hepburn and hannele were to make a small excursion to the glacier which stood there always in sight, coldly grinning in the sky. the weather had been very hot, but this morning there were loose clouds in the sky. the captain rowed over the lake soon after dawn. hannele stepped into the little craft, and they pulled back to the town. there was a wind ruffling the water, so that the boat leaped and chuckled. the glacier, in a recess among the folded mountains, looked cold and angry. but morning was very sweet in the sky, and blowing very sweet with a faint scent of the second hay from the low lands at the head of the lake. beyond stood naked grey rock like a wall of mountains, pure rock, with faint, thin slashes of snow. yesterday it had rained on the lake. the sun was going to appear from behind the breitsteinhorn, the sky with its clouds floating in blue light and yellow radiance was lovely and cheering again. but dark clouds seemed to spout up from the pinzgau valley. and once across the lake, all was shadow, when the water no longer gave back the sky-morning.

the day was a feast day, a holiday. already so early three young men from the mountains were bathing near the steps of the badeanstalt. handsome, physical fellows, with good limbs rolling and swaying in the early morning water. they seemed to enjoy it too. but to hepburn it was always as if a dark wing were stretched in the sky, over these mountains, like a doom. and these three young, lusty, naked men swimming and rolling in the shadow.

hepburn’s was the first boat stirring. he made fast in the hotel boat-house, and he and hannele went into the little town. it was deep in shadow, though the light of the sky, curdled with cloud, was bright overhead. but dark and chill and heavy lay the shadow in the black-and-white town, like a sediment.

the shops were all shut, but peasants from the hills were already strolling about in their holiday dress: the men in their short leather trousers, like football drawers, and bare brown knees and great boots: their little grey jackets faced with green, and their green hats with the proud chamois-brush behind. they seemed to stray about like lost souls, and the proud chamois-brush behind their hats, this proud, cocky, perking-up tail, like a mountain-buck with his tail up, was belied by the lost-soul look of the men, as they loitered about with their hands shoved in the front pockets of their trousers. some women also were creeping about: peasant women, in the funny little black hats that had thick gold under the brim and long black streamers of ribbon, broad, black, water-wave ribbon starting from a bow under the brim behind and streaming right to the bottom of the skirt. these women, in their thick, dark dresses with tight bodices and massive, heavy, full skirts, and bright or dark aprons, strode about with the heavy stride of the mountain women, the heavy, quick, forward-leaning motion. they were waiting for the town-day to begin.

hepburn had a knapsack on his back, with food for the day. but bread was wanting. they found the door of the bakery open, and got a loaf: a long, hot loaf of pure white bread, beautifully sweet bread. it cost seventy kronen. to hepburn it was always a mystery where this exquisite bread came from, in a lost land.

in the little square where the clock stood were bunches of people, and a big motor-omnibus, and a motor-car that would hold about eight people. hepburn had paid his seven hundred kronen for the two tickets. hannele tied up her head in a thin scarf and put on her thick coat. she and hepburn sat in front by the peaked driver. and at seven o’clock away went the car, swooping out of the town, past the handsome old tyrolese schloss, or manor, black-and-white, with its little black spires pricking up, past the station, and under the trees by the lakeside. the road was not good, but they ran at a great speed, out past the end of the lake, where the reeds grew, out into the open valley mouth, where the mountains opened in two clefts. it was cold in the car. hepburn buttoned himself up to the throat and pulled his hat down on his ears. hannele’s scarf fluttered. she sat without saying anything, erect, her face fine and keen, watching ahead. from the deep pinzgau valley came the river roaring and raging, a glacier river of pale, seething ice-water. over went the car, over the log bridge, darting towards the great slopes opposite. and then a sudden immense turn, a swerve under the height of the mountain-side, and again a darting lurch forward, under the pear trees of the high-road, past the big old ruined castle that so magnificently watched the valley mouth, and the foaming river; on, rushing under the huge roofs of the balconied peasant houses of a village, then swinging again to take another valley mouth, there where a little village clustered all black and white on a knoll, with a white church that had a black steeple, and a white castle with black spires, and clustering, ample black-and-white houses of the tyrol. there is a grandeur even in the peasant houses, with their great wide passage halls where the swallows build, and where one could build a whole english cottage.

