Windfalls

And at Keswick you call on George Abraham. It would be absurd to go to Keswick without calling on George Abraham. You might as well go to Wastdale Head without calling on the Pillar Rock. And George tells you that of course he will be over at Wastdale on New Year’s Eve and will climb the Pillar Rock or Scafell Pinnacle with you on New Year’s Day.

The trap is at the door, you mount, you wave adieus, and are soon jolting down the road that runs by Derwentwater, where every object is an old friend, whom absence only makes more dear. Here is the Bowder Stone and there across the Lake is Causey Pike, peeping over the brow of Cat Bells. (Ah! the summer days on Causey Pike, scrambling and picking wimberries and waking the echoes of Grisedale.)

And there before us are the dark Jaws of Borrowdale and, beyond, the billowy summits of Great Gable and Scafell. And all around are the rocky sentinels of the valley. You know everyone and hail him by his name. Perhaps you jump down at Lodore and scramble up to the Falls. Then on to Rosthwaite and lunch.

And here the last rags of the lower world are shed. Fleet Street is a myth and London a frenzied dream. You are at the portals of the sanctuary and the great peace of the mountains is yours. You sling your rucksack on your back and your rope over your shoulder and set out on the three hours’ tramp over Styhead Pass to Wastdale.

It is dark when you reach the inn yard for the way down is long and these December days are short. And on the threshold you are welcomed by the landlord and landlady – heirs of Auld Will Ritson – and in the flagged entrance you see coils of rope and rucksacks and a noble array of climbers’ boots – boots that make the heart sing to look upon, boots that have struck music out of many a rocky breast, boots whose missing nails has each a story of its own. You put your own among them, don your slippers, and plunge among your old companions of the rocks with jolly greeting and pass words. What a mingled gathering it is – a master from a school in the West, a jolly lawyer from Lancashire, a young clergyman, a barrister from the Temple, a manufacturer from Nottingham, and so on. But the disguises they wear to the world are cast aside, and the eternal boy that refuses to grow up is revealed in all of them.

Who shall tell of the days and nights that follow? – of the songs that are sung, and the “traverses” that are made round the billiard room and the barn, of the talk of handholds and footholds on this and that famous climb, of the letting in of the New Year, of the early breakfasts and the departures for the mountains, of the nights when, tired and rich with new memories, you all foregather again – save only, perhaps, the jolly lawyer and his fellows who have lost their way back from Scafell, and for whom you are about to send out a search party when they turn up out of the darkness with new material for fireside tales.

Let us take one picture from many. It is New Year’s Day – clear and bright, patches of snow on the mountains and a touch of frost in the air. In the hall there is a mob of gay adventurers, tying up ropes, putting on putties, filling rucksacks with provisions, hunting for boots (the boots are all alike, but you recognise them by your missing nails). We separate at the threshold – this group for the Great Gable, that for Scafell, ours, which includes George Abraham, for the Pillar Rock. It is a two and a half hour’s tramp thither by Black Sail Pass, and as daylight is short there is no time to waste. We follow the water course up the valley, splash through marshes, faintly veneered with ice, cross the stream where the boulders give a decent foothold, and mount the steep ascent of Black Sail. From the top of the Pass we look down lonely Ennerdale, where, springing from the flank of the Pillar mountain, is the great Rock we have come to challenge. It stands like a tower, gloomy, impregnable, sheer, 600 feet from its northern base to its summit, split on the south side by Jordan Gap that divides the High Man or main rock from Pisgah, the lesser rock.

We have been overtaken by another party of three from the inn – one in a white jersey which, for reasons that will appear, I shall always remember. Together we follow the High Level Traverse, the track that leads round the flank of the mountain to the top of Walker’s Gully, the grim descent to the valley, loved by the climber for the perils to which it invites him. Here wre lunch and here we separate. We, unambitious (having three passengers in our party of five), are climbing the East face by the Notch and Slab route; the others are ascending by the New West route, one of the more difficult climbs. Our start is here; theirs is from the other side of Jordan Gap. It is not of our climb that I wish to speak, but of theirs. In the old literature of the Rock you will find the Slab and Notch route treated as a difficult feat; but to-day it is held in little esteem.

With five on the rope, however, our progress is slow, and it is two o’clock when we emerge from the chimney, perspiring and triumphant, and stand, first of the year, on the summit of the Pillar Rock, where the wind blows thin and shrill and from whence you look out over half the peaks of Lakeland. We take a second lunch, inscribe our names in the book that lies under the cairn, and then look down the precipice on the West face for signs of our late companions. The sound of their voices comes up from below, but the drop is too sheer to catch a glimpse of their forms. “They’re going to be late,” says George Abraham – the discoverer of the New West – and then he indicates the closing stages of the climb and the slab where on another New Year’s Day occurred the most thrilling escape from death in the records of the Pillar rock – two men falling, and held on the rope and finally rescued by the third. Of those three, two, Lewis Meryon and the Rev. W. F. Wright, perished the next year on the Grand Paradis. We dismiss the unhappy memory and turn cheerfully to descend by Slingsby’s Crack and the Old West route which ends on the slope of the mountain near to the starting point of the New West route.

