CHAPTER XV. AN ENGLISH ADMIRER OF THE “AMERICAN LANGUAGE.”
At the Hôtel de l’Ours (the Bear Hotel of Englishmen and Americans who do not care to expose their French) I added another to the list of my pleasant English acquaintances. One morning, while sauntering in front of the hotel before breakfast, I noticed a young man with bright-yellow hair, whiskers, and mustache, calm gray eyes, and that perfect freshness of complexion which one rarely sees in men’s faces outside of England. He was habited in corduroy from his jockey-cap down to his knee-breeches, and wore stout walking-shoes of the Alpine Club pattern. In his right hand he sported a sharp-pointed Alpenstock, which looked stained and worn with use, but was unscarred by branding-irons. His well-knit figure and his good face were a recommendation to all beholders. We exchanged glances, and would probably have spoken to each other then, if one of the long-bearded guides had not appeared and taken off Corduroy in the direction of the lower glacier. Corduroy was the name which, in absence of the authentic one, I conferred upon him. I regretted his hasty departure, for he seemed just the man to draw into an interesting conversation.
The next morning, at about the same hour, I found Corduroy standing alone, in the same place as before. He was again dressed for an outing, and had his Alpenstock still in hand. He was looking fixedly in the direction of the mighty Wetterhorn, whose snowy summit was now visible and now concealed, as the lazy clouds or mist-wreaths drifted back and forth. He puffed at a brierwood pipe calmly, and seemed engrossed in that occupation and the study of Wetterhorn’s top, until he saw me looking at him. Then he pulled the pipe from his mouth, as one who expects to speak and be spoken to, at the same time walking toward me with a look of friendly recognition.
Being the older, I was the first to break silence, and I did so with a commonplace remark upon the weather, which was a little uncertain, but promising to be fine. And I could not resist the temptation to add that it reminded me of the day I ascended the Gorner Grat, 10,000 feet above the sea, only two weeks before. That being my only really hard climb in the Alps, I was as proud of it as a boy of his first trousers.
Corduroy’s face expressed great interest. He asked me a number of questions about the state of the weather at Zermatt, and whether the hotels were crowded, and as to the condition of the road from Vispach to St. Niklaus, a bad bit generally. I answered him very fully, only too happy to show off my familiarity with the most wonderful mountain district of Switzerland. And I said patronizingly, I must confess: “Really, now, you ought to see the Matterhorn. It’s worth the trouble, I assure you. I was the second man on the Gorner Grat this year, and as the snow was then about eight feet deep, and only a foot-path broken through it part of the way, the climbing was no joke. You would find it easier next—”
“But I have already seen the Matterhorn,” said Corduroy, who had been quietly smoking his pipe during my remarks.
“From what point?” I asked.
“From the top. I made my second ascent last year. And hope to get round there in July for my third.”
I have seen, in my day, many undemonstrative Englishmen. But this one beat them all. Who could have thought he would have listened so patiently to all my brag about that ant-hill of a Gorner Grat when he had done the awful Matterhorn twice? I was astonished, and at first doubtful of Corduroy’s entire veracity, though truth seemed to ooze out of every feature of his prepossessing face. I inadvertently glanced at the Alpenstock and saw no record of any performances written there.
Corduroy read my thoughts. He cast an eye on the smooth old Alpenstock and smiled as he said: “Oh! we never do that, you know.”
Then I remembered to have heard that the people who do the least climbing generally have the most names of conquered peaks on their Alpenstocks; so that, in fact, the absence of the dreadful Matterhorn from Corduroy’s staff became a sort of proof that he was not lying to me. I blushed at my unworthy suspicion. It was now my turn to become deeply interested. I asked him many questions about his ascents of the most difficult mountain in all Europe. He answered briefly and modestly, and I also learned from him by the corkscrew process (for I never saw a man with less vanity) that he had ascended Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, the Weisshorn, Schreckhorn, and Finsteraarhorn once each, and that he was now on the point of attacking the Wetterhorn, toward which he had been gazing, but feared that the impending change of weather might compel him to give it up.
I asked him where he had been the day before, with the long-bearded guide.
“Oh, only up to the Eismeer there,” he said, jerking his thumb toward a white and heavenly sea of ice, which shone at that moment, through a rift in the clouds, forming a horizon line of 12,000 feet above the ocean-level. It almost gave me a crick in the neck to look at it.
“Of course no guide was needed for a thing like that,” he added. “But the old fellow wanted a job; so I took him along to carry the lunch-basket. Aren’t you going to do the Eismeer?”
“Well,” said I, laughing, “I might perhaps get as far as the foot of the glacier. But I guess I should have to discount the rest.”
Corduroy broke out laughing. “Excuse me,” said he, “but you Americans are so amusing. Ha! ha! Discount! what a capital word! So expressive, you know. It means, if I understand it, that you would go to the foot of the glacier, and say that you had been to the top. Ha! ha! No offense meant.”
