A Voyage of Consolation Part 32

It was all so clear and sharp and still at St. Moritz; everything drew a double significance from its height and its loneliness. But, as poppa says, a great deal of trouble would be saved if people who feel that they can't describe things would be willing to consider the alternative of leaving them alone; and I will only dwell on St. Moritz long enough to say that it nearly shattered one of Mr. Mafferton's most cherished principles. Never in his life before, he said, had he felt inclined to take warm water in his bath in the morning. He made a note of the temperature of his tub to send to the _Times_. "You never can tell," he said, "the effect these little things may have." I was beginning to be accustomed to the effect they had on me.

Before we got to Coire the cool rus.h.i.+ng night had come and the glaciers had blotted themselves out. I find a mere note against Coire to the effect that it often rains when you arrive there, and also that it is a place in which you may count on sleeping particularly sound if you come by diligence; but there is no reason why I should not mention that it was under the sway of the Dukes of Swabia until 1268, as momma wishes me to do so. We took the train there for Constance, and between Coire and Constance, on the Bodensee, occurred Rorshach and Romanshorn; but we didn't get out, and, as momma says, there was nothing in the least individual about their railway stations. We went on that Bodensee, however, I remember with animosity, taking a small steamer at Constance for Neuhausen. It was a gray and sulky Bodensee, full of little dull waves and a cold head wind that never changed its mind for a moment.

Isabel and I huddled together for comfort on the very hard wooden seat that ran round the deck, and the depth of our misery may be gathered from the fact that, when the wind caught Isabel's floral hat under the brim and cast it suddenly into that body of water, neither of us looked round! Mrs. Portheris was very much annoyed at our unhappy indifference.

She implied that it was precisely to enable Isabel to stop a steamer on the Bodensee in an emergency of this sort that she had had her taught German. d.i.c.ky told me privately that if it had happened a week before he would have gone overboard in pursuit, for the sake of business, without hesitation, but, under the present happy circ.u.mstances, he preferred the prospect of buying a new hat. Nothing else actually transpired during the afternoon, though there were times when other events seemed as precipitant, to most of us, as upon the tossing Atlantic, and we made port without having realised anything about the Bodensee, except that we would rather not be on it.

Neuhausen was the port, but Schaffhausen was of course the place, two or three dusty miles along a river the ident.i.ty of which revealed itself to Mrs. Portheris through the hotel omnibus windows as an inspiration. "Do we all fully understand," she demanded, "that we are looking upon the Rhine?" And we endeavoured to do so, though the Senator said that if it were not so intimately connected with the lake we had just been delivered from he would have felt more cordial about it. I should like to have it understood that relations were hardly what might be called strained at this time between the Senator and myself. There were subjects which we avoided, and we had enough regard for our dignity, respectively, not to drop into personalities whatever we did, but we had a _modus vivendi_, we got along. d.i.c.ky maintained a n.o.ble and pained reserve, giving poppa hours of thought, out of which he emerged with the almost visible reflection that a Wick never changed his mind.

There was a garden with funny little flowers in it which went out of fas.h.i.+on in America about twenty years ago. There was also a _chalet_ in the garden, where we saw at once that we could buy cuckoo clocks and edelweiss and German lace if we wanted to. There was a big hotel full of people speaking strange languages--by this time we all sympathised with Mr. Mafferton in his resentment of foreigners in Continental hotels; as he said, one expected them to do their travelling in England. There were the "Laufen" foaming down the valley under the dining room windows, there were the Swiss waitresses in short petticoats and velvet bodices and white chemisettes, and at the dinner table, sitting precisely opposite, there were the Malts. Mr. Malt, Mrs. Malt, Emmeline Malt, and Miss Callis, not one of them missing. The Malts whom we had left at Rome, left in the same hotel with Count Filgiatti, and to some purpose apparently, for seated attentively next to Mrs. Malt there also was that diminutive n.o.bleman.

As a family we saw at a glance that America was not likely to be the poorer by one Count in spite of the way we had behaved to him. Miss Callis, with four thousand dollars a year of her own, was going to offer them up to sustain the traditions of her country. A Count, if she could help it, should not go a-begging more than twice. Further impressions were lost in the shock of greeting, but it recurred to me instantly to wonder whether Miss Callis had really gone into the question of keeping a Count on that income, whether she would be able to give him all the luxuries he had been brought up in antic.i.p.ation of. It was interesting to observe the slight embarra.s.sment with which Count Filgiatti re-encountered his earlier American vision, and his re-a.s.surance when I gave him the bow of the most travelling of acquaintances. Nothing was further from my thoughts than interfering. When I considered the number of engagements upon my hands already, it made me quite faint to contemplate even an _arrangimento_ in addition to them.

