The Princess Passes by Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

A >> Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson >> The Princess Passes

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

By the time we had reached Gurtnellen night had fallen black and
close, and Molly issued an edict that we should dine in the open air,
instead of seeking the doubtful comforts of a village inn, where, too,
we might suffer from the solicitude of some officious policeman. The
car accordingly was run under the lee of a great rock, the
ever-inspired Gotteland extemporised a shelter with the waterproof
rugs, and the blue flame of the chafing-dish presently cheered us with
its glow. The wind bellowed along the precipices, the Reuss shouted in
its rocky bed, and once an express from Italy to the north passed high
above us, streaming its lights through the darkness like sparks from a
boy's squib. Yet those plutocratic travellers up in the _wagons lits_
were not having anything like the "good time" we enjoyed, warm in our
motor coats, sitting snug behind our rock, a lamp from the car
illuminating our little party and shining on Molly's piquant profile
as she brewed savoury messes in her magic cauldron. This was testing
thoroughly the resources of the automobile, which was playing the part
of travelling kitchen and larder as well as travelling chariot, and
could no doubt be made, with a little ingenuity, to play the parts
also of travelling bed and tent. Yet, as I said all this aloud to
Jack, my mind leaped forward to other nights which I should soon be
spending alone tinder the stars, and I thought tenderly of my
aluminium stove and tent, my sleeping-sack, and the other camping
tools I had bought in Bern.

From where we lay hid behind our rock to Airolo was only some
thirty-two miles, and the car ate up distance with so voracious an
appetite, that it was clear we should arrive in the little Italian
town in the dead waste and middle of the night. To travel a forbidden
road on an automobile, and then to knock up a snoring innkeeper at one
in the morning, to ask him where we could find a donkey, seemed to be
straining unduly the sense of humour; so after consultation we decided
that we should leave Airolo to its slumbers and speed down the Pass
into Italy until we ran to earth the object of our quest.

[Illustration: "THE BLUE FLAME OF THE CHAFING-DISH".]

Molly had produced excellent coffee; the smoke of our cigarettes
mingled its perfume with the night air. Our position had in it
something unique, for while we were "in the heart of one of nature's
most savage retreats" (as said a guide-book of my boyhood), we were at
the same time enjoying the refinements of civilisation, and I
suggested to Winston that our bivouac would form a fit subject for a
picture labelled, in the manner of some Dutch masters, "Automobilists
Reposing."

By the time Gotteland had packed up everything, and we were seated
once more in the car, it was nearly eleven o'clock at night. Coming
out from the shelter of our rock, so fierce a blast of wind smote us
that Molly would, I think, have been carried off her feet had I not
given her a steadying arm. We had to cram our caps on our heads, or
the wind would have torn them from us, and the voice of the motor was
swallowed up in the shrieking of the tempest. Molly was evidently
destined to have her wish.

The car ran swiftly up the road to Wasen, and some twinkling lights
and a huge crimson eye at the entrance to the great tunnel told us
that we had done the ten miles to Goeschenen. No one stirred in the
streets of the village, and, gliding cat-like past the station, Jack
put the car at the beginning of the real ascent of the famous St.
Gothard Road. The higher we went, the more wildly roared the storm.
There was something appalling in the fierce volleyings of the wind
along the stark and broken faces of the precipice: it was like the
rattle of thunder. In the sombre defile of the Schoellenen the air
rushed as through a funnel. We could see nothing save the thread-like
road illuminated by our steadfast lanterns--the sole beacon of safety
in this welter. We had a ghostly impression of winding through a
narrow gorge, the river roaring in its depths; then, dashing through
an avalanche gallery (where the lights played strange tricks with the
vaulted roof), we came out upon the Devil's Bridge. The spray from the
Reuss, which here drops a full hundred feet into the abyss, lashed our
faces as with whips; the storm leaped at us out of the blackness like
a wolf; the car quivered, and for an instant it seemed that we should
be hurled against the parapet of the bridge. But we passed unharmed,
and a quarter of a mile further on Winston stopped in the welcome
shelter of the Urner Loch, a tunnelled passage in the rock.

