Part 8
We were still hard-jammed in the steamer crowd and barely off the gang-plank, when a stout, motherly-looking, middle-aged woman asked me in German whether we were strangers, and if so, where we were going to lodge? I thought she had just come ashore with us and supposed she was a guileless stranger and didn’t know where to go. So I told her in my labored German that we also were strangers and to our infinite regret were unable to offer her any advice. But _that_ wasn’t what she wanted, and she buzzed on hopefully till by and by I got it through my head that she had two furnished rooms she’d like to rent us and that they were wonderfully clean and pleasant and home-like, and the location central, and she would serve us breakfast and charge us only three francs apiece for it and lodging, and we would really have great difficulty in finding anything else so desirable at anything like the price.
Sandwiched in with all this was a large amount of family history. They were Germans from some Rhine town and had only been in Geneva a few months. Her husband had come here to work. She could not get used to it. Neither could she speak French, but she had a daughter who spoke it very nicely. When her rooms became vacant, she went down to the pier and watched the people come ashore from the boat and spoke to some one who looked likely to understand German. She nearly always guessed right, and they had had _such_ nice people in their rooms! Some such charming Americans! Were _we_ by any chance Americans? Ah, she had thought so as soon as she saw us. She seldom made a mistake.
I told her at first automatically, as a matter of course, that we did not want her rooms, but she was not easily discouraged and prattled artlessly on. Her apartment was very near. It could do us no harm to _look_ at the rooms. We were nowise bound to take them.
After all, this was quite true, and though we had a number of addresses, we had no special reason for going to any of them. She had as honest a face as one could need to see. We had stayed at plenty of places about which we knew absolutely nothing. We did not know less about this good woman’s rooms. Clearly, we risked nothing by going with her. So off we went, her babble of personal and professional reminiscences running on like a brook.
The apartment was in a house not especially attractive from the outside, but once we got within and saw its resplendent cleanliness and almost luxury of furnishing, we knew we should search no farther.
Geneva is what is known as a handsome city. It is clean and modern and tries to be like Paris. It has good hotels and shops and parks and quays and drives and public monuments. We spent that afternoon shopping and sight-seeing, took dinner at an open-air restaurant in the Jardin Anglais, attended an organ recital at the cathedral, which was considerably marred by the non-working of the blowing apparatus, and decided as we walked home that we would have had all we cared for of Geneva by 2 P. M. the following day.
I remember the gentle irony of the pretty waitress at the restaurant in the Jardin Anglais. Frater, who was still feeling under the weather, ordered two soft-boiled eggs and a cup of hot milk. Antonio, who always manifested homesickness by mortification of the flesh, gave an almost equally simple order and said he would drink _water_. He had read somewhere that Geneva city water was safe. Belle Soeur and I, who were hungry and _not_ homesick, ordered a substantial meal and a small bottle of red wine. Having written this all down, the waitress turned to Antonio and inquired with a demure smile whether the gentleman who drank water would have it _hot_ or _plain_?
The next morning our landlady brought us a breakfast that was fit for the gods. The _café-au-lait_ was excellent, the little rolls delicious, the fresh butter pats exquisite, and the honey—where shall I find words to describe its perfection? We all did well at that breakfast, but the two boys, who had dined so frugally the night before, appeared to be hollow to their toes. Like magic melted out of sight the heaping plate of rolls, the great pots of coffee and milk, the dainty pats of butter, and only a trace in the bottom was left of the pint jar of honey. Really, it was shocking.
Later, Belle Soeur, Antonio and I, being in the sitting-room, heard strange sounds of blind man’s buff and overturned chairs issuing from the boys’ bedroom. Presently out rushed Frater with an anxious hunted look, closely followed by the daughter of the house, who, her face swollen with tooth-ache and tied up in a handkerchief, was not at the moment of great personal attractiveness. “She wants to tell me something!” groaned Frater. “For heaven’s sake, find out what it is!” Apparently she had felt that her message was of a confidential nature and should be communicated at close range, and Frater, who is shy—at _times_—had tried to keep the center-table between them, and the strange sounds we had heard were caused by his flight and her pursuit around and around this table till he bolted for the door. At least such is the not very gallant explanation he gave us later.
Balked in her desire to speak quietly to one of the gentlemen of the party (the sterner sex being popularly supposed to be more liberal in money matters), the young-woman-who-spoke-French got out to me with great embarrassment her mother’s message—that she was _very_ glad we had enjoyed the breakfast, and that she was prepared to stand by the price she had quoted to us the day before, but that she had really not looked forward to such wholesale consumption of honey, and would be actually out of pocket unless we would be willing to pay her twenty-five centimes (five cents) apiece more. Of course if we didn’t think it right——But we _did_, and so assured her!
