Part 11

Meanwhile Miss Prim, during one of her holiday visits to England, had succeeded in getting engaged. She imparted the happy news to our family, with becoming shyness, a few hours after her return; she wondered whether her fiancé might ever come out here, and proceed with his courtship on foreign soil, for a week or so? Why, of course he could; let him come when he pleased, and stay as long as ever he liked! In due course of time he arrived; and his name was Mr. Clutterbuck. Clutterbuck. Clutterbuck. The name alone sent us into fits; we thought it an incomparably funny one, as indeed it is. Mr. Clutterbuck, himself, was a droll and pertinacious individual. He used to sit, rod in hand, trying to catch trout in the reservoirs. Everybody told him he would never get a nibble there--the fish were far too well-fed; why not try a fly on the Tabalada stream, at the bottom of the valley near Gais, the fishing of which also belonged to us?

No. Mr. Clutterbuck preferred the reservoirs. He would sit on that stone margin morning and afternoon, while the Prim hovered lovingly in his neighborhood. There I see him sitting to this day.

* * * * *

The only way to get these pampered beasts out of the reservoir is by the prosaic method of draining off the water. Then you have them! Now just remove your trousers and wade into the mud, if you do not mind looking like a fool, and pull them out with your hands, which is far more exciting sport than you might imagine. Only then is it possible to realize how slippery and muscular a trout can be when taken, not off a hook after an hour’s playing, but fresh from its element. We used to do this periodically in later years, and some of the fish were of respectable size. The largest I remember catching weighed a fraction over four kilograms and was seventy-six centimeters in length. He kicked like an electric dynamo.

We happened to be going that afternoon to a friend in Bregenz and decided to make him a present of this trout, particularly as he had a far-famed Viennese _chef_ who claimed to be able to make a succulent ragout out of the Devil himself. As there was no time for a special box to be built, we requisitioned the newly made coffin of a child that had died overnight but was happily not yet bestowed therein; our monster was packed inside, comfortably wrapped up in green nettles. The baby could wait; the trout was in a hurry....

SCHLINS

_Schlins_

There is a sense of sudden departure in the air.

We shall know the worst, to-morrow, or next day....

Lasko’s well has not moved from its old place. It lies about a hundred yards west of the “Château aux fenêtres.” The wooden trough into which the water trickles--one of its many successors--looks the same as ever; I am glad it has not yet been converted into a basin of cement, like those in the village below.

The transformation of wood into cement is proceeding relentlessly all over the country; to my infinite disgust. Those numerous wooden watertroughs for the use of householders and their cattle, which used to be quite a feature of the streets, are now all being manufactured out of this damnably durable material; there is a cement-factory near our station, and I wish somebody would drop a bomb on it. Cement has invaded domestic architecture, as was inevitable. Inevitable things are not always pleasant, and not always pretty. It is hard to imagine anything more infamous, on a small scale, than the prison-like gray garden walls which have replaced those delightful wooden palings through whose meshes a riot of flowers would come tumbling out upon the road; the spacious wooden houses, so full of charm and individuality, so redolent of patriarchal well-being, with their shingles and gables burnt to a glowing umber-brown by years and years of sunshine, are being discarded in favor of weedy little cement abominations that make one sorry for people who have to live in them. They look cheap; they are cheap. I wish they were dear, for cheap things are seldom attractive, and life in cheap and ugly homes cannot fail to give their inmates a corresponding bent of mind.

Not a single wooden bridge is left over Lutz or Ill. They were swept away, every one of them, in the floods of 1910 and 1911 and now, for the first time, their place is taken by solid but hideous structures of cement. One is sorry to let the old ones go; one calls to mind the bridge at Ludesch built as long ago as 1498 and ever since then kept in repair, with its sloping wooden roof, its sudden twilight within and odor of hot fir-wood, as of a scented tunnel; one remembers the soft tread of the horses’ feet on the powdery beams and the sound of creaking timbers underfoot. They are eyesores, these new things; they will remain eyesores.