“Not quite as bad as that,” I replied, laughing in turn. “To discount it, in my sense of the word, is to imagine the rest of the glacier and the Eismeer at the top, from the sample seen below. Have you never discounted anything that way?”
“Ha! ha! No! no! we are never allowed to do that. Discounting would be dead against our rules.”
I noticed that, for the second time, he employed the pronoun “we,” from which I inferred that he was a member of some association of mountain-climbers. As he seemed so much amused by the slang use of the word “discount,” I thought I would favor him with a few more of our latest and choicest inventions in that line, which happened to have lodged in my memory:
“You tumble to my exact meaning now, I hope.”
“Ha! ha! Tumble to, signifying to understand, of course. That’s better than discount, if possible. I do so admire the American language. So rich, you know. Ha! ha!”
I never saw a man so easily tickled. In the ecstasy of his mirth he capered about like a dancing bear, while his laughter rang out till it woke the echoes in old Mettenberg which frowned above us. The noise drew a number of the hotel guests to the door, and others peered through the windows at him.
“They’ll think it’s a circus,” said I, innocently.
“A circus. Ha! ha! how forcible, and so funny—just like you Americans! And perhaps you’ll next say I’m the performing clown.” And that idea started Corduroy off in another fit of laughter.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“The size of it! How good! So humorous, you know. Ha! ha!”
“You seem to catch on to American slang like a native,” said I.
“Catch on. Ha! ha! Well, that’s the best yet. A sort of figure of speech meaning to seize something as it flies, I suppose.”
“You have got it down fine.”
Corduroy laughed gently in an accommodating spirit; but I do not think he caught the precise meaning of this last expression. He made no comment on it, and I was glad he did not ask me to explain it, for I could not have done so.
“By-the-way,” said Corduroy, “as you are an American, perhaps you can tell me why an old story or joke is called a chestnut in your country. It may be very funny—in fact, it must be, as it is American. But I don’t tumble to it, as yet. Ha! ha!”
For the honor of my country, I would have liked to clear up the great chestnut mystery to this delightful young Englishman. I had heard some accounts of the origin of the word in its application to threadbare anecdotes and moldy conundrums, but they were all unsatisfactory. “I am sorry I can not answer your question,” said I, at length; “but I can give you points on the chestnut-bell.”
Corduroy was all ears while I explained to him the construction of the little instrument which had already worked so useful a reform in the clubs of my country.
“Well, well,” he cried, “American inventions are truly wonderful. And this chestnut-bell beats them all. Ha! ha! I’m so glad I met you this morning! I’ll have a chestnut-bell made according to your description of it down at Interlaken by a metal-worker I know there. It’s just what we have long wanted. You see, some of our fellows don’t climb any new mountains. They keep telling all about the old mountains they climbed years ago. Now, I just want to shut ’em up. And the chestnut-bell is the thing to do it. Ha! ha!” And Corduroy roared with delight.
“All right,” said I; “but as the chestnut-bell is the latest thing out in my country, let me offer you a piece of advice.”
“What is it?” asked Corduroy, eagerly.
“It is this: Don’t give it away.”
“I see—I see. You mean I must keep this idea of a chestnut-bell to myself, so as to get the start of all the other fellows. How very expressive! Give away. Ha! ha!”
I was about to make some other valuable suggestion on the subject, when I saw among the group which then filled the open doorway a slight figure beckoning to me quite earnestly. When that small hand is gesticulated in that peculiar way, I do not pretend not to see it. Experience has taught me that it is much easier to answer the summons in person at once than to explain later on why I did not do so. I said “Ta! ta!” to Corduroy, and moved toward the house.
As I hurried away, he called out to me, “There is no getting ahead of you Americans, you know.”
“It will be a cold day when we get left, and don’t you forget it!” was my answer shouted back at him, exhausting my small stock of slang in that supreme effort.
“Just so,” he cried. “Ha! ha! Cold day! Get left! What a world of meaning! Be sure I won’t forget it! Ha! ha!”
I never saw Corduroy again. We had a little unambitious excursion of our own to make that day, and did not get back to the Bear before dinner-time. Then I inquired after the gentleman in corduroy, and learned that he had given up the Wetterhorn on account of the thick weather, and had started off for a walk over the Grimsel to the Rhône glacier. He was well known at the hotel, being one of its regular visitors. This steadiness of patronage might naturally be expected of him, for he proved to be one of the most distinguished members of the Alpine Club, famous for his devotion to mountain-climbing in Switzerland, and a terror even to the hardiest guides, by reason of his courage and perseverance against all obstacles. He had, it seems, a passion for new routes and short cuts, which I hope will not some day end the merry life of Corduroy. After this explanation, I understood his occasional allusions to “we” and “us” and “our fellows” and “our rules,” which forbade this and that. And sometimes now, at two o’clock in the morning, while I am lying awake and thinking over many things, I catch myself wondering if Corduroy has ever introduced the chestnut-bell to the Alpine Club, and, if so, how the retired climbers like it.