 up back to heat again this year there will 
 be no more heat but to a kind of cool, pure 
 gold. All day yesterday it was clearing up, 
 and toward evening there came a great 
 wind and swept the sky clear during the 
 night of everything but stars; and when I 
 woke this morning there was the familiar 
 golden patch on the wall again, and I knew 
 the day was to be beautiful.
 
 174 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 And so it has been, with the snow come 
 much lower down the mountains, and the 
 still air very fresh. Things sparkle; and 
 one feels like some bright bubble of light 
 oneself. Actually even Mrs. Barnes has al- 
 most been like that has been, for her, 
 astonishingly, awe-inspiringly gay. 
 
 "Ah," she said, standing on the terrace 
 after breakfast, drawing in deep draughts of 
 air, "now I understand the expression so 
 frequently used in descriptions of scenery. 
 This air indeed is like champagne." 
 
 "It does make one feel very healthy," I 
 said. 
 
 There are several things I wanted to say 
 instead of this, things suggested by her 
 remark, but I refrained. I mean to be 
 careful now to let my communications with 
 Mrs. Barnes be Yea, yea, and Nay, nay 
 that is, straightforward and brief, with noth- 
 ing whatever in them that might directly 
 or indirectly lead to the encouragement of 
 Dolly. Dolly has been trying to catch me 
 alone. She has tried twice since Mrs. Barnes 
 yesterday at tea told her I had asked them to 
 stay on, but I have avoided her. 
 
 "Healthy?" repeated Mrs. Barnes. "It 
 makes one feel more than healthy. It goes
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 175 
 
 to one's head. I can imagine it turning me 
 quite dizzy quite turning my head." 
 
 And then she actually asked me a riddle- 
 Mrs. Barnes asked a riddle, at ten o'clock in 
 the morning, asked me, a person long since 
 callous to riddles and at no time since six 
 years old particularly appreciative of them. 
 
 Of course I answered wrong. Discon- 
 certed, I impetuously hazarded Brandy as 
 the answer, when it should have been Whisky; 
 hut really I think it was wonderful to have got 
 even so near the right answer as Brandy. I 
 won't record the riddle. It was old in Mrs. 
 Barnes's youth, for she told me she had it 
 from her father, who, she said, could enjoy a 
 joke as heartily as she can herself. 
 
 But what was so surprising was that the 
 effect of the crisp, sunlit air on Mrs. Barnes 
 should be to engender riddles. It didn't do 
 this to my pre-war guests. They grew young, 
 but not younger than twenty. Mrs. Barnes 
 to-day descended to the age of bibs. I never 
 could have believed it of her. I never could 
 have believed she would come so near what 
 I can only call an awful friskiness. And it 
 wasn't just this morning, in the first intoxi- 
 cation of the splendid new air; it has gone on 
 like it all day. On the mountain slopes,
 
 176 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 slippery now and difficult to walk on because 
 of the heavy rain of the thunderstorm, might 
 have been seen this afternoon three figures, 
 two black ones and a white one, proceeding 
 for a space in a rather wobbly single file, then 
 pausing in an animated group, then once more 
 proceeding. When they paused it was because 
 Mrs. Barnes had thought of another riddle. 
 
 Dolly was very quick at the answers 
 so quick that I suspected her of having 
 been brought up on these very ones, as she 
 no doubt was, but I cut a lamentable figure. 
 I tried to make up for my natural incapacity 
 by great goodwill. Mrs. Barnes's spirits were 
 too rare and precious, I felt, not to be wel- 
 comed; and having failed in answers I desper- 
 ately ransacked my memory in search of ques- 
 tions, so that I could ask riddles, too. 
 
 But by a strange perversion of recollection 
 I could remember several answers and not 
 their questions. In my brain, on inquiry, 
 were fixed quite firmly things like this 
 obviously answers to what once had been 
 riddles: 
 
 Because his tail comes out of his head. 
 
 So did the other donkey. 
 
 He took a fly and went home. 
 
 Orleans.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 177 
 
 Having nothing else to offer Mrs. Barnes I 
 offered her these, and suggested she should 
 supply the questions. 
 
 She thought this way of dealing with riddles 
 subversive and difficult. Dolly began to 
 laugh. Mrs. Barnes, filled with the invigo- 
 rating air, actually laughed, too. It was the 
 first time I have heard her laugh. I listened 
 with awe. Evidently she laughs very rarely, 
 for Dolly looked so extraordinarily pleased; 
 evidently her doing it made to-day memor- 
 able, for Dolly's face, turned to her sister in 
 a delighted surprise, had the expression on it 
 that a mother's has when her offspring 
 suddenly behaves in a way unhoped for and 
 gratifying. 
 
 So there we stood, gesticulating gaily on 
 the slippery slope. 
 
 This is a strange place. Its effects are 
 incalculable. I suppose it is because it is 
 five thousand feet up, and has so great a 
 proportion of sunshine. 
 
 September 6th. 
 
 There were letters this morning from Eng- 
 land that wiped out all the gaiety of yester- 
 day; letters that reminded me. It was as if 
 the cold mist had come back again, and blotted
 
 178 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 out the light after I had hoped it had gone for 
 good. It was as if a weight had dropped down 
 again on my heart, suffocating it, making it 
 difficult to breathe, after I had hoped it was 
 lifted off for ever. I feel sick. Sick with the 
 return of the familiar pain, sick with fear that 
 I am going to fall back hopelessly into it. 
 I wonder if I am. Oh, I had such hope that 
 I was better! Shall I ever get quite well 
 again? Won't it at best after every effort, 
 every perseverance in struggle, be just a 
 more or less skilful mending, a more or less 
 successful putting together of broken bits? 
 I thought I had been growing whole. I 
 thought I wouldn't any longer wince. And 
 now these letters. 
 
 Ridiculous, hateful and ridiculous, to be so 
 little master of one's own body that one has to 
 look on helplessly at one's hands shaking. 
 
 I want to forget. I don't want to be 
 reminded. It is my one chance of safety, my 
 one hope of escape. To forget forget till 
 I have got my soul safe back again, really 
 my own again, no longer a half -destroyed 
 thing. I call it my soul. I don't know what 
 it is. I am very miserable. 
 
 It is details that I find so difficult to bear. 
 As long as in my mind everything is one great,
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 179 
 
 unhappy blur, there is a chance of quietness, 
 of gradual creeping back to peace. But 
 details remind me too acutely, flash back old 
 anguish too sharply focussed. I oughtn't to 
 have opened the letters till I was by myself. 
 But it pleased me so much to get them. I 
 love getting letters. They were in the hand- 
 writing of friends. How could I guess, when 
 I saw them on the breakfast-table, that they 
 would innocently be so full of hurt? And 
 when I had read them, and I picked up my 
 cup and tried to look as if nothing had hap- 
 pened and I were drinking coffee like any- 
 body else, my silly hand shook so much 
 that Dolly noticed it. 
 
 Our eyes met. 
 
 I couldn't get that wretched cup back on 
 to its saucer again without spilling the coffee. 
 If that is how I still behave, what has been 
 the good of being here? What has the time 
 been but wasted? What has the cure been 
 but a failure? 
 
 I have come up to my room. I can't stay 
 downstairs. It would be unbearable this 
 morning to sit and be read to. But I must 
 try to think of an excuse, quickly. Mrs. 
 Barnes may be up any minute to ask oh, 
 I am hunted!
 
 180 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 It is a comfort to write this. To write does 
 make one in some strange way less lonely. 
 Yet having to go and look at oneself in the 
 glass for companionship) isn't that to have 
 reached the very bottom level of loneliness? 
 
 Evening. 
 
 The direct result of those letters has been 
 to bring Dolly and me at last together. 
 
 She came down to the kitchen-garden after 
 me, where I went this morning when I had 
 succeeded in straightening myself out a little. 
 On the way I told Mrs. Barnes, with as tran- 
 quil a face as I could manage, that I had 
 arrangements to discuss with Antoine, and so, 
 I was afraid, would for once miss the reading. 
 
 Antoine I knew was working in the kitchen- 
 garden, a plot of ground hidden from the 
 house at the foot of a steep descent, and I 
 w r ent to him and asked to be allowed to 
 help. I said I would do anything dig, weed, 
 collect slugs, anything at all, but he must let 
 me work. Work with my hands out of doors 
 was the only thing I felt I could bear to-day. 
 It wasn't the first time, I reflected, that peace 
 has been found among cabbages. 
 
 Antoine demurred, of course, but did at 
 last consent to let me pick red currants.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 181 
 
 That was an easy task, and useful as well, 
 for it would save Lisette the assistant's time, 
 who would otherwise presently have to pick 
 them. So I chose the bushes nearest to where 
 he was digging, because I wanted to be near 
 someone who neither talked nor noticed, 
 someone alive, someone kind and good who 
 wouldn't look at me, and I began to pick 
 these strange, belated fruits, finished and 
 forgotten two months ago in the valley. 
 
 Then I saw Dolly coining down the steps 
 cut in the turf. She was holding up her long 
 black skirt. She had nothing on her head, 
 and the sun shone in her eyes and made her 
 screw them up as she stood still for a moment 
 on the bottom step searching for me. I 
 saw all this, though I was stooping over the 
 bushes. 
 
 Then she came and stood beside me. 
 
 : ' You oughtn't to be here," I said, going on 
 picking and not looking at her. 
 
 "I know," said Dolly. 
 'Then hadn't you better go back?" 
 'Yes. But I'm not going to." 
 
 I picked in silence. 
 
 'You've been crying," was what she said 
 next. 
 
 "No," I said.
 
 182 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Perhaps not with your eyes, but you 
 have with your heart." 
 
 At this I felt very much like Mrs. Barnes; 
 very much like what Mrs. Barnes must have 
 felt when I tried to get her to be frank. 
 
 ''Do you know what your sister said to me 
 the other day?" I asked, busily picking. 
 "She said she has a great opinion of discretion." 
 
 "Yes," said Dolly. "But I haven't." 
 
 "And I haven't, either," I was forced to 
 admit. 
 
 "Well, then," said Dolly. 
 
 I straightened myself, and we looked at 
 each other. Her eyes have a kind of sweet 
 radiance. Siegfried must have been pleased 
 when he saw her coming down the sheet into 
 his arms. 
 
 ''You mustn't tell me anything you don't 
 quite want to," said Dolly, her sweet eyes 
 smiling, "but I couldn't see you looking so 
 unhappy and not come and well, stroke 
 you." 
 
 "There isn't anything to tell," I said, 
 comforted by the mere idea of being stroked. 
 
 'Yes, there is." 
 
 "Not really. It's only that once oh, well, 
 what's the good? I don't want to think of 
 it I want to forget."
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 183 
 
 Dolly nodded. "Yes," she said. "Yes." 
 
 "You see I came here to get cured by 
 forgetting, and I thought I was cured. And 
 this morning I found I wasn't, and it has 
 and it has disappointed me." 
 
 'You musn't cry, you know," said Dolly, 
 gently. "Not in the middle of picking red 
 currants. There's the man- 
 She glanced at Antoine, digging. 
 
 I snuffled away my tears without the 
 betrayal of a pocket handkerchief, and man- 
 aged to smile at her. 
 
 "What idiots we go on being," I said, 
 ruefully. 
 
 "Oh idiots!" 
 
 Dolly made a gesture as of including the 
 whole world. 
 
 "Does one ever grow up?" I asked. 
 
 "I don't know. I haven't." 
 
 "But do you think one ever learns to bear 
 pain without wanting to run crying bitterly 
 to one's mother?" 
 
 "I think it's difficult. It seems to take 
 more time", she added, smiling, "than I've 
 yet had, and I'm forty. You know I'm 
 forty?" 
 
 'Yes. That is, I've been told so, but it 
 hasn't been proved."
 
 184 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Oh, I never could prove anything/' said 
 Dolly. 
 
 Then she put on an air of determination 
 that would have alarmed Mrs. Barnes, and 
 said, "There are several other things that I 
 am that you don't know, and as I'm here 
 alone with you at last I may as well tell you 
 what they are. In fact, I'm not going away 
 from these currant bushes till I have told 
 
 you." 
 
 "Then," I said, "hadn't you better help me 
 with the currants while you tell?" And I 
 lifted the basket across and put it on the 
 ground between us. 
 
 Already I felt better. Comforted, cheered 
 by Dolly's mere presence and the sweet 
 understanding that seems to shine out from her. 
 
 She turned up her sleeve and plunged 
 her arms into the currant bushes. Luckily 
 currants don't have thorns, for if it had been 
 a gooseberry bush she would have plunged 
 her bare arms in just the same. 
 
 ''You have asked us to stay on," she began, 
 "and it isn't fair that you shouldn't know 
 exactly what you are in for." 
 
 "If you're going to tell me how your name 
 is spelt," I said, "I've guessed that already. 
 It is Juchs."
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 185 
 
 "Oh, you're clever!" exclaimed Dolly, un- 
 expectedly. 
 
 "Well, if that's clever," I said, modestly, 
 " I don't know what you would say to some of 
 the things I think of." 
 
 Dolly laughed. Then she looked serious 
 again, and tugged at the currants in a way 
 that wasn't very good for the bush. 
 
 ; 'Yes. His name was Juchs," she said. 
 "Kitty always did pronounce it Jewks. It 
 wasn't the war. It wasn't camouflage. She 
 thought it was the way. So did the other 
 relations in England. That is when they 
 pronounced it at all, which I should think 
 wasn't ever." 
 
 "You mean they called him Siegfried," I said. 
 
 Dolly stopped short in her picking to look 
 at me in surprise. "Siegfried?" she repeated, 
 her arrested hands full of currants. 
 
 'That's another of the things I've guessed," 
 I said, proudly. "By sheer intelligently put- 
 ting two and two together." 
 
 "He wasn't Siegfried," said Dolly. 
 
 "Not Siegfried?" 
 
 It was my turn to stop picking and look 
 surprised. 
 
 "And in your sleep ? And so affection- 
 ately ?" I said.
 
 18C IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Siegfried wasn't Juchs, he was Bretter- 
 stangel," said Dolly. "Did I say his name 
 that day in my sleep? Dear Siegfried." 
 And her eyes, even while they rested on mine, 
 became softly reminiscent. 
 
 "But Dolly if Siegfried wasn't your hus- 
 band, ought you to have well, do you think 
 it was wise to be dreaming of him?" 
 
 "But he was my husband." 
 
 I stared. 
 
 "But you said your husband was Juchs," 
 I said. 
 
 "So he was," said Dolly. 
 
 "He was? Then why I'm fearfully slow, 
 I know, but do tell me if Juchs was your 
 husband why wasn't he called Siegfried?" 
 
 "Because Siegfried's name was Bretter- 
 stangel. I began with Siegfried." 
 
 There was a silence. We stood looking at 
 each other, our hands full of currants. 
 
 Then I said, "Oh." And after a moment I 
 said, "I see." And after another moment I 
 said, "You began with Siegfried." 
 
 I was greatly taken aback. The guesses 
 which had been arranged so neatly in my 
 mind were swept into confusion. 
 
 "What you've got to realize," said Dolly, 
 evidently with an effort, "is that I kept on
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 187 
 
 marrying Germans. I ought to have left off 
 at Siegfried. I wish now I had. But one 
 gets into a habit 
 
 "But," I interrupted, my mouth I think 
 rather open, "you kept on?" 
 
 :< Yes," said Dolly, holding herself very 
 straight and defiantly, "I did keep on, and 
 that's what I want you to be quite clear 
 about before we settle down to stay here 
 indefinitely. Kitty can't stay if I won't. 
 I do put my foot down sometimes, and I 
 would about this. Poor darling she feels 
 desperately what I've done, and I try to help 
 her to keep it quiet with ordinary people as 
 much as I can oh, I'm always letting little 
 bits out! But I can't, I won't, not tell a 
 friend who so wonderfully invites us 
 
 " You're not going to begin being grateful?" 
 I interrupted, quickly. 
 
 ''You've no idea," Dolly answered, irrele- 
 vantly, her eyes wide with wonder at her past 
 self, "how difficult it is not to marry Germans 
 once you've begun." 
 
 "But how many?" I got out. 
 
 ''Oh, only two. It wasn't their number so 
 much. It was their quality." 
 
 "What Junkers?" 
 
 "Junkers? Would you mind more if they
 
 188 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 had been? Do you mind very much any- 
 how?" 
 