so the motor-car darted up this new, narrow, wilder, more sinister valley. a herd of almost wild young horses, handsome reddish things, burst around the car, and one great mare with full flanks went crashing up the road ahead, her heels flashing to the car, while her foal whinneyed and screamed from behind. but no, she could not turn from the road. on and on she crashed, forging ahead, the car behind her. and then at last she did swerve aside, among the thin alder trees by the wild riverbed.

‘if it isn’t a cow, it’s a horse,’ said the driver, who was thin and weaselish and silent, with his ear-flaps over his ears.

but the great mare had shaken herself in a wild swerve, and screaming and whinneying was plunging back to her foal. hannele had been frightened.

the car rushed on, through water-meadows, along a naked, white bit of mountain road. ahead was a darkness of mountain front and pine trees. to the right was the stony, furious, lion-like river, tawny-coloured here, and the slope up beyond. but the road for the moment was swinging fairly level through the stunned water-meadows of the savage valley. there were gates to open, and hepburn jumped down to open them, as if he were the footboy. the heavy jews of the wrong sort, seated behind, of course did not stir.

at a house on a knoll the driver sounded his horn, and out rushed children crying papa! papa! — then a woman with a basket. a few brief words from the weaselish man, who smiled with warm, manly blue eyes at his children, then the car leaped forward. the whole bearing of the man was so different when he was looking at his own family. he could not even say thank you when hepburn opened the gates. he hated and even despised his human cargo of middle-class people. deep, deep is class hatred, and it begins to swallow all human feeling in its abyss. so, stiff, silent, thin, capable, and neuter towards his fares, sat the little driver with the flaps over his ears, and his thin nose cold.

the car swept round, suddenly, into the trees: and into the ravine. the river shouted at the bottom of a gulf. bristling pine trees stood around. the air was black and cold and forever sunless. the motor-car rushed on, in this blackness under the rock-walls and the fir trees.

then it suddenly stopped. there was a huge motor-omnibus ahead, drab and enormous-looking. tourists and trippers of last night coming back from the glacier. it stood like a great rock. and the smaller motor-car edged past, tilting into the rock gutter under the face of stone.

so, after a while of this valley of the shadow of death, lurching in steep loops upwards, the motor-car scrambling wonderfully, struggling past trees and rock upwards, at last they came to the end. it was a huge inn or tourist hotel of brown wood: and here the road ended in a little wide bay surrounded and overhung by trees. beyond was a garage and a bridge over a roaring river: and always the overhung darkness of trees and the intolerable steep slopes immediately above.

hannele left her big coat. the sky looked blue above the gloom. they set out across the hollow-sounding bridge, over the everlasting mad rush of ice-water, to the immediate upslope of the path, under dark trees. but a little old man in a sort of sentry-box wanted fifty or sixty kronen: apparently for the upkeep of the road, a sort of toll.

the other tourists were coming — some stopping to have a drink first. the second omnibus had not yet arrived. hannele and hepburn were the first two, treading slowly up that dark path, under the trees. the grasses hanging on the rock face were still dewy. there were a few wild raspberries, and a tiny tuft of bilberries with black berries here and there, and a few tufts of unripe cranberries. the many hundreds of tourists who passed up and down did not leave much to pick. some mountain harebells, like bells of blue water, hung coldly glistening in their darkness. sometimes the hairy mountain-bell, pale-blue and bristling, stood alone, curving his head right down, stiff and taut. there was an occasional big, moist, lolling daisy.