We told the Malts where we had been and they told us where they had been as well as we could across the table without seeming too confidential, and after dinner Emmeline led the way to the enclosed verandah which commanded the Falls. "Come along, ladies and gentlemen," said Emmeline, "and see the great big old Schaffhausen Fraud. Performance begins at nine o'clock exactly, and no reserve seats, so unless you want to get left, Mrs. Portheris, you'd better put a hustle on."

Miss Malt had gone through several processes of annihilation at Mrs.

Portheris's hands, and had always come out of them so much livelier than ever, that our Aunt Caroline had abandoned her to America some time previously.

"Emmeline!" exclaimed Mrs. Malt, "you are _too_ personal."

"She ought to be sent to the children's table," Mrs. Portheris remarked severely.

"Oh, that's all right, Mrs. Portheris. I don't like milk puddings--they give you a double chin. I expect you've eaten a lot of 'em in your time, haven't you, Mis' Portheris? Now, Mr. Mafferton, you sit here, and you, Mis' Wick, you sit _here_. That's right, Mr. Wick, you hold up the wall.

I ain't proud, I'll sit on the floor--there now, we're every one fixed.

No, Mr. Dod, none of us ladies object to smoking--Mis' Portheris smokes herself, don't you, Mis' Portheris?"

"Emmeline, if you pa.s.s another remark to bed you go!" exclaimed her mother with unction.

"I was fourteen the day before yesterday, and you don't send people of fourteen to bed. I got a town lot for a birthday present. Oh, there's the French gentleman! _Bon soir, Monsieur! Comment va-t-il! Attendez!_"

and we were suddenly bereft of Emmeline.

"She's gone to play poker with that man from Ma.r.s.eilles," remarked Mrs.

Malt. "Really, husband, I don't know----"

"You able to put a limit on the game?" asked poppa.

Everybody laughed, and Mr. Malt said that it wasn't possible for Emmeline to play for money because she never could keep as much as five francs in her possession, but if she _did_ he'd think it necessary to warn the man from Ma.r.s.eilles that Miss Malt knew the game.

"And she's perfectly right," continued her father, "in describing this illumination business as a fraud. I don't say it isn't pretty enough, but it's a fraud this way, they don't give you any choice about paying your money for it. Now we didn't start boarding at this hotel, we went to the one down there on the other side of the river. We were very much fatigued when we arrived, and every member of our party went straight to bed. Next day--I always call for my bills daily--what do I find in my account but '_Illumination de la chute de la Rhin_' one franc apiece."

"And you hadn't ordered anything of the kind," said poppa.

"Ordered it? I hadn't even seen it! Well, I didn't lose my temper. I took the doc.u.ment down to the office and asked to have it explained to me. The explanation was that it cost the hotel a large sum of money. I said I guessed it did, and it was also probably expensive to get hot and cold water laid on, but I didn't see any mention of that in the bill, though I used the hot and cold water, and didn't use the illumination."

"That's so," said poppa.

"Well, then the fellow said it was done all on my account, or words to that effect, and that it was a beautiful illumination and worth twice the money, and as it was the rule of the hotel he'd have to trouble me for the price of it."

"Did you oblige him?" asked poppa.

"Yes, I did. I hated to awfully, but you never can tell where the law will land you in a foreign country, especially when you can't converse with the judge, and I don't expect any stranger could get justice in Schaffhausen against an hotel anyway. But I sent for my party's trunks, and we moved--down there to that little thing like a castle overhanging the Falls. It was a castle once, I believe, but it's a deception now, for they've turned it into an hotel."

"Find it comfortable there?" inquired the Senator.

"Well, I'm telling you. Pretty comfortable. You could sit in the garden and get as wet as you liked from the spray, and no extra charge; and if you wanted to eat apricots at the same time they only cost you a franc apiece. So when I saw how moderate they were every way, I didn't think I'd have any trouble about the illumination, specially as I heard that the three hotels which compose Schaffhausen subscribed to run the electric plant, and I'd already helped one hotel with its subscription."

"When did you move in here?" asked poppa.

"I am coming to that. Well, I saw the show that night. I happened to be on an outside balcony when it came off, and I couldn't help seeing it. I wouldn't let myself out so far as to enjoy it, for fear it might prejudice me later, but I certainly looked on. You can't keep your eyes shut for three-quarters of an hour for the sake of a principle valued at a franc a head."

"I expect you had to pay," said poppa.

"You're so impatient. I looked coldly on, and between the different coloured acts I made a calculation of the amount the hotel opposite was losing by its extortion. I took considerable satisfaction in doing it.

