Asphodel

FROM THE REV. JULIAN TEMPLE TO MISS AYLMER.

‘Schaffhausen, September 11th, 187—.

‘My dear Flora,

‘You ask me for a detailed account of the melancholy accident on the Matterhorn, of which I had the misfortune to be an eye-witness, and the memory of which will haunt me for years to come—yes, even in that blessed time when I shall be quietly settled down in domestic life with my dear girl, and must needs have a thousand reasons for being completely happy.

‘I kept you so well posted in my movements, until the occurrence of this unhappy event made it painful to me to write about our Alpine experiences, that you no doubt remember how Trevor and I, after our successful attempt upon the Finsteraarhorn, made our way quietly down to Zermatt, by way of Thun and Vispach. Never shall I forget the calm delight of the last day’s walk between Vispach and Zermatt. The distance is only thirty miles, we were in high spirits and in excellent condition for the tramp, and we had a cart for our mountaineering gear, and our knapsacks, so were able to take things easily.

‘We started at six o’clock, breakfasted at St. Nicolas, and reached Zermatt early in the evening. Our road—a mule-path for the greater part of the way—led us through scenes of infinite variety, and opened to us views of surpassing grandeur and beauty. Amidst all the wildness of a mountainous landscape we were struck with the profusion of flowers which gave life and colour to the foreground, and the wild fruits which rivalled the flowers in their vivid beauty; beds of Alpine strawberries, thickets of raspberries and barberries, bordered the path, and every village we entered lay sheltered amidst patriarchal walnut or chestnut trees.

‘How can I describe to you the glory of the Matterhorn, as that mighty monolith reveals itself for the first time to the eve of the traveller?—an obelisk of dazzling whiteness cleaving the blue sky, blanking out earth and heaven with its gigantic form, the one mountain-peak which reigns supreme in a kingly solitude, not lifting his proud head from a group of brother peaks, not buttressed by inferior hills, but solitary as the Prince of Darkness, a being apart and alone. Mont Blanc overawes by massive grandeur, but I should choose the Matterhorn for the monarch of mountains.

‘The sun was setting as we crossed the Visp for the last time before entering Zermatt. Trevor and I had been in the gayest spirits throughout our journey. We had rested two hours at St. Nicolas, and had taken a leisurely luncheon at Randa. We were full of talk about the day after to-morrow, which date we had chosen for our attempt on the Matterhorn, thinking it wise to give ourselves a day’s rest, or at least partial rest, after our thirty miles’ walk, and to leave time for engaging guides and making all necessary preparations in a leisurely manner.

‘Trevor was a stranger to the district, but he had done much good work on Mont Blanc, and he had behaved so well on the Finsteraarhorn that I had no doubt of his mettle. I had familiarised myself with the Monte Rosa group three years before, and I knew the Zermatt guides and their ways and manners. We interviewed some of these gentry after our dinner, and I picked two of the sturdiest and trustiest, made my bargain with them, and told them to examine our ropes and other gear carefully by daylight next morning.

‘We had a pleasant evening, sauntering about the quiet little town in the light of a glorious full moon, smoking our cigars, talking of our future prospects, of the Church, and of you. Yes, dear love, Trevor is just one of those faithful souls with whom a man can talk about his sweetheart.

‘Next morning we breakfasted at daybreak and started luxuriously on a brace of mules for the Riffelberg, to reconnoitre our mountain. How grand and beautiful was the circle of snow-clad peaks which we beheld from that dark hillside: Monte Rosa on the south-east, on the south-west the Matterhorn, on the east, the Cima de Jassi, to the west the Dent Blanche, to the north-eastward the Dom, and westward the Weisshorn—gigantic crags and domes and solitary peaks, all bathed in sunshine, and as dazzling in their glorified whiteness as the sun himself! We spent some hours in quiet contemplation of that sublime and awful scene gazing at that circle of Titanic peaks, which had a sphinx-like and mysterious air as they looked back at us in their dumb unapproachable majesty.

‘“Is it not a kind of blasphemy to pollute them with our footsteps, to be always trying to get nearer and nearer to them, into Nature’s Holy of Holies?”’ I asked, carried away by the grandeur of the scene.

‘But Trevor’s manner of look at the question was practical rather than imaginative.

‘“I shouldn’t like to go back without having done the Matterhorn,” he said, “though the terrible accident a few years ago makes one inclined to be cautious.”