We gasped out broken expressions of a fearful joy; then, seeing that
Molly was well, and that the wind-wolf's teeth had torn nothing from
the car, Jack went full speed ahead again, steering along the open
Urseren Valley, where we had fleeting glimpses of green fields instead
of granite rocks. Thus we came to Andermatt, where not the eye of a
mouse seemed open to mark our quick and stealthy passage. We were now
on that great mountain highroad that slants in a straight line across
almost all Switzerland from Coire to Martigny; but we kept on it only
for a little while, to steal through Hospenthal--as dead asleep as the
other villages (for Labour had not yet begun to waken in its hard
bed), and take the southern road that leads to Italy.

Thus far, audacity had been laurelled by success. It was near one in
the morning, and we were spinning fast up a valley which showed
bleakly in the flying lights of our car. Soon Jack called to us that
we had crossed the border line of the Canton Ticino, and presently
through the blackness twinkled the little lakes which mark the summit
of the Pass. We were nearly seven thousand feet above the sea, and
suddenly, as we crossed the ridge and began to sail down the dismal
Val Tremolo towards Airolo, the great wind that had made majestic
music all day and night ceased to blow. We ran into a zone of
motionless, ice-cold air, and what seemed an unnatural silence, only
the hum of the motor breaking the frozen stillness of these high
Alpine solitudes.

The road plunged to lower levels in interminable windings, the car
swooping in a series of bird-like flights, exhilarating to the nerves,
thrilling to the imagination; for in the blackness that held us we
could but guess at abysses which dropped away almost from under the
tyres of our wheels. Sometimes we dashed over foaming rivers, and soon
we sped through Airolo, where yet no one moved. Now the loud-voiced
Ticino was our companion, and we swept down through an open valley to
Faido, where we met the first human being we had seen since we left
Gurtnellen. It was a very old man, with a red cap, like a stocking,
pulled close upon his head. He had a rake on his shoulder, and we were
close on him before he knew; for the car was coasting, and ran with
hardly any noise save the whir of the chains. For a flashing instant
that old face shone out of the circle of our lights, concave with
astonishment; then we lost it forever.

"No fear that _he_ will telephone to have us stopped lower down," said
Molly. "He thinks we are supernatural, and will go home and tell his
grandchildren that he has seen witches tearing home after a revel up
among the glaciers."

Faster still the car flew down the road. The air that streamed past us
held the faint, elusive perfume of Italy, which softly hints the
presence of the walnut, the chestnut, and the grape. Through village
after village we swept at speed, our lamps shining now on mulberry and
fig trees, and on vines trained over trellises held up by splintered
granite slabs. Next we came suddenly upon an Italian-looking town with
bad _pave_ and dimly lighted streets, where three or four workmen,
early astir, stared at us in bewilderment. It was Bellinzona; but
passing through, we came out presently on the margin of an immense
sheet of water, and it was only in Locarno on the edge of Lago
Maggiore, when dawn was paling the eastern sky, that Jack at last drew
rein.

No one was tired; no one wanted to rest. On the contrary, our rapid
flight over the Alps had intoxicated us with the sense of speed; and
we were all excitedly for going on until we should reach the frontier.
As pink dawn blossomed in the sky, like a heavenly orchard, and the
mountain tops were beaten into copper, we glided along the edge of the
lake, past picturesque villages and _campanili_, and cypress trees. At
the Italian frontier there were the usual tedious formalities of
payment and sealing the car with a leaden seal; but when all this was
done by sleepy officials, surly at our early passage, though little
recking of our crimes, we sailed on again, Molly driving now, through
a landscape magically clear in the young morning light.

Suddenly we all started in joyous astonishment, and Molly brought the
car to a stop. Each had seen the same thing, each had been struck with
the same thought. Here, at last, we had found what we had come so far
to seek; what Switzerland denied us, Italy offered. Standing alone in
a field by the roadside was a small, dark grey donkey, tethered to a
stone; and no other living being was in sight. The creature was not
eating; it was only thinking; and it looked at us with an eye that
seemed to speak of loneliness and the desire for human fellowship.
"The very thing for you!" cried Molly; and the long-sought-for
treasure, finding itself observed, flicked one of its heavy ears.

Gotteland and I dismounted and went nearer. As we approached, the
donkey nickered; and as its family is famed for reticence, such proof
of friendliness made me yearn to possess the deserted little beast.
But its legs were very thin, its hoofs exceedingly small, and the
thought of loading so frail a structure with the great packs that held
my camping kit seemed a barbarity. Meanwhile Gotteland, who knows
something of everything, had carefully examined the tiny animal, and
just as I was growing sentimental over its perfections, he broke the
charm by pronouncing it to be incredibly old, and unfit for work. He
also drew my attention to a disagreeable sore upon its shoulder. It
was sad; but indisputably the man was right; in any case there was no
one with whom a bargain could have been arranged, and with poignant
regret I was forced to leave my treasure-trove to its solitary
thoughts. After this we did not stop again until Molly steered the car
to the door of a beautiful hotel in Pallanza, where the shirt-sleeved
concierge hurried into his gold-laced coat, to receive in fitting
style the unusually early guests.

