Deep; but after
Napoleon had floundered through a conquered kingdom he
generally arranged things so that the rest of the world
could follow dry-shod.
We went on climbing, higher and higher, and curving hither
and thither, in the shade of noble woods, and with a rich
variety and profusion of wild flowers all about us;
and glimpses of rounded grassy backbones below us occupied
by trim chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpses
of far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the
chalets to toys and obliterated the sheep altogether;
and every now and then some ermined monarch of the Alps
swung magnificently into view for a moment, then drifted
past an intervening spur and disappeared again.
It was an intoxicating trip altogether; the exceeding
sense of satisfaction that follows a good dinner added
largely to the enjoyment; the having something especial
to look forward to and muse about, like the approaching
grandeurs of Meiringen, sharpened the zest. Smoking was
never so good before, solid comfort was never solider;
we lay back against the thick cushions silent, meditative,
steeped in felicity.
I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. I had been
dreaming I was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake
up and find land all around me. It took me a couple seconds
to "come to," as you may say; then I took in the situation.
The horses were drinking at a trough in the edge of a town,
the driver was taking beer, Harris was snoring at my side,
the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, was sleeping
on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children
were gathered about the carriage, with their hands
crossed behind, gazing up with serious and innocent
admiration at the dozing tourists baking there in the sun.
Several small girls held night-capped babies nearly
as big as themselves in their arms, and even these fat
babies seemed to take a sort of sluggish interest in us.
We had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery!
I did not need anybody to tell me that. If I had been
a girl, I could have cursed for vexation. As it was,
I woke up the agent and gave him a piece of my mind.
Instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for being
so wanting in vigilance. He said he had expected to improve
his mind by coming to Europe, but a man might travel to the
ends of the earth with me and never see anything, for I
was manifestly endowed with the very genius of ill luck.
He even tried to get up some emotion about that poor courier,
who never got a chance to see anything, on account of
my heedlessness. But when I thought I had borne about
enough of this kind of talk, I threatened to make Harris
tramp back to the summit and make a report on that scenery,
and this suggestion spiked his battery.
We drove sullenly through Brienz, dead to the seductions
of its bewildering array of Swiss carvings and the
clamorous HOO-hooing of its cuckoo clocks, and had not
entirely recovered our spirits when we rattled across
a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered the
pretty town of Interlaken. It was just about sunset,
and we had made the trip from Lucerne in ten hours.
CHAPTER XXXII
[The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano]
We located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one of those
huge establishments which the needs of modern travel
have created in every attractive spot on the continent.
There was a great gathering at dinner, and, as usual,
one heard all sorts of languages.
The table d'ho^te was served by waitresses dressed
in the quaint and comely costume of the Swiss peasants.
This consists of a simple gros de laine, trimmed with ashes
of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre saint gris,
cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise
and narrow insertions of pa^te de foie gras backstitched
to the mise en sce`ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives
to the wearer a singularly piquant and alluring aspect.
One of these waitresses, a woman of forty,
had side-whiskers reaching half-way down her jaws.
They were two fingers broad, dark in color, pretty thick,
and the hairs were an inch long. One sees many women on
the continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this
was the only woman I saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers.
After dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves
about the front porches and the ornamental grounds belonging
to the hotel, to enjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight
deepened toward darkness, they gathered themselves together
in that saddest and solemnest and most constrained of
all places, the great blank drawing-room which is the chief
feature of all continental summer hotels. There they
grouped themselves about, in couples and threes, and mumbled
in bated voices, and looked timid and homeless and forlorn.
There was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy,
asthmatic thing, certainly the very worst miscarriage
in the way of a piano that the world has seen. In turn,
five or six dejected and homesick ladies approached
it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, and retired
with the lockjaw. But the boss of that instrument was
to come, nevertheless; and from my own country - from Arkansaw.
She was a brand-new bride, innocent, girlish, happy in herself
and her grave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was
about eighteen, just out of school, free from affections,
unconscious of that passionless multitude around her;
and the very first time she smote that old wreck one
recognized that it had met its destiny.