Now a new road is an eyesore too, ruthlessly hacked, as it is, through the landscape; and nearly every road hereabouts, great or small, has been cut afresh within the last generation. No great harm in this, however, since roads have a knack of growing old again; you need only wait; lichens and grass and brushwood will presently creep up to hide the scars. There is nothing to be done with palings and bridges and troughs and houses of cement; nothing, save to stand aside and curse them. For the æsthetic drawback of cement, that godsend to lazy builders, lies in its agelessness and lack of character; if it grows old at all, it grows even more horrible than in youth. But men are becoming blind to these and other uglifications--the word is not quite ugly enough for the thing--of the scenery and of their houses. For instance: forty-one unseemly electric wires converge at the post-office of our small village; there they are, so repulsive that you cannot but look at them; the women of the place, instead of feeding chickens or mending the children’s clothes, spend their lives in gossiping with each other at long distances, and God alone knows the nonsense they find to chatter about. Go where you please, in fact, and you cannot fail to perceive half a dozen decorative telegraph poles staring you in the face. Now why do people want all this ridiculous electricity rushing up and down the country? Solidarity. Brotherhood of men....

Lasko’s well----

No; it has not moved from its old place. But we looked in vain for those “Wasserkälber” which were always to be found lying at its bottom in olden days. Indeed, I have not seen a single “Wasserkälb” since my arrival here. Are they extinct?[38]

We called him Lasko; but it was not till many years afterwards, at an English public school, that I learnt that Lasko really meant anything. And we called it Lasko’s well, because it was here that Lasko, our black retriever, lapped up some water on his last walk, the day before his death. After that, we made it a rule that every one of our dogs, as often as we passed this place, should drink at the trough in memory of dear old Lasko, whether he happened to be thirsty or not; if he refused, his head was held under the water till he had imbibed, willy-nilly, something like the requisite amount of liquid. To this treatment were submitted:

(1) Lasko the Second, a worthless yellow brute who, having been altered in youth, was of so timorous a disposition that it became our greatest delight to get somebody to fire off a gun in his immediate neighborhood, and watch him flee for his life.

(2) Sippins, who belonged to my sister and to the “Affenpincher” breed--that is, to so small and strange-looking a canine variety that the boys were wont to call him a Chinese rat; all of which did not prevent him from having fleas. One wonders whether those enthusiasts, who declare that dogs have no fleas, are in earnest. Have they ever looked for them? Sippins was flea’d, during the summer, twice a day by a maid who deposited the insects in a saucer containing alcohol, and in my boyish journal I record “136 fleas caught from Sippins at a single time”--Sippins himself, as aforesaid, being about the size of a full-grown rat. Now Sippins objected strongly to this water-cure at Lasko’s well. He had been born and educated at Munich; he only touched water when no beer was procurable; he could drink like a lord, like a fish; but only beer. It was not long, therefore, before it became one of our principal pastimes to “make Sippins drunk.” He seldom knew when to stop.

(3) MacDougall, a Skye-terrier belonging to me, of so pure a breed that you never knew whether he was walking forwards or backwards. He was an anomaly among quadrupeds; nothing approaching his style had been seen in this country before. His talent consisted in enticing cats down from walls and trees and other inaccessible situations by his mere appearance; the cats, seemingly, being unable to resist the temptation of inspecting at close quarters this freak of nature, this animated hearth-rug. Once on the ground, they were doomed to a violent death, for they never dreamt it was a dog. Need I say what our chief diversion with MacDougall used to be? One of his most brilliant exploits took place in Bludesch at our tailor’s--who was also our haircutter; whence, for many years, I found it difficult to realize that tailoring and haircutting were separate professions--where dwelt a family of cats, a mother and half a dozen kittens. The operation took less than a minute to perform, while we looked on amazed and, ten to one, amused; two shakes for the mother, half a shake each for the kittens; the entire family laid out flat on the grass, dead as doornails, side by side; whereupon he trotted up to us, right end forward, saying plainly: “_How’s that?_” And we doubtless replied: “Oh, MacDougall! Do it again.” Very cruel children, we were....