 "I don't mind anything. I don't mind 
 your being technically German a scrap. All 
 I think is that it was a little well, perhaps 
 a little excessive to marry another German 
 when you had done it once already. But 
 then I'm always rather on the side of frugality. 
 I do definitely prefer the few instead of the 
 many and the little instead of the much." 
 
 "In husbands as well?" 
 
 "Well, yes I think so." 
 
 Dolly sighed. 
 
 "I wish I had been like that," she said. 
 "It would have saved poor Kitty so much." 
 
 She dropped the currants she held in her 
 hands slowly bunch by bunch into the basket. 
 
 "But I don't see," I said, "what difference 
 it could make to Kitty. I mean, once you 
 had started having German husbands at all, 
 what did it matter one more or less? And 
 wasn't the second one d I mean, hadn't he 
 left off being alive when the war began? So 
 I don't see what difference it could make to 
 Kitty." 
 
 "But that's just what you've got to realize," 
 said Dolly, letting the last bunch of currants 
 drop out of her hand into the basket.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 189 
 
 She looked at me, and I became aware 
 that she was slowly turning red. A very 
 delicate flush was slowly spreading over her 
 face, so delicate that for a moment I didn't 
 see what it was that was making her look more 
 and more guilty, more and more like a child 
 who has got to confess but an honourable, 
 good child, determined that it will confess. 
 
 ''You know," she said, "that I've lived in 
 Germany for years and years." 
 
 "Yes," I said. "I've guessed that." 
 
 "And it's different from England." 
 
 "Yes," I said. "So I understand." 
 
 'The way they see things. Their laws." 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 Dolly was finding it difficult to say what 
 she had to say. I thought it might help her 
 if I didn't look at her, so I once more began 
 to pick currants. She mechanically followed 
 my example. 
 
 "Kitty," she said, as we both stooped busily 
 over the same bush, "thinks what I did too 
 dreadful. So did all our English relations. 
 It's because you may think so, too, that I've 
 got to tell you. Then you can decide whether 
 you really want me here or not." 
 
 "Dear Dolly," I murmured, "don't please 
 make my blood run cold
 
 190 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Ah, but it's forbidden in the Prayer 
 Book." 
 
 44 What is?" 
 
 "What I did." 
 
 "What did you do, Dolly?" I asked, now 
 thoroughly uneasy ; had her recklessness gone 
 so far as to lead her to tamper with the Com- 
 mandments? 
 
 Dolly tore off currants and leaves in hand- 
 fuls and flung them together into the basket. 
 "I married my uncle," she said. 
 
 "What?" I said, really astonished. 
 
 "Karl that was my second husband 
 was Siegfried's that was my first hus- 
 band's uncle. He was Siegfried's mother's 
 brother my first mother-in-law's brother. 
 My second mother-in-law was my first 
 husband's grandmother. In Germany you 
 can. In Germany you do. But it's forbidden 
 in the English Prayer Book. It's put in the 
 Table of Kindred and Affinity that you 
 mustn't. It's number nine of the right-hand 
 column Husband's Mother's Brother. And 
 Kitty well, you can guess what Kitty has 
 felt about it. If it had been my own uncle, 
 my own mother's p brother, she couldn't have 
 been more horrified and heartbroken. I 
 didn't realize. I didn't think of the effect it
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 191 
 
 might have on them at home. I just did it. 
 They didn't know till I had done it. I 
 always think it saves bother to marry first 
 and tell afterward. I had been so many 
 years in Germany. It seemed quite natural. 
 I simply stayed on in the family. It was really 
 habit." 
 
 She threw some currants into the basket, 
 then faced me. 'There," she said, looking 
 me straight in the eyes, "I've told you, and 
 if you think me impossible I'll go." 
 
 "But- 'I began. 
 
 Her face was definitely flushed now, and her 
 eyes very bright. 
 
 "Oh, I'd be sorry, sorry," she said, impetu- 
 ously, "if this ended us!" 
 
 it 1 T } ?? 
 
 Isr 
 
 ''You and me. But I couldn't stay here 
 and not tell you, could I? Just because you 
 may hate it so I had to tell you. You've 
 got a dean in your family. The Prayer 
 Book is in your blood. And if you do hate 
 it I shall understand perfectly, and I'll go 
 away and take Kitty and you need never 
 see or hear of me again, so you mustn't mind 
 saying 
 
 "Oh, do wait a minute!" I cried. "I don't 
 hate it. I don't mind. I'd only hate it and
 
 192 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 mind if it was I who had to marry a German 
 uncle. I can't imagine why anybody should 
 ever want to marry uncles anyhow, but if 
 they do, and they're not blood-uncles, and 
 it's the custom of the country, why not? 
 You'll stay here, Dolly. I won't let you go. 
 I don't care if you've married fifty German 
 uncles. I've loved you from the moment 
 I saw you on the top of the wall in your 
 funny petticoat. Why, you don't suppose," 
 I finished, suddenly magnificently British, 
 "that I'm going to let any mere German 
 come between you and me?" 
 
 Whereupon we kissed each other not 
 once, but several times; fell, indeed, upon 
 each other's necks. And Antoine, coming to 
 fetch the red currants for Lisette who had 
 been making signs to him from the steps for 
 some time past, stood waiting quietly till we 
 should have done. 
 
 When he thought we had done he stepped 
 forward and said, "Pardon, mesdames" and 
 stooping down deftly extracted the basket 
 from between us. 
 
 As he did so his eye rested an instant on the 
 stripped and broken branches of the currant 
 bush. 
 
 He wasn't surprised.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 193 
 
 September 1th. 
 
 I couldn't finish about yesterday last night. 
 When I had got as far as Antoine and the 
 basket I looked at the little clock on my 
 writing-table and saw to my horror that it 
 was nearly twelve. So I fled into bed; for 
 what would Mrs. Barnes have said if she 
 had seen me burning the electric light and 
 doing what she calls trying my eyes at such 
 an hour? It doesn't matter that they are 
 my eyes and my light: Mrs. Barnes has 
 become, by virtue of her troubles, the secret 
 standard of my behaviour. She is like the 
 eye of God to me now in every place. And 
 my desire to please her and make her happy 
 has increased a hundredfold since Dolly and 
 I have at last, in spite of her precautions, 
 become real friends. 
 
 We decided before we left the kitchen- 
 garden yesterday that this was the important 
 thing: to keep Mrs. Barnes from any hurt 
 that we can avoid. She has had so many. 
 She will have so many more. I understand 
 now Dolly's deep sense of all her poor Kitty 
 has given up and endured for her sake, and 
 I understand the shackles these sacrifices 
 have put on Dolly. It is a terrible burden to 
 be very much loved. If Dolly were of a less
 
 194 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 naturally serene temperament she would go 
 under beneath the weight, she would be, after 
 five years of it, a colourless, meek thing. 
 
 We agreed that Mrs. Barnes mustn't know 
 that I know about Dolly's marriages. Dolly 
 said roundly that it would kill her. Mrs. 
 Barnes regards her misguided sister as having 
 committed a crime. It is forbidden in the 
 Prayer Book. She brushes aside the possible 
 Prayer Books of other countries. Therefore 
 the word German shall never I hope again 
 escape me while she is here, nor will I talk 
 of husbands, and perhaps it will be as well 
 to avoid mentioning uncles. Dear me, how 
 very watchful I shall have to be. For the 
 first time in his life the Dean has become 
 unmentionable. 
 
 I am writing this before breakfast. I 
 haven't seen Dolly alone again since the 
 kitchen-garden. I don't know how she con- 
 trived to appease Mrs. Barnes and explain 
 her long absence, but that she did contrive 
 it was evident from the harmonious pic- 
 ture I beheld when, half an hour later, I, too, 
 went back to the house. They were sitting 
 together in the sun just outside the front 
 door knitting. Mrs. Barnes's face was quite 
 contented. Dolly looked specially radiant.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 195 
 
 I believe she is made up entirely of love and 
 laughter dangerous, endearing ingredients! 
 We just looked at each other as I came out of 
 the house. It is the most comforting, the 
 warmest thing, this unexpected finding of a 
 completely understanding friend. 
 
 September 10th. 
 
 Once you have achieved complete under- 
 standing with anybody it isn't necessary, I 
 know, to talk much. I have been told this 
 by the wise. They have said mere knowledge 
 that the understanding is there is enough. 
 They have said that perfect understanding 
 needs no expression, that the perfect inter- 
 course is without words. That may be; but 
 I want to talk. Not excessively, but some- 
 times. Speech does add grace and satisfac- 
 tion to friendship. It may not be necessary, 
 but it is very agreeable. 
 
 As far as I can see I am never, except by 
 the rarest chance, going to get an opportunity 
 of talking to Dolly alone. And there are so 
 many things I want to ask her. Were her 
 experiences all pleasant? Or is it her gay, 
 indomitable spirit that has left her, after 
 them, so entirely unmarked? Anyhow, the 
 last five years can't possibly have been
 
 196 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 pleasant, and yet they've not left the shadow 
 of a stain on her serenity. I feel that she 
 would think very sanely about anything her 
 bright mind touched. There is something 
 disinfecting about Dolly. I believe she would 
 disinfect me of the last dregs of morbidness I 
 still may have lurking inside me. 
 
 She and Mrs. Barnes are utterly poor. 
 When the war began Dolly was in Germany, 
 she told me that morning in the kitchen- 
 garden, and had been a widow nearly a year. 
 Not Siegfried's widow: Juchs's. I find her 
 widowhoods confusing. 
 
 "Didn't you ever have a child, Dolly?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "No," she said. 
 
 'Then how is it you twitched the hand- 
 kerchief off your sister's sleeping face that 
 first day and said Peep bo to her so profes- 
 sionally?" 
 
 "I used to do that to Siegfried. We were 
 both quite young to begin with, and played 
 silly games." 
 
 t< T " T "1 /~* " 
 
 1 see, 1 said. lio on. 
 
 Juchs had left her some money; just 
 
 enough to live on. Siegfried hadn't ever had 
 
 any, except what he earned as a clerk in a 
 
 bank, but Juchs had had some. She hadn't
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 197 
 
 married Juchs for any reason, I gathered, 
 except to please him. It did please him very 
 much, she said, and I can quite imagine it. 
 Siegfried, too, had been pleased in his day. 
 "I seem to have a gift for pleasing Germans," 
 she remarked, smiling. 'They were both 
 very kind to me. I ended by being very- 
 fond of them both. I believe I'd be fond of 
 any one who was kind. There's a good deal 
 of the dog about me." 
 
 Directly the war began she packed up and 
 came to Switzerland; she didn't wish, under 
 such circumstances, to risk pleasing any more 
 Germans. Since her marriage to Juchs all 
 her English relations except Kitty had cast 
 her off, so that only a neutral country was 
 open to her, and Kitty instantly gave up 
 everybody and everything to come and be 
 with her. At first her little income was sent 
 to her by her German bank, but after the 
 first few months it sent no more, and she 
 became entirely dependent on Kitty. All 
 that Kitty had was what she got from selling 
 her house. The Germans, Dolly said, would 
 send no money out of the country. Though 
 the war was over she could get nothing out 
 of them unless she went back. She would 
 never go back. It would kill Kitty; and
 
 198 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 she, too, she thought, would very likely die. 
 Her career of pleasing Germans does seem to 
 be definitely over. 
 
 "So you see," she said, smiling, "how won- 
 derful it is for us to have found you.''' 
 
 "What I can't get over," I said, "is having 
 found you" 
 
 But I wish, having found her, I might 
 sometimes talk to her. 
 
 September l%th. 
 
 We live here in an atmosphere of combats 
 de generosite. It is tremendous. Mrs. Barnes 
 and I are always doing things we don't want 
 to do because we suppose it is what is going 
 to make the other one happy. (, The tyranny 
 of unselfishness! I can hardly breathe. 
 
 September IQth. 
 
 I think it isn't good for women to be shut 
 up too long alone together without a man. 
 They seem to fester. Even the noblest. 
 Taking our intentions all round they really 
 are quite noble. We do only want to de- 
 velop in ideal directions, and remove what we 
 think are the obstacles to this development 
 in each other's paths; and yet we fester. 
 Not Dolly. Nothing ever smudges her
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 199 
 
 equable, clear wholesomeness ; but there are 
 moments when I feel as if Mrs. Barnes and I 
 got much mixed up together in a sort of 
 sticky mass. Faint struggles from time to 
 time, brief efforts at extrication, show there 
 is still a life in me that is not flawlessly 
 benevolent, but I repent of them as soon as 
 made because of the pain and surprise that 
 instantly appear in Mrs. Barnes's tired, 
 pathetic eyes, and hastily I engulf myself 
 once more in goodness. 
 
 That's why I haven't written lately not 
 for a whole week. It is glutinous, the pre- 
 vailing goodness. I have stuck. I have 
 felt as though my mind were steeped in 
 treacle. Then to-day I remembered my old 
 age, and the old lady waiting at the end of 
 the years who will want to be amused, so I've 
 begun again. I have an idea that what will 
 really most amuse that old lady, that wrinkled, 
 philosophical old thing, will be all the times 
 when I was being uncomfortable. She will 
 be so very comfortable herself, so done with 
 everything, so entirely an impartial looker- 
 on, that the rebellions and contortions and 
 woes of the creature who used to be herself 
 will only make her laugh. She will be blithe 
 in her securitv. Besides, she will know the
 
 200 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 sequel, she will know what came next, and 
 will see, I daresay, how vain the expense of 
 trouble and emotions was. So that naturally 
 she will laugh. "You silly little thing!" 
 I can imagine her exclaiming, "if only you 
 had known how it all wasn't going to matter!" 
 And she will laugh very heartily; for I am 
 sure she will be a gay old lady. 
 
 But what we really want here now is an 
 occasional breath of brutality the passage, 
 infrequent and not too much prolonged, of a 
 man. If he came to tea once in a way it 
 would do. He would be a blast of fresh air. 
 He would be like opening a window. We 
 have minced about among solicitudes and 
 delicacies so very long. I want to smell the 
 rankness of a pipe, and see the cushions 
 thrown anyhow. I want to see somebody who 
 doesn't knit. I want to hear Mrs. Barnes 
 being contradicted. Especially do I want to 
 hear Mrs. Barnes being contradicted 
 oh, I'm afraid I'm still not very good! 
 
 September 20th. 
 
 The grapes are ripe down in the vineyards 
 along the edge of the valley, and this morning 
 I proposed that we should start off early and 
 spend the day among them doing a grape-cure.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 201 
 
 Mrs. Barnes liked the idea very much, and 
 sandwiches were ordered, for we were not to 
 come back till evening; then at the last 
 moment she thought it would be too hot in 
 the valley, and that her head, which has been 
 aching lately, might get worse. The sand- 
 wiches were ready on the hall table. Dolly 
 and I were ready, too, boots on and sticks in 
 hand. To our great surprise Mrs. Barnes, 
 contemplating the sandwiches, said that as 
 they had been cut they mustn't be \vasted, 
 and therefore we had better go without her. 
 
 We were astonished. We were like chil- 
 dren being given a holiday. She kissed us 
 affectionately when we said good-bye, as 
 though to mark her trust in us in Dolly that 
 she wouldn't tell me the dreadful truth about 
 herself, in me that I wouldn't encourage her 
 in undesirable points of view. How safe we 
 were, how deserving of trust, Mrs. Barnes 
 naturally didn't know. Nothing that either of 
 us could say could possibly upset the other. 
 
 "If Mrs. Barnes knew the worst, knew I 
 knew everything, wouldn't she be happier?" 
 I asked Dolly as we went briskly down the 
 mountain. "Wouldn't at least part of her 
 daily anxiety be got rid of, her daily fear lest 
 I should get to know?"
 
 202 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "It would kill her," said Dolly, firmly. 
 
 "But surely- 
 
 'You mustn't forget that she thinks what 
 I did was a crime." 
 
 ; 'You mean the uncle." 
 
 "Oh, she wouldn't very much mind your 
 knowing about Siegfried. She would do her 
 utmost to prevent it, because of her horror 
 of Germans and of the horror she assumes 
 you have of Germans. But once you did 
 know she would be resigned. The other- 
 Dolly shook her head. "It would kill her," 
 she said again. 
 
