第5章

Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got into the landlord's light dog-cart, and rattled off through the village for the foot of Carrock.The journey at the outset was not remarkable.The Cumberland road went up and down like all other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like the rest of their race.The approach to the foot of the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other mountains all over the world.The cultivation gradually ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road became gradually rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked gradually more and more lofty, and more and more difficult to get up.The dog-cart was left at a lonely farm-house.The landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, assuming in an instant the character of the most cheerful and adventurous of guides, led the way to the ascent.Mr.Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of the mountain, and, feeling apparently that he was now going to be very lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under the influence of the contentment within and the moisture without.Only in the bosom of Mr.Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy state.He kept it a secret; but he would have given a very handsome sum, when the ascent began, to have been back again at the inn.The sides of Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden in mist.The rain was falling faster and faster.The knees of Mr.Idle - always weak on walking excursions - shivered and shook with fear and damp.The wet was already penetrating through the young man's outer coat to a brand-new shooting-jacket, for which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town; he had no stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet of clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody to push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front, nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent, the dampness ofthe rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there is level ground within reach to walk on instead.Was it for this that Thomas had left London? London, where there are nice short walks in level public gardens, with benches of repose set up at convenient distances for weary travellers - London, where rugged stone is humanely pounded into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into smooth slabs for the pavement! No! it was not for the laborious ascent of the crags of Carrock that Idle had left his native city, and travelled to Cumberland.Never did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had committed a very grave error in judgment than when he found himself standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and knew that the responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually getting to the top of it.

The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the mournful Idle brought up the rear.From time to time, the two foremost members of the expedition changed places in the order of march; but the rearguard never altered his position.Up the mountain or down the mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr.Thomas Idle was always the last, and was always the man who had to be looked after and waited for.At first the ascent was delusively easy, the sides of the mountain sloped gradually, and the material of which they were composed was a soft spongy turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon.After a hundred yards or so, however, the verdant scene and the easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began.Not noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to sit upon, but little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about anyhow, by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers- up of wavering feet.When these impediments were passed, heather and slough followed.Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned round to look at the view below them.The scene of the moorland and the fields was like a feeble water-colour drawing half sponged out.The mist was darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees were dotted aboutlike spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped out the fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely farm-house where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral in the grey light like the last human dwelling at the end of the habitable world.Was this a sight worth climbing to see?Surely - surely not!