Straight up, from Lasko’s well, and once more to that inspiring portal of green, where the path to Tiefis enters the cavern-like forest. To-day those curtain-fringes of the dark firs are waving softly to and fro, stirred by a tepid Fön wind. Now down again, past sundry erratic blocks and through the newly planted tract to the “nymphe pudique”--the source of the crayfish stream, which we intend to pursue all the way to Schlins. A good deal of that fair swamp growth has been cut since our last visit; enough remains to please the eye. The vale grows wider after the Tiefis-Bludesch road has been crossed, and the rushes denser; one realizes why the peasants have called this rivulet “Ried-bach.” It meanders in desultory fashion about this upper marshy level; then plunges, all of a sudden, into the wood, and puts on a new character. A downhill career begins in earnest. Rapids are formed, and islets; all in the deep shade of those trees through which it glimmers obscurely along. A kingfisher haunts these dusky reaches (there is another on the upper Montiola brook); scenery such as this must have been in Poe’s mind when he wrote “The Island of the Fay.” Soon we pass a small abandoned reservoir; it is the second spot in the district where bulrushes can be found--the third is near Bludenz; after that comes a stretch of country difficult to follow, steep and irregular, a stretch of tortuous windings and cascades, till the lower level of Schlins is reached, where the brook enters upon its final phase, gliding demurely, like our own Feldbächle, through cultivated meadows at the foot of Jagdberg.

It stands to reason that we straightway found ourselves sitting at the Krone inn, wistful at the thought that this might be our last visit here. The proprietress is a sweet-natured woman and a stimulating conversationalist; we talked and talked, while Mr. R. partook of his traditional two eggs and insisted moreover in drinking “Suser,” freshly made cider, in spite of my warning about the probable consequences of such rash behavior, namely, an attack of the “Holde Katarina,” the “Fair Katherine,” which signifies a loosening of the bowels. The expression is remarkable as showing the prudishness of these folk in regard to bodily matters of every kind; alter a letter in that name, and you may divine its origin. All such things are slurred over, even by grown-up people. So female dogs are always known as “he”; incredible to relate, our much-married dachshund-lady is “he.” How different from Mediterranean countries where sexuality and every other physiological fact is taken for granted by the smallest children, and emphasized as such; where even inanimate objects are apt to be invested with the attributes of sex! Here we stand before a racial divergence of outlook; a gulf.

The cider-harvest promises well. But I have long ago given up pretending to enjoy this drink, and find it hard to believe that the first time I ever got tipsy was on such mawkish stuff. Yet so it was. Needless to say, it was not my own fault; other people were mixed up in the affair; Jakob, and my sister. Jakob was a smiling, sunburnt villager who looked after our cows and pigs and also helped at the hay-making; the accident, therefore, must have occurred at the present season of the year. Now whatever Jakob did, he did with such peculiar zest that it was a liberal education to watch him. Nobody could _dengel_ quite like he could (to _dengel_ is to beat out the blade of a scythe); he threw his heart and soul into the performance. And nobody could quaff cider with such infinite gusto; it made you thirsty to look at him. Wherever he happened to be mowing among the fields, there, close at hand, in the shade of some tree, stood his jug of blue stoneware out of which he refreshed himself gloriously, in god-like fashion, from time to time. When it was empty, he was wont to disappear down the stairs of the laundry into certain mysterious regions underneath our house and come back with the jug refilled; and this is where my sister’s rôle begins. She was three years old at the time; the suggestion, therefore, can only have come from her; the suggestion, I mean, that we should watch where Jakob went and then get some cider for ourselves. It was another world down there, a cool twilight passage running the whole length of the house, with vaulted chambers on both sides that were lighted by windows ever so high up. One of them was full of barrels side by side, and one of those barrels was still dripping. Aha! So that was where Jakob filled his jug. Now just the least little turn of the tap, and the liquid began to trickle deliciously down our throats, while we egged each other on to drink more and more. I have no idea how long we stayed down there. The countryside was scoured in vain; all traces of the children had disappeared, and had it not been for Jakob providentially descending to fetch himself yet another jugful, we might have remained undiscovered till next morning. As it was, we were picked up senseless and put to bed.