‘We had a rough-and-ready luncheon on the Rothe Kumm, and took our time about the descent. It was nearly dark when we got back to Zermatt. The table-d’hôte dinner was over, and we dined together at a small table in a corner of the coffee-room, a table near a window, that stood open to a verandah. As we took our seats we noticed that there was a gentleman sitting smoking a little way from the window. I sat facing him, and as we began dinner he asked politely whether his cigar annoyed us. This broke the ice, and he began to talk of our intended ascent, which he had heard of from the guides.

‘“I should very much like to join you,” he said. “We could take another guide if you think it advisable. I am used to Alpine climbing. I came here on purpose to ascend the Matterhorn, and I shall do it in any case; but it would be pleasant to have congenial company,” he added, with a light laugh.

‘“Pleasant for us as well as for you,” I replied, for there was something particularly winning in his manner; “but you must not consider me impertinent if I say that you hardly seem in strong enough health for mountain climbing. You look as if you had not long recovered from a severe illness.”

‘“Do I?” he asked, in the same light tone; “I was always a sallow individual. No, I have not been ill; and I am sinewy and wiry enough for pretty hard work in the climbing way, though I have no superfluous flesh. I don’t think you’ll find me an encumbrance to you; but if you have any doubt upon the subject you can ask your chief guide, Peter Hirsch, for my character, He and I have done same pretty rapid ascents together in past years.”

‘He handed me his card. “Mr. Goring, Goring Abbey, Warwickshire.”

‘There was nothing of the braggart about him, and I had no doubt as to his Alpine experience, but I could not dispossess myself of the idea that he was in weak health, and out of condition for a fatiguing ascent; for though the approach to the Matterhorn has been made much easier than it was in ’65, when it was ascended for the first time by Mr. Whymper and three other gentlemen, with most lamentable results, it is still a toughish piece of work.

‘I heard a good deal of Mr. Goring later from our landlord; he was well known in the district, and known as an experienced mountaineer. He was a man of large wealth, very generous, very good to the poor. He had been living in Switzerland for the past year, shifting from town to town along the banks of Lake Leman, but never leaving the shores of the lake, until a few weeks ago, when he set out on a walking expedition to Italy. He had stopped at Zermatt on his way southward; had idled away his days in a listless purposeless way; now doing a little climbing, now spending whole days lying about in the woods, with his books and his sketching materials. He kept himself as much aloof from the tourists as it was possible for him to do, occupying his own rooms, and never dining at the table-d’hôte; and the landlord was surprised that he should wish to join our party. His story was at once romantic and tragical. He had come to Montreux with the family of the young lady to whom he was engaged. This young lady was accidentally drowned in the lake last summer, and Mr. Goring had never left the scene of her untimely death till he came to Zermatt.

‘I asked the landlord if there was any fear of his mind being affected by this trouble, and he assured me that there was not the slightest ground for such an idea. Mr. Goring kept himself to himself; but he was as rational and as clever a man to talk to as any gentleman the landlord had ever known.

‘This settled the matter. To make assurance doubly sure I engaged a third guide, and a young man to help in carrying tents, ropes, etc., and we set out, a little party of seven, gaily enough, in the early morning. We meant to take things quietly, and to spend the first night in the tent, or in blanket-bags, if the weather were as mild as it promised to be. We carried provisions enough to last for three days, in case the ascent should take even longer than we anticipated. We took sketching materials, a tin box for any botanical or entomological specimens we might collect, and two or three well-worn volumes of poetry which had accompanied us in all our excursions, but had not been largely read. The great and varied book of Nature had generally proved all-sufficient.

‘We left Zermatt soon after five, the Lac Noir between eight and nine, and a little before noon we had chosen our spot for a camping-place, eleven thousand feet high, and the men set to work making a platform for the tent, while we took our ease on the mountain, basking in the sunshine, sketching, collecting a little, and talking a great deal. We found Mr. Goring a delightful companion. He was a man of considerable culture; had travelled much and read much. There was a dash of nineteenth-century cynicism in his talk, and it was but too easy to see that his view of this life and the world beyond it was of that sombre hue which so deeply overshadows modern thought. Still he was a most agreeable companion; and Trevor told me more than once, in a confidential aside, that our new acquaintance was a decided acquisition.

‘In all our conversation, which was perfectly unreserved on all sides, it was noticeable that Mr. Goring talked very little of himself or of his own affairs. He spoke vaguely of an idea of going on to Italy, and wintering at Naples, but rather as an intention he had entertained and abandoned, than as one which he meant to carry out.

‘I ventured to say that I should have thought that, for a man of his culture, Paris or Berlin would have been a pleasanter wintering-place; but he shrugged his shoulders and declared that he detested both these cities, and the society to be found in them. “French charlatanism or German pedantry,” he said, “God knows which is worse.”

