CHAPTER XIV. EXCELSIOR AND THE MAIDEN.
The hero of Longfellow’s poem, “Excelsior,” has long been a favorite subject with artists. Among the many full-length fancy portraits of that rash young man, is one which represents him in a loose sack-coat with knee-breeches, a rolling shirt-collar displaying his open throat, and the long ends of a necktie streaming in the winds. The costume was charming, but too airy for the higher Alps, to which he was bound. He had a little kit, presumably of clothes, slung across his shoulder. He held aloft a stick to which was tied a white flag or banner inscribed “Excelsior.” The artist had caught the spirit of Longfellow’s verse, and had stamped enthusiasm and high resolve on the pleasant face of this young fellow.
I had been sitting for some time over an out-door luncheon in front of the Hôtel des Avalanches, with lines of “Excelsior” running in my head. Before me was the Queen of Mountains. The landlord had assured me that the top of the symmetrical peak was fifteen good miles away. It did not seem more than a mile off in the transparent atmosphere of that perfect June morning. It was equally impossible to realize that you could not see, with the naked eye, the figures—showing black against the spotless snow—of persons climbing the Jungfrau by paths directly opposite the house. There was no one so occupied that day, as the season for ascents does not begin till July. So I was obliged to take the landlord’s word for it that the largest parties attacking the mountain were invisible from his hotel, except through the fine telescope which stood there on its tripod with joints greased and ready for use. Then I fell to meditating on the sad fate of the willful young hero of the poem. I amused myself imagining him as he toiled up those awful heights, after dark, floundering through the snow waist-deep, just missing the crevasses by an inch, starting little avalanches of loose rocks and ice (the larger, more overwhelming and dangerous snow-slides occurring only in the hours of full sunshine), and finally succumbing to fatigue and exhaustion and cold, and dying up there, far from human aid, with his banner still gripped in his hand. How much better, I thought, if he had taken a fancy to the maiden of the valley, and remained comfortable and happy down below!
And there was the identical maiden at my elbow! She had just poured out a cup of smoking, fragrant coffee for me, and stood waiting meekly to take another order. A prettier girl never ’tended on travelers. I addressed her in English, and found she spoke it well; and when she added—noticing that I was an American—that she had relatives in the United States, and had spent two years there on a visit, I felt that here was a sort of country-woman in this out-of-the-way place. Surely I had seen few American girls of twenty or thereabout comelier than this true daughter of the Alps. She was a niece of the landlord, she said, and she had the manners of a lady. As the season had but recently opened, and the tide of tourists not yet set in, there was a scarcity of hired help at the inn. She was assisting in the humblest ways to make everybody contented. She served me without any sense of humiliation, such as possibly I might have observed in her had she passed a few more years in America before returning to her dear old Swiss home.
Her pretty face and innocent, winning ways had divided my attention with the avalanches. I am not sure but that I missed some little ones while chatting with her. As I sipped the delicious coffee, my imagination paired her off with that headstrong youth in “Excelsior.” I could not help thinking what a fool he was not to rest his weary head on that breast, as per invitation, instead of climbing the terrible mountain after dark.
Perhaps it was the mountain air—perhaps it was the coffee. Anyhow, my imagination became so excited that I thought I saw that same young man right before me, coming up the steep road from Lauterbrunnen. He was not two hundred feet away. There was no mistaking him. He had on the knee-breeches, the bob-tailed jacket, the cut-away collar and flowing necktie of the picture, and a small knapsack of the roll-pattern was strapped to his back. There, too, was the attractive face stamped with fierce resolution. But the most striking mark of identity was a white flag attached to a walking-stick which he carried over his shoulder like a musket. The wind was brisk and blew the flag out straight behind him. It did not, so far as I could see, bear the inscription “Excelsior,” and this was the first shock to the illusion. As I looked wonderingly at him, he turned on his heels and shook his flag, which I could now see was only a pocket-handkerchief, high in the air, as if signaling some distant person.
This dumb show lasted about half a minute. Then he lowered his flag and strode up to the hotel. As he drew near enough, I saw that his eyes were deep blue, like those of the hero of the poem. So, for all these reasons, I at once christened him “Excelsior.”
