A Tramp Abroad — Volume 05
Page 7
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 Hotel des Alpes.
At the table d'hote, 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, thenset 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, andtook the rest of his dinner dry.
It was at that table d'hote, 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 these 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 himove
r 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'hote 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'hote 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.