 We came to a green slope starred thick 
 with autumn crocuses, and sat down to look 
 at them. These delicate, lovely things have 
 been appearing lately on the mountain, at 
 first one by one and then in flocks pale 
 cups of light, lilac on long white stalks that 
 snap off at a touch. Like the almond trees 
 in the suburban gardens round London that 
 flower when the winds are cruellest, the 
 autumn crocuses seem too frail to face the 
 cold nights we are having now; yet it is just 
 when conditions are growing unkind that they 
 come out. There they are, all over the moun- 
 tain fields, flowering in greater profusion 
 the further the month moves toward winter.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 203 
 
 This particular field of them was so beautiful 
 that with one accord Dolly and I sat down to 
 look. One doesn't pass such beauty by. 
 I think we sat quite half an hour drinking in 
 those crocuses, and their sunny plateau, and 
 the way the tops of the pine trees on the slope 
 below stood out against the blue emptiness 
 of the valley. We were most content. The 
 sun was so warm, the air of such an extraor- 
 dinary fresh purity. Just to breathe was 
 happiness. I think that in my life I have 
 been most blest in this, that so often just to 
 breathe has been happiness. 
 
 Dolly and I, now that we could talk as 
 much as we wanted to, didn't after all talk 
 much. Suddenly I felt incurious about her 
 Germans. I didn't want them among the 
 crocuses. The past, both hers and mine, 
 seemed to matter very little, seemed a stuffy, 
 indifferent thing, in that clear present. I 
 don't suppose if we hadn't brought an empty 
 basket with us on purpose to take back 
 grapes to Mrs. Barnes that we would have 
 gone on down to the vineyards at all, but 
 rather have spent the day just where we 
 were. The basket, however, had to be filled; 
 it had to be brought back filled. It was to 
 be the proof that we had done what we said
 
 204 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 we would. Kitty, said Dolly, would be 
 fidgeted if we hadn't carried out the original 
 plan, and might be afraid that if we weren't 
 eating grapes all day as arranged we were 
 probably using our idle mouths for saying 
 things she wished left unsaid. 
 
 "Does poor Kitty always fidget?" I asked. 
 
 "Always," said Dolly. 
 
 "About every single thing that might 
 happen?" 
 
 "Every single thing," said Dolly. "She 
 spends her life now entirely in fear and it's 
 all because of me." 
 
 "But really, while she is with me she could 
 have a holiday from fear if we told her I knew 
 about your uncle and had accepted it with calm . ' ' 
 
 "It would kill her," said Dolly once more, 
 firmly. 
 
 We lunched in the vineyards, and our 
 dessert was grapes. We ate them for a long 
 while with enthusiasm, and went on eating 
 them through every degree of declining 
 pleasure till we disliked them. For fifty 
 centimes each the owner gave us permission 
 to eat grapes till we died if we wished to. 
 For another franc we were allowed to fill the 
 basket for Mrs. Barnes. Only conscientious- 
 ness made us fill it full, for we couldn't believe
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 205 
 
 anybody would really want to eat such things 
 as grapes. Then we began to crawl up the 
 mountain again, greatly burdened both inside 
 and out. 
 
 It took us over three hours to get home. 
 \Ve carried the basket in turns, half an hour 
 at a time; but what about those other, 
 invisible, grapes, that came with us as well? 
 I think people who have been doing a grape- 
 cure should sit quiet for the rest of the day, 
 or else walk only on the level. To have to 
 take one's cure up five thousand feet with 
 one is hard. Again we didn't talk; this time 
 because we couldn't. All that we could do 
 was to pant and to perspire. It was a bril- 
 liant afternoon, and the way led up when 
 the vineyards left off through stunted fir 
 trees that gave no shade, along narrow paths 
 strewn with dry fir needles the slipperiest 
 things in the world to walk on. Through 
 these hot, shadeless trees the sun beat on our 
 bent and burdened figures. Whenever we 
 stopped to rest and caught sight of each 
 other's flushed, wet faces we laughed. 
 
 "Kitty needn't have been afraid we'd say 
 much," panted Dolly in one of these pauses, 
 her eyes screwed up with laughter at my 
 melted state.
 
 206 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 I knew what I must be looking like by 
 looking at her. 
 
 It was five o'clock by the time we reached 
 the field with the crocuses, and we sank down 
 on the grass where we had sat in the morning, 
 speechless, dripping, overwhelmed by grapes. 
 For a long while we said nothing. It was 
 bliss to lie in the cool grass and not to have 
 to carry anything. The sun, low in the 
 sky, slanted almost level along the field, 
 and shining right through the thin-petalled 
 crocuses made of each a little star. I don't 
 know anything more happy than to be where 
 it is beautiful with someone who sees and 
 loves it as much as you do yourself. We lay 
 stretched out on the grass, quite silent, 
 watching the splendour grow and grow till, 
 having reached a supreme moment of radi- 
 ance, it suddenly went out. The sun dropped 
 behind the mountains along to the west, 
 and out went the light; with a flick; in an 
 instant. And the crocuses, left standing in 
 their drab field, looked like so many blown- 
 out candles. 
 
 Dolly sat up. 
 
 "There, now," she said. "That's over. 
 They look as blind and dim as a woman whose 
 lover has left her. Have you ever," she asked.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 207 
 
 turning her head to me still lying pillowed 
 on Mrs. Barnes's grapes the basket had a 
 lid "seen a woman whose lover has left 
 her?" 
 
 "Of course I have. Everybody has been 
 left by somebody." 
 
 "I mean just left." 
 
 ''Yes. I've seen that, too." 
 
 "They look exactly like that," said Dolly, 
 nodding toward the crocuses. "Smitten 
 colourless. Light gone, life gone, beauty 
 gone dead things in a dead world. I don't," 
 she concluded, shaking her head slowly, 
 "hold with love." 
 
 At this I sat up, too, and began to tidy my 
 hair and put my hat on again. "It's cold," 
 I said, "now that the sun is gone. Let us go 
 home." 
 
 Dolly didn't move. 
 
 "Do you?" she asked. 
 
 "Do I what?" 
 
 "Hold with love." 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 "Whatever happens?" 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 "Whatever its end is?" 
 
 "Yes," I said. "And I w T on't even say yes 
 and no, as the cautious Charlotte Bronte did
 
 208 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 when she was asked if she liked London. I 
 won't be cautious in love. I won't look at all 
 the reasons for saying no. It's a glorious 
 thing to have had. It's splendid to have 
 believed all one did believe." 
 
 "Even when there never was a shred of 
 justification for the belief?" asked Dolly, 
 watching me. 
 
 ; 'Yes," I said; and began passionately to 
 pin my hat on, digging the pins into my head 
 in my vehemence. 'Yes. The thing is to 
 believe. Not go round first cautiously on 
 tip-toe so as to be sure before believing and 
 trusting that your precious belief and trust 
 are going to be safe. Safe! There's no 
 safety in love. You risk the whole of life. 
 But the great thing is to risk to believe, 
 and to risk everything for your belief. And 
 if there wasn't anything there, if it was you 
 all by yourself who imagined the beautiful, 
 kind things in the other one, the wonderful, 
 generous, beautiful kind things, what does it 
 matter? They weren't there, but you for 
 once were capable of imagining them. You 
 were up among the stars for a little, you did 
 touch heaven. And when you've had the 
 tumble down again and you're scrunched all 
 to pieces and are just a miserable heap of
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 209 
 
 blood and brokenness, where's your grit that 
 you should complain? Haven't you seen 
 wonders up there past all telling, and had 
 supreme joys? It's because you were up in 
 heaven that your fall is so tremendous and 
 hurts so. What you've got to do is not to be 
 killed. You've got at all costs to stay alive, 
 so that for the rest of your days you may 
 go gratefully, giving thanks to God that 
 once . . . you see," I finished, suddenly, 
 "I'm a great believer in saying thank 
 
 you." 
 
 "Oh," said Dolly, laying her hand on my 
 knee and looking at me very kindly, "I'm 
 so glad!" 
 
 "Now what are you glad about, Dolly?" 
 I asked, turning on her and giving my hat a 
 pull straight. And I added, my chin in the 
 air, "Those dead women of yours in their 
 dead world, indeed! Ashamed of them- 
 selves that's what they ought to be." 
 
 "You're cured," said Dolly. 
 
 "Cured?" I echoed. 
 
 I stared at her severely. "Oh I see," 1 
 said. ''You've been drawing me out." 
 
 "Of course I have. I couldn't bear to 
 think of you going on being unhappy- 
 hankering
 
 210 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Hankering?'* 
 
 Dolly got up. "Now let's go home," she 
 said. "It's my turn to carry the basket. 
 Yes, it's a horrid word. Nobody should ever 
 hanker. I couldn't bear it if you did. I've 
 been afraid that perhaps 
 
 "Hankering!" 
 
 I got up, too, and stood very straight. 
 
 "Give me those grapes," said Dolly. 
 
 "Hankering!" I said again. 
 
 And the rest of the way home, along the 
 cool path where the dusk was gathering 
 among the bushes and the grass was damp 
 now beneath our dusty shoes, we walked 
 with heads held high hankering indeed! 
 two women surely in perfect harmony with 
 life and the calm evening, women of wisdom 
 and intelligence, of a proper pride and self- 
 respect, kind women, good women, pleasant, 
 amiable women, contented women, pleased 
 women; and at the last corner, the last one 
 between us and Mrs. Barnes's eye on the 
 terrace, Dolly stopped, put down the basket, 
 and laying both her arms about my shoulders 
 kissed me. 
 
 "Cured," she said, kissing me on one side of 
 my face. "Safe," she said, kissing me on the 
 other.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 211 
 
 And we laughed, both of us, confident 
 and glad. And I went up to my room 
 confident and glad, for if I felt cured and 
 Dolly was sure I was cured, mustn't it be 
 true? 
 
 Hankering indeed. 
 
 September %\st. 
 
 But I'm not cured. For when I was alone 
 in my room last night and the house was 
 quiet with sleep, a great emptiness came upon 
 me, and those fine, defiant words of mine in, 
 the afternoon seemed poor things, poor 
 dwindled things, like kaisers in their night- 
 gowns. For hours I lay awake with only one 
 longing: to creep back back into my shat- 
 tered beliefs, even if it were the littlest 
 corner of them. Surely there must be some 
 corner of them still, with squeezing, habit- 
 able? I'm so small. I need hardly any 
 room. I'd curl up. I'd fit myself in. And 
 I wouldn't look at the ruin of the great-splen- 
 did spaces I once thought I lived in, but be 
 content with a few inches. Oh, it's cold, cold, 
 cold, left outside of faith like this. 
 
 For hours I lay awake; and being ashamed 
 of myself did no good, because love doesn't 
 mind about being ashamed.
 
 212 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Evening. 
 
 All day I've slunk about in silence, watch- 
 ing for a moment alone with Dolly. I want 
 to tell her that it was only one side of me 
 yesterday, and that there's another, and 
 another oh, so many others; that I meant 
 every word I said, but there are other things, 
 quite different, almost opposite things that I 
 also mean; that it's true I'm cured, but only 
 cured in places, and over the rest of me, the 
 rest that is still sick, great salt waves of 
 memories wash every now and then and bite 
 and bite. . . . 
 
 But Dolly, who seems more like an un- 
 ruffled pool of clear water to-day than ever, 
 hasn't left Mrs. Barnes's side; making up, 
 I suppose, for being away from her all yester- 
 day. 
 
 Toward tea-time I became aware that 
 Mrs. Barnes was watching me with a worried 
 face, the well-known worried, anxious face, 
 and I guessed she was wondering if Dolly 
 had been indiscreet on our picnic and told me 
 things that had shocked me into silence. 
 So I cast about in my mind for something to 
 reassure her, and, as I thought fortunately, 
 very soon remembered the grapes. 
 
 "I'm afraid I ate too many grapes yester-
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 213 
 
 day," I said, when next I caught her worried, 
 questioning eye. 
 
 Her face cleared. I congratulated myself. 
 But I didn't congratulate myself long; for 
 Mrs. Barnes, all motherly solicitude, inquired 
 if by any chance I had swallowed some of the 
 stones; and desiring to reassure her to the 
 utmost as to the reason of my thoughtfulness, 
 I said that very likely I had; from the feel 
 of things; from the kind of heaviness. . . . 
 And she, before I could stop her, had darted 
 into the kitchen these lean women are 
 terribly nimble and before I could turn 
 round or decide what to do next, for by this 
 time I was suspicious, she was back again 
 with Mrs. Antoine and all the dreadful 
 paraphernalia of castor oil. And I had to 
 drink it. And it seemed hard that because 
 I had been so benevolently desirous to 
 reassure Mrs. Barnes I should have to drink 
 castor oil and be grateful to her as well. 
 
 'This is petty," I thought, sombrely eyeing 
 the bottle I alluded in my mind to Fate. 
 
 But as I had to drink the stuff I might as 
 well do it gallantly. And so I did; tossing 
 it off with an air, after raising the glass and 
 wishing the onlookers health and happiness 
 in what I tried to make a pleasant speech.
 
 214 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Mrs. Barnes, Mrs. Antoine, and Dolly stood 
 watching me spellbound. A shudder rippled 
 over them as the last drops slid down. 
 
 Then I came up here. 
 
 September %%nd. 
 
 Let me draw your attention, O ancient 
 woman sitting at the end of my life, to the 
 colour of the trees and bushes in this place 
 you once lived in, in autumns that for you 
 are now so far away. Do you remember 
 how it was like flames, and the very air was 
 golden? The hazel -bushes do you remem- 
 ber them? Along the path that led down 
 from the terrace to the village? How each 
 separate one was like a heap of light? Do 
 you remember how you spent to-day, the 
 22nd of September, 1919, lying on a rug in 
 the sun close up under one of them, content 
 to stare at the clear yellow leaves against 
 the amazing sky? You've forgotten, I dare- 
 say. You're only thinking of your next 
 meal and being put to bed. But you did 
 spend a day to-day worth remembering. 
 You were very content. You were exactly 
 balanced in the present, without a single 
 oscillation toward either the past, a period 
 you hadn't then learned to regard with the
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 215 
 
 levity for which you are now so remarkable, 
 or to the future, which you at that time, 
 however much the attitude may amuse you 
 now, thought of with doubt and often with 
 fear. Mrs. Barnes let you go to-day, having 
 an appreciation of the privileges due to the 
 dosed, and you took a cushion and a rug 
 active, weren't you? and there you lay the 
 whole blessed day, the sun warm on your 
 body, enfolded in freshness, thinking of 
 nothing but calm things. Rather like a baby 
 you were; a baby on its back sucking its thumb 
 and placidly contemplating the nursery ceil- 
 ing. But the ceiling was the great sky, with 
 two eagles ever so far up curving in its depths, 
 and when they sloped their wings the sun 
 caught them and they flashed. 
 
 It seems a pity to forget these things. 
 They make up, after all, the real preciousness 
 of life. But I'm afraid my writing them 
 down won't make you feel any joy in them 
 again, you old thing. You'll be too brittle 
 and rheumaticky to be able to think of lying 
 on the grass for a whole day except with 
 horror. I'm beginning to dislike the idea of 
 being forced into your old body; and, on 
 reflection, your philosophical detachment, 
 your incapacity to do anything but laugh at
 
 216 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 the hopes and griefs and exultations and 
 disappointments and bitter pains of your 
 past, seems to me very like the fixed grimace 
 of fleshless death. 
 
 September 23rd. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes can't, however hard she tries, 
 be with us absolutely continuously. Gaps 
 in her attendance do inevitably occur. There 
 was one of them to-day; and I seized it to 
 say to Dolly across the momentarily empty 
 middle chair we were on the terrace and 
 the reading was going on "I've not seen 
 you alone since the grape day. I wanted to 
 tell you that I'm not cured. I had a relapse 
 that very night. I meant all I said to you, 
 but I meant, too, all I said to myself while I 
 was having the relapse. You'd better know 
 the worst. I simply intolerably hankered." 
 
 Dolly let Merivale fall on her lap, and 
 gazed pensively at the distant mountains 
 across the end of the valley. 
 
 "It's only the last growlings," she said 
 after a moment. 
 
 "Growlings?" I echoed. 
 
