The Birds and Other Stories Read online

  "Perhaps," I said, with a glance at Anna, "there won't be a next time. Once was enough."

  "Not a bit of it," said Victor cheerfully, "we are all set, you know, to go off next summer. The Alps, or the Dolomites, or the Pyrenees, we haven't decided yet on the objective. You had better come with us and we'll have a proper expedition."

  I shook my head, regretfully.

  "I only wish I could," I said, "but it's impossible. I must be in New York by May and shan't be home again until September."

  "Oh, that's a long way ahead," said Victor, "anything may happen by May. We'll talk of it again, nearer the time."

  Still Anna said no word, and I wondered why Victor saw nothing strange in her reticence. Suddenly she said good night and went upstairs. It was obvious to me that all this chatter of mountain climbing had been unwelcome to her. I felt an urge to attack Victor on the subject.

  "Look here," I said, "do think twice about this holiday in the mountains. I am pretty sure Anna isn't for it."

  "Not for it?" said Victor, surprised. "Why, it was her idea entirely."

  I stared at him.

  "Are you sure?" I asked.

  "Of course I'm sure. I tell you, old fellow, she's crazy about mountains. She had a fetish about them. It's her Welsh blood, I suppose. I was being lighthearted just now about that night on Snowdon, but between ourselves I was quite amazed at her courage and her endurance. I don't mind admitting that what with the blizzard, and being frightened for her, I was dead beat by morning; but she came out of that mist like a spirit from another world. I've never seen her like it. She went down that blasted mountain as if she had spent the night on Olympus, while I limped behind her like a child. She is a very remarkable person: you realize that, don't you?"

  "Yes," I said slowly, "I do agree. Anna is very remarkable."

  Shortly afterwards we went upstairs to bed, and as I undressed and put on my pajamas, which had been left to warm for me before the fire, and noticed the thermos flask of hot milk on the bedside table, in case I should be wakeful, and padded about the thick carpeted room in my soft slippers, I thought once again of that strange bare room where Anna slept, and of the narrow trestle bed. In a futile, unnecessary gesture, I threw aside the heavy satin quilt that lay on top of my blankets, and before getting into bed opened my windows wide.

  I was restless, though, and could not sleep. My fire sank low and the cold air penetrated the room. I heard my old worn traveling clock race round the hours through the night. At four I could stand it no longer and remembered the thermos of milk with gratitude. Before drinking it I decided to pamper myself still further and close the window.

  I climbed out of bed and, shivering, went across the room to do so. Victor was right. A white frost covered the ground. The moon was full. I stood for a moment by the open window, and from the trees in shadow I saw a figure come and stand below me on the lawn. Not furtive, as a trespasser, not creeping, as a thief. Whoever it was stood motionless, as though in meditation, with face uplifted to the moon.

  Then I perceived that it was Anna. She wore a dressing gown, with a cord about it, and her hair was loose on her shoulders. She made no sound as she stood there on the frosty lawn, and I saw, with a shock of horror, that her feet were bare. I stood watching, my hand on the curtain, and suddenly I felt that I was looking upon something intimate and secret, which concerned me not. So I shut my window and returned to bed. Instinct told me that I must say nothing of what I had seen to Victor, or to Anna herself; and because of this I was filled with disquiet, almost with apprehension.

  Next morning the sun shone and we were out about the grounds with the dogs, Anna and Victor both so normal and cheerful that I told myself I had been overwrought the previous night. If Anna chose to walk barefoot in the small hours it was her business, and I had behaved ill in spying upon her. The rest of my visit passed without incident; we were all three happy and content, and I was very loath to leave them.

  I saw them again for a brief moment, some months later, before I left for America. I had gone into the Map House, in St. James's, to buy myself some half dozen books to read on that long thrash across the Atlantic--a journey one took with certain qualms in those days, the Titanic tragedy still fresh in memory--and there were Victor and Anna, poring over maps, which they had spread out over every available space.