Seven o’clock--how long one has lingered in this pleasant tavern! Now we leave, after many farewellings, and wander homewards due east, not passing the church at all; we cross the streamlet which has accompanied us hither and immediately enter that wood, familiar by this time, the once awe-inspiring forest of the----. It is already dark here, under the firs, but the rich, resinous perfumes of daylight are still hanging in the air; no dew has fallen to quench them. So we move along the dim path in silence; we have talked ourselves out, at Schlins.

All those squirrels--what has become of them? In olden days you could seldom traverse any wood hereabouts without encountering one or more. Now, during the whole of our stay here, we have seen but two; one black, one red. Where are they gone? I enquired, and learnt that they had not been persecuted during the war, as were the moles. To be sure, certain persons eat squirrels and declare them to be excellent; they did this already in the days when these animals were numerous. In England, also, the race seems to be dying out. Has there been some epidemic, or is the whole squirrel-tribe growing weary of life and contemptuous of the joys of propagation? Quite lonesome these forests are, without their squirrels. As to the crested tits--they seem to have vanished altogether; in fact, the entire titmouse tribe is far less common than it used to be. Have their nesting-places grown rarer or are they, too, becoming ascetic? We have wandered leagues and leagues about these woodlands, and not once have I heard that melodious trill; not once.

Out, into the odorous _pré des papillons_, into a fading, greenish-gray atmosphere, a kind of elf-land. All is moist here, and mysterious. An owl sallies forth on our left and circles twice directly overhead, so close that we can discern her eyes and beak. Then up through misty fields past a decrepit hay-hut, one of the survivors of the old school like that near the crayfish-stream, one of those whose planks are encrusted with sulphur-hued lichen. Now Mr. R. produces his talisman and plays as we walk in the gloaming; many new _morceaux_ have been “found” since that day at Blumenegg. Our last concert, possibly! And just when I was beginning to appreciate, and even understand--which is far more difficult--this aboriginal music with its up-to-date names!

Marching along I review, in fancy, the many scenes which have lately flitted before our eyes, and one little memory creeps up among the throng; I think it will end in submerging them all. It was what we saw a few days ago during our latest stroll to the ruined Jagdberg. I make a point, namely, of losing myself on the way there (it is quite easy; you have only to bear a little to the north in the woods) because, in so doing, you never fail to see something, however insignificant, which you never saw before. So it fell out. We duly lost our way and, floundering down a thickly wooded incline, came to the margin of a small crescent-shaped bog, surrounded by old firs. It was as solitary a spot as you might wish to find; for all one knew, the foot of man had never trodden here. Now I have spoken of the many-tinted vegetation of these marshy tracts. This one, for reasons which a botanist may expound, was of another nature. It had been dedicated wholly to gentians.[39] They shot up from the wet moss--a blaze of the most perfect blue on earth. Theirs was not a steady light, but shimmering and playful, and of a luster so intense that no African sky, no sapphire, could have rivaled it. I plucked one of these portentous flowers. It measured nearly the length of my walking-stick and was alive with color from end to end. Conceive a hundred thousand of them, all huddled together among those somber trees. We seemed to be looking down into a lake of blue fire.

Here, I think, is a memory to cherish; a vision to carry away into other lands.

* * * * *

Sunday, 3 September. Departure! We leave by the 1 a.m. train to-night.

And it would not be hard to guess where we went this afternoon, for a final stroll.