The day is fading fast, and the moon that is rising in the East sheds no light on this face of the great tower. The voices now are quite distinct, coming to us from the left. We can almost hear the directions and distinguish the speakers. “Can’t understand why those lads are cutting it so fine,” says George Abraham, and he hastens our pace down cracks and grooves and over ledges until we reach the screes and safety. And now we look up the great cliff and in the gathering dusk one thing is visible – a figure in a white jersey, with arms extended at full stretch. There it hangs minute by minute as if nailed to the rocks.

The party, then, are only just making the traverse from the chimney to the right, the most difficult manoeuvre of the climb – a manoeuvre in which one, he in the white jersey, has to remain stationary while his fellows pass him. “This is bad,” says George Abraham and he prepares for a possible emergency. “Are you in difficulties? Shall we wait?” he cries. “Yes, wait.” The words rebound from the cliff in the still air like stones. We wait and watch. We can see nothing but the white jersey, still moveless; but every motion of the other climbers and every word they speak echoes down the precipice, as if from a sounding board. You hear the iron-shod feet of the climbers feeling about for footholds on the ringing wall of rock. Once there is a horrible clatter as if both feet are dangling over the abyss and scraping convulsively for a hold. I fancy one or two of us feel a little uncomfortable as we look at each other in silent comment. And all the time the figure in white, now growing dim, is impaled on the face of the darkness, and the voices come down to us in brief, staccato phrases. Above the rock, the moon is sailing into the clear winter sky and the stars are coming out.

At last the figure in white is seen to move and soon a cheery “All right” drops down from above. The difficult operation is over, the scattered rocks are reached and nothing remains but the final slabs, which in the absence of ice offer no great difficulty. Their descent by the easy Jordan route will be quick. We turn to go with the comment that it is perhaps more sensational to watch a climb than to do one.

And then we plunge over the debris behind Pisgah, climb up the Great Doup, where the snow lies crisp and deep, until we reach the friendly fence that has guided many a wanderer in the darkness down to the top of Black Sail Pass. From thence the way is familiar, and two hours later we have rejoined the merry party round the board at the inn.

In a few days it is all over. This one is back in the Temple, that one to his office, a third to his pulpit, another to his mill, and all seem prosaic and ordinary. But they will carry with them a secret music. Say only the word “Wastdale” to them and you shall awake its echoes; then you shall see their faces light up with the emotion of incommunicable things. They are no longer men of the world; they are spirits of the mountains.

TWO VOICES

Yes,” said the man with the big voice, “I’ve seen it coming for years. Years.”

“Have you?” said the man with the timid voice. He had taken his seat on the top of the bus beside the big voice and had spoken of the tube strike that had suddenly paralysed the traffic of London.

“Yes, years,” said big voice, crowding as much modesty into the admission as possible. “I’m a long-sighted man. I see things a long way off. Suppose I’m a bit psychic. That’s what I’m told. A bit psychic.”

“Ah,” said timid voice, doubtful, I thought, as to the meaning of the word, but firm in admiring acceptance of whatever it meant.

“Yes, I saw it coming for years. Lloyd George – that’s the man that up to it before the war with his talk about the dukes and property and things. I said then, ‘You see if this don’t make trouble.’ Why, his speeches got out to Russia and started them there. And now’s it’s come back. I always said it would. I said we should pay for it.”

“Did you, though?” observed timid voice – not questioningly, but as an assurance that he was listening attentively.

“Yes, the same with the war. I see it coming for years – years, I did. And if they’d taken my advice it’ ud have been over in no time. In the first week I said: ‘What we’ve got to do is to build 1000 aeroplanes and train 10,000 pilots and make 2000 torpedo craft.’ That’s what I said. But was it done?”

“Of course not,” said timid voice.

“I saw it all with my long sight. It’s a way I have. I don’t know why, but there it is. I’m not much at the platform business – tub-thumping, I call it – but for seeing things far off – well, I’m a bit psychic, you know.”

“Ah,” said timid voice, mournfully, “it’s a pity some of those talking fellows are not psychic, too.” He’d got the word firmly now.

“Them psychic!” said big voice, with scorn. “We know what they are. You see that Miss Asquith is marrying a Roumanian prince. Mark my word, he’ll turn out to be a German, that’s what he’ll turn out to be. It’s German money all round. Same with these strikes. There’s German money behind them.”