  There was no chance of a real meeting. I had engagements for the rest of the day, and so had they, so it was hail and farewell.

  "You find us," said Victor, "getting busy about the summer holiday. The itinerary is planned. Change your mind and join us."

  "Impossible," I said. "All being well, I should be home by September. I'll get in touch with you directly I return. Well, where are you making for?"

  "Anna's choice," said Victor. "She's been thinking this out for weeks, and she's hit on a spot that looks completely inaccessible. Anyway, it's somewhere you and I have never climbed."

  He pointed down to the large-scale map in front of them. I followed his finger to a point that Anna had already marked with a tiny cross.

  "Monte Verita," I read.

  I looked up and saw that Anna's eyes were upon me.

  "Completely unknown territory, as far as I'm concerned," I said. "Be sure and have advice first, before setting forth. Get hold of local guides, and so on. What made you choose that particular ridge of mountains?"

  Anna smiled, and I felt a sense of shame, of inferiority beside her.

  "The Mountain of Truth," she said. "Come with us, do."

  I shook my head and went off upon my journey.

  During the months that followed I thought of them both, and envied them too. They were climbing, and I was hemmed in, not by the mountains that I loved but by hard business. Often I wished I had the courage to throw my work aside, turn my back on the civilized world and its dubious delights, and go seeking after truth with my two friends. Only convention deterred me, the sense that I was making a successful career for myself, which it would be folly to cut short. The pattern of my life was set. It was too late to change.

  I returned to England in September, and I was surprised, in going through the great pile of letters that awaited me, to have nothing from Victor. He had promised to write and give me news of all they had seen and done. They were not on the telephone, so I could not get in touch with them direct, but I made a note to write to Victor as soon as I had sorted out my business mail.

  A couple of days later, coming out of my club, I ran into a man, a mutual friend of ours, who detained me a moment to ask some question about my journey, and then, just as I was going down the steps, called over his shoulder, "I say, what a tragedy about poor Victor. Are you going to see him?"

  "What do you mean? What tragedy?" I asked. "Has there been an accident?"

  "He's terribly ill in a nursing home, here in London," came the answer. "Nervous breakdown. You know his wife has left him?"

  "Good God, no," I exclaimed.

  "Oh, yes. That's the cause of all the trouble. He's gone quite to pieces. You know he was devoted to her."

  I was stunned. I stood staring at the fellow, my face blank.

  "Do you mean," I said, "that she has gone off with somebody else?"

  "I don't know. I assume so. No one can get anything out of Victor. Anyway, there he has been for several weeks, with this breakdown."

  I asked for the address of the nursing home, and at once, without further delay, jumped into a cab and was driven there.

  At first I was told, on making inquiry, that Victor was seeing no visitors, but I took out my card and scribbled a line across the back. Surely he would not refuse to see me? A nurse came, and I was taken upstairs to a room on the first floor.

  I was horrified, when she opened the door, to see the haggard face that looked up at me from the chair beside the gas fire, so frail he was, so altered.

  "My dear old boy," I said, going towards him, "I only heard five minutes ago that you were here."

  The nurse closed the door and l
eft us together.

  To my distress Victor's eyes filled with tears.

  "It's all right," I said, "don't mind me. You know I shall understand."

  He seemed unable to speak. He just sat there, hunched in his dressing gown, the tears running down his cheeks. I had never felt more helpless. He pointed to a chair, and I drew it up beside him. I waited. If he did not want to tell me what had happened I would not press him. I only wanted to comfort him, to be of some assistance.

  At last he spoke, and I hardly recognized his voice.

  "Anna's gone," he said. "Did you know that? She's gone."

  I nodded. I put my hand on his knee, as though he were a small boy again and not a man past thirty, of my own age.

  "I know," I said gently, "but it will be all right. She will come back again. You are sure to get her back."

  He shook his head. I had never seen such despair, and such complete conviction.

  "Oh no," he said, "she will never come back. I know her too well. She's found what she wants."

