Algernon Blackwood

“ Fixing himself securely against his axe, he stood and stared. The sun beat back into his face from the glittering snow on all sides. Tremendous black precipices towered not far behind him; to his left rolled the frozen mass of the huge glacier, its pinnacles of tottering ice catching the afternoon sun; to his right stretched into bewildering distance the interminable and desolate reaches of shale and moraine till the eye rested upon summits of a dozen peaks that literally swam in the sky where white clouds streamed westwards. ”

“ Like a man who hears his name called out of darkness he turned instinctively to find the speaker; almost as though someone had been speaking to him for a considerable time, and he had only just had his attention drawn to it. He looked keenly up and down the immense, deserted valley.
In every direction, however, he saw nothing but miles of rock, dazzling snowfields, dark precipices, and endless peaks cutting the blue sky overhead with teeth that gleamed like burnished steel. It was desolation everywhere. The gentle wind that fanned his cheek made no sound against the stones. ”

“ Leaning back on his axe he threw his body into position for sliding down to the bottom of the slope. In another second he would have started⁠—when something that froze him into the immobility of a terror worse than death arrested him with a Power beyond anything he had ever known before in his life⁠—a Power that seemed to carry behind it the pressure of the entire universe. ”

“ The gulf yawning at his feet touched him with its splendour, not its terror.
Thus, feeling inclined to shout and run, he eventually reached the desolate valley of rock and shale that lies, unrelieved by a single blade of grass, between the glacier-covered slopes that shut it in impassably on three sides. The bed of this valley lies some 7,000 feet above the sea. ”

“ An ordinary frivolous girl, of course, would have been impatient long ago. But the fine passion of the man broke everywhere through his rather lame words, and set something in the air about them aflame. The violins sounded thin and trashy compared to the rhythm of this earnest voice; all the glitter of the ballroom seemed cheap⁠—the costume of Carmen absurdly incongruous. Mr. Ambleside slipped back somehow into the key of the afternoon when Cosmic Powers had held direct communion with his soul. ”

“ Courtships fostered in the holy atmosphere of the sacred building were more likely to be true than those fanned to flame in the feverish surroundings of the dance-room. And true love is ever an offering to God. He knew the couple, too. The man, quiet, earnest, well over forty; the girl, young, dashing, spirited, leader in mischief, hard to believe sincere, flirting with more than one. In spite of the careful concealment with which she covered their proceedings, choosing the deserted afternoon service rather than the glare of the garden or ballroom for their talks, the couple were marked. ”

“ It was just possible some climber in distress had spied him out, and shouted down upon him from the heights. But he searched in vain. There was no moving human figure. The sound, if sound it had been, was not repeated; only he was no longer alone, as before. That, at least, was certain. He nibbled more chocolate, put a couple of sour prunes into his mouth to suck, arranged the blue snow-glass over his eyes, and started on again for a steady pull up to the next ridge. ”

“ Paul’s Cathedral are real and actual.
What he saw, he really saw: though the sight may have been of a kind unfamiliar to the majority. He was used as a real pawn in a real game. The girl’s life and soul were rescued, so to speak, by the marriage brought about, and her forces of mind and spirit lifted bodily for what they were worth into the scheme that God had ordained for them from the beginning of the world. Only⁠—the machinery brought to bear upon the end in view seemed so prodigious, so extraordinary, so unnecessary. One thinks of the sentence with which Ambleside always began his tale. ”

“ He was playing the whole stake, as a strong man of middle age plays it when he is utterly in earnest. “For my scheme, for our scheme, for God’s scheme I want you; and no one else but you will do. I want you to awake, and change your life, and be your true, fine self. We can make a success, you and I, a success for ourselves and for others, I shall never give you up until⁠—until you give yourself to the world, or”⁠—his voice dropped very low⁠—“to another.”
The clergyman waited breathlessly for the answer. ”

“ So far Ambleside’s story runs along ordinary lines enough. One sees his man and girl without further detail. From this point, however, it slips into a stride where the sense of proportion seems somehow lost, or else “man’s little understanding” is too close to the thing to obtain the proper perspective. If anyone but this devout and clearheaded clergyman told the tale, one might say “Fancy,” “Delusion,” or any other expression that seemed suitable. ”

“ It is always somewhat pathetic to see a man of real value fall before the conquering beauty of an ordinary young girl of the world. The clergyman, however, with an eye for spiritual values, even deeply hidden, divined that beneath her lightness and love for conquest’s sake there lay the desire for something more real. ”

“ After lunch, therefore, he struck out a diagonal course across a steep snow-slope that would eventually bring him down again to the valley a little nearer its head. And before he had gone a hundred yards he ran into the track of another climber. The marks were a couple of days old, perhaps, for in their hollows lay little heaps of fine snow-dust, freshly blown. Judging by the size there had been two men. He noted the trace of the ice-axe and the occasional streak of the trailing rope. The men had made straight for the valley far below. ”

“ The clergyman pushed his chair aside to make room to go, when, in doing so, he threw a passing glance at the couple⁠—and instantly recognised them. The girl, a Carmen, and a very becoming Carmen, was the one who frequented his afternoon services, and the man, who wore simple evening dress and was not in costume at all, was the middle-aged Englishman who had been at her heels like a slave all the summer. ”

“ For, truly, of the threads which weave into the pattern of life and out again, men see but the tiny section immediately beneath their eyes. The majority focus their gaze upon some detail⁠—thus losing the view of the whole. ”

“ And he guessed, though at first the wish may have been father to the thought only, that it was the elder man’s fine zeal and power that attracted the butterfly in spite of herself towards a life that was more worth living. ”

“ The tracks of the other men stretched clear and unbroken into the valley of rocks below. He traced the wavering thin line the whole way down.
“It’s nothing to do with these men, at any rate,” he said to himself, as he sat down for the final slide that should take him to the bottom of the slope. “No accident could possibly have happened here. The snow’s too soft, and there are no rocks to fall over or⁠ ⁠...” ”

“ Talking of the wondrous ways of God, and the little understanding of the children of men, I am always struck by the huge machinery He sometimes adopts to accomplish such delicate and apparently insignificant ends. ”

“ There was no body certainly, nor any sign of an accident; no place, indeed, where an accident could possibly have come about. He dug quickly in the loose snow with his axe, but the snow was barely two feet deep in this particular hollow, and all round it was a hard surface of smoothly and tightly packed stuff that was almost ice. ”

“ His heart went out to the faithful and patient man who was being so trifled with, yet who might be in danger of losing by virtue of his very simplicity what was to be of real value in his life⁠—and scheme. ”

“ To a man, of course, whose habit it was to seek often the will of a personal Deity he worshipped, there was nothing very out-of-the-way in all this, although he never remembered to have felt any guidance so distinctly and forcibly indicated before. ”

“ That same night it so happened, before he was able to take any steps to trace the owner of the little envelope, there was a Bal de Têtes at the principal hotel. Although the clergyman was on the Entertainment Committee which organised the simple gaieties of the place, he held that honorary position only as a personal compliment to himself ”