My first care, after coffee and a bath, was to examine the landlord
of the hotel on momentous question of mules and donkeys. At Lucerne, I
told him, they had assured me that the animals "flourished" in Canton
Ticino and the neighbourhood of the Italian Lakes. But I met with no
encouragement. Mules and donkeys were rarely seen in these parts, the
host declared. True, a few peasants employed them in the fields; but
those were poor things, unfit for an excursion such as Monsieur
purposed. At Piedimulera, perhaps, Monsieur would find what he wanted;
yes, at Piedimulera, or if not, at Domodossola; or--his face
brightened--in the Valais, preferably at Brig. Yes, he was certain
that mules and asses in abundance could be found at Brig in the Rhone
Valley. Brig! My heart sank. It was the old story. Counterfeiting
patience, I explained that I had an antipathy to the Rhone Valley, and
had actually crossed the Alps to find animals in Italy rather than be
driven to seek them in Brig.

Crushed by a hopeless, answering gesture, I made my report to Molly
and Jack. "It will end," I said, "in my traversing the world, and
eventually arriving in Japan, still searching the _rara avis_. By that
time I shall have become a harmless lunatic, and people will treat my
babblings with indulgent forbearance, when I go from house to house
begging to be supplied with a pack-mule or a pack-donkey."

At _dejeuner_, in a garden which was a successful imitation of Eden,
the situation did not, however, look so dark. The perfume of flowers,
distilled by the hot sun, was of Araby the Blest; the Borromean
Islands spread their enchantments before us, across a glittering blue
expanse of lake, and the world was after all endurable, though empty
of mules. Besides, Molly was a sweet consoler. She dwelt on the
hopeful suggestion in the name Piedimulera. It could not be wholly
deceiving, she argued. Why name a place Foot-of-a-Mule, if there were
no mules there?

"If there aren't," I exclaimed, "I swear to you that I will, by fair
means or foul, dispose of at Piedimulera all the things with which I
fondly thought to deck the animal my fancy had painted. Everything I
bought at Bern shall go, if I have to dig a grave by night in which to
bury them. This is a vow, and though my heart be wrung, I'll keep it."

Molly listened to this outburst as gravely as if I had been
threatening to sacrifice a son, did not some incredible good fortune
supply a ram caught by his horns in the bushes.

For Piedimulera we left in the afternoon, somewhat buoyed up by the
omen of the name. The way led back towards the Alps, up a broad and
beautiful valley strewn with evidences of the works for the Simplon
railway: embankments, bridges, quarries, and occasional groups of
workmen hauling rhythmically on the many ropes of a pile-driver.
Presently we swerved from the main road, and crossed the valley bed,
obedient to the map, which was our only guide to Piedimulera. We
passed one or two romantically placed, ancient villages, each of which
I hoped might be our goal; but, as usual in life, the town for which
we were bound did not appear as alluring as other towns, where we had
no need to stop.

"I feel there will be not so much as the ghost of a long-perished
Roman mule in this hamlet," I said despondently, hoping that Molly
would contradict me. But she, too, looked anxious, now that the great
moment had come, for we were driving into a town, at the mouth of a
deep gorge already dusky with purpling shadows, and there was no doubt
that it was Piedimulera.

The gloom of the twilight settled upon our spirits, dissimulate as we
might, as the car swept into the cobble-paved courtyard of an
_albergo_, a venerable grandfather of a hostelry, old, grim, and
forbidding. Out came a large, fair man to welcome us, with calculation
in his cold grey eye. He looked to me like a spider in his web,
greeting some inviting flies. We broke the ice by asking for coffee,
and when we were told that we must have it without milk, as there were
no cows within a radius of many miles, I would have staked all my
possessions (especially those acquired at Bern) that there would be no
such comparatively useless animals as mules or donkeys.