so the two climbed slowly up the steep ledge of a road. this valley was just a mountain cleft, cleft sheer in the hard, living rock, with black trees like hair flourishing in this secret, naked place of the earth. at the bottom of the open wedge for ever roared the rampant, insatiable water. the sky from above was like a sharp wedge forcing its way into the earth’s cleavage, and that eternal ferocious water was like the steel edge of the wedge, the terrible tip biting in into the rocks’ intensity. who could have thought that the soft sky of light, and the soft foam of water could thrust and penetrate into the dark, strong earth? but so it was. hannele and hepburn, toiling up the steep little ledge of a road that hung half-way down the gulf, looked back, time after time, back down upon the brown timbers and shingle roofs of the hotel, that now, away below, looked damp and wedged in like boulders. then back at the next tourists struggling up. then down at the water, that rushed like a beast of prey. and then, as they rose higher, they looked up also at the livid great sides of rock, livid, bare rock that sloped from the sky-ridge in a hideous sheer swerve downwards.

in his heart of hearts hepburn hated it. he hated it, he loathed it, it seemed almost obscene, this livid, naked slide of rock, unthinkably huge and massive, sliding down to this gulf where bushes grew like hair in the darkness and water roared. above, there were thin slashes of snow.

so the two climbed slowly on, up the eternal side of that valley, sweating with the exertion. sometimes the sun, now risen high, shone full on their side of the gulley. tourists were trickling downhill too: two maidens with bare arms and bare heads and huge boots: men tourists with great knapsacks and edelweiss in their hats: giving bergheil for a greeting. but the captain said good-day. he refused this bergheil business. people swarming touristy on these horrible mountains made him feel almost sick.

he and hannele also were not in good company together. there was a sort of silent hostility between them. she hated the effort of climbing; but the high air, the cold in the air, the savage cat-howling sound of the water, those awful flanks of livid rock, all this thrilled and excited her to another sort of savageness. and he, dark, rather slender and feline, with something of the physical suavity of a delicate-footed race, he hated beating his way up the rock, he hated the sound of the water, it frightened him, and the high air hit him in the chest, like a viper.

‘wonderful! wonderful!’ she cried, taking great breaths in her splendid chest.

‘yes. and horrible. detestable,’ he said.

she turned with a flash, and the high strident sound of the mountain in her voice.

‘if you don’t like it,’ she said, rather jeering, ‘why ever did you come?’

‘i had to try,’ he said.

‘and if you don’t like it,’ she said, ‘why should you try to spoil it for me?’

‘i hate it,’ he answered.

they were climbing more into the height, more into the light, into the open, in the full sun. the valley cleft was sinking below them. opposite was only the sheer, livid slide of the naked rock, tipping from the pure sky. at a certain angle they could see away beyond the lake lying far off and small, the wall of those other rocks like a curtain of stone, dim and diminished to the horizon. and the sky with curdling clouds and blue sunshine intermittent.

‘wonderful, wonderful, to be high up,’ she said, breathing great breaths.

‘yes,’ he said. ‘it is wonderful. but very detestable. i want to live near the sea-level. i am no mountain-topper.’

‘evidently not,’ she said.

‘bergheil!’ cried a youth with bare arms and bare chest, bare head, terrific fanged boots, a knapsack and an alpenstock, and all the bronzed wind and sun of the mountain snow in his skin and his faintly bleached hair. with his great heavy knapsack, his rumpled thick stockings, his ghastly fanged boots, hepburn found him repulsive.

‘guten tag’ he answered coldly.

‘gruss gott,’ said hannele.

and the young tannh?user, the young siegfried, this young balder beautiful strode climbing down the rocks, marching and swinging with his alpenstock. and immediately after the youth came a maiden, with hair on the wind and her shirt-breast open, striding in corduroy breeches, rumpled worsted stockings, thick boots, a knapsack and an alpenstock. she passed without greeting. and our pair stopped in angry silence and watched her dropping down the mountain-side.