There, in the well-known room, was the “old one” as well as her husband, and the baby looking prettier than ever since her holiday at Thüringerberg; there also were some twenty other people, peasant-folk, chatting at tables, and smoking and drinking beer. Sunday! We had overlooked this fact. And there they would sit, till all hours of the night. “Not much chance of _embrassez-moi_ in here,” I thought, as I looked round. Mr. R. remained in the open doorway, and his disappointment took a tragic turn. He said bitterly:

“What are all our pleasant walks and talks worth now? Ah, I shall have nothing but unhappy memories of your country.”

“That you shall not,” I declared. “Nobody is to have unhappy memories of my country, if I can help it. Now this is a moment for heroic measures, and one little thing has just dawned upon me; what cannot be done inside a room, may be done outside. Let us sit down, while you order your eggs. I have it. I have it already. Those eggs.... How lucky you are fond of eggs. How lucky you have a friend who knows why eggs were created!”

We gave our orders.

“What on earth am I to do?” asked Mr. R.

“You will presently leave the room, without turning round to look at anybody. Go into the orchard at the back of the house, and wait there. When the baby arrives, I give you thirty seconds together. Employ them in a laughing and brotherly fashion, as I told you the other day. Then you, at least, will return straight here. Thirty seconds. If you mean to obey to the letter, swear it. Else no baby till the crack of doom. Now, swear.”

Whereupon Mr. R. swore a great oath in the Mediterranean manner, on the head, or the honor--on both, I fancy--of his own mother, to obey to the letter.

“Thirty seconds,” I went on. “Imagine otherwise what might happen if the old one grew suspicious and went into the orchard! And she may well be suspicious, after those marconigrams of the other day. What would she think of us two conspirators? How about my reputation here, in the only country where, by good luck, I have not yet been found out; where my family name is a byword for all that is upright and honorable; where my father, my grandfather.... Just let me hear you swear again.”

Whereupon he swore a second great oath, to the same effect as the first, on the souls of all his dead ancestors, male and female.

“Thirty seconds.... You can go now. And listen! Clasp her firmly if you get the chance, or you may bungle the whole affair, and these are the little accidents one never forgives oneself. After all, it would be a queer baby who objected to being embraced for thirty seconds by such an affectionate elder brother. Why should she?”

“I was going to do that anyhow.”

He departed; and presently the fateful eggs arrived and remained on the table one minute, two minutes. I beckoned Dorothea to my side:

“Will you go and fetch my friend? His eggs are getting cold. You may find him in the orchard; he is fond of orchards. _Run!_” and I gave her a gentle push. Whether she perceived the strategy or not, she was off like an arrow.

What happened under those apple-trees I shall learn in due course of time, by the simple expedient of asking no questions. Up to this moment I only know that Mr. R. returned alone, and sat down to his eggs with a not unsuccessful air of _insouciance_. The baby, I suspect, was in the kitchen, cooling down that wonderful complexion, and her mother would doubtless have gone to look for her there, had I not meanwhile entangled her into a complicated discussion anent the manufacture of Kirschwasser, a specialty of this village. Thirty thousand kronen a liter, she vowed, was what they were asking for it. Who was going to pay thirty thousand kronen? Well, it struck me that one shilling and sixpence for a bottle and a quarter of the finest Kirschwasser on earth was a fairly reasonable price.

So far good. I came well out of that little episode....

Endless are the other things we have left undone. Why, we have not even been up the Walserthal, nor so much as an inch in the direction of that fairest of all our alps, the Gamperdona behind Nenzing, where twelve hundred cows are munching and mooing day and night. (The Montavon valley may take care of itself; it is full of tourists). And of hills, real hills, nothing has been climbed save the poor old Scesaplana. I had intended to take Mr. R. on some mountain which has more flavor to it, even though it be not so high--the Drei Schwestern, for instance, above Frastanz, about which my father also wrote a paper; or the Widderstein, or the Kanisfluh. There, on the Kanisfluh, he might have satisfied his craving for edelweiss.

No matter. The mountains can wait for another season.