precedence, for a few days, over the simmering European situation.
Hardship, for those forty-eight hours, was not acute. Luckily there were no women or children passengers travelling, so we men put the best face on it we could, and waited for rescue. We were confident that help would reach us before long. Our wireless had functioned until the moment of the forced landing, and the operator had given our position. It was all a matter of patience, and of keeping warm.
For my part, with my mission in Europe accomplished and no ties strong enough back in the States to believe myself anxiously awaited, this sudden plunging into the sort of country that years ago I had most passionately loved was a strange experience. I had become so much a man of cities, and a creature of comfort. The high pulse of American living, the pace, the vitality, the whole breathless energy of the New World, had combined to make me forget the ties that still bound me to the Old.
Now, looking about me in the desolation and the splendour, I knew what I had lacked all these years. I forgot my fellow-travellers, forgot the grey fuselage of the crippled 'plane — an anachronism, surely, amid the wilderness of centuries — and forgot too my grey hair, my heavy frame, and all the burden of my five-and-fifty years. I was a boy again, hopeful, eager, seeking an answer to eternity. Surely it was there, waiting, beyond the further peaks. I stood there, incongruous in my city clothes, and the mountain fever raced back into my blood.
I wanted to get away from the wrecked 'plane and the pinched faces of my companions; I wanted to forget the waste of the years between. What I would have given to be young again, a boy, and, reckless of the consequences, set forth towards those peaks and climb to glory. I knew how it would feel, up there on the higher mountains. The air keener and still more cold, the silence deeper. The strange burning quality of ice, the penetrating strength of the sun, and that moment when the heart misses a beat as the foot, momentarily slipping on the narrow ledge, seeks safety; the hand's clutch to the rope.
I gazed up at them, the mountains that I loved, and felt a traitor. I had betrayed them for baser things, for comfort, ease, security. When rescue came to me and to my fellow-travellers, I would make amends for the time that had been lost. There was no pressing hurry to return to the States. I would take a vacation, here in Europe, and go climbing once again. I would buy proper clothes, equipment, set myself to it. This decision taken, I felt light-hearted, irresponsible. Nothing seemed to matter any more. I returned to my little party, sheltering beside the 'plane, and laughed and joked through the remaining hours.
Help reached us on the second day. We had been certain of rescue when we had sighted an aeroplane, at dawn, hundreds of feet above us. The search party consisted of true mountaineers and guides, rough fellows but likeable. They had brought clothing, kit and food for us, and were astonished, they admitted, that we were all in condition to make use of them. They had thought to find none of us alive.
They helped us down to the valley in easy stages, and it took us until the following day. We spent the night encamped on the north side of the great ridge of mountains that had seemed to us, beside the useless 'plane, so remote and so inaccessible. At daybreak we set forth again, a splendid clear day, and the whole of the valley below our camp lay plain to the eye. Eastward the mountain range ran sheer, and as far as I could judge impassable, to a snow-capped peak, or possibly two, that pierced the dazzling sky like the knuckles on a closed hand.
I said to the leader of the rescue expedition, just as we were starting out on the descent, 'I used to climb much, in old days, when I was young. I don't know this country at all. Do many expeditions come this way?'
He shook his head. He told me conditions were difficult. He and his companions came from some distance away. The people in the valley to the eastward there were backward and ignorant; there were few facilities for tourists or for strangers. If I cared about climbing he could take me to other places, where I should find good sport. It was already rather late in the year, though, for expeditions.
I went on looking at that eastward ridge, remote and strangely beautiful.
'What do they call them,' I said, 'those twin peaks, to the east?'
He answered, 'Monte Verita.'
I knew then what had brought me back to Europe…
We parted, my fellow travellers and I, at a little town some twenty miles from the spot where the aeroplane had crashed. Transport took them on to the nearest railway line, and to civilization. I remained behind. I booked a room at the small hotel and deposited my luggage there. I bought myself strong boots, a pair of breeches, a jerkin, and a couple of shirts. Then I turned my back upon the town and climbed.
It was, as the guide had told me, late in the year for expeditions. Somehow I did not care. I was alone, and on the mountains once again. I had forgotten how healing solitude could be. The old strength came back to my legs and to my lungs, and the cold air bit into the whole of me. I could have shouted with delight, at fifty-five. Gone was the turmoil and the stress, the anxious stir of many millions; gone were the lights, and the vapid city smells. I had been mad to endure it for so long.
In a mood of exaltation I came to the valley that lies at the be eastern foot of Monte Verita. It had not changed much, it seemed to me, from the description Victor gave of it, those many years ago before the war. The little town was small and primitive, the people dull and dour. There was a rough sort of inn — one could not grace it by the name of hotel — where I proposed to stay the night.
I was received with indifference, though not discourtesy. After supper I asked if the track was still passable to the summit of Monte Verita. My informant behind his bar — for bar and cafe were in one, and I ate there, being the only visitor — regarded me without interest as he drank the glass of wine I offered him.
'It is passable, I believe, as far as the village. Beyond that I do not know,' he said.
'Is there much coming and going between your people in the valley here and those in the village on the mountain?' I asked.
'Sometimes. Perhaps. Not at this time of year,' he answered.
'Do you ever have tourists here?'
'Few tourists. They go north. It is better in the north.'
'Is there any place in the village where I could sleep tomorrow night?'
'I do not know.'
I paused a moment, watching his heavy sullen face, then I said to him, 'And the 'sacerdotesse', do they still live on the rock-face on the summit of Monte Verita?'
He started. He turned his eyes full upon me, and leant over the bar. 'Who are you, then? What do you know of them?'
'Then they do exist still?' I said.
He watched me, suspicious. Much had happened to his country in the past twenty years, violence, revolution, hostility between father and son, and even this remote corner must have had its share. It may have been this that made reserve.
'There are stories,' he said, slowly. 'I prefer not to mix myself up in such matters. It is dangerous. One day there will be trouble.'
'Trouble for whom?'
'For those in the village, for those who may live on Monte Verita—I know nothing of them — for us here in the valley. I do not know. If I do not know, no harm can come to me.'
He finished his wine, and cleaned his glass, and wiped the bar with a cloth. He was anxious to be rid of me.
'At what time do you wish for your breakfast in the morning?' he said.
I told him seven, and went up to my room.
I opened the double windows and stood out on the narrow balcony. The little town was quiet. Few lights winked in the darkness. The night was clear and cold. The moon had risen and would be full tomorrow or the day after. It shone upon the dark mountain mass in front of me. I felt oddly moved, as though I had stepped back into the past. This room, where I should pass the night, might have been the same one where Victor and Anna slept, all those years ago, in the summer of 1913. Anna herself might have stood here, on the balcony, gazing up at Monte Verita, while Victor unconscious of the tragedy so few hours distant, called to her from within.
And now, in their footsteps, I had come to Monte Verita.
The next morning I took my breakfast in the cafe-bar, and my landlord of the night before was absent. My coffee and bread were brought me by a girl, perhaps his daughter. Her manner was quiet and courteous, and she wished me a pleasant day.
'I am going to climb,' I said, 'the weather seems set fair. Tell me, have you ever been to Monte Verita?'
