CHAPTER XXXV
[Swindling the Coroner]
A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How it takes possessionof a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him! I strode onward fromthe Schwarenbach hostelry a changed man, a reorganized personality. Iwalked into a new world, I saw with new eyes. I had been lookingaloft at the giant show-peaks only as things to be worshiped for theirgrandeur and magnitude, and their unspeakable grace of form; I lookedup at them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed. My sense oftheir grandeur and their noble beauty was neither lost nor impaired; Ihad gained a new interest in the mountains without losing the old ones.I followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye, and noted thepossibility or impossibility of following them with my feet. When I sawa shining helmet of ice projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagineI saw files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a gossamerthread.
We skirted the lonely little lake called the Daubensee, and presentlypassed close by a glacier on the right--a thing like a great riverfrozen solid in its flow and broken square off like a wall at its mouth.I had never been so near a glacier before.
Here we came upon a new board shanty, and found some men engaged inbuilding a stone house; so the Schwarenbach was soon to have a rival. Webought a bottle or so of beer here; at any rate they called it beer, butI knew by the price that it was dissolved jewelry, and I perceived bythe taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink.
We were surrounded by a hideous desolation. We stepped forward to a sortof jumping-off place, and were confronted by a startling contrast: weseemed to look down into fairyland. Two or three thousand feet below uswas a bright green level, with a pretty town in its midst, and a silverystream winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled in on allsides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines; and over the pines, outof the softened distances, rose the snowy domes and peaks of the MonteRosa region. How exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley downthere was! The distance was not great enough to obliterate details, itonly made them little, and mellow, and dainty, like landscapes and townsseen through the wrong end of a spy-glass.
Right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the valley, with a green,slanting, bench-shaped top, and grouped about upon this green-baizebench were a lot of black and white sheep which looked merely likeoversized worms. The bench seemed lifted well up into our neighborhood,but that was a deception--it was a long way down to it.
We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I have ever seen.It wound its corkscrew curves down the face of the colossal precipice--anarrow way, with always the solid rock wall at one elbow, andperpendicular nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting processionof guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steepand muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you had to pass atolerably fat mule. I always took the inside, when I heard or saw themule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. I preferred theinside, of course, but I should have had to take it anyhow, becausethe mule prefers the outside. A mule's preference--on a precipice--is athing to be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside. His lifeis mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers and packages which restagainst his body--therefore he is habituated to taking the outside edgeof mountain paths, to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks orbanks on the other. When he goes into the passenger business he absurdlyclings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger alwaysdangling over the great deeps of the lower world while that passenger'sheart is in the highlands, so to speak. More than once I saw a mule'shind foot cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into thebottom abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions the rider, whethermale or female, looked tolerably unwell.
There was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of light masonry hadbeen added to the verge of the path, and as there was a very sharpturn here, a panel of fencing had been set up there at some time, asa protection. This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the lightmasonry had been loosened by recent rains. A young American girl camealong on a mule, and in making the turn the mule's hind foot caved allthe loose masonry and one of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave aviolent lurch inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort, butthat girl turned as white as the snows of Mont Blanc for a moment.
The path was simply a groove cut into the face of the precipice; therewas a four-foot breadth of solid rock under the traveler, and four-footbreadth of solid rock just above his head, like the roof of a narrowporch; he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer summitlessand bottomless wall of rock before him, across a gorge or crack abiscuit's toss in width--but he could not see the bottom of his ownprecipice unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge. I didnot do this, because I did not wish to soil my clothes.
Every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places, one came acrossa panel or so of plank fencing; but they were always old and weak,and they generally leaned out over the chasm and did not make any rashpromises to hold up people who might need support. There was one ofthese panels which had only its upper board left; a pedestrianizingEnglish youth came tearing down the path, was seized with an impulse tolook over the precipice, and without an instant's thought he threw hisweight upon that crazy board. It bent outward a foot! I never made agasp before that came so near suffocating me. The English youth's facesimply showed a lively surprise, but nothing more. He went swingingalong valleyward again, as if he did not know he had just swindled acoroner by the closest kind of a shave.
The Alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box made fast betweenthe middles of two long poles, and sometimes it is a chair with a backto it and a support for the feet. It is carried by relays of strongporters. The motion is easier than that of any other conveyance. We meta few men and a great many ladies in litters; it seemed to me that mostof the ladies looked pale and nauseated; their general aspect gave methe idea that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering. As arule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery to take care ofitself.