“Shouldn’t wonder at all,” said timid voice.

“I know,” said big voice. “I’ve a way of seeing things. The same in the Boer War. I saw that coming for years.”

“Did you, indeed?” said timid voice.

“Yes. I wrote it down, and showed it to some of my friends. There it was in black and white. They said it was wonderful how it all turned out – two years, I said, 250 millions of money, and 20,000 casualties. That’s what I said, and that’s what it was. I said the Boers would win, and I claim they did win, seeing old Campbell Bannerman gave them all they asked for.”

“You were about right,” assented timid voice.

“And now look at Lloyd George. Why, Wilson is twisting him round his finger – that’s what he’s doing. Just twisting him round his finger. Wants a League of Nations, says Wilson, and then he starts building a fleet as big as ours.”

“Never did like that man,” said timid voice.

“It’s him that has let the Germans escape. That’s what the armistice means. They’ve escaped – and just when we’d got them down.”

“It’s a shame,” said timid voice.

“This war ought to have gone on longer,” continued big voice. “My opinion is that the world wanted thinning out. People are too crowded. That’s what they are – they’re too crowded.”

“I agree there,” said timid voice. “We wanted thinning.”

“I consider we haven’t been thinned out half enough yet. It ought to have gone on, and it would have gone on but for Wilson. I should like to know his little game. ‘Keep your eye on Wilson,’ says John Bull, and that’s what I say. Seems to me he’s one of the artful sort. I saw a case down at Portsmouth. Secretary of a building society – regular chapel-goer, teetotaller, and all that. One day the building society went smash, and Mr Chapel-goer had got off with the lot.”

“I don’t like those goody-goody people,” said timid voice.

“No,” said big voice. “William Shakespeare hit it oh. Wonderful what that man knew. ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women players,’ he said. Strordinary how he knew things.”

“Wonderful,” said timid voice.

“There’s never been a man since who knew half what William Shakespeare knew – not one-half.”

“No doubt about it,” said timid voice.

“I consider that William Shakespeare was the most psychic man that ever lived. I don’t suppose there was ever such a long-sighted man before or since. He could see through anything. He’d have seen through Wilson and he’d have seen this war didn’t stop before the job was done. It’s a pity we haven’t a William Shakespeare now. Lloyd George and Asquith are not in it with him. They’re simply duds beside William Shakespeare. Couldn’t hold a candle to him.”

“Seems to me,” said timid voice, “that there’s nobody, as you might say, worth anything to-day.”

“Nobody,” said big voice. “We’ve gone right off. There used to be men. Old Dizzy, he was a man. So was Joseph Chamberlain. He was right about Tariff Reform. I saw it years before he did. Free Trade I said was all right years ago, when we were manufacturing for the world. But it’s out of date. I saw it was out of date long before Joseph Chamberlain. It’s the result of being long-sighted. I said to my father, ‘If we stick to Free Trade this country is done.’ That’s what I said, and it’s true. We are done. Look at these strikes. We stick to things too long. I believe in looking ahead. When I was in America before the war they wouldn’t believe I came from England. Wouldn’t believe it. ‘But the English are so slow,’ they said, ‘and you – why you want to be getting on in front of us.’ That’s my way. I look ahead and don’t stand still.”

“It’s the best way too,” said timid voice. “We want more of it. We’re too slow.”

And so on. When I came to the end of my journey I rose so that the light of a lamp shone on the speakers as I passed. They were both well-dressed, ordinary-looking men. If I had passed them in the street I should have said they were intelligent men of the well-to-do business class. I have set down their conversation, which I could not help overhearing, and which was carried on by the big voice in a tone meant for publication, as exactly as I can recall it. There was a good deal more of it, all of the same character. You will laugh at it, or weep over it, according to your humour.

ON BEING TIDY

Any careful observer of my habits would know that I am on the eve of an adventure – a holiday, or a bankruptcy, or a fire, or a voluntary liquidation (whatever that may be), or an elopement, or a duel, or a conspiracy, or – in short, of something out of the normal, something romantic or dangerous, pleasurable or painful, interrupting the calm current of my affairs. Being the end of July, he would probably say: That fellow is on the brink of the holiday fever. He has all the symptoms of the epidemic. Observe his negligent, abstracted manner. Notice his slackness about business – how he just comes and looks in and goes out as though he were a visitor paying a call, or a person who had been left a fortune and didn’t care twopence what happened. Observe his clothes, how they are burgeoning into unaccustomed gaiety, even levity. Is not his hat set on at just a shade of a sporting angle? Does not his stick twirl with a hint of irresponsible emotions? Is there not the glint of far horizons in his eye? Did you not hear him humming as he came up the stairs? Yes, assuredly the fellow is going for a holiday.