That morning we called on some friends, a retired Rear Admiral and his family, at one of the hotels, and had the novel sensation of talking “American” for an hour or more, declined their invitation to lunch, got our letters and a hamper of clothes from the post-office, shifted into mountaineering costume again and returned our traveling outfit by the convenient mail to Grindelwald.
Belle Soeur and Antonio had noticed the day before the bill-of-fare of a restaurant outside its door, the prices of which had struck them as the most phenomenally low they had ever seen, and the place looked clean and respectable. It was on the other side of the river, on the way to the train we were to take for Chamonix. So we resolved to get our luncheon there.
It was not till we were inside and giving our order that we woke up to the fact that it was a charitable institution—a sort of soup-kitchen financially backed by a committee of ladies. A quick vote taken showed that we declined to beat a retreat at that late date, so we had a remarkably fine lunch, thanks to the charitable ladies, at the interesting price of ten cents apiece. It included roast beef (a big, tender, juicy slice), five cents, mashed potatoes, two cents, bread, one cent, and seltzer water, two cents. We were later than the conventional lunch hour and had the place to ourselves, so could not judge who or what its usual patrons were; but evidently _we_ were _raras aves_, to judge by the stir and amusement we created among the employees.
XVI
There was nothing very scenically interesting about the trip from Geneva to Chamonix. So far as I remember, we played cards all the way. A certain thrill of emotion was experienced as we passed over the French border. The boys felt it because it was the first time, Belle Soeur and I because we were back again! The baggy red trousers of the soldiers of the line loafing about the station—Heavens, how natural they looked! Frater called them bloomers, but that was irreverent of him.
Chamonix reminded us of Zermatt for being big and full of tourists, and, as at Zermatt, we yearned to get out of the village. We went to a hotel mentioned by Baedeker well up on the hillside, which must have a fine view of Mont Blanc and the neighboring peaks when the weather permitted. Just then, low-lying clouds shut them all out.
It was an attractive place, surrounded by a garden, rather more sophisticated than the hotels we generally frequented. But being late in the season, they gave us beautiful front rooms at very moderate pension rates.
We laid our plans for an all-day’s excursion on the morrow and were very much disgusted when we woke up to find it raining. We loafed around the house rather disconsolately all the morning, writing letters and playing cards.
After lunch it had stopped raining, though the sky was still overcast. So we curtailed our intended expedition and started out. We betook ourselves to a spot called Montanvert overhanging the Mer de Glace, adorned, of course, by a restaurant, where we had tea and Belle Soeur bought a pair of woolen socks. She was weak on nails in her soles, and the socks, put on over her shoes, were to take their place while crossing the glacier.
There were streams of tourists here coming and going and quantities of guides anxious to take us across, but we assured them that we had had large experience in glaciers and needed no assistance. A timid-looking bearded German overheard us thus assuring the last offering guide and decided to combine safety and economy by following us. He said no word of thanks, explanation or apology, but constituted himself our shadow. Also, by the grace of God, he came through alive.
The crossing of the Mer de Glace is hummocky and requires climbing. It is also slippery. But there is no danger involved of anything worse than sitting down hard. The continuous procession of tourists passing over makes losing one’s way quite out of the question, and the function of the guide is only to lend a steadying hand to the aged and infirm or to persons unsuitably dressed for scrambling. There is nothing at all about the Mer de Glace to justify its reputation. It is simply an average characteristic sort of glacier, very accessible to the general tourist, and safe and easy to walk across.
The path on the other side, after running along the ridge of the lateral moraine for a little distance, takes one down the famous “Mauvais Pas.” It may have been “bad” at some prehistoric time, though the vertical distance involved is so small (perhaps a hundred and fifty feet to the surface of the glacier) that it can never have been _very_ desperate. But now there are nice steps cut out in the rock and an iron hand-rail let into the cliff to hold on by, and really no one but a cripple, an old lady or a young child could find it dangerous. Nevertheless, the French dramatic instinct has not failed to take advantage of its traditional terrors. Two little boxes for the poor are attached to the rock at the beginning and end of the “Pas” with a request that the traveler express his gratitude to God for his preservation by alms-giving. The whole thing was so delightfully Latin and characteristic that we stopped and contributed.
It was a long way down through the woods and home, and we quickened our steps till we were almost running the last mile or two, for we had a strong interest in dinner and we knew that we were late.
The next morning it was raining again! This was disgusting. We decided, however, that as it had stopped about noon the day before, perhaps it would do so this time. So we ordered our luncheon put up and started out on the Mont Blanc trail. Besides, I wanted to try the exercise and fresh air cure on a cold I was catching. The microbe had established itself in my throat the morning previous, when I was sitting on the balcony outside my window, waiting for it to stop raining. An old gentleman sitting on _his_ balcony directly overhead was sneezing and sneezing with great violence. In the midst of so much fresh air, it did not occur to me to think of infection, till all at once I felt a raw scratchiness in the mucous membrane of my throat, and I knew that the “invasion” had taken place. I tried to drive the beast out with listerine, but unfortunately there was only a spoonful left in the bottle. So then I tried the mountain air. It was my misfortune that it could be had just then only in combination with rain.