Instinct is seldom wrong. If ever there was nothing in a name, there
was nothing in that of Piedimulera, which had evidently been applied
in sheer mockery, or because, untold generations ago, the foot of that
rare creature, a mule, had been preserved here in a museum. When the
landlord found that we did not intend to stop overnight, unless mules
were at once forthcoming, he visibly lost interest in us, as inedible
insects. He shrugged his shoulders at the bare idea that Piedimulera
might shelter such creatures as we were mad enough to desire, and
assured us that there was not the least use in trying Domodossola. We
had much better spend the night with him, and to-morrow morning go on
as best we might to Brig. No? Then he washed his hands of us.

I did not give my treasures to this person: rather would I have burnt
all, than picture him battening on my Instantaneous Breakfasts. Molly
would have had me keep them, at least until we knew what fate awaited
us at Domodossola. The moment I had irrevocably parted with my outfit,
bought in happier days, I should find a mule, and how annoyed would I
be, she prophesied. But I was adamant. Had I not made a vow? Besides,
if I were to find a mule or donkey the moment I had got rid of his
paraphernalia, that alone was an inducement to throw the cargo
overboard.

On our way to Domodossola, I saw a pretty dark-eyed young woman, with
a cherubic baby in her arms, standing in the doorway of a tumble-down
cottage. Evidently she was waiting to greet her husband when he should
come home, weary with his long day's work. Quickly I made a decision
and with the same abruptness I had used in urging Molly to draw before
the too attractive shop in Bern, I begged her now to stop. My white
elephants were stowed away in separate bundles in the tonneau, where,
ever since Lucerne, they had been the cause of cramps and "pins and
needles" to the feet of any member of the party who sat there. I
ruthlessly collected the lot, and, well-nigh swamped by the load, I
carried them to the cottage door, where I laid all at the feet of the
young mother. She suddenly became an incarnate point of admiration,
and could scarcely believe that I was sane, or that she was not
dreaming when I explained my wish to make her a present. If I had
stayed an hour, I could not have dissipated her bewilderment, so I
left the things to speak for themselves--if she did not take them for
infernal machines and throw them into the river.

It was evening when we arrived at Domodossola, and I felt nothing
save cold resignation when told emphatically by the concierge of our
chosen hotel that my quest was hopeless.

"You will have to go to Brig," he said; and though he was an
intelligent and worthy man, I could have smitten him to earth.

"You must abandon me to my fate," I told Jack and Molly. "_Il est trop
fort._ If I'm to walk the face of the earth, I want a pack-mule and a
man; and, 'somehow, somewhere, somewhen,' I mean to have them. But
you've more than done your duty by me. You can get back to Lucerne
from here comfortably, without daring any more mountain passes and
fines for law-breaking. Since to Brig I must go, I'll make a virtue of
necessity, and walk over the Simplon, to see the tunnel and railway
works."

"Walk, if you will," said Molly; "but if I know my Lightning Conductor
and myself, we'll see you through to the end, be it bitter or sweet."

"Echo answers," added Jack. "If you want to see things clearly, you
must have daylight, and if we wish to escape the arm of the law, we
must fly by night, which means that we can't join forces till the
journey's end."

"You needn't think we're sacrificing ourselves, for we should love
it," Molly capped him. "We're having the jam of adventure spread thick
on our bread now."

"Well, then, everything's settled," said Jack, "except the start."

Molly thought a day in Domodossola too much. It was decided, therefore,
that they should rest till eleven, and that the motor should be ready
at midnight. They could reach Brig between two and three, and being a
posting town, the hotel people were sure to be up. I was to start
early in the morning, and meet my friends at Brig, after walking over
the Pass.

I saw them off, and then plunged fathoms deep into sleep, dreaming of
a land flowing with mules and donkeys. At five, I was up, and was
surprised to find that the despised Domodossola was a beautiful and
interesting old town, with curiously Spanish effects in its shadowy
streets, lined with ancient, arcaded houses. I thought to save time
and fatigue by taking a carriage to the frontier village of Iselle at
the foot of the Pass, and was glad I had done so, for the road was
rough and covered inches deep with a deposit of peculiar, grey dust.
But things mended when we climbed a hill, turned out of the main
valley, and followed the course of the river Diveria into a lateral
gorge of the mountains, the real porchway or entrance of the Simplon
Pass.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII

At Last!

"A Jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire,
A dare, a bliss, and a desire."
--BLISS CARMAN.

"Here a great personal deed has room."
--WALT WHITMAN.