  It was pitiful to see how completely he had given in to what had happened. Victor, usually so strong, so well-balanced.

  "Who is it?" I said. "Where did she meet this other fellow?"

  Victor stared at me, bewildered.

  "What do you mean?" he said. "She hasn't met anyone. It's not that at all. If it were, that would be easy..."

  He paused, spreading out his hands in a hopeless gesture. And suddenly he broke down again, but this time not with weakness but with a more fearful sort of stifled rage, the impotent, useless rage of a man who fights against something stronger than himself. "It was the mountain that got her," he said, "that Goddamned mountain, Monte Verita. There's a sect there, a closed order, they shut themselves up for life--there, on that mountain. I never dreamed there could be such a thing. I never knew. And she's there. On that damned mountain. On Monte Verita..."

  I sat there with him in the nursing home all afternoon, and little by little had the whole story from him.

  The journey itself, Victor said, had been pleasant and uneventful. Eventually they reached the center from which they proposed to explore the terrain immediately below Monte Verita, and here they met with difficulties. The country was unknown to Victor, and the people seemed morose and unfriendly, very different, he said, to the sort of folk who had welcomed us in the past. They spoke in a patois hard to understand, and they lacked intelligence.

  "At least, that's how they struck me," said Victor. "They were very rough and somehow undeveloped, the sort of people who might have stepped out of a former century. You know how, when we climbed together, the people could not do enough to help us, and we always managed to find guides. Here, it was different. When Anna and I tried to find out the best approach to Monte Verita, they would not tell us. They just stared at us in a stupid sort of way, and shrugged their shoulders. They had no guides, one fellow said; the mountain was--savage, unexplored."

  Victor paused, and looked at me with that same expression of despair.

  "You see," he said, "that's when I made my mistake. I should have realized the expedition was a failure--to that particular spot at any rate--and suggested to Anna that we turn back and tackle something else, something nearer to civilization anyhow, where the people were more helpful and the country more familiar. But you know how it is. You get a stubborn feeling inside you, on the mountains, and any opposition somehow rouses you.

  "And Monte Verita itself..." he broke off and stared in front of him. It was as though he was looking upon it again in his own mind. "I've never been one for lyrical description, you know that," he said. "On our finest climbs I was always the practical one and you the poet. For sheer beauty, I have never seen anything like Monte Verita. We have climbed many higher peaks, you and I, and far more dangerous ones, too; but this was somehow... sublime."

  After a few moments' silence he continued talking. "I said to Anna, 'What shall we do?' and she answered me without hesitation, 'We must go on.' I did not argue, I knew perfectly well that would be her wish. The place had put a spell on both of us."

  They left the valley, and began the ascent.

  "It was a wonderful day," said Victor, "hardly a breath of wind, and not a cloud in the sky. Scorching sun, you know how it can be, cut the air clean and cold. I chaffed Anna about that other climb, up Snowdon, and made her promise not to leave me behind this time. She was wearing an open shirt, and a brief kilted skirt, and her hair was loose. She looked... quite beautiful."

  As he talked, slowly, quietly, I had the impression that it must surely be an accident that had happened, but that his mind, unhinged by tragedy, balked at Anna's death. It must be so. Anna had fallen. He had seen her fall and had been powerless to help her. He had then returned, broken in mind and spirit, telling himself she still lived on Monte Verita.

  "We came to a village an hour before sundown," said Victor.

  "The climb had taken us all day. We were still about three hours from the peak itself, or so I judged. The village consisted of some dozen dwellings or so, huddled together. And as we walked towards the first one, a curious thing happened."

  He paused and stared in front of him.

  "Anna was a little ahead of me," he said, "moving swiftly with those long strides of hers, you know how she does. I saw two or three men, with some children and goats, come onto the track from a piece of pastureland to the right of us. Anna raised her hand in salute, and at sight of her the men started, as if terrified, and snatching up the children ran to the nearest group of hovels, as if all the fiends in hell were after them. I heard them bolt the doors and shutter the windows. It was the most extraordinary thing. The goats went scattering down the track, equally scared."