It is only just to say that this explanation of the origin of my cold was not accepted by my companions, who preferred to lay it on the weather. But they were all able to bear witness later to the highly contagious nature of the malady. Personally, I was and am convinced that my three months of out-door life in all weathers had seasoned me beyond any peradventure of catching cold because my shoes were damp.
It was only drizzly, for the most part. When a hard downpour came, we stopped and took shelter under a shed or dense-leafed tree. Some distance up the mountain-side, but still within the tree belt, we came upon a lonely little refreshment hut, where we stopped and ordered coffee and hot milk to go with our cold lunch from the hotel. It was raining pretty hard just then, and we spread out our lunch hour as long as possible, keeping up each other’s spirits by a very conscious, but reasonably successful effort. Evidently it looked all right from the outside at least, for when we came to go, the proprietress of the châlet, a sad-eyed little Frenchwoman, begged us almost with tears to stay longer,—not to feel that we must order anything more either, but just to stay and not go out in the rain. She would _love_ to have us stay, we were young and had _le cœur gai_, and it did her good to look at us and listen to us, although she could not understand what we were saying!
However, though thanking her for her tribute to our gay hearts and not ungrateful (I at least) for that incidental tribute to our extreme youth, we decided it was time to move and pushed on up the mountain-side. After half an hour or more we passed the more elaborate Pavilion de la Pierre Pointue, and then all at once found ourselves on the brink of the Glacier des Bossons.
I do not know whether on a clear day it would have seemed so enormous, so awe-inspiring. The rain had turned into snow drifting lazily down on us. The clouds were all around, above, below. Out of the clouds above flowed that huge ice-mass,—vast, measureless, tossed like waves of the sea suddenly frozen. Down below us the clouds swallowed it again. What we saw was gigantic. Who could tell how much more there might be hidden in the clouds? The Pavilion was lost behind a corner of rocks. It might have been a thousand miles away, and any other trace of humanity as well, for aught that we could see. We seemed to be in the very heart of Nature—huge, untrammeled, primordial.
The cold and the increasing thickness of the snow-storm drove us down, but it was glorious while it lasted.
The next morning at breakfast we observed for the last time the amiable manners of the young Frenchman with the downy moustache who always kissed his father, mother and two sisters on the forehead before sitting down to his coffee, and admired once more the embroidered napkin-covers of the English family. Then we asked for our bill. The sun was really out that morning and the clouds looked as if they might lift, but we did not feel that we could stay longer in Chamonix. Antonio’s time in Switzerland was growing very limited, and we must give him a few days to rest at the Châlet Edelweiss before starting on the homeward journey.
The amiable French proprietress blandly presented us with a bill about twice the size agreed upon. Then followed heavy weather. If there is anything under heaven I hate, it is an altercation over a bill, but my three companions stood expectantly beside me, and I _can_ be voluble in French when I have to be. So I girded up my loins and did my duty. Back and forth we hurled the language, up and down we shrugged our shoulders, using hands and eye-brows to intensify our effects. She was much bigger than I, and her voice was louder. Also she had doubtless had more practice. But the Three stood firm behind me to block retreat, and the consciousness of being in the right presumably buoyed me up.
All at once, without the slightest warning of an approaching change of front, the proprietress dropped her blustering voice, yielded the point at issue with an incredible gracefulness, made out the bill anew in the way it ought to be, and devoted the last few minutes of our stay to making an agreeable impression. The clouds were lifting. Ah, we should have a view of Mont Blanc before we left! Quick, François, bring the big telescope and have it all ready. Ah—ah—joy! There go the clouds! There at last is Mont Blanc!
There it was, and we were very glad we did not have to leave Chamonix without seeing it. But aside from this academic satisfaction, Mont Blanc is very disappointing,—a wide, rounded excrescence on a long mountain range, hardly any higher apparently than the surrounding peaks, some of which are infinitely more picturesque in form. In fact, the dominating feature of the Chamonix scenery is not that broad lumpy saddle-back of Mont Blanc, but the serrated rows of needle peaks called Aiguilles rising black above the snow, uptilted rock-strata worn away by erosion, the most spectacular objects, except the Matterhorn, in all the Alps.
A party who had ascended Mont Blanc the day of our arrival, before the rain came on, and had been imprisoned at the summit ever since, were taking advantage of this first clearing to get down. Through the telescope we could see them plainly—little moving black specks on the snow field, descending towards the Grands Mulets.
