In the Mountains

'That's just high spirits,' I said. 'He is really most goodnatured 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 were related to a Lord Mayor, I thought. Or a rector. But a Lord Mayor would be 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 unendurable. They used to know this district years ago, and recollected a pension right up 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 provision 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 my joy at seeing them both!—as my kindness, 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 re-entered 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 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, 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 potatoes 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 enthusiasm 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 realised 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.

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 English 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. 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.

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 wandered 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, was 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 situation I don't know how to deal with, which does bore me. I sat on 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 sleeping 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 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 towards 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 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 backwards and forwards 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 completely 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 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 embarrassment laid her cheek on it affectionately 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 lèse majesté, they loudly and openly abused him under the name of Siegfried Meyer, whose initials, S.M., also represent Seine Majestät; by which simple 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 realise that she was dreaming of him affectionately. 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.'

'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 inquiring eye she smiled at me. She had very sweet eyes, grey 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 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 obediently 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'hôte, 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.

I 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 longer. It was far too late already, owing to their so unfortunately having gone to sleep—

'I mean stay the night,' I said; and explained that it would be doing me a kindness, 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.