‘There was a magnificent sunset. Never shall I forget the awful beauty of the sky and mountains as we watched the decline of that ineffable glory—watched in silence, subdued to gravity by the unspeakable grandeur of that mighty panorama, in the midst of which our own littleness was brought painfully home to our minds.

‘The night was singularly mild, and we preferred sleeping in our blanket-bags to the stuffy atmosphere of a tent.

‘We were up before daybreak next morning, and breakfasted merrily enough by the light of the stars, which were dropping out of the purple sky, like lamps burned out, as the colder light of day crept slowly along the edges of the eastward snow-peaks—such a livid ghastly light. I remember wondering at Mr. Goring’s good spirits, which seemed by no means to accord with the landlord’s account of him. Had there been anything forced or hysterical about his gaiety I should have taken alarm: but nothing could be easier or more natural than his manner; and I was pleased to think that, however deeply he might regret the poor girl whom he had lost by so sad a fate, he had his hours of forgetfulness and tranquillity.

‘We made the ascent slowly but easily, our guides seeing no risk from any quarter; and between one and two o’clock we stood on the top of that peak which of all others had most impressed me by its grand air of solitude and inaccessibility. Throughout the ascent Mr. Goring had shown himself a skilful and experienced mountaineer; and there was no thought further from my mind than the apprehension of hazard to him more than to anyone of us in the descent, or of recklessness on his part.

‘We stayed on the summit a little over an hour, and then prepared ourselves for the descent. There were some difficult bits to be passed in going down, and it was suggested by the most experienced of the guides that we should be all roped together with the stoutest of our Alpine-Club ropes. But this Mr. Goring negatived. “Where there is only one rope, a false step for one means death to all,” he said. “It was that which caused the calamity in Mr. Whymper’s descent; if the rope had not broken there would not have been a man left to tell the story of that fatal day.” At his urgent request we formed ourselves into three parties, each of the guides being roped to one of us. He chose the least experienced of the three men, and he, with this youngest of the guides, went first.

‘“You need not be afraid about me,” he said cheerily. “I am as sure-footed as the best guide in Zermatt.”

‘The two men who were with us assented heartily to this, and my own observation went far to assure me that Mr. Goring’s assertion was no idle boast.

‘Those were the last words I ever heard him speak. We were all intent upon the descent, the guides cutting footsteps now and then in the ice. There was neither inclination nor opportunity for much talk of any kind. Mr. Goring and his companion moved more quickly than we did; and I began to fear, as I saw the two dark figures ever so far below us amidst the dazzling whiteness, that there was a dash of recklessness in him after all.

‘This made me feel uneasy, and I found my attention wandering from my own position, which was not without peril, to those two in advance of us. Suddenly, to my surprise, I saw Goring change places with the guide, who until this moment had been foremost. I saw also in the same instant that the rope which had been hanging somewhat loosely between them a minute or so before—always a source of danger—was now tightly braced. It seemed to me that Goring stood still for a moment or two, looking down the sheer precipice that yawned on one side of him, as if admiring the awful grandeur of the abyss, then I saw a sharp sudden movement of his right arm; there was a cry from the guide, and in the next moment a dark figure slid with a fearful velocity along the smooth whiteness of the frozen snow, and then shot over the edge, and dropped from precipice to precipice to the Matterhorn glacier below, a distance of nearly four thousand feet. How the guide contrived to maintain his footing in that awful moment I know not. He never could have done it had the rope been slack before it broke—or was severed. In those last words lies the saddest part of the story. It is the guide’s opinion, and mine, that the rope was deliberately cut by Mr. Goring. He could scarcely have done this all at once by one movement of his knife; but the guide believes that he had contrived to cut it three parts through, unobserved by him, in the course of the descent. I asked how it came about that he and the guide changed places, and the young man told me that it was at Mr. Goring’s desire, a desire so calmly and naturally expressed that it had occasioned neither wonder nor alarm.

‘His body has not been found, though the people of Zermatt have been diligent in their search. He lies locked in his frozen tomb in some crevasse of the glacier.

‘A very beautiful marble cross has been erected to his memory in the little churchyard at Zermatt. I am told that it exactly resembles one that was placed last year in the churchyard at Montreux, in memory of the young lady who was drowned in the lake near that town.

‘It may interest you to know that Mr. Goring’s will bequeaths the whole of his enormous fortune to the elder sister of this unfortunate lady, the testator being assured that she will make a much more noble use of that fortune than he could ever have done.

‘Those are the words of the legacy.’

THE END.