 "It's only the last growlings and mutter- 
 ings of a thunderstorm that's going away. 
 Whatever it was that happened to you
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 217 
 
 you've never told me, you know, but I'm 
 quite good at somehow knowing was very 
 like a thunderstorm. A violent one. It was 
 rather brief, it raged incredibly, and then it 
 rumbled off. Though you were flattened out 
 while it was going on, like some otherwise 
 promising crop 
 
 "Oh," I protested; but I had to laugh. 
 
 still when it took itself off you missed 
 it. I wouldn't talk like this," she said, 
 turning her sweet eyes to me, "I wouldn't 
 make fun if I weren't sure you are on the 
 road, anyhow, to being cured. Presently 
 you'll reach the stage when you begin to 
 realize that falling out of love is every bit as 
 agreeable as falling in. It is, you know. 
 It's a wonderful feeling, that gradual restora- 
 tion to freedom and one's friends." 
 
 ''You don't understand, after all," I said. 
 
 Dolly said she did. 
 
 "No. Because you talk of falling out of 
 love. What has happened to me is far worse 
 than that. That? That's nothing. It's 
 what everybody is doing all the time. What 
 has happened to me is that I've lost my faith. 
 It has been like losing God, after years of 
 trust in Him. I believed with all my heart. 
 And I am desolate."
 
 218 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 But Dolly only shook her head. "You're 
 not as desolate as you were," she said. "No- 
 body who loves all this as you do" - and she 
 turned up her face to the warm sun, blinking 
 her eyes "can go on being desolate long. 
 Besides really, you know look at that." 
 
 And she pointed to the shining mountains 
 across the valley's eastern end. 
 
 "Yes. That is eternal. Beauty is eternal. 
 When I look at that, when I am in the clear 
 mood that, looking at the mountains, really 
 sees them, all the rest, the bewilderment and 
 crying out, the clinging and the hankering, 
 seem indeed unworthy. Imagine, with the 
 vast landscape of the splendid world spread 
 out before you, not moving freely in it on 
 and on, rejoicing and praising God, but 
 sitting quite still lamenting in one spot, 
 stuck in sediment." 
 
 "Did you say sentiment?" asked Dolly. 
 
 "Did I say anything?" I asked in surprise, 
 turning my head to her. "I thought I was 
 thinking." 
 
 ; 'You were doing it aloud, then," said 
 Dolly. "Was the word sentiment?" 
 
 "No. Sediment." 
 
 ' They're the same thing. I hate them 
 both." '
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 219 
 
 September %4>th. 
 
 What will happen to Mrs. Barnes and 
 Dolly when I go back to England? The 
 weather was a little fidgety to-day and 
 yesterday, a little troubled, like a creature 
 that stirs fretfully in its sleep, and it set 
 me thinking. For once the change really 
 begins at this time of the year it doesn't 
 stop any more. It goes on through an 
 increasing unpleasantness winds, rain, snow, 
 blizzards till, after Christinas, the real win- 
 ter begins, without a cloud, without a stir of 
 the air, its short days flooded with sunshine, 
 its dawns and twilights miracles of colour. 
 
 All that fuss and noise of snow-flurries 
 and howling winds is only the preparation 
 for the great final calm. The last blizzard, 
 tearing away over the mountains, is like 
 an ugly curtain rolling up; and behold a 
 new world. One night while you are asleep 
 the howls and rattlings suddenly leave off, 
 and in the morning you look out of the window 
 and for the first time for weeks you see the 
 mountains at the end of the valley clear 
 against the eastern sky, clothed in all new 
 snow from head to foot, and behind them the 
 lovely green where the sunrise is getting ready. 
 I know, because I was obliged to be here
 
 220 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 through the October and November and 
 December of the year the house was built and 
 was being furnished. They were three most 
 horrid months; and the end of them was 
 heaven. 
 
 But what will become of Mrs. Barnes and 
 Dolly when the weather does finally break up? 
 
 I can't face the picture of them spending 
 a gloomy, half-warmed winter down in some 
 cheap pension; an endless winter of doing 
 without things, of watching every franc. 
 They've been living like that for five years 
 now. Where does Dolly get her sweet serenity 
 from? I wish I could take them to England 
 with me. But Dolly can't go to England. 
 She is German. She is doomed. And Mrs. 
 Barnes is doomed, too, inextricably tied up in 
 Dolly's fate. Of course I am going to beg 
 them to stay on here, but it seems a poor thing 
 to offer them, to live up here in blizzards 
 that I run away from myself. It does seem a 
 very doubtful offer of hospitality. I ought, 
 to make it real, to stay on with them. And I 
 simply couldn't. I do believe I would die if 
 I had three months shut up with Mrs. Barnes 
 in blizzards. Let her have everything the 
 house, the Antoines, all, all that I possess; 
 but only let me go.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 221 
 
 My spirit faints at the task before me, 
 at the thought of the persuasions and the 
 protests that will have to be gone through. 
 And Dolly; how can I leave Dolly? I 
 shall be haunted in London by visions of 
 these two up here, the wind raging round 
 the house, the snow piled up to the bedroom 
 windows, sometimes cut off for a whole 
 week from the village, because only in a 
 pause in the blizzard can the little black 
 figures that are peasants come sprawling 
 over the snow with their shovels to dig 
 one out. I know because I have been through 
 it that first winter. But it was all new to us 
 then, and we were a care-free, cheerful group 
 inside the house, five people who loved each 
 other and talked about anything they wanted 
 to, besides being backed reassuringly by a sack 
 of lentils and several sacks of potatoes that 
 Antoine, even then prudent and my right 
 hand, had laid in for just this eventuality. 
 AVe made great fires, and brewed strange 
 drinks. AYe sat round till far into the 
 nights telling ghost stories. We laughed 
 a good deal, and said just what we felt 
 like saying. But Mrs. Barnes and Dolly? 
 Alone up here, and undugout? It will haunt 
 me.
 
 222 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 September 25th. 
 
 She hasn't noticed the weather yet. At 
 least, she has drawn no deductions from it. 
 Evidently she thinks its fitfulness, its gleams 
 of sunshine and its uneasy cloudings over, 
 are just a passing thing and that it soon 
 will settle down again to what it was before. 
 After all, she no doubt says to herself, it 
 is still September. But Antoine knows bet- 
 ter, and so do I, and it is merely hours now 
 before the break-up will be plain even to 
 Mrs. Barnes. Then the combats de gene- 
 rosite will begin. I can't, I can't stop here 
 so that Mrs. Barnes may be justified to 
 herself in stopping, too, ont he ground of 
 cheering my solitude. I drank the castor 
 oil solely that her mind might be at rest, 
 but I can't develop any further along 
 lines of such awful magnanimity. I would 
 die. 
 
 September %6th. 
 
 To-day I smoked twelve cigarettes, only 
 that the house should smell virile. They're 
 not as good as a pipe for that, but they're 
 better than the eternal characterless, clean 
 smell of unselfish women. 
 
 After each cigarette Mrs. Barnes got up
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 223 
 
 unobtrusively and aired the room. Then 
 I lit another. 
 
 Also I threw the cushions on the floor 
 before flinging myself on the sofa in the 
 hall; and presently Mrs. Barnes came and 
 tidied them. 
 
 Then I threw them down again. 
 
 Toward evening she asked me if I was 
 feeling quite well. I wasn't, because of 
 the cigarettes, but I didn't tell her that. 
 I said I felt very well indeed. Naturally 
 I couldn't explain to her that I had only 
 been trying to pretend there was a man about. 
 
 'You're sure those grape-stones ?" she 
 
 began, anxiously. 
 
 "Oh, certain!" I cried; and hastily be- 
 came meek. 
 
 September %7th. 
 
 Oaths, now. I shrink from so much as 
 suggesting it, but there is something to 
 be said for them. They're so brief. They 
 get the mood over. They clear the air. 
 Women explain and protest and tip-toe tact- 
 fully about among what they think are 
 your feelings, and there's no end to it. And 
 then, if they're good women, good, affec- 
 tionate, unselfish women, they have a way of
 
 224 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 forgiving you. They keep on forgiving you. 
 Freely. With a horrible magnanimousness. 
 Mrs. Barnes insisted on forgiving me yester- 
 day for the cigarettes, for the untidiness. It 
 isn't a happy thing, I think, to be shut up in a 
 small, lonely house being forgiven. 
 
 September %8th. 
 
 In the night the wind shook the windows 
 and the rain pelted against them, and I 
 knew that when I went down to break- 
 fast the struggle with Mrs. Barnes would 
 begin. 
 
 It did. It began directly after breakfast in 
 the hall, where Antoine, remarking firmly 
 "C'est Vhiver" had lit a roaring fire, deter- 
 mined this time to stand no parsimonious 
 nonsense; and it has gone on all day, with the 
 necessary intervals for recuperation. 
 
 Nothing has been settled. I still don't 
 in the least know what to do. Mrs. Barnes's 
 attitude is obstinately unselfish. She and 
 Dolly, she reiterates, won't dream of staying 
 on here unless they feel that by doing so 
 they could be of service to me by keeping 
 me company. If I'm not here I can't be 
 kept company with; that, she says, I must 
 admit.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 225 
 
 I do. Every time she says it it has been 
 a day of reiterations I admit it. There- 
 fore, if I go they go, she finishes with a 
 kind of sombre triumph at her determina- 
 tion not to give trouble or be an expense; 
 but words fail her, she adds (this is a delu- 
 sion) to express her gratitude for my offer, 
 etc., and never, for the rest of their lives, will 
 she and Dolly forget the delightful etc., etc. 
 
 What am I to do? I don't know. How 
 lightly one embarks on marriage and on 
 guests, and in what unexpected directions 
 do both develop! Also, what a terrible 
 thing is unselfishness. ) Once it has become 
 a habit, how tough, how difficult to uproot. 
 A single obstinately unselfish person can 
 wreck the happiness of a whole household. 
 Is it possible that I shall have to stay here? 
 And I have so many things waiting for me 
 in England that have to be done. 
 
 There's a fire in my bedroom, and I've been 
 sitting on the floor staring into it for the past 
 hour, seeking a solution. Because all the 
 while Mrs. Barnes is firmly refusing to listen 
 for a moment to my entreaties to use the 
 house while I'm away, her thin face is hungry 
 with longing to accept, and the mere talking, 
 however bravely, of taking up the old home-
 
 226 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 less wandering again fills her tired eyes with 
 tears. 
 
 Once I got so desperate that I begged her 
 to stay as a kindness to me, in order to 
 keep an eye on those patently efficient 
 and trustworthy Antoines. This, indeed, was 
 the straw-clutching of the drowning, and 
 even Mrs. Barnes, that rare smiler, smiled. 
 
 No. I don't know what to do. How 
 the wind screams. I'll go to bed. 
 
 September %9th. 
 
 And there's nothing to be done with 
 Dolly, either. 
 
 'You told me you put your foot down 
 sometimes," I said, appealing to her this 
 morning in one of Mrs. Barnes's brief ab- 
 sences. "Why don't you put it down now?" 
 
 "Because I don't want to," said Dolly. 
 
 "But why not?" I asked, exasperated. 
 " It's so reasonable what I suggest, so easy 
 
 "I don't want to stay here without you," 
 said Dolly. 'This place is you. You've 
 made it. It is soaked in you. I should 
 feel haunted here without you. Why, I 
 should feel lost." 
 
 "As though you would! When we hardly 
 speak to each other as it is
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 227 
 
 "But I watch you," said Dolly, smiling, 
 "and I know what you're thinking. You've 
 no idea how what you're thinking comes out 
 on your face." 
 
 "But if it makes your unhappy sister's 
 mind more comfortable? If she feels free 
 from anxiety here? If she feels you are 
 safe here?" I passionately reasoned. 
 
 "I don't want to be safe." 
 
 "Oh, Dolly you're not going to break 
 out again?" I asked, as anxiously every 
 bit as poor Mrs. Barnes would have asked. 
 
 Dolly laughed. "I'll never do anything 
 again that makes Kitty unhappy," she said. 
 "But I do like the feeling ' she made a 
 movement with her arms as though they 
 were wings "oh, I like the feeling of having 
 room!" 
 
 September 30th. 
 
 The weather is better again, and there 
 has been a pause in our strivings. Mrs. 
 Barnes and I drifted, tired both of us, I rest- 
 ing in that refuge of the weak, the putting 
 off of making up my mind, back into talking 
 only of the situation and the view. If 
 Mrs. Barnes were either less good or more 
 intelligent! But the combination of non-
 
 228 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 intelligence with goodness is unassailable 
 You can't get through. Nothing gets through. 
 You give in. You are flattened out. You 
 become a slave. And your case is indeed 
 hopeless if the non-intelligent and good are at 
 the same time the victims, nobly enduring, of 
 undeserved misfortune. 
 
 Evening. 
 
 A really remarkable thing happened to-day : 
 I've had a prayer answered. I shall never 
 dare pray again. I prayed for a man, any 
 man, to come and leaven us, and I've got him. 
 
 Let me set it down in order. 
 
 This afternoon on our walk, soon after 
 we had left the house and were struggling 
 along against gusts of wind and whirling 
 leaves in the direction, as it happened, of 
 the carriage road up from the valley, Dolly 
 said, "Who is that funny little man coining 
 toward us?" 
 
 And I looked, and said after a moment in 
 which my heart stood still for what had 
 he come for? ''That funny little man is 
 my uncle." 
 
 There he was, the authentic uncle: gaiters, 
 apron, shovel hat. He was holding on his 
 hat, and the rude wind, thwarted in its
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 229 
 
 desire to frolic with it, frisked instead about 
 his apron, twitching it up, bellying it out; 
 so that his remaining hand had all it could 
 do to smooth the apron down again decor- 
 ously, and he was obliged to carry his um- 
 brella pressed tightly against his side under 
 his arm. 
 
 "Not your uncle the Dean?" asked Mrs. 
 Barnes in a voice of awe, hastily arranging 
 her toque; for a whiff of the Church, any 
 whiff, even one so faint as a curate, is as 
 the breath of life to her. 
 
 "Yes," I said, amazed and helpless. "My 
 Uncle Rudolph." 
 
 "Why, he might be a German," said 
 Dolly, "with a name like that." 
 
 "Oh, but don't say so to him!" I cried. 
 "He has a perfect horror of Germans 
 
 And it was out before I remembered, 
 before I could stop it. Good heavens, I 
 thought; good heavens. 
 
 I looked sideways at Mrs. Barnes. She 
 was, I am afraid, very red. So I plunged 
 in again, eager to reassure her. "That is 
 to say," I said, "he used to have during the 
 war. But of course now that the war is 
 over it would be mere silliness nobody 
 minds now nobody ought to mind now
 
 230 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 My voice, however, trailed out into silence, 
 for I knew, and Mrs. Barnes knew, that 
 people do mind. 
 
 By this time we were within hail of my 
 uncle and with that joy one instinctively 
 assumes on such occasions I waved my 
 stick in exultant circles at him and called 
 out, "How very delightful of you, Uncle 
 Rudolph!" And I advanced to greet him, 
 the others tactfully dropping behind, alone. 
 
 There on the mountain side, with the rude 
 wind whisking his clothes irreverently about, 
 we kissed; and in my uncle's kiss I instantly 
 perceived something of the quality of Mrs. 
 Barnes's speeches the day I smoked the 
 twelve cigarettes he was forgiving me. 
 
 "I have come to escort you home to 
 England," he said, his face spread over 
 with the spirit of allowing byegones to be 
 byegones; and in that spirit he let go of 
 his apron in order reassuringly to pat my 
 shoulder. Immediately the apron bellied. 
 His hand had abruptly to leave my shoulder 
 so as to clutch it down again. 'You are 
 with ladies?" he said a little distractedly, 
 holding on to this turbulent portion of his 
 clothing. 
 
 "Yes, Uncle Rudolph," I replied, modestly.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 231 
 
 "I hope you didn't expect to find me with 
 gentlemen?" 
 
 "I expected to find you, dear child, as 
 I have always found you ready to admit 
 and retrace. Generously ready to admit 
 and retrace." 
 
 "Sweet of you," I murmured. "But you 
 should have let me know you were coming. 
 I'd have had things killed for you. Fatted 
 things." 
 
 "It is not I," he said, in as gentle a voice 
 as he could manage, the wind being what 
 it was, "who am the returning prodigal. 
 Indeed I wish for your sake that I were. 
 My shoulders could bear the burden better 
 than those little ones of yours." 
 