You can get excited over a little thing like that just as much as if it were the entire Monroe Doctrine; and I couldn't sleep, hardly, that night for thinking of the things I'd say to the hotel clerk if the illumination item decorated the bill next day. Cut myself shaving in the morning over it--thing I never do. Well, there it was--'_Illumination de la chute de la Rhin_,' same old French story, a franc apiece."

"I thought, somehow, from what you've been saying, that it _would_ be there," remarked the Senator patiently.

"Well, sir, I tried to control myself, but I guess the clerk would tell you I was pretty wild. There wasn't an argument I didn't use. I threw as many lights on the situation as they did on the Falls. I asked him how it would be if a person preferred his Falls plain? I told him I paid him board and lodging for what Schaffhausen could show me, not for what I could show Schaffhausen. I used the words 'pillage,' 'outrage,' and other unmistakable terms, and I spoke of communicating the matter to the American Consul at Berne."

"And after that?" inquired the Senator.

"Oh, it wasn't any use. After that I paid, and moved. Moved right up here, this morning. But I thought about it a good deal on the way, and concluded that, if I wasn't prepared to sample every hotel within ten miles of this cataract for the sake of not being imposed upon, I'd have to take up a different att.i.tude. So I walked up to the manager the minute we arrived, fierce as an Englishman--beg your pardon, Squire Mafferton, but the British _have_ a ferocious way with hotel managers, as a rule. I didn't mean anything personal--and said to him exactly as if it was my hotel, and he was merely stopping in it, 'Sir,' I said, 'I understand that the guests of this hotel are allowed to subscribe to an electric illumination of the Falls of the Rhine. You may put me down for ten francs. Now I'm prepared, for the first time, to appreciate the evening's entertainment."

Shortly after the recital of Mr. Malt's experiences the illumination began, and we realised what it was to drink coffee in fairyland. Poppa advises me, however, to attempt no description of the Falls of Schaffhausen by any light, because "there," he says, "you will come into compet.i.tion with Ruskin." The Senator is perfectly satisfied with Ruskin's description of the Falls; he says he doesn't believe much could be added to it. Though he himself was somewhat depressed by them, he found that he liked them so much better than Niagara. I heard him myself tell five different Alpine climbers, in precise figures, how much more water went over our own cataract.

It was discovered that evening that Mr. and Mrs. Malt, and Emmeline, and Miss Callis and the Count were going on to Heidelberg and down the Rhine by precisely the same train and steamer that we had ourselves selected.

Mrs. Malt was looking forward to the ruins on the embattled Rhine with all the enthusiasm we had expended upon Venice, but Mr. Malt declared himself so full of the picturesque already that he didn't know how he was going to hold another castle.

CHAPTER XXV.

We were on our way from Basle to Heidelberg, I remember, and Mr. Malt was commenting sarcastically upon Swiss resources for naming towns as exemplified in "Neuhausen." "There's a lot about this country,"

said Mr. Malt, "that reminds you of the world as it appeared about the time you built it for yourself every day with blocks, and made it lively with animals out of your Noah's Ark. I can't say what it is, but that's a sample of it--'New Houses!' What a baby baa-lamb name for a town! It would settle the munic.i.p.ality in our part of the world--any railway would make a circuit of fifty miles to avoid it!"

Mr. Mafferton and I had paused in our conversation, and these remarks reached us in full. They gave him the opportunity of bending a sympathetic glance upon me and saying, "How graphic your countrymen are, Miss Wick." Cologne was only three days off, but Mr. Mafferton never departed from the proprieties in his form of address. He was in that respect quite the most docile and respectful person I have ever found it necessary to keep in suspense.

I said they were not all as pictorial as Mr. Malt, and noticed that his eye was wandering. It had wandered to Miss Callis, who was snubbing the Count, and looking wonderfully well. I don't know whether I have mentioned that she had blue eyes and black hair, but her occupation, of course, would be becoming to anybody.

"And for the matter of that your country-women, too," said Mr.

Mafferton. "I am much gratified to have the opportunity of making the acquaintance of another of them in this unexpected way. I find your friend, Miss Callis, a charming creature."

She wasn't my friend, but the moment did not seem opportune for saying so.

"I saw you talking a good deal to her yesterday," I said.

Mr. Mafferton twisted his moustache with a look of guilty satisfaction which I found hard to bear. "Must I cry _Peccavi_?" he said. "You see you were so--er--preoccupied. You said you would rather hear about the growth of the Swiss Confederacy and its relation to the Helvetia of the Ancients another day."

"That was quite true," I said indignantly.