The further I penetrated into the mountains, the more like a vast
engineering workshop did the long Alpine valley become. Yet, curiously
enough, instead of destroying romance, this gave a certain majestic
romance of its own; the romance of man's struggle to conquer the
stupendous forces of Nature with his science. It was as if Vulcan's
stithy had been dropped down into a profound ravine of the Alps, and
the drone of machinery mingled with the music of the fleeting river--a
strange diapason.

On the right of the highroad, the flat mountain face opened a black,
egg-shaped mouth at me. I got out of the carriage to approach it, and
while I stood peering down the dark throat, as if I were a Lilliputian
doctor examining the tongue of Giant Gulliver, I was suddenly clapped
upon the shoulder. It flashed into my mind that perhaps it was
forbidden to stare at the tunnel-in-making; and turning to defend
myself from a lash of red tape, with the adage that "a cat may look at
a king," I saw a man I had known years ago smiling at me.

[Illustration: "I WAS SUDDENLY CLAPPED UPON THE SHOULDER".]

I have a worldly-minded cousin who says that she is always nice to
girls, because "you never know whom they may marry." It might be
equally diplomatic to be nice to foreigners who are at Oxford with
you, because you don't know that they may not become famous engineers,
able to show you interesting things when you visit their country.
Giovanni Bolzano had been at Balliol with me, studying English, and
now it turned out that he was second engineer to the works for the new
tunnel. I recalled with poignant regret that Jack Winston and I had
once made hay of his room; but evidently he bore no malice, for after
saying that he was not surprised to see me, as everybody came this way
sooner or later, he offered to show me his tunnel, of which this was
the Italian mouth. It had another at Brig, twelve miles away, and
boasted the longest throat in the world, but as it was marvellously
ventilated, it would never choke in its own smoke, and Bolzano was
very proud of the engineering achievement. Having discharged my
carriage, I went with him into a workshop, heard the humming of
dynamos, and the buzzing of tremendous turbines, actuated by the fall
of the river Diveria, and gazed with the fascination of a mouse for a
cat at a huge and diabolical fan, driving air into the tunnel. This
fearful beast had a house to itself, with a passage down which you
could venture like Theseus entering the labyrinth of the Minotaur; but
such was the volume of breath which it drew into its mighty lungs that
you must use all your strength not to be sucked in and hurled against
the shafting; all your self-control not to be confused by its loud,
unceasing roar.

Hardly had we come out from this weird place, which would have given
Edgar Allan Poe an inspiration for a creepy tale, when Bolzano showed
me a relief gang of men getting ready to enter the tunnel, in a train
consisting of wooden boxes drawn by a miniature locomotive. This was
my chance. I was hurried off to his quarters, helped into rough,
miner's clothing, with great boots up to my knees, and given a miner's
lamp. Then, joining the eight hundred Italians,--a battalion of the
soldiers of Labour,--we got into a box, and set off to relieve eight
hundred other such soldiers who for eight hours had toiled in the
schisty heart of the mountain.

I felt as if suddenly, between sleeping and waking, I had plunged deep
into the dusk of dreamland. We rumbled through a lofty egg-shaped
vault, lined with masonry, lighted waveringly, with strange play of
shadow, by our many lamps. This phase of the dream seemed to last a
long time; and then the train of boxes slowed down, for we had reached
the danger-point, a part of the tunnel where the hidden Genii of the
Mountain had planned a trap to upset all geological expectations.
Having allowed the engineers to penetrate thus far, they had suddenly
flooded the tunnel with cataracts of water from fissures in the rock,
and had laughed wild, echoing laughter because they had contrived to
delay the work for a year, and cause the spending of much extra money.

The dream showed me now a long iron cage, shoring up the crumbling
walls of the excavation; and through this cage we crept like a
procession of wary mice, suddenly putting on speed at the end, till we
reached the tunnel-head, and found another train preparing to go out.

Here the dream flung me into a teeming Inferno of darkness and lost
spirits who (spent with eight hours' monotonous toil in this Circle)
had dropped asleep, sitting half-naked in the line of boxes which
would bear them away to a spell of rest. They had fallen into pathetic
attitudes of collapse, some lying back with their mouths open, some
resting their heads on folded arms, some drooping on comrades'
shoulders.

As our train-load of Activity came to a stand, this other train-load
of Exhaustion rumbled slowly away, the smoky lamps glinting on
polished, olive-coloured flesh, on hairy arms, and swarthy faces shut
to consciousness.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23