 This talk was ominous, so I said, "I must 
 introduce you to Mrs. Barnes and her sister 
 Mrs. Jewks. Let me present," I said, cere- 
 moniously, turning to them who were now 
 fortunately near enough, "my Uncle Rudolph 
 to you, of whom you have often heard me 
 speak." 
 
 "Indeed we have," said Mrs. Barnes, with 
 as extreme a cordiality as awe permitted. 
 
 My uncle, obviously relieved to find his 
 niece not eccentrically alone but flanked by 
 figures so respectable, securely, as it were,
 
 232 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 embedded in widows, was very gracious. Mrs. 
 Barnes received his pleasant speeches with 
 delighted reverence; and as we went back to 
 the house, for the first thing to do with arrivals 
 from England is to give them a bath, he and 
 she fell naturally into each other's company 
 along the narrow track, and Dolly and I 
 followed behind. 
 
 We looked at each other simultaneously, 
 perceiving the advantages of four rather 
 than of three. Behind Mrs. Barnes's absorbed 
 and obsequious back we looked at each other 
 with visions in our eyes of unsupervised talks 
 opening before us. 
 
 : 'They have their uses, you see," I said 
 in a low voice not that I need have lowered 
 it in that wind. 
 
 "Deans have," agreed Dolly, nodding. 
 
 And my desire to laugh discreetly, under 
 my breath, ready to pull my face sober 
 and be gazing at the clouds the minute our 
 relations should turn round, was strangled 
 by the chill conviction that my uncle's coming 
 means painful things for me. 
 
 He is going to talk to me; talk about 
 what I am trying so hard not to think of, 
 what I really am succeeding in not thinking 
 of; and he is going to approach the deso-
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 233 
 
 lating subject in, as he will say and perhaps 
 even persuade himself to believe, a Christian 
 spirit, but in what really is a spirit of sheer 
 worldliness. He has well-founded hopes of 
 soon going to be a bishop. I am his niece. 
 The womenkind of bishops should be incon- 
 spicuous, should see to it that comment 
 cannot touch them. Therefore he is going 
 to try to get me to deliver myself up to a 
 life of impossible wretchedness again, only 
 that the outside of it may look in order. 
 The outside of the house of the house of 
 a bishop's niece at all costs keep it neat, 
 keep it looking like all the others in the 
 street; so shall nobody know what is going 
 on inside, and the neighbours won't talk 
 about one's uncle. 
 
 If I were no relation but just a mere, ordinary 
 stranger-soul in difficulties, he, this very same 
 man, would be full of understanding, would 
 find himself unable, indeed, the facts being 
 what they are, to be anything but most earn- 
 estly concerned to help me keep clear of all 
 temptations to do what he calls retrace. 
 And at the same time he would be con- 
 cerned also to strengthen me in that mood 
 which is I am sure the right one, and does 
 very often recur, of being entirely without
 
 234 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 resentment and so glad to have the remem- 
 brance at least of the beautiful things I 
 believed in. But I am his niece. He is 
 about to become a bishop. Naturally he has 
 to be careful not to be too much like Christ. 
 
 Accordingly, I followed uneasily in his 
 footsteps toward the house, dreading what 
 was going to happen next. And nothing 
 has happened next. Not yet, anyhow. I 
 expect to-morrow. . . . 
 
 We spent a most bland evening. I'm 
 as sleepy and as much satiated by ecclesias- 
 tical good things as though I had been the 
 whole day in church. My uncle, washed, 
 shaven, and restored by tea, laid himself 
 out to entertain. He was the decorous life 
 of the party. He let himself go to that 
 tempered exuberance with which good men 
 of his calling like to prove that they really 
 are not so very much different from other 
 people after all. Round the hall fire we 
 sat after tea, and again after supper, Dolly 
 and I facing each other at the corners, my 
 uncle and Mrs. Barnes in the middle, and 
 the room gently echoed with seemly and 
 strictly wholesome rnirth. "How enjoyable," 
 my uncle seemed to say, looking at us at the 
 end of each of his good stories, gathering in
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 235 
 
 the harvest of our appreciation, "how enjoy- 
 able is the indulgence of legitimate fun. Why 
 need one ever indulge in illegitimacy?" 
 
 And indeed his stories were so very good 
 that every one of them, before they reached 
 the point of bringing forth their joke, must 
 have been to church and got married. 
 
 Dolly sat knitting, the light shining on 
 her infantile fair hair, her eyes downcast in 
 a dove-like meekness. Punctually her dimple 
 flickered out at the right moment in each 
 anecdote. She appeared to know by in- 
 stinct where to smile; and several times I 
 was only aware that the moment had come by 
 happening to notice her dimple. 
 
 As for Mrs. Barnes, for the first time since 
 I have known her, her face was cloudless. 
 My uncle embarked on anecdote, did not 
 mention the war. We did not once get on 
 to Germans. Mrs. Barnes could give herself 
 up to real enjoyment. She beamed. She 
 was suffused with reverential delight. And 
 her whole body, the very way she sat in her 
 chair, showed an absorption, an eagerness 
 not to miss a crumb of my uncle's talk, 
 that would have been very gratifying to 
 him if he were not used to just this. It is 
 strange how widows cling to clergymen.
 
 236 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Ever since I can remember, like the afflicted 
 Margaret's apprehensions in Wordsworth's 
 poem, they have come to Uncle Rudolph in 
 crowds. My aunt used to raise her eye- 
 brows and ask me if I could at all tell her 
 what they saw in him. 
 
 When we bade each other good -night there 
 was something in Mrs. Barnes's manner to 
 me that showed me the presence of a man 
 was already doing its work. She was aerated. 
 Fresh air had got into her and was circulating 
 freely. At my bedroom door she embraced 
 me with warm and simple heartiness, without 
 the usual painful search of my face to see if 
 by any chance there was anything she had left 
 undone in her duty of being unselfish. My 
 uncle's arrival has got her thoughts off me 
 for a bit. I knew that what we wanted was a 
 man. Not that a dean is quite my idea of a 
 man, but then, on the other hand, neither is he 
 quite my idea of a woman, and his arrival does 
 put an end for the moment to Mrs. Barnes's 
 and my dreadful combats de generosite. He in- 
 fuses fresh blood into our anaemic little 
 circle. Different blood, perhaps I should 
 rather say; the blood of deans not being, 
 I think, ever very fresh. 
 
 "Good-night, Uncle Rudolph," I said,
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 237 
 
 getting up at ten o'clock and holding up 
 my face to him. "We have to thank you 
 for a delightful evening." 
 
 "Most delightful," echoed Mrs. Barnes, 
 enthusiastically, getting up, too, and rolling 
 up her knitting. 
 
 My uncle was gratified. He felt he had 
 been at his best, and that his best had been 
 appreciated. 
 
 "Good-night, dear child," he said, kissing 
 my offered cheek. "May the blessed angels 
 watch about your bed." 
 
 "Thank you, Uncle Rudolph," I said, 
 bowing my head beneath this benediction. 
 
 Mrs. Barnes looked on at the little domestic 
 scene with reverential sympathy. Then her 
 turn came. 
 
 " Goorf-night, Mrs. Barnes," said my uncle 
 most graciously, shaking hands and doing 
 what my dancing mistress used to call bend- 
 ing from the waist. 
 
 And to Dolly, " GW-night, Miss- 
 Then he hesitated, groping for the name. 
 
 "Mrs," said Dolly, sweetly correcting him, 
 her hand in his. 
 
 "Ah, I beg your pardon. Married. These 
 introductions especially in that noisy wind." 
 
 "No not exactly married," said Dolly
 
 238 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 still sweetly correcting him, her hand still in 
 his. 
 
 "Not exactly ?" 
 
 "My sister has lost her my sister is a 
 widow," said Mrs. Barnes, hastily and ner- 
 vously; alas, these complications of Dolly's! 
 
 "Indeed. Indeed. Sad, sad," said my 
 uncle, sympathetically, continuing to hold 
 her hand. "And so young. Ah. Yes. Well, 
 good night then, Mrs. 
 
 But again he had to pause and grope. 
 
 "Jewks," said Dolly, sweetly. 
 
 "Forgive me. You may depend I shall 
 not again be so stupid. Good-night. And 
 may the blessed angels 
 
 A third time he stopped; pulled up, I 
 suppose, by the thought that it was perhaps 
 not quite seemly to draw the attention of 
 even the angels to an unrelated lady's bed. 
 So he merely very warmly shook her hand, 
 while she smiled a really heavenly smile at 
 him. 
 
 We left him standing with his back to the 
 fire watching us go up the stairs, holding 
 almost tenderly, for one must expend one's 
 sympathy on something, a glass of hot water. 
 
 My uncle is very sympathetic. In matters 
 that do not touch his own advancement he
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 239 
 
 is all sympathy. That is why widows like 
 him, I expect. My aunt would have known 
 the reason if she hadn't been his wife. 
 
 October 1st. 
 
 While I dress it is my habit to read. Some 
 book is propped up open against the looking- 
 glass, and sometimes, for one's eyes can't be 
 everywhere at once, my hooks in conse- 
 quence don't get quite satisfactorily fastened. 
 Indeed I would be very neat if I could, 
 but there are other things. This morning 
 the book was the Bible, and in it I read, 
 A prudent man how much more prudently, 
 then, a woman foreseeth tJie evil and hidetli 
 himself, but tlie simple pass on and are 
 punished. 
 
 This made me late for breakfast. I sat 
 looking out of the window, my hands in 
 my lap, the sensible words of Solomon ring- 
 ing in my ears, and considered if there was 
 any way of escaping the fate of the simple. 
 
 There was no way. It seemed hard that 
 without being exactly of the simple I yet 
 should be doomed to their fate. And out- 
 side it was one of those cold windy mornings 
 when male relations insist on taking one 
 for what they call a run as if one were a
 
 240 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 dog in order to go through the bleak proc- 
 ess they describe as getting one's cobwebs 
 blown off. I can't bear being parted from 
 my cobwebs. I never want them blown off. 
 Uncle Rudolph is small and active, besides 
 having since my aunt's death considerably 
 dwindled beneath his apron, and I felt sure 
 he intended to run me up the mountain after 
 breakfast, and, having got me breathless and 
 speechless on to some cold rock, sit with me 
 there and say all the things I am dreading 
 having to hear. 
 
 It was quite difficult to get myself to go 
 downstairs. I seemed rooted. I knew that, 
 seeing that I am that unfortunately situated 
 person the hostess, my duty lay in morning 
 smiles behind the coffee pot; but the con- 
 viction of what was going to happen to me 
 after the coffee pot kept me rooted, even 
 when the bell had rung twice. 
 
 When, however, after the second ringing 
 quick footsteps pattered along the passage to 
 my door I did get up jumped up, afraid of 
 what might be coming in. Bedrooms are 
 no real protection from uncles. Those quick 
 footsteps might easily be Uncle Rudolph's. 
 I hurried across to the door and pulled it 
 open, so that at least by coming out I might
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 241 
 
 stop his coming in; and there was Mrs. 
 Antoine, her hand lifted up to knock. 
 
 "Ces dames et Monsieur VEveque alien- 
 dent,'" she said, with an air of reproachful 
 surprise. 
 
 "// n'est pas un eveque" I replied a little 
 irritably, for I knew I was in the wrong 
 staying upstairs like that, and naturally 
 resented not being allowed to be in the wrong 
 in peace. "// est seulement presque un." 
 
 Mrs. Antoine said nothing to that, but 
 stepping aside to let me pass informed me 
 rather severely that the coffee had been on 
 the table a whole quarter of an hour. 
 
 "Comment appelle-t-on chez vous" I said, 
 lingering in the doorway to gain time, " cc 
 qui rient devant un eveque?" 
 
 " Ce qui merit devant un eveque?" repeated 
 Mrs. Antoine, doubtfully. 
 
 "Old. Uespece de monsieur qui nest pas 
 tout a fait ereque mais presque?" 
 
 Mrs. Antoine knit her brows. " Mafoi 
 she began. 
 
 "Oh, fai oublic" I said. "Vous netcs 
 plus catholique. 11 n'y a rien comme dcs 
 creques et comme les messieurs qui sont presque 
 creques dans votre eglise protestanle, nest-ce 
 pas?"
 
 242 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Mais rien, rien, rien," asseverated Mrs. 
 Antoine, vehemently, her hands spread out, 
 her shoulders up to her ears, passionately 
 protesting the empty purity of her adopted 
 church "mais rien du tout, du tout. Ma- 
 dame pent venir un dimanche voir " 
 
 Then, having cleared off these imputations, 
 she switched back to the coffee. "Le cafe 
 Madame desire que fen fasse encore ? Ces 
 dames et Monsieur VEreque 
 
 "II nest pas un ev 
 
 "Ah here you are!" exclaimed my uncle, 
 his head appearing at the top of the stairs. 
 "I was just coming to see if there was any- 
 thing the matter. Here she is coming, 
 coming!" he called out, genially, to the others; 
 and on my hurrying to join him, for I am not 
 one to struggle against the inevitable, he put 
 his arm through mine and we went down to- 
 gether. 
 
 Having got me to the bottom he placed both 
 hands on my shoulders and twisted me round 
 to the light. "Dear child," he said, scruti- 
 nizing my face while he held me firmly in this 
 position, "we were getting quite anxious about 
 you. Mrs. Barnes feared you might be ill, 
 and was already contemplating remedies 
 I shuddered "however " he twisted me
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 243 
 
 round to Mrs. Barnes " nothing ill about this 
 little lady, Mrs. Barnes, eh?" 
 
 Then he took my chin between his finger 
 and thumb and kissed me lightly, gaily even, 
 on each cheek, and then, letting me go, he 
 rubbed his hands and briskly approached the 
 table, all the warm things on which were 
 swathed as usual when I am late either in 
 napkins or in portions of Mrs. Barnes's 
 clothing. 
 
 "Come along come along, now break- 
 fast, breakfast," cried my uncle. "For these 
 and all Thy mercies Lord he continued 
 
 with hardly a break, his eyes shut, his hands 
 outspread over Mrs. Barnes's white woollen 
 shawl in benediction. 
 
 We were overwhelmed. The male had 
 arrived and taken us in hand. But we were 
 happily overwhelmed, judging from Mrs. 
 Barnes's face. For the first time since she 
 has been with me the blessing of heaven had 
 been implored and presumably obtained for 
 her egg, and I realized from her expression as 
 she ate it how much she had felt the daily en- 
 forced consumption, owing to my graceless 
 habits, of eggs unsanctified. And Dolly, too, 
 looked pleased, as she always does when her 
 poor Kitty is happy. I alone wasn't. Be-
 
 244 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 hind the coffee pot I sat pensive. I knew too 
 well what was before me. I distrusted my 
 uncle's gaiety. He had thought it all out 
 in the night, and had decided that the best line 
 of approach to the painful subject he had come 
 to discuss would be one of cheerful affection. 
 Certainly I had never seen him in such spirits; 
 but then I haven't seen him since my aunt's 
 death. 
 
 "Dear child," he said, when the table had 
 been picked up and carried off bodily by 
 the Antoines from our midst, leaving us 
 sitting round nothing with the surprised 
 feeling of sudden nakedness that, as I have 
 already explained, this way of clearing away 
 produces my uncle was actually surprised 
 for a moment into silence " dear child, I 
 would like to take you for a little run before 
 lunch." 
 
 "Yes, Uncle Rudolph?" 
 
 'That we may get rid of our cobwebs." 
 
 "Yes, Uncle Rudolph." 
 
 "I know you are a quick-limbed little 
 lady- 
 
 " Yes, Uncle Rudolph?" 
 
 "So you shall take the edge off my appetite 
 for exercise." 
 
 "Yes, Uncle Rudolph."
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 245 
 
 "Then perhaps this afternoon one or other 
 of these ladies "I noted his caution in 
 not suggesting both. 
 
 "Oh, delightful," Mrs. Barnes hastened to 
 assure him. "We shall be only too pleased 
 to accompany you. We are great walkers. 
 We think a very great deal of the benefits 
 to be derived from regular exercise. Our 
 father brought us up to a keen appreciation 
 of its necessity. If it were not that we so 
 strongly feel that the greater part of each 
 day should be employed in some useful 
 pursuit, we would spend it, I believe, almost 
 altogether in outdoor exercise." 
 