But the most frightened creature I saw, was a led horse that overtookus. Poor fellow, he had been born and reared in the grassy levels of theKandersteg valley and had never seen anything like this hideous placebefore. Every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out fromthe dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide and pant asviolently as if he had been running a race; and all the while he quakedfrom head to heel as with a palsy. He was a handsome fellow, and hemade a fine statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see himsuffer so.
This dreadful path has had its tragedy. Baedeker, with his customaryover terseness, begins and ends the tale thus:
"The descent on horseback should be avoided. In 1861 a Comtessed'Herlincourt fell from her saddle over the precipice and was killed onthe spot."
We looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument whichcommemorates the event. It stands in the bottom of the gorge, in a placewhich has been hollowed out of the rock to protect it from the torrentand the storms. Our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and thenlimited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked him about thistragedy he showed a strong interest in the matter. He said the Countesswas very pretty, and very young--hardly out of her girlhood, in fact.She was newly married, and was on her bridal tour. The young husband wasriding a little in advance; one guide was leading the husband's horse,another was leading the bride's.
The old man continued:
"The guide that was leading the husband's horse happened to glance back,and there was that poor young thing sitting up staring out over theprecipice; and her face began to bend downward a little, and she putup her two hands slowly and met it--so,--and put them flat against hereyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a sharp shriek, andone caught only the flash of a dress, and it was all over."
Then after a pause:
"Ah, yes, that guide saw these things--yes, he saw them all. He saw themall, just as I have told you."
/> After another pause:
"Ah, yes, he saw them all. My God, that was _me_. I was that guide!"
This had been the one event of the old man's life; so one may be sure hehad forgotten no detail connected with it. We listened to all he had tosay about what was done and what happened and what was said after thesorrowful occurrence, and a painful story it was.
When we had wound down toward the valley until we were about on the lastspiral of the corkscrew, Harris's hat blew over the last remainingbit of precipice--a small cliff a hundred or hundred and fifty feethigh--and sailed down toward a steep slant composed of rough chips andfragments which the weather had flaked away from the precipices. We wentleisurely down there, expecting to find it without any trouble, but wehad made a mistake, as to that. We hunted during a couple of hours--notbecause the old straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to findout how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open ground wherethere was nothing left for it to hide behind. When one is reading inbed, and lays his paper-knife down, he cannot find it again if it issmaller than a saber; that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife couldhave been, and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragmentthat had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging around andturning over the rocks we gradually collected all the lenses and thecylinders and the various odds and ends that go to making up a completeopera-glass. We afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner canhave his adventurous lost-property by submitting proofs and paying costsof rehabilitation. We had hopes of finding the owner there, distributedaround amongst the rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph;but we were disappointed. Still, we were far from being disheartened,for there was a considerable area which we had not thoroughly searched;we were satisfied he was there, somewhere, so we resolved to wait over aday at Leuk and come back and get him.
Then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and arrange about whatwe would do with him when we got him. Harris was for contributing him tothe British Museum; but I was for mailing him to his widow. That is thedifference between Harris and me: Harris is all for display, I am allfor the simple right, even though I lose money by it. Harris argued infavor of his proposition against mine, I argued in favor of mine andagainst his. The discussion warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmedinto a quarrel. I finally said, very decidedly:
"My mind is made up. He goes to the widow."
Harris answered sharply:
"And _my_ mind is made up. He goes to the Museum."
I said, calmly:
"The museum may whistle when it gets him."
Harris retorted:
"The widow may save herself the trouble of whistling, for I will seethat she never gets him."
After some angry bandying of epithets, I said:
"It seems to me that you are taking on a good many airs about theseremains. I don't quite see what _you've_ got to say about them?"
"I? I've got _all_ to say about them. They'd never have been thought ofif I hadn't found their opera-glass. The corpse belongs to me, and I'lldo as I please with him."
I was leader of the Expedition, and all discoveries achieved by itnaturally belonged to me. I was entitled to these remains, and couldhave enforced my right; but rather than have bad blood about the matter,I said we would toss up for them. I threw heads and won, but it was abarren victory, for although we spent all the next day searching, wenever found a bone. I cannot imagine what could ever have become of thatfellow.
The town in the valley is called Leuk or Leukerbad. We pointed ourcourse toward it, down a verdant slope which was adorned with fringedgentians and other flowers, and presently entered the narrow alleys ofthe outskirts and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid"fertilizer." They ought to either pave that village or organize aferry.
Harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person was populous withthe little hungry pests; his skin, when he stripped, was splotched likea scarlet-fever patient's; so, when we were about to enter one of theLeukerbad inns, and he noticed its sign, "Chamois Hotel," he refused tostop there. He said the chamois was plentiful enough, without huntingup hotels where they made a specialty of it. I was indifferent, for thechamois is a creature that will neither bite me nor abide with me; butto calm Harris, we went to the H?tel des Alpes.
At the table d'h?te, we had this, for an incident. A very grave man--infact his gravity amounted to solemnity, and almost to austerity--satopposite us and he was "tight," but doing his best to appear sober. Hetook up a _corked_ bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass awhile,then set it out of the way, with a contented look, and went on with hisdinner.
Presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course found it empty.He looked puzzled, and glanced furtively and suspiciously out of thecorner of his eye at a benignant and unconscious old lady who sat at hisright. Shook his head, as much as to say, "No, she couldn't havedone it." He tilted the corked bottle over his glass again, meantimesearching around with his watery eye to see if anybody was watching him.He ate a few mouthfuls, raised his glass to his lips, and of course itwas still empty. He bent an injured and accusing side-glance upon thatunconscious old lady, which was a study to see. She went on eating andgave no sign. He took up his glass and his bottle, with a wise privatenod of his head, and set them gravely on the left-hand side of hisplate--poured himself another imaginary drink--went to work withhis knife and fork once more--presently lifted his glass with goodconfidence, and found it empty, as usual.
This was almost a petrifying surprise. He straightened himself up in hischair and deliberately and sorrowfully inspected the busy old ladies athis elbows, first one and then the other. At last he softly pushed hisplate away, set his glass directly in front of him, held on to itwith his left hand, and proceeded to pour with his right. This timehe observed that nothing came. He turned the bottle clear upside down;still nothing issued from it; a plaintive look came into his face, andhe said, as if to himself,
"'_Ic! they've got it all_!" Then he set the bottle down, resignedly,and took the rest of his dinner dry.
It was at that table d'h?te, too, that I had under inspection thelargest lady I have ever seen in private life. She was over seven feethigh, and magnificently proportioned. What had first called my attentionto her, was my stepping on an outlying flange of her foot, and hearing,from up toward the ceiling, a deep "Pardon, m'sieu, but you encroach!"
That was when we were coming through the hall, and the place was dim,and I could see her only vaguely. The thing which called my attentionto her the second time was, that at a table beyond ours were two verypretty girls, and this great lady came in and sat down between them andme and blotted out my view. She had a handsome face, and she was veryfinely formed--perfectly formed, I should say. But she made everybodyaround her look trivial and commonplace. Ladies near her looked likechildren, and the men about her looked mean. They looked like failures;and they looked as if they felt so, too. She sat with her back to us. Inever saw such a back in my life. I would have so liked to see themoon rise over it. The whole congregation waited, under one pretext oranother, till she finished her dinner and went out; they wanted to seeher at full altitude, and they found it worth tarrying for. She filledone's idea of what an empress ought to be, when she rose up in herunapproachable grandeur and moved superbly out of that place.
We were not at Leuk in time to see her at her heaviest weight. She hadsuffered from corpulence and had come there to get rid of her extraflesh in the baths. Five weeks of soaking--five uninterrupted hours ofit every day--had accomplished her purpose and reduced her to the rightproportions.
Those baths remove fat, and also skin-diseases. The patients remain inthe great tanks for hours at a time. A dozen gentlemen and ladies occupya tank together, and amuse themselves with rompings and various games.They have floating desks and tables, and they read or lunch or playchess in water that is breast-deep. The tourist can step in and viewthis novel spectacle if he chooses. There's a poor-box, and he will haveto contribute. There are several of thes
e big bathing-houses, and youcan always tell when you are near one of them by the romping noises andshouts of laughter that proceed from it. The water is running water, andchanges all the time, else a patient with a ringworm might take the bathwith only a partial success, since, while he was ridding himself of theringworm, he might catch the itch.