Excelsior, though a young man, was not a green traveler. He knew a good thing when he saw it. There was a pretty girl, and there was a little table covered with a clean white cloth, all set out with plates, glasses, knives, forks, and napkins, under an awning that screened it from the sun, with the peerless Jungfrau in full view. So, when he took his seat at the spare table near me, I was not surprised. He looked at the maiden, and she looked at him. Everybody would have said they were made for each other, so far as good looks are reasons for mating. She was not a full-blooded brunette, but her deep-brown hair and eyes and swarthy ruddiness of cheeks differentiated her from the blonde school of beauty. He was fair-haired, with a skin which the sun had reddened but not freckled, and just such a forehead (now that he had cast his slouched hat aside) as you see in Shelley’s portraits. As he sat there, with his strong, shapely arm flung over the back of his chair, he looked the embodiment of youthful vigor and careless grace. The misleading outlines of modern clothes could not conceal the symmetry of his figure. How the sculptors must have wanted him for a model, if he ever came under their eyes, in Rome or Florence. And they would have been equally glad, I am sure, to secure a like favor from the Swiss maiden.
Suddenly he glanced at his watch, and then accosted me in the language I expected to hear, for I knew him to be an American at first sight.
“Not a bad job, that—only four hours and ten minutes from Interlaken, and the muddiest road I ever saw, up the Wengern Alp.”
“Well done,” I replied. “The guide-books give six hours for it. But aren’t you tired?”
“Not the slightest,” he said, laughing pleasantly, and showing his fine white teeth. “Lucky for me, as I must do Grindelwald and the lower glacier before night.”
This astonished me. I had found the ascent from Grindelwald over thousands of rude stone steps and through seas of mud, hard enough on horseback, and was dreading the descent as still more trying. And here was Excelsior talking about it as if it were only a little promenade on Broadway, not to mention the visit to the lower glacier, a good two hours’ stretch (going and returning) from Grindelwald and more mud from three to six inches deep all the way, except for the stepping-stones.
“Well, you are plucky—young America all over!” I at length remarked, with a pride in the gameness of my countryman.
“I’m from Illinois,” said he.
“And I from New York.”
“Then we’re sure not to quarrel,” he rejoined, “for I’ve noticed that New-Yorkers and Westerners get along better together in Europe than Americans from any other parts of the country.”
I said that I had often noticed the same thing, without being able to explain it. There was a singular instinctive aversion between New-Yorkers themselves and also between them and Bostonians and Philadelphians. But, whenever New York and Chicago met in any foreign country, the fraternization was spontaneous. Then I took the liberty of asking my young friend why he waved his handkerchief on the end of a stick just before pulling up at the hotel.
“Oh! only to signal a fellow over there on the Murren. We had walked together up the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and he turned off to climb the Murren while I kept on for the Wengern Alp. We agreed to exchange signals from the tops of the two mountains, or foot-hills, or whatever else they should be called. But he hasn’t got up there yet, for I don’t see a flutter of his handkerchief.”
“Possibly because it is at least eight miles from here to Murren in an air-line,” I said, smiling.
The maiden, who had been listening with great interest to this dialogue, her tender eyes fixed on the younger of the two speakers all the time, here broke in to say:
“Perhaps you would like to look through the glass down there. That will show you everything on the Murren plain enough.” She spoke English with a foreign accent so delicate that types can not reproduce it.
“Thank you, miss,” said Excelsior, sweetly, “I shall be very glad. But let me order the lunch first.”
The young girl seemed happy to serve him. She handed him a bill of fare, and waited by his side while he looked it over. It was as good as a play to watch the two thus thrown together by Fate.
Excelsior examined the bill with great apparent interest. Every item in it seemed to raise a question which he asked in a voice so low that I could not hear him. I never saw a man so particular about his luncheon, and so long ordering it. But at last he got through, and the maiden hastened into the house.
“Fine girl, or rather, young lady, that,” said I to Excelsior. “The niece of the landlord, and has been in America two years.”
“I thought she was superior,” replied Excelsior, “and wondered where she picked up her good English. What a musical voice and lovely—”
But while he was speaking the fair object of our comments reappeared upon the scene. I may have been mistaken, but it seemed to me that a cherry-colored ribbon, over which rolled a plain, broad white collar, had been retied in her absence. And this reminded me that Excelsior had, while speaking to me, been smoothing out the rumpled ends of his blue neckerchief. To my eye it looked more pleasing before, but I dare say he was not thinking of my taste in dress.