  Victor said he had made some joke to Anna about a charming welcome, and that she seemed upset; she did not know what she could have done to frighten them. Victor went to the first hut and knocked upon the door.

  Nothing happened at all, but he could hear whispers inside and a child crying. Then he lost patience and began to shout. This had effect, and after a moment one of the shutters was removed and a man's face appeared at the gap and stared at him. Victor, by way of encouragement, nodded and smiled. Slowly the man withdrew the whole of the shutter and Victor spoke to him. At first the man shook his head, then he seemed to change his mind and came and unbolted the door. He stood in the entrance, peering nervously about him, and, ignoring Victor, looked at Anna. He shook his head violently and, speaking very quickly and quite unintelligibly, pointed towards the summit of Monte Verita. Then from the shadows of the small room came an elderly man, leaning on two sticks, who motioned aside the terrified children and moved past them to the door. He, at least, spoke a language that was not entirely patois.

  "Who is that woman?" he asked. "What does she want with us?"

  Victor explained that Anna was his wife, that they had come from the valley to climb the mountain, that they were tourists on holiday, and they would be glad of shelter for the night. He said the old man stared away from him to Anna.

  "She is your wife?" he said. "She is not from Monte Verita?"

  "She is my wife," repeated Victor. "We come from England. We are in this country on holiday. We have never been here before."

  The old man turned to the younger and they muttered together for a few moments. Then the younger man went back inside the house, and there was further talk from the interior. A woman appeared, even more frightened than the younger man. She was literally trembling, Victor said, as she looked out of the doorway towards Anna. It was Anna who disturbed them.

  "She is my wife," said Victor again, "we come from the valley."

  Finally the old man made a gesture of consent, of understanding.

  "I believe you," he said. "You are welcome to come inside. If you are from the valley, that is all right. We have to be careful."

  Victor beckoned to Anna, and slowly she came up the track and stood beside Victor, on the threshold of the house. Even now the woman looked at her with t
imidity, and she and the children backed away.

  The old man motioned his visitors inside. The living room was bare but clean, and there was a fire burning.

  "We have food," said Victor, unshouldering his pack, "and mattresses too. We don't want to be a nuisance. But if we could eat here, and sleep on the floor, it will do very well indeed."

  The old man nodded. "I am satisfied," he said, "I believe you."

  Then he withdrew with his family.

  Victor said he and Anna were both puzzled at their reception, and could not understand why the fact of their being married, and coming from the valley, should have gained them admittance, after that first odd show of terror. They ate, and unrolled their packs, and then the old man appeared again with milk for them, and cheese. The woman remained behind, but the younger man, out of curiosity, accompanied the elder.

  Victor thanked the old fellow for his hospitality, and said that now they would sleep, and in the morning, soon after sunrise, they would climb to the summit of the mountain.

  "Is the way easy?" he asked.

  "It is not difficult," came the reply. "I would offer to send someone with you, but no one cares to go."

  His manner was diffident, and Victor said he glanced again at Anna.

  "Your wife will be all right in the house here," he said. "We will take care of her."

  "My wife will climb with me," said Victor. "She won't want to stay behind."

  A look of anxiety came into the old man's face.

  "It is better that your wife does not go up Monte Verita," he said. "It will be dangerous."

  "Why is it dangerous for me to go up to Monte Verita?" asked Anna.

  The old man looked at her, his anxiety deepening.

  "For girls," he said, "for women, it is dangerous."

  "But how?" asked Anna. "Why? You told my husband the path is easy."

  "It is not the path that is dangerous," he answered; "my son can set you on the path. It is because of the..." and Victor said he used a word that neither he nor Anna understood, but that it sounded like sacerdotessa, or sacerdozio.

  "That's priestess, or priesthood," said Victor. "It can't be that. I wonder what on earth he means?"