The next morning we wandered back up the green valley, leisurely, withthe curving walls of those bare and stupendous precipices risinginto the clouds before us. I had never seen a clean, bare precipicestretching up five thousand feet above me before, and I never shallexpect to see another one. They exist, perhaps, but not in places whereone can easily get close to them. This pile of stone is peculiar. Fromits base to the soaring tops of its mighty towers, all its lines and allits details vaguely suggest human architecture. There are rudimentarybow-windows, cornices, chimneys, demarcations of stories, etc. One couldsit and stare up there and study the features and exquisite graces ofthis grand structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never weary hisinterest. The termination, toward the town, observed in profile, is theperfection of shape. It comes down out of the clouds in a succession ofrounded, colossal, terracelike projections--a stairway for the gods; atits head spring several lofty storm-scarred towers, one after another,with faint films of vapor curling always about them like spectralbanners. If there were a king whose realms included the whole world,here would be the place meet and proper for such a monarch. He wouldonly need to hollow it out and put in the electric light. He could giveaudience to a nation at a time under its roof.
Our search for those remains having failed, we inspected with a glassthe dim and distant track of an old-time avalanche that once swept downfrom some pine-grown summits behind the town and swept away the housesand buried the people; then we struck down the road that leads towardthe Rhone, to see the famous Ladders. These perilous things are builtagainst the perpendicular face of a cliff two or three hundred feethigh. The peasants, of both sexes, were climbing up and down them, withheavy loads on their backs. I ordered Harris to make the ascent, so Icould put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he accomplishedthe feat successfully, through a subagent, for three francs, which Ipaid. It makes me shudder yet when I think of what I felt when I wasclinging there between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy. Attimes the world swam around me, and I could hardly keep from letting go,so dizzying was the appalling danger. Many a person would have given upand descended, but I stuck to my task, and would not yield until I hadaccomplished it. I felt a just pride in my exploit, but I would not haverepeated it for the wealth of the world. I shall break my neck yet withsome such foolhardy performance, for warnings never seem to have anylasting effect on me. When the people of the hotel found that I hadbeen climbing those crazy Ladders, it made me an object of considerableattention.
Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone valley and took the train forVisp. There we shouldered our knapsacks and things, and set out on foot,in a tremendous rain, up the winding gorge, toward Zermatt. Hour afterhour we slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble LesserAlps which were clothed in rich velvety green all the way up andhad little atomy Swiss homes perched upon grassy benches along theirmist-dimmed heights.
The rain continued to pour and the torrent to boom, and we continuedto enjoy both. At the one spot where this torrent tossed its white manehighest, and thundered loudest, and lashed the big boulders fiercest,the canton had done itself the honor to build the flimsiest woodenbridge that exists in the world. While we were walking over it, alongwith a party of horsemen, I noticed that even the larger raindrops madeit shake. I called Harris's attention to it, and he noticed it, too.It seemed to me that if I owned an elephant that was a keepsake, and Ithought a good deal of him, I would think twice before I would ride himover that bridge.
We climbed up to the village of St. Nicholas, about half past fourin the afternoon, waded ankle-deep through the fertilizer-juice, andstopped at a new and nice hotel close by the little church. We strippedand went to bed, and sent our clothes down to be baked. And the hordeof soaked tourists did the same. That chaos of clothing got mixed in thekitchen, and there were consequences.
I did not get back the same drawers I sent down, when our things came upat six-fifteen; I got a pair on a new plan. They were merely a pairof white ruffle-cuffed absurdities, hitched together at the top witha narrow band, and they did not come quite down to my knees. They werepretty enough, but they made me feel like two people, and disconnectedat that. The man must have been an idiot that got himself up likethat, to rough it in the Swiss mountains. The shirt they brought mewas shorter than the drawers, and hadn't any sleeves to it--at leastit hadn't anything more than what Mr. Darwin would call "rudimentary"sleeves; these had "edging" around them, but the bosom was ridiculouslyplain. The knit silk undershirt they brought me was on a new plan, andwas really a sensible thing; it opened behind, and had pockets in it toput your shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine, and soI found it a sort of uncomfortable garment. They gave my bobtail coatto somebody else, and sent me an ulster suitable for a giraffe. I hadto tie my collar on, because there was no button behind on that foolishlittle shirt which I described a while ago.
When I was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, I was too loose in someplaces and too tight in others, and altogether I felt slovenly andill-conditioned. However, the people at the table d'h?te were no betteroff than I was; they had everybody's clothes but their own on. Along stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail of itfollowing me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or my drawers, though Idescribed them as well as I was able. I gave them to the chambermaidthat night when I went to bed, and she probably found the owner, for myown things were on a chair outside my door in the morning.
There was a lovable English clergyman who did not get to the tabled'h?te at all. His breeches had turned up missing, and without anyequivalent. He said he was not more particular than other people, but hehad noticed that a clergyman at dinner without any breeches was almostsure to excite remark.