We left them presently, Madame and François and the rest of the hotel staff in a perfect ferment of amiability and politeness, and walked up the valley to Argentière, then, sharply turning to the left, followed the diligence road over the Tête Noire.
XVII
Going over the Tête Noire is another of the things that everybody does, and like most things that are so easy, hardly worth while. I do not mean that there is no good scenery on the road, but there is nothing that quickens the pulse or sets one to breathing deep.
Perhaps I may do less than justice to the Tête Noire road because of my bodily sensations while passing over it. I certainly was not happy that day. The beast in my throat had downed me. I had a headache and a fever, a cold in the head, and an unpleasant sense of collapsibility in the legs.
Every few miles I stopped at some wayside inn or refreshment booth and ordered a liqueur glass of kirsch (which is a local form of liquid fire) and a few lumps of sugar, and, by dipping the sugar in the nostrum, was able little by little to absorb its fieriness, whereby the legs afore-mentioned acquired an artificial stiffening that carried them a few miles farther.
Antonio was greatly distressed at this immoral method by which I kept going. I think he had visions of my becoming a dipsomaniac in consequence of that day’s tippling. If he had only known how unpleasant the kirsch was, he would have been less alarmed.
The day passed somehow. There were showers here and there to add to the rawness of my throat. We passed back into Switzerland about noon. At dinner-time we began arriving at Martignys. There are an indefinite number of them spread out for miles—old town, new town, and railroad station. The last named was our destination. After dinner at the Hotel de la Gare (a function in which I was not personally interested, though I took another kirsch), we boarded a crowded train for Sion. I have seldom been so glad to get anywhere as I was to get to bed in the Sion hotel that night. I was sorry for poor Belle Soeur having to share my room, for I was well aware of the infectious character of the microbe I was harboring, but as they had no more vacant ones (or said they hadn’t), there seemed to be no help for it.
The next day I felt worse. Belle Soeur nobly offered to stay with me at Sion till I got well and let the boys continue the trip without us. But I did not want to break up the party, and knowing I was bound to be miserable that day _anywhere_, decided it might as well be on the road. So Frater filled his pocket flask with kirsch instead of cognac, and off we started over the Rawyl.
Now, the Rawyl is one of the least traveled passes in Switzerland. Baedeker, who takes it in the reverse direction from ours, gives a very inadequate description of the path, and says it takes ten and a half hours from Lenk to Sion, and that a guide is desirable. We ought to have taken warning from that ten and a half hours, for Baedeker’s times allow for no stops and assume a pretty swinging gait. But we wanted to go home that way, and we trusted to luck.
We did not get such an early start as we intended, and we took the wrong road out of Sion and walked an extra mile or so before we got set right. Those of us who had been brave enough to dig through the Swiss histories were mildly interested in the roofless, windowless, grinning skulls of castles that crowned the hill-tops over the town, the Bishop’s and the Baron’s. They used to have such lively times in Sion between their two sets of tyrants!
As always, it was sizzling hot in the Rhone valley, and we were glad as our road lifted us out of it. We went through a fine fruit belt as we rose, and I regret to say we plucked a plum or a pear or an apple quite frequently as we walked along.
At Ayent, about half-past ten, we came to what we knew was the last settlement. Here we fortified ourselves with a second _café-au-lait_, and laid in a stock of bread, sweet chocolate and hard-boiled eggs. Then we turned our backs on civilization and went on. We knew we had to leave the wagon road soon, but were in great doubt where, till a very intelligent peasant came along who gave us directions we could really follow. He also told us that we were two days’ journey from Lenk—which hardly sounded encouraging.
That day seemed to me about a hundred years long. Would there never be an end to this picking up of one foot and setting down of the other? And I had to keep _pushing_ the old things so to make them move! No wonder I was tired. My head weighed about a ton, and had a red-hot and very tight iron band around it. And every bone in my body ached. Oh, _bless_ the old man at Chamonix! At Ayent I had happened to look in a glass that hung on the dining-room wall, and the reflection I saw fairly frightened me for its ugliness. Did that shiny red nose, those bleary red eyes, that blotchy red face really belong to _me_?
By lunch-time we were among the high pastures and had opened up a pretty broad view of the Valais mountains, our old friends around Zermatt on the other side of the Rhone. We came upon a spring which had been piped to a trough for the cattle, and, as we were very thirsty, thought we would risk drinking from it, when, fortunately, we looked closer and saw the water was alive with long squirming hair-thin eels! They were the most uncanny-looking beasts I almost ever saw. Antonio suggested picking them out, as they were extremely visible, and drinking the expurgated water, but somebody objected that the water must be full of their eggs and that it would be so unpleasant to have them hatch—afterwards. So we ate our chocolate and hard-boiled eggs and bread, and kept our thirst for future reference.