 "Why not go with my uncle this morning, 
 then?" I asked, catching at a straw. "I've 
 got to order dinner 
 
 "Oh, no, no not on any account. The 
 Dean's wishes 
 
 But who should pass through the hall at 
 that moment, making for the small room 
 where I settle my household affairs, his 
 arms full of the monthly books, but Antoine. 
 It is the first of October. Pay day. I had 
 forgotten. And for this one morning, at 
 least, I knew that I was saved. 
 
 "Look," I said to Mrs. Barnes, nodding in 
 the direction of Antoine and his burden.
 
 246 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 I felt certain she would have all the ap- 
 preciation of the solemnity, the undefera- 
 bility, of settling up that is characteristic of 
 the virtuous poor; she would understand 
 that even the wishes of deans must come 
 second to this holy household rite. 
 
 "Oh, how unfortunate!" she exclaimed. 
 "Just this day of all days your uncle's first 
 day." 
 
 But there was nothing to be done. She 
 saw that. And besides, never was a woman 
 so obstinately determined as I was to do my 
 duty. 
 
 "Dear Uncle Rudolph," I said very amiably 
 I did suddenly feel very amiable " I'm 
 so sorry. This is the one day in the month 
 when I am tethered. Any other day 
 
 And I withdrew with every appearance of 
 reluctant but indomitable virtue into my 
 little room and stayed there shut in safe till 
 I heard them go out. 
 
 From the window I could see them pres- 
 ently starting off up the mountain, actively 
 led by my uncle who hadn't succeeded in 
 taking only one, Mrs. Barnes following with 
 the devoutness she who in our walks goes 
 always first and chooses the way of an 
 obedient hen, and some way behind, as
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 247 
 
 though she disliked having to shed her cob- 
 webs as much as I do, straggled Dolly. 
 Then, when they had dwindled into just 
 black specks away up the slope, I turned 
 with lively pleasure to paying the books. 
 
 Those blessed books! If only I could 
 have gone on paying them over and over 
 again, paying them all day! But when I 
 had done them, and conversed about the hens 
 and bees and cow with Antoine, and it was 
 getting near lunch-time, and at any moment 
 through the window I might see the three 
 specks that had dwindled appearing as three 
 specks that were swelling, I thought I noticed 
 I had a headache. 
 
 Addings-up often give me a headache, es- 
 pecially when they won't, which they cu- 
 riously often won't, add up the same twice 
 running, so that it was quite likely that 
 I had got a headache. I sat waiting to be 
 quite sure, and presently, just as the three 
 tiny specks appeared on the sky line, I was 
 quite sure; and I came up here and put 
 myself to bed. For, I argued, it isn't grape- 
 stones this time, it's sums, and Mrs. Barnes 
 can't dose me for what is only arithmetic; 
 also, even if Uncle Rudolph insists on com- 
 ing to my bedside he can't be so inhumane
 
 248 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 as to torment somebody who isn't very 
 well. 
 
 So here I have been ever since snugly in 
 bed, and I must say my guests have been 
 most considerate. They have left me almost 
 altogether alone. Mrs. Barnes did look in 
 once, and when I said, closing my eyes, "It's 
 those tradesmen's books " she understood 
 immediately, and simply nodded her head 
 and disappeared. 
 
 Dolly came and sat with me for a little, 
 but we hadn't said much before Mrs. Antoine 
 brought a message from my uncle asking her 
 to go down to tea. 
 
 " What are you all doing?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, just sitting round the fire not talking," 
 she said, smiling. 
 
 "Not talking?" I said, surprised. 
 
 But she was gone. 
 
 Perhaps, I thought, they're not talking for 
 fear of disturbing me. This really was most 
 considerate. 
 
 As for Uncle Rudolph, he hasn't even tried 
 to come and see me. The only sign of life 
 he has made was to send me the current 
 number of the Nineteenth Century he brought 
 out with him, in which he has an article a 
 very good one. Else he, too, has been quite
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 249 
 
 quiet; and I have read, and I have pondered, 
 and I have written this, and now it really is 
 bedtime and I'm going to sleep. 
 
 Well, a whole day has been gained anyhow, 
 and I have had hours and hours of complete 
 peace. Rather a surprising lot of peace, 
 really. It is rather surprising, I think. I 
 mean, that they haven't wanted to come and 
 see me more. Nobody has even been to say 
 good-night to me. I think I like being said 
 good-night to. Especially if nobody does 
 say it. 
 
 October %nd. 
 
 Twenty-four hours sometimes produce re- 
 markable changes. These have. 
 
 Again it is night, and again I'm in my room 
 on my way to going to sleep; but before I get 
 any sleepier I'll write what I can about to-day, 
 because it has been an extremely interesting 
 day. I knew that what we wanted was a man. 
 
 At breakfast, to which I proceeded punctu- 
 ally, refreshed by my retreat yesterday, armed 
 from head to foot in all the considerations 
 I had collected during those quiet hours 
 most likely to make me immune from Uncle 
 Rudolph's inevitable attacks, having said 
 iny prayers and emptied my mind of weaken-
 
 250 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 ing memories, I found my three guests silent. 
 Uncle Rudolph's talkativeness, so conspicuous 
 at yesterday's breakfast, was confined at 
 to-day's to saying grace. Except for that, 
 he didn't talk at all. And neither, once 
 having said her Amen, did Mrs. Barnes. 
 Neither did Dolly, but then she never does. 
 
 "I've not got a headache," I gently said 
 at last, looking round at them. 
 
 Perhaps they were still going on being con- 
 siderate, I thought. At least, perhaps Mrs. 
 Barnes was. My uncle's silence was merely 
 ominous of what I was in for, of how strongly, 
 after another night's thinking it out, he felt 
 about my affairs and his own lamentable con- 
 nection with them owing to God's having 
 given me to him for a niece. But Mrs. 
 Barnes why didn't she talk? She couldn't 
 surely intend, because once I had a headache, 
 to go on tip-toe for the rest of our days to- 
 gether? 
 
 Nobody having taken any notice of my 
 first announcement I presently said, "I'm 
 very well, indeed, thank you, this morning." 
 
 At this Dolly laughed, and her eyes sent 
 little morning kisses across to me. She, at 
 least, was in her normal state. 
 
 "Aren't you ' I looked at the other two
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 251 
 
 unresponsive breakfasting heads "aren't you 
 glad?" 
 
 "Very," said Mrs. Barnes. "Very." But 
 she didn't raise her eyes from her egg, and my 
 uncle again took no notice. 
 
 So then I thought I might as well not take 
 any notice either, and I ate my breakfast in 
 dignity and retirement, occasionally fortifying 
 myself against what awaited me after it by 
 looking at Dolly's restful and refreshing face. 
 
 Such an unclouded face; so sweet, so 
 clean, so sunny with morning graciousness. 
 Really an ideal breakfast-table face. For- 
 tunate Juchs and Siegfried, I thought, to 
 have had it to look forward to every morning. 
 That they were undeserving of their good 
 fortune I patriotically felt sure, as I sat 
 considering the gentle sweep of her eyelashes 
 while she buttered her toast. Yet they did, 
 both of them make her happy; or perhaps 
 it was that she made them happy, and caught 
 her own happiness back again, as it were on 
 the rebound. With any ordinarily kind and 
 decent husband this must be possible. That 
 she had been happy was evident, for un- 
 happiness leaves traces, and I've never seen 
 an object quite so unmarked, quite so can- 
 did as Dolly's intelligent and charming brow.
 
 252 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 We finished our breakfast in silence; and 
 no sooner had the table been plucked out 
 from our midst by the swift, disconcerting 
 Antoines, than my uncle got up and went to 
 the window. 
 
 There he stood with his back to us. 
 
 "Do you feel equal to a walk?" he asked, 
 not turning round. 
 
 Profound silence. 
 
 \Ye three, still sitting round the blank the 
 vanished table had left, looked at each other, 
 our eyes inquiring mutely, "Is it I?" 
 
 But I knew it was me. 
 
 "Do you mean me, Uncle Rudolph?" I 
 therefore asked; for after all it had best be 
 got over quickly. 
 
 "Yes, dear child." 
 
 "Now?" 
 
 "If you will." 
 
 "There's no esc you don't think the 
 weather too horrid?" 
 
 "Bracing." 
 
 I sighed, and went away to put on my 
 nailed boots. 
 
 Relations . . . what right had he 
 as though I hadn't suffered hor- 
 ribly. . . and on such an unpleasant 
 morning. . . if at least it had been fine
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 253 
 
 and warm. . . but to be taken up a 
 mountain in a bitter wind so as to be made 
 miserable on the top. 
 
 And two hours later, when I was perched 
 exactly as I had feared on a cold rock, reached 
 after breathless toil in a searching wind, 
 perched draughtily and shorn of every cob- 
 web I could ever in my life have possessed, 
 helplessly exposed to the dreaded talking-to, 
 Uncle Rudolph, settling himself at my feet, 
 after a long and terrifying silence during 
 which I tremblingly went over my defences 
 in the vain effort to assure myself that per- 
 haps I wasn't going to be much hurt, said : 
 
 "How does she spell it?" 
 
 Really one is very fatuous. Absorbed in 
 myself, I hadn't thought of Dolly. 
 
 October 3rd. 
 
 It was so late last night when I got to that, 
 that I went to bed. Now it is before break- 
 fast, and I'll finish about yesterday. 
 
 Uncle Rudolph had taken me up the moun- 
 tain only to talk of Dolly. Incredible as it 
 may seem, he has fallen in love. At first 
 sight. At sixty. I am sure a woman can't 
 do that, so that this by itself convinces me he 
 is a man. Three days ago I wrote in this very
 
 254 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 book that a dean isn't quite my idea of a 
 man. I retract. He is. 
 
 Well, while I was shrinking and shivering 
 on my own account, waiting for him to begin 
 digging about among my raw places, he said 
 instead, "How does she spell it?" and threw 
 my thoughts into complete confusion. 
 
 Blankly I gazed at him while I struggled 
 to rearrange them on this new basis. It was 
 such an entirely unexpected question. I did 
 not at this stage dream of what had happened 
 to him. It never would have occurred to 
 me that Dolly would have so immediate 
 an effect, simply by sitting there, simply by 
 producing her dimple at the right moment. 
 Attractive as she is, it is her ways rather than 
 her looks that are so adorable; and what 
 could Uncle Rudolph have seen of her ways 
 in so brief a time? He has simply fallen 
 in love with a smile. And he sixty. And 
 he one's uncle. Amazing Dolly; irresistible; 
 apparently, to uncles. 
 
 "Do you mean Mrs. Jewks's name?" I 
 asked, when I was able to speak. 
 'Yes," said my uncle. 
 
 "I haven't seen it written," I said, restored 
 so far by my relief for Dolly had saved me 
 that I had the presence of mind to hedge.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 255 
 
 I was obliged to hedge. In my mind's eye 
 I saw Mrs. Barnes's face imploring me. 
 
 "No doubt," said my uncle after another 
 silence, "it is spelt on the same principle as 
 Molyneux." 
 
 "Very likely," I agreed. 
 
 "It sounds as though her late husband's 
 family might originally have been French." 
 
 "It does rather." 
 
 '"Possibly Huguenot." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I was much astonished that she should be a 
 widow." 
 
 " Yet not one widow but two widows . . ." 
 ran at this like a refrain in my mind, perhaps 
 because I was sitting so close to a dean. 
 Aloud I said, for by now I had completely 
 recovered, "Why, Uncle Rudolph? Widows 
 do abound." 
 
 "Alas, yes. But there is something pecu- 
 liarly virginal about Mrs. Jcwks." 
 
 I admitted that this was so. Part of 
 Dolly's attractiveness is the odd impression 
 she gives of untouchedncss, of gay aloofness. 
 
 My uncle broke off a stalk of the withered 
 last summer's grass and began nibbling it. 
 He was lying on his side a little below me, 
 resting on his elbow. His black, neat legs
 
 256 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 looked quaint stuck through the long yellow 
 grass. He had taken off his hat, hardy 
 creature, and the wind blew his gray hair 
 this way and that, and sometimes flattened 
 it down in a fringe over his eyes. When this 
 happened he didn't look a bit like anybody 
 good, but he pushed it back each time, 
 smoothing it down again with an abstracted 
 carefulness, his eyes fixed on the valley far 
 below. He wasn't seeing the valley. 
 
 "How long has the poor young thing- 
 he began. 
 
 "You will be surprised to hear," I inter- 
 rupted him, "that Mrs. Jewks is forty." 
 
 "Really," said my uncle, staring round at 
 me. "Really. That is indeed surprising." 
 And after a pause he added, "Surprising and 
 gratifying." 
 
 "Why gratifying, Uncle Rudolph?" I in- 
 quired. 
 
 "When did she lose her husband?" he 
 asked, taking no notice of my inquiry. 
 
 The preliminary to an accurate answer to 
 this question was, of course, Which? But 
 again a vision of Mrs. Barnes's imploring face 
 rose before me, and accordingly, restricting 
 myself to Juchs, I said she had lost him 
 shortly before the war.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 257 
 
 "Ah. So he was prevented, poor fellow, 
 from having the honour of dying for England." 
 
 "Yes, Uncle Rudolph." 
 
 " Poor fellow. Poor fellow." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Poor fellow. Well, he was spared know- 
 ing what he had missed. At least he was 
 spared that. And she his poor wife how 
 did she take it?" 
 
 "Well, I think." 
 
 :< Yes. I can believe it. She wouldn't 
 I am very sure she wouldn't intrude her 
 sorrows selfishly on others." 
 
 It was at this point that I became aware 
 my uncle had fallen in love. Up to this, 
 oddly enough, it hadn't dawned on me. 
 Now it did more than dawn, it blazed. 
 
 I looked at him with a new and startled 
 interest. "Uncle Rudolph," I said, impetu- 
 ously, no longer a distrustful niece talking to 
 an uncle she suspects, but an equal with an 
 equal, a human being with another human 
 being, "haven't you ever thought of marrying 
 again? It's quite a long time now since 
 Aunt Winifred 
 
 'Thought?" said my uncle, his voice 
 sounding for the first time simply, ordinarily 
 human, without a trace in it of the fatal pul-
 
 258 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 pit flavour. "Thought? I'm always thinking 
 of it." 
 
 And except for his apron and gaiters he 
 might have been any ordinary, solitary little 
 man eating out his heart for a mate. 
 
 "But then why don't you? Surely a 
 deanery ot all places wants a wife in it?" 
 
 "Of course it does. Those strings of rooms 
 empty, echoing. It shouts for a wife. 
 Shouts, I tell you. At least mine does. 
 But I've never found I hadn't seen " 
 
 He broke off, biting at the stalk of grass. 
 
 "But I remember you," I went on, eagerly, 
 "always surrounded by flocks of devoted 
 women. Weren't any of them ?" 
 
 "No," said my uncle shortly. And after 
 a second of silence he said again, and so loud 
 that I jumped, "No!" And then he went on 
 even more violently, "They didn't give me 
 a chance. They never let me alone a minute. 
 After Winifred's death they were like flies. 
 Stuck to me made me sick great flies 
 
 crawling And he shuddered, and shook 
 
 himself as though he were shaking off the lot 
 of them. 
 
 I looked at him in amazement. "Why," 
 I cried, "you're talking exactly like a 
 man!"
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 259 
 
 But he, staring at the view without seeing 
 an inch of it, took no heed of me, and I heard 
 him say under his breath, as though I hadn't 
 been there at all, "My God, I'm so lonely at 
 night!" 
 
 That finished it. In that moment I began 
 to love my uncle. At this authentic cry of 
 forlornness I had great difficulty in not 
 bending over and putting my arms round 
 him just to comfort him, just to keep him 
 warm. It must be a dreadful thing to be 
 sixty and all alone. You look so grown up. 
 You look as though you must have so many 
 resources, so few needs; and you are accepted 
 as provided for, what with your career ac- 
 complished, and your houses and servants 
 and friends and books and all the rest of it- 
 all the empty, meaningless rest of it for really 
 you are the most miserable of motherless cold 
 babies, conscious that you are motherless, 
 conscious that nobody soft and kind and 
 adoring is ever again coming to croon over 
 you and kiss you good-night and be there 
 next morning to smile when you wake up. 
 
 "Uncle Rudolph ' I began. 
 
 Then I stopped, and bending over took the 
 stalk of grass he kept on biting out of his 
 hand.
 
