"Yes," said John, as we turned back, "some very scared men have come
down this road."
If he had known what an exceedingly scared girl was at his side he
wouldn't, I think, have chosen that moment to turn into the little
graveyard that surrounds the village chapel, to look at the graves
of the victims--the graves of Croz the guide, of Hudson, and the boy
Hadow. The text on one stone caught my eye--"_Be ye therefore also
ready..._" It was too much; I fled back to the hotel, locked the door
of my room, shuttered the windows so that I should not see the vestige
of a mountain--and wept.
It is odd to think how I hated it all that night, how to myself
I maligned all climbers, calling them in my haste
foolhardy--senseless--imbecile, when I had only to go up my first easy
mountain to become as keen as the worst--or the best.
Sometimes in those mountaineering excursions with John to Zermatt,
to Chamonix, to Grindelwald, I have found it in my heart to envy the
unaspiring people who spend long days pottering about on level ground.
But looking back it isn't the quiet, lazy days one likes to think
about. No--rather it is the mornings when one rose at 2 a.m. and,
thrusting aching feet into nailed boots, tiptoed noisily into the
deserted dining-room to be supplied with coffee and rolls by a
pitifully sleepy waiter.
Outside the guides wait, Joseph and Aloys, and away we tramp in single
file along the little path that runs through fields full of wild
flowers, drenched with dew, into a fairy-tale wood of tall, straight
pine-trees.
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