What I had told Excelsior about this young girl had caused a perceptible change in his manner toward her. He had been civil enough before, but now he was quite polite, as one who recognizes the difference between a landlord’s niece and a common house-servant. But it was plain that her two years’ residence in America had impressed him most deeply. To him she was in some sense an American girl. It was with a bow almost deferential that he said, if she pleased, he would now try the telescope, and perhaps be able to get a sight of his friend on the Murren. The maiden acted very much as if she expected and wanted this, for she smiled and tripped down the little slope before the house to the spot where the glass rested on its three spindle legs. Excelsior followed. What was said down there I do not know, for I did not think it my business to join them, and from the place where I still sat, watching for avalanches, I could not catch a word. I only repeat what I saw.
It seemed to take a great while to get that telescope into working trim. Nothing was the matter with it when I used it twenty minutes before; but now they had the greatest trouble in lengthening or shortening the focus and elevating or depressing the object-glass. For me one hand was enough to adjust the instrument, but now it took four hands, and they were for a long time unsuccessful. As far as I could make out things clearly, these hands appeared to be getting in each other’s way occasionally; and, besides, there was one head too many. It sometimes seemed as if they were both trying to look through the telescope at once, and this was obviously impossible. And, finally, when they had the telescope all right, as I supposed, and Excelsior was about to pick up his Murren friend in good earnest, they would stop and lean on the long brass tube and fall to conversing with each other, as if they had clean forgotten the business in hand. Then, looking up, they saw me gazing down at them, and resumed their absurd manipulations of the glass with increased energy.
I felt just mischievous enough to shout to them: “Anything the matter? Can I help you?”
“No, thanks,” he cried. “We are just catching the range now; something the matter with the swivel. Oh, there he is, swinging his handkerchief on the piazza of the Murren Hotel! And now he is looking through a telescope, too. He sees us!” Excelsior thereupon fluttered his own signal for about one minute with great enthusiasm. By means of the two glasses the friends had exchanged salutes across an interval of eight miles.
This ceremony over, Excelsior apparently transferred his interest to the Jungfrau, the Monch, the Eiger, and lesser peaks, as well he might have done, for there is no single view in the Bernese Oberland more sublime and satisfactory in all its details than that of the mountain-chain seen from the Wengern Alp. Here, too, the telescope was continually getting out of gear and defying the joint efforts of Excelsior and the maiden to make it work right. I do not know if they would ever have quitted the task which occupied them so intently had not a horseman and a lady in a chaise-porte, swinging between two stalwart peasants, arrived on the scene. The new-comers, of course, required immediate attention, and the maiden was too good a niece of the landlord to neglect his interests. So, with this single remark, made so loud that all of us could hear it, “I think you understand how to do it now, sir,” she bounded up the slope like a chamois to look after the new guests. Excelsior followed a moment later, and sat down at the little table where his hot luncheon was about due.
I felt that a pretty comedy of real life had been interrupted by these arrivals. I hoped to see a second act of it when the maiden served Excelsior with his repast, but in this I was disappointed. She soon brought out the dishes and the half-bottle of Yvorne he had ordered, and put them before him. But she was silent and demure now, for there were new eyes upon her. Excelsior himself had an attack of gravity, for he ate and drank without saying a word to the maiden, who came and went. If it was not a case of love at first sight on his part, then I am no judge of the symptoms of that passion. As for the maiden, who can tell?
I am sorry not to gratify the legitimate curiosity of my readers further on this point; but I could not tarry longer on the Wengern Alp, even to report the progress of a genuine love-affair. An appointment at Grindelwald compelled me to hasten my departure. I bade good-by to Excelsior, with a hope that I should meet him at the Hôtel de l’Ours that night or next morning. He replied, in a confused manner, that he did not know. Perhaps he would spend just one night on the Wengern Alp; the house there seemed so snug and comfortable. “It would not be a bad idea, you know, to visit the glacier over there in the morning, while the snow is still hard and the footing good.”
I did not feel familiar enough with Excelsior to joke him about another attraction—a second Jungfrau—so I only smiled. When I said good-by to the maiden, I could not help adding that I hoped she would see America again some day, and perhaps stay there; and, by a natural association of ideas, I glanced at the same time at Excelsior. For, far-fetched as the thought may seem, the mountain air was so stimulating that I persisted in imagining that the chance meeting of these two emotional young persons on the Wengern Alp was the beginning of a romance destined to end in a happy marriage. What a good-looking couple they would make!
I have never seen him or her from that day to this. But we all find out for ourselves the truth of the old saying that the world is small. I should not be much astonished to meet Mr. and Mrs. Excelsior some day; and then I shall tell him how much more sensible I think him to be than the young man in the poem, who had no taste for pretty Swiss girls.