 260 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "I can't let you eat any more of that," I 
 said. "It's not good for you." 
 
 And having got hold of his hand I kept 
 it. 
 
 "There, now," I said, holding it tight. 
 
 He looked up at me vaguely, absorbed in 
 his thoughts; then, realizing how tight his 
 hand was being held, he smiled. 
 
 : 'You dear child," he said, scanning my 
 face as though he had never seen it before. 
 
 ;< Yes," I said, smiling in my turn and not 
 letting go of his hand. "I like that. I 
 didn't like any of the other dear children I 
 was." 
 
 "Which other dear children?" 
 
 "Uncle Rudolph," I said, "let's go home. 
 This is a bleak place. Why do we sit here 
 shivering forlornly when there's all that 
 waiting for us down there?" 
 
 And loosing his hand I got on to my feet, 
 and when I was on them I held out both my 
 hands to him and pulled him up, and he 
 standing lower than where I was our eyes 
 were then on a level. 
 
 "All what?" he asked, his eyes searching 
 mine. 
 
 " Oh, Uncle Rudolph ! Warmth and Dolly, 
 of course."
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 261 
 
 October 4>th. 
 
 But it hasn't been quite so simple. Noth- 
 ing last night was different. My uncle re- 
 mained tongue-tied. Dolly sat waiting to 
 smile at anecdotes that he never told. Mrs 
 Barnes knitted uneasily, already fearing, per- 
 haps, because of his strange silence, that 
 he somehow may have scented Siegfried, 
 else how inexplicable his silence after that one 
 bright, wonderful first evening and morning. 
 
 It was I last night who did the talking, it 
 was I who took up the line, abandoned by 
 my uncle, of wholesome entertainment. I, 
 too, told anecdotes; and when I had told all 
 the ones I knew and still nobody said any- 
 thing, I began to tell all the ones I didn't 
 know. Anything rather than that continued, 
 uncomfortable silence. But how very diffi- 
 cult it was. I grew quite damp with effort. 
 And nobody except Dolly so much as smiled; 
 and even Dolly, though she smiled, especially 
 when I embarked on my second series of 
 anecdotes, looked at me with a mild inquiry, 
 as if she were wondering what was the matter 
 with me. 
 
 Wretched, indeed, is the hostess upon 
 whose guests has fallen, from whatever cause, 
 a blight.
 
 262 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 October 5th. 
 
 Crabbe's son, in the life he wrote of his 
 father, asks: "Will it seem wonderful when we 
 consider how lie was situated at this time, that 
 with a most affectionate heart, a peculiar 
 attachment to female society, and with unwasted 
 passions, Mr. Crabbe, though in his sixty- 
 second year should have again thought of 
 marriage ? I feel satisfied that no one will be 
 seriously shocked with such an evidence of the 
 freshness of his feelings." 
 
 A little shocked; Crabbe's son was pre- 
 pared to allow this much; but not seriously. 
 
 Well, it is a good thing my uncle didn't live 
 at that period, for it would have gone hard 
 with him. His feelings are more than fresh, 
 they are violent. 
 
 October 6th. 
 
 While Dolly is in the room Uncle Rudolph 
 never moves, but sits tongue-tied staring at 
 her. If she goes away he at once gets up and 
 takes me by the arm and walks me off on to 
 the terrace, where in a biting wind we pace 
 up and down. 
 
 Our positions are completely reversed. It is 
 I now who am the wise old relative, counsel- 
 ling, encouraging, listening to outpours. Up
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 263 
 
 and down we pace, up and down, very fast 
 because of the freshness of Uncle's Rudolph's 
 feelings and also of the wind, arm in arm, 
 I trying to keep step, he not bothering about 
 such things as step, absorbed in his condition, 
 his hopes, his fears especially his fears. 
 For he is terrified lest, having at last found 
 the perfect woman, she won't have him. 
 "Why should she?" he asks, almost angrily, 
 "Why should she? Tell me why she should." 
 
 "I can't tell you," I say, for Uncle Rudolph 
 and I are now the frankest friends. "But 
 I can't tell you either why she shouldn't. 
 Think how nice you are, Uncle Rudolph. 
 And Dolly is naturally very affectionate." 
 
 "She is perfect, perfect," vehemently de- 
 clares my uncle. 
 
 And Mrs. Barnes, who from the window 
 watches us while we walk, looks with anxious, 
 questioning eyes at my face when we come in. 
 What can my uncle have to talk about so 
 eagerly to me when he is out on the terrace, 
 and why does he stare in such stony silence at 
 Dolly when he comes in? Poor Mrs. Barnes. 
 
 October 7th. 
 
 The difficulty about Dolly for courting 
 purposes is that she is never to be got alone,
 
 264 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 not even into a corner out of earshot of 
 Mrs. Barnes. Mrs. Barnes doesn't go away 
 for a moment, except together with Dolly. 
 Wonderful how clever she is at it. She is 
 obsessed by terror lest the horrid marriage 
 to the German uncle should somehow be 
 discovered. If she was afraid of my knowing 
 it she is a hundred times more afraid of 
 Uncle Rudolph's knowing it. So persistent 
 is her humility, so great and remote a digni- 
 tary does he seem to her, that the real situa- 
 tion hasn't even glimmered on her. All she 
 craves is to keep this holy and distinguished 
 man's good opinion, to protect her Dolly, her 
 darling erring one, from his just but un- 
 bearable contempt. Therefore she doesn't 
 budge. Dolly is never to be got alone. 
 
 "A man," said my uncle violently to me 
 this morning, "can't propose to a woman 
 before her sister." 
 
 'You've quite decided you're going to?" 
 I asked, keeping up with him as best I could, 
 trotting beside him up and down the terrace. 
 
 "The minute I can catch her alone. I 
 can't stand any more of this. I must know. 
 If she won't have me my God, if she won't 
 have me !" 
 
 I laid hold affectionately of his arm. "Oh,
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 265 
 
 but she will," I said, reassuringly. "Dolly 
 is rather a creature of habit, you know." 
 
 ; ' You mean she has got used to marriage " 
 
 "Well, I do think she is rather used to it. 
 Uncle Rudolph," I went on, hesitating as I 
 have hesitated a dozen times these last few 
 days as to whether I oughtn't to tell him 
 about Juchs Siegfried would be a shock, 
 but Juchs would be crushing unless very 
 carefully explained "you don't feel you 
 don't think you'd like to know something 
 more about Dolly first? I mean before you 
 propose?" 
 
 "No!" shouted my uncle. 
 
 Afterward he said more quietly that he 
 could see through a brick wall as well as most 
 men, and that Dolly wasn't a brick wall but 
 the perfect woman. What could be told 
 him that he didn't see for himself? Nothing, 
 said my uncle. 
 
 What can be done with a man in love? 
 Nothing, say I. 
 
 October Sth, 
 
 Sometimes I feel very angry with Dolly 
 that she should have got herself so tiresomely 
 mixed up with Germans. How simple every- 
 thing would be now if only she hadn't! But
 
 266 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 when I am calm again I realize that she 
 couldn't help it. It is as natural to her to 
 get mixed up as to breathe. ^ Very sweet, 
 affectionate natures are always getting mixed 
 up. I suppose if it weren't for Mrs. Barnes's 
 constant watchfulness and her own earnest 
 desire never again to distress poor Kitty, 
 she would at an early stage of their war 
 wanderings have become some ardent Swiss 
 hotelkeeper's wife. Just to please him; just 
 because else he would be miserable. Dolly 
 ought to be married. It is the only certain 
 way of saving her from marriage. 
 
 October 9th. 
 
 It is snowing. The wind howls, and the 
 snow whirls, and we can't go out and so get 
 away from each other. Uncle Rudolph is 
 obliged, when Dolly isn't there, to continue 
 sitting with Mrs. Barnes. He can't to-day 
 hurry me out on to the terrace. There's only 
 the hall in this house to sit in, for that place 
 I pay the household books in is no more than 
 a cupboard. 
 
 Uncle Rudolph could just bear Mrs. Barnes 
 when he could get away from her; to-day 
 he can't bear her at all. Everything that 
 should be characteristic of a dean patience,
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 267 
 
 courtesy, kindliness, has been stripped off 
 him by his eagerness to propose and the 
 impossibility of doing it. There's nothing 
 at all left now of what he was but that empty 
 symbol, his apron. 
 
 October Wth. 
 
 My uncle is fermenting with checked, 
 prevented courting. And he ought to be 
 back in England. He ought to have gone 
 back almost at once, he says. He only came 
 out for three or four days 
 
 ; 'Yes; just time to settle me in," I said. 
 
 "Yes," he said, smiling, "and then take you 
 home with me by the ear." 
 
 He has some very important meetings he 
 is to preside at coming off soon, and here he is, 
 hung up. It is Mrs. Barnes who is the cause 
 of it, and naturally he isn't very nice to her. 
 In vain does she try to please him; the one 
 thing he wants her to do, to go away and leave 
 him with Dolly, she of course doesn't. She 
 sits there, saying meek things about the 
 weather, expressing a modest optimism, ready 
 to relinquish even that if my uncle differs, 
 becoming, when he takes up a book, respect- 
 fully quiet, ready the moment he puts it down 
 to rejoice with him if he wishes to rejoice or
 
 268 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 weep with him if he prefers weeping; and the 
 more she is concerned to give satisfaction the 
 less well-disposed is he toward her. He can't 
 forgive her inexplicable fixedness. Her per- 
 sistent, unintermittent gregariousness is incom- 
 prehensible to him. All he wants, being re- 
 duced to simplicity by love, is to be left alone 
 with Dolly. He can't understand, being a 
 man, why if he wants this he shouldn't get it. 
 
 "You're not kind to Mrs. Barnes," I said 
 to him this afternoon. 'You've made her 
 quite unnatural. She is cowed." 
 
 "I am unable to like her," said my uncle, 
 shortly. 
 
 ; ' You are quite wrong not to. She has had 
 bitter trouble, and is all goodness. I don't 
 think I ever met anybody so completely 
 unselfish." 
 
 "I wish she would go and be unselfish in 
 her own room, then," said my uncle. 
 
 "I don't know you," I said, shrugging my 
 shoulders. 'You arrived here dripping unc- 
 tion and charitableness, and now 
 
 "Why doesn't she give me a chance?" he 
 cried. "She never budges. These women who 
 stick, who can't bear to be by themselves good 
 heavens, hasn't she prayers she ought to be 
 saying, and underclothes she ought to mend?"
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 269 
 
 "I don't believe you care so very much for 
 Dolly, after all," I said, "or you would be 
 kind to the sister she is so deeply devoted to." 
 
 This sobered him. "I'll try," said my 
 uncle; and it was quite hard not to laugh 
 at the change in our positions I the gray- 
 beard now, the wise rebuker, he the hot- 
 headed yet well-intentioned young relative. 
 
 October \\th. 
 
 I think guests ought to like each other; 
 love each other if they prefer it, but at least 
 like. They, too, have their duties, and one 
 of them is to resist nourishing aversions; 
 or, if owing to their implacable dispositions 
 they can't help nourishing them oughtn't 
 they to try very hard not to show it? 
 They should consider the helpless position 
 of the hostess she who, at any rate theoreti- 
 cally, is bound to be equally attached to 
 them all. 
 
 Before my uncle came it is true we had 
 begun to fester, but we festered nicely. 
 Mrs. Barnes and I did it with every mark 
 of consideration and politeness. We were 
 ladies. Uncle Rudolph is no lady; and this 
 little house, which I daresay looks a picture 
 of peace from outside with the snow falling
 
 270 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 on its roof and the firelight shining in its 
 windows, seethes with elemental passions. 
 Fear, love, anger they all dwell in it now, 
 all brought into it by him, all coming out of 
 the mixture, so innocuous one would think, 
 so likely, one would think, to produce only 
 the fruits of the spirit the mixture of two 
 widows and one clergyman. Wonderful how 
 much can be accomplished with small means. 
 Also, most wonderful the centuries that seem 
 to separate me from those July days when I 
 lay innocently on the grass watching the clouds 
 pass over the blue of the delphinium tops, 
 before ever I had set eyes on Mrs. Barnes and 
 Dolly, and while Uncle Rudolph, far away at 
 home and not even beginning to think of a 
 passport, was being normal in his Deanery. 
 
 He has, I am sure, done what he promised, 
 and tried to be kinder to Mrs. Barnes, and I 
 can only conclude he was not able to manage 
 it, for I see no difference. He glowers and 
 glowers, and she immovably knits. And in 
 spite of the silence that reigns except when, 
 for a desperate moment, I make an effort to 
 be amusing, there is a curious feeling that we 
 are really living in a state of muffled uproar, 
 in a constant condition of barely suppressed 
 brawl. I feel as though the least thing, the
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 271 
 
 least touch, even somebody coughing, and 
 the house will blow up. I catch myself 
 walking carefully across the hall so as not to 
 shake it, not to knock against the furniture. 
 How secure, how peaceful, of what a great 
 and splendid simplicity do those July days, 
 those pre-guest days, seem now! 
 
 October 12th. 
 
 I went into Dolly's bedroom last night, 
 crept in on tip-toe because there is a door 
 leading from it into Mrs. Barnes's room, 
 caught hold firmly of her wrist, and led her, 
 without saying a word and taking infinite 
 care to move quietly, into my bedroom. 
 Then, having shut her in, I said, "What are 
 you going to do about it?" 
 
 She didn't pretend not to understand. 
 The candour of Dolly's brow is an exact 
 reflection of the candour of her mind. 
 
 "About your uncle," she said, nodding. 
 "I like him very much." 
 
 "Enough to marry him?" 
 
 "Oh, quite. I always like people enough to 
 marry them." And she added, as though in 
 explanation of this perhaps rather excessively 
 amiable tendency, "Husbands are so kind." 
 
 "You ought to know," I conceded.
 
 272 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "I do," said Dolly, with the sweetest 
 reminiscent smile. 
 
 "Uncle Rudolph is only waiting to get you 
 alone to propose," I said. 
 
 Dolly nodded. There was nothing I could 
 tell her that she wasn't already aware of. 
 
 "As you appear to have noticed every- 
 thing," I said, "I suppose you have also 
 noticed that he is very much in love with 
 
 you." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Dolly, placidly. 
 
 "So much in love that he doesn't seem even 
 to remember that he's a dignitary of the 
 Church, and when he's alone with me he 
 behaves in a way I'm sure the Church wouldn't 
 like at all. Why, he almost swears." 
 
 "Isn't it a good thing," said Dolly, ap- 
 provingly. 
 
 "Yes. But now what is to be done about 
 Siegfried 
 
 "Dear Siegfried," murmured Dolly. 
 
 "And Juchs- 
 
 "Poor darling," murmured Dolly. 
 
 'Yes, yes. But oughtn't Uncle Rudolph 
 to be told?" 
 
 "Of course," said Dolly, her eyes a little 
 surprised that I should want to know any- 
 thing so obvious.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 273 
 
 "You told me it would kill Kitty if I knew 
 about Juchs. It will kill her twice as much 
 if Uncle Rudolph know T s." 
 
 " Kitty won't know anything about it. 
 At least, not till it's all over. My dear, when 
 it comes to marrying I can't be stuck all 
 about with secrets." 
 
 "Do you mean to tell my uncle yourself?" 
 
 "Of course," said Dolly, again with surprise 
 in her eyes. 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "When he asks me to marry him. Till he 
 does I don't quite see what it has to do with 
 him." 
 
 "And you're not afraid you don't think 
 your second marriage will be a great shock to 
 him? He being a dean, and nourished on 
 Tables of Affinity?" 
 
 "I can't help it if it is. He has got to 
 know. If he loves me enough it won't matter 
 to him, and if he doesn't love me enough it 
 won't matter to him cither." 
 
 "Because then his objections to Juchs 
 would be greater than his wish to marry you?" 
 
 "Yes," said Dolly, smiling. "It would 
 mean," she went on, "that he wasn't fond of 
 me enough." 
 
 "And you wouldn't mind?"
 
 274 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Her eyes widened a little. "Why should 
 I mind?" 
 
 "No. I suppose you wouldn't, as you're 
 not in love." 
 
 I then remarked that, though I could 
 understand her not being in love with a man 
 my uncle's age, it was my belief that she had 
 never in her life been in love. Not even 
 with Siegfried. Not with anybody. 
 
 Dolly said she hadn't, and that she liked 
 people much too much to want to grab at 
 them. 
 
 "Grab at them!" 
 
 "That's what your being in love does," 
 said Dolly, "It grabs." 
 
 "But you've been grabbed yourself, and 
 you liked it. Uncle Rudolph is certainly 
 bent on grabbing you." 
 
 "Yes. But the man gets over it quicker. 
 He grabs and has done with it, and then 
 settles down to the real things affection 
 and kindness. A woman hasn't ever done 
 with it. She can't let go. And the poor 
 thing, because she what you call loves, is so 
 dreadfully vulnerable, and gets so hurt, so 
 hurt- 
 Dolly began kissing me and stroking my 
 hair.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 275 
 
 "I think, though," I said, while she was do- 
 ing this, "I'd rather have loved thoroughly 
 you can call it grabbing if you like, I don't 
 care what ugly words you use and been 
 vulnerable and got hurt, than never once 
 have felt than just be a sort of amiable 
 amoeba 
 
 "Has it occurred to you," interrupted 
 Dolly, continuing to kiss me her cheek was 
 against mine, and she was stroking my hair 
 very tenderly "that if I marry that dear 
 little uncle of yours I shall be your aunt?" 
 
 October 13th. 
 
 Well, then, if Dolly is ready to marry my 
 uncle and my uncle is dying to marry Dolly, 
 all that remains to be done is to remove Mrs. 
 Barnes for an hour from the hall. An hour 
 would be long enough, I think, to include 
 everything five minutes for the proposal, 
 fifteen for presenting Siegfried, thirty-five 
 for explaining Juchs, and five for the final 
 happy mutual acceptances. 
 
 This very morning I must somehow manage 
 to get Mrs. Barnes away. How it is to be 
 done 1 can't think; especially for so long 
 as an hour. Yet Juchs and Siegfried couldn't 
 be rendered intelligible, I feel, in less than
 
 276 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 fifty minutes between them. Yes; it will 
 have to be an hour. 
 
 I have tried over and over again the last 
 few days to lure Mrs. Barnes out of the hall, 
 but it has been useless. Is it possible that 
 I shall have to do something unpleasant to 
 myself, hurt myself, hurt something that takes 
 time to bandage? The idea is repugnant to 
 me; still, things can't go on like this. 
 
 I asked Dolly last night if I hadn't better 
 draw Mrs. Barnes's attention to my uncle's 
 lovelorn condition, for obviously the marriage 
 would be a solution of all her difficulties and 
 could give her nothing but extraordinary re- 
 lief and joy; but Dolly wouldn't let me. She 
 said that it would only agonize poor Kitty to 
 become aware that my uncle was in love, for 
 she would be quite certain that the moment he 
 heard about Juchs horror would take the 
 place of love. How could a dean of the 
 Church of England, Kitty would say, bring 
 himself to take as wife one who had previously 
 been married to an item in the forbidden list 
 of the Tables of Affinity? And Juchs being 
 German w r ould only, she would feel, make it 
 so much more awful. Besides, said Dolly, 
 smiling and shaking her head, my uncle 
 mightn't propose at all. He might change
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 277 
 
 again. I myself had been astonished, she 
 reminded me, at the sudden violent change 
 he had already undergone from unction to 
 very nearly swearing; he might easily under- 
 go another back again, and then what a pity 
 to have disturbed the small amount of peace 
 of mind poor Kitty had. 
 
 "She hasn't any, ever," I said; impatiently, 
 I'm afraid. 
 
 "Not very much," admitted Dolly with 
 wistful penitence. "And it has all been my 
 fault." 
 
 But what I was thinking was that Kitty 
 never has any peace of mind because she 
 hasn't any mind to have peace in. 
 
 I didn't say this, however. 
 
 I practised tact. 
 
 Later. 
 
 Well, it has come off. Mrs. Barnes is out 
 of the hall, and at this very moment Uncle 
 Rudolph and Dolly are alone together in it, 
 proposing and being proposed to. He is 
 telling her that he worships her, and in reply 
 she is gently drawing his attention to Sieg- 
 fried and Juchs. How much will he mind 
 them? Will he mind them at all? Will his 
 love triumphantly consume them, or, having
 
 278 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 swallowed Siegfried, will he find himself un- 
 able to manage Juchs? 
 
 Oh, I love people to be happy! I love 
 them to love each other! I do hope it will 
 be all right! Dolly may say what she likes, 
 but love is the only thing in the world that 
 works miracles. Look at Uncle Rudolph. 
 I'm more doubtful, though, of the result than 
 I would have been yesterday, because what 
 brought about Mrs. Barnes's absence from 
 the hall has made me nervous as to how he 
 will face the disclosing of Juchs. 
 
 While I'm waiting I may as well write it 
 down by my clock I count up that Dolly 
 must be a third of the way through Siegfried 
 now, so that I've still got three quarters of 
 an hour. 
 
 This is what happened : 
 
 The morning started badly, indeed terribly. 
 Dolly, bored by being stared at in silence, said 
 something about more wool and went upstairs 
 quite soon after breakfast. My uncle, casting 
 a despairing glance at the window past which 
 the snow was driving, scowled for a moment or 
 two at Mrs. Barnes, then picked up a stale 
 Times and hid himself behind it. 
 
 To make up for his really dreadful scowl 
 at Mrs. Barnes I began a pleasant conversa-
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 279 
 
 tion with her, but at once she checked me, 
 saying, "Sh sh," and deferentially indi- 
 cating, with her knitting needle, my read- 
 ing uncle. 
 
 Incensed by such slavishness, I was about 
 to rebel and insist on talking when he, stirred 
 apparently by something of a bloodthirsty 
 nature that he saw in the Times, exclaimed 
 in a very loud voice, "Search as I may and 
 I have searched most diligently I can't find 
 a single good word to say for Germans." 
 
 It fell like a bomb. He hasn't mentioned 
 Germans once. I had come to feel quite safe. 
 The shock of it left me dumb. Mrs. Barnes's 
 knitting needles stopped as if struck. I 
 didn't dare look at her. Dead silence. 
 
 My uncle lowered the paper and glanced 
 round at us, expecting agreement, impatient of 
 our not instantly saying we thought as he did. 
 
 "Can you ?" he asked me, as I said nothing, 
 being petrified. 
 
 I was just able to shake my head. 
 
 "Can you?" he asked, turning to Mrs. 
 Barnes. 
 
 Her surprising answer surprising, naturally, 
 to my uncle was to get up quickly, drop all her 
 wool on the floor, and hurry upstairs. 
 
 He watched her departure with amaze-
 
 280 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 ment. Still with amazement, when she had 
 disappeared, his eyes sought mine. 
 
 "Why," he said, staring at me aghast, 
 "why the woman's a pro-German!" 
 
 In my turn I stared aghast. 
 
 "Mrs. Barnes ?" I exclaimed, stung to quite 
 a loud exclamation by the grossness of this in- 
 justice. 
 
 "Yes," said my uncle, horrified. "Yes. 
 Didn't you notice her expression? Good 
 heavens and I who've taken care not to 
 speak to a pro-German for five years, and 
 had hoped, God willing, never to speak to 
 one again, much less ' he banged his fists 
 on the arms of the chair, and the Times slid 
 on to the floor "much less be under the 
 same roof with one." 
 
 "Well, then, you see, God wasn't willing," 
 I said, greatly shocked. 
 
 Here was the ecclesiastic coining up again 
 with a vengeance in all the characteristic anti- 
 Christian qualities; and I was so much stirred 
 by his readiness to believe what he thinks is 
 the very worst of poor, distracted Mrs. Barnes 
 that I flung caution to the winds and went 
 indignantly on: "It isn't Mrs. Barnes who 
 is pro-German in this house it's Dolly." 
 
 "What?" cried my uncle.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 281 
 
 ; ' Yes," I repeated, nodding my head at him 
 defiantly, for having said it I was scared, 
 "it's Dolly." 
 
 "Dolly?" echoed my uncle, grasping the 
 arms of his chair. 
 
 "Perhaps pro-German doesn't quite de- 
 scribe it," I hurried on, nervously, "and yet I 
 don't know I think it would. Perhaps it's 
 better to say that she is she is of an un- 
 prejudiced international spirit- 
 Then I suddenly realized that Mrs. Barnes 
 was gone. Driven away. Not likely to ap- 
 pear again for ages. 
 
 I got up quickly. "Look here, Uncle 
 Rudolph," I said, making hastily, even as 
 Mrs. Barnes had made, for the stairs, "you 
 ask Dolly about it yourself. I'll go and tell 
 her to come down. You ask her about being 
 pro-German. She'll tell you. Only ' I ran 
 back to him and lowered my voice " propose 
 first. She won't tell you unless you've pro- 
 posed first." 
 
 Then, as he sat clutching the arms of 
 his chair and staring at me, I bent down 
 and whispered, "Now's your chance, Uncle 
 Rudolph. You've settled poor Mrs. Barnes 
 for a bit. She won't interrupt. I'll send 
 Dolly good-bye good luck!"
 
 282 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 And hurriedly kissing him I hastened 
 upstairs to Dolly's room. 
 
 Because of the door leading out of it into 
 Mrs. Barnes's room I had to be as cautious 
 as I was last night. I did exactly the same 
 things: went in on tip-toe, took hold of her 
 firmly by the wrist, and led her out without 
 a word. Then all I had to do was to point to 
 the stairs, and at the same time make a face- 
 but a kind face, I hope at her sister's shut 
 door, and the intelligent Dolly did the rest. 
 
 She proceeded with a sober dignity pleasant 
 to watch, along the passage in order to be 
 proposed to. Practice in being proposed to 
 has made her perfect. At the top of the 
 stairs she turned and smiled at me her 
 dimple was adorable. I waved my hand; 
 she disappeared; and here I am. 
 
 Forty minutes of the hour are gone. She 
 must be in the very middle now of Juchs. 
 
 Night. 
 
 I knew this little house was made for 
 kindness and love. I've always, since first 
 it was built, had the feeling that it was blest. 
 Sure indeed was the instinct that brought 
 me away from England, doggedly dragging 
 myself up the mountain to tumble my burdens
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 283 
 
 down in this place. It invariably conquers. 
 Nobody can resist it. Nobody can go away 
 from here quite as they arrived, unless to 
 start with they were of those blessed ones 
 who wherever they go carry peace with them 
 in their hearts. From the first I have felt 
 that the worried had only got to come here 
 to be smoothed out, and the lonely to be 
 exhilarated, and the unhappy to be com- 
 forted, and the old to be made young. Now 
 to this list must be added: and the widowed 
 to be wedded; because all is well with Uncle 
 Rudolph and Dolly, and the house once more 
 is in its normal state of having no one in it 
 who isn't happy. 
 
 For I grew happy completely so for the 
 moment, and I shouldn't be surprised if I had 
 really done now with the other thing the 
 minute I caught sight of Uncle Rudolph's 
 face when I went downstairs. 
 
 Dolly was sitting by the fire looking pleased. 
 My uncle was standing on the rug; and when he 
 saw me he came across to me holding out both 
 his hands, and I stopped on the bottom stair, my 
 hands in his, and we looked at each other and 
 laughed sheer happiness we laughed for. 
 
 Then we kissed each other, I still on the 
 bottom stair and therefore level with him,
 
 284 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and then he said, his face full of that sweet 
 affection for the whole world that radiates 
 from persons in his situation, "And to think 
 that I came here only to scold you!" 
 
 "Yes, Uncle Rudolph," I said. "To think 
 of it!" 
 
 "Well, if I came to scold I've stayed to 
 love," he said. 
 
 "Which," said I, while we beamed at each 
 other, "as the Bible says, is far better." 
 
 Then Dolly went upstairs to tell Mrs. 
 Barnes lovely to be going to strike off 
 somebody's troubles with a single sentence! 
 and my uncle confessed to me that for the 
 first time a doubt of Dolly had shadowed his 
 idea of her when I left him sitting there while 
 I fetched her. 
 
 "Conceive it conceive it!" he cried, smit- 
 ing his hands together, "conceive letting 
 Germans Germans, if you please get even 
 for half an instant between her and me!" 
 
 But that the minute he saw her coming 
 down the stairs to him such love of her flooded 
 him that he got up and proposed to her before 
 she had so much as reached the bottom. And 
 it was from the stairs, as from a pulpit, that 
 Dolly, supporting herself on the balustrade, 
 expounded Siegfried and Juchs.
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 285 
 
 She wouldn't come down till she had 
 finished with them. She was, I gathered, 
 ample over Siegfried, but when it came to 
 Juchs she was profuse. Every single aspect 
 of them both that was most likely to make 
 a dean think it impossible to marry her was 
 pointed out and enlarged upon. She wouldn't, 
 she announced, come down a stair farther 
 till my uncle was in full possession of all the 
 facts while at the same time carefully bearing 
 in mind the Table of Affinity. 
 
 "And were you terribly surprised and 
 shocked, Uncle Rudolph?" I asked, standing 
 beside him with our backs to the fire in our 
 now familiar attitude of arm in arm. 
 
 My uncle is an ugly little man, yet at that 
 moment I could have sworn that he had the 
 face of an angel. He looked at me and 
 smiled. It was the wonderfullest smile. 
 
 "I don't know what I was," he said. "When 
 she had done I just said, 'My Beloved' and 
 then she came down." 
 
 October 15th. 
 
 This, is my last night here, and this is the 
 last time I shall write in my old-age book. 
 To-morrow we all go away together, to 
 Bern, where my uncle and Dolly will be
 
 286 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 married, and then he takes her to England, 
 and Mrs. Barnes and I will also proceed there, 
 discreetly, by another route. 
 
 So are the wanderings of Mrs. Barnes and 
 Dolly ended, and Mrs. Barnes will enter into 
 her idea of perfect bliss, which is to live in the 
 very bosorn of the Church with a cathedral 
 almost in her back garden. For my uncle, 
 prepared at this moment to love anybody, 
 also loves Mrs. Barnes, and has invited her 
 to make her home with him. At this moment 
 indeed he w r ould invite everybody to make 
 their homes with him, for not only has he in- 
 vited me but I heard him most cordially press- 
 ing those peculiarly immovable Antoines to 
 use his house as their headquarters whenever 
 they happen to be in England. 
 
 I think a tendency to invite runs in the 
 family, for I, too, have been busy inviting. 
 I have invited Mrs. Barnes to stay with me 
 in London till she goes to the Deanery, and 
 she has accepted. Together we shall travel 
 thither, and together we shall dwell there, 
 I am sure, in that unity which is praised 
 by the Psalmist as a good and pleasant 
 thing. 
 
 She will stay with me for the weeks during 
 which my uncle wishes to have Dolly all to
 
 IN THE MOUNTAINS 287 
 
 himself. I think there will be a great many 
 of those weeks, from what I know of Dolly; 
 but being with a happy Mrs. Barnes will be 
 different from being with her as she was here. 
 She is so happy that she consists entirely of 
 unclouded affection. The puckers from her 
 face, and the fears and concealments from 
 her heart, have all gone together. She is as 
 simple and as transparent as a child. She 
 always was transparent, but without know- 
 ing it; now she herself has pulled off her 
 veils, and cordially requests one to look her 
 through and through and see for oneself how 
 there is nothing there but contentment. A 
 little happiness what wonders it works! 
 Was there ever anything like it? 
 
 This is a place of blessing, When I came 
 up my mountain three months ago, alone and 
 so miserable, no vision was vouchsafed me 
 that I would go down it again one of four 
 people, each of whom would leave the little 
 house full of renewed life, of restored hope, 
 of wholesome looking-forward, clarified, set 
 on their feet, made useful once more to 
 themselves and the world. After all, we're 
 none of us going to be wasted. Whatever 
 there is of good in any of us isn't after all 
 going to be destroyed by circumstances and
 
 288 IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 thrown aside as useless. When I am so 
 foolish if I am so foolish I should say, for I 
 feel completely cured! as to begin thinking 
 backward again with anything but a benevo- 
 lent calm, I shall instantly, come out here 
 and invite the most wretched of my friends 
 to join me, and watch them and myself being 
 made whole. 
 
 The house, I think, ought to be re-christ- 
 ened. 
 
 It ought to be called Chalet du Fleuve Jor- 
 dan. 
 
 But perhaps my guests mightn't like that. 
 
 THE END
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
 
 A 001 447 939 8