8
Joseph had spent the winter in Geneva, studying the classic and modern languages. In the spring he joined a band of students, on a walking tour through the mountains. At Tarasp he bade them good-bye—he was going to see the Val Sinestra, where his mother, years before, had been caught in a storm and where his father’s best friend, his Uncle Martin, had been lost in the mountains.
He passed the hotel, climbed down into the ravine, and stood before the little chapel, where by a strange coincidence they had met Father Cabello. He pushed open the door. How old it was, how very old!—the fading wall pictures, the broken windows, the time-stained Virgin and Child looming up out of the shadows. There was a sudden impulse to go to her, to speak to her, as he used to, when she was living to him. He gazed and gazed; she was drawing him down the aisle—
He went out, shutting the door softly behind him. Ghosts followed him as he climbed up the open road; then they melted away in the warm sunlight.
He was soon going home. His father’s “dazzling” business proposition had been enthusiastically received by the younger Gonzolas—but the “old gentleman” remained obdurate. The boy must accept his conditions. Floyd had written to Joseph, advising him to “give in while the old man lived.” But Joseph refused to make any concession; Ruth wouldn’t let him.
He strolled along, his knapsack on his back, his hat and cape in his belt, a handsome young student; one meets them often in the mountains—fine happy lads, their only wealth, the Future. He knelt down by a stream, caught the falling water in his hands, and drank it; then he poetized.
Spring dances in the mountains.
Winter’s young daughter, peeps at her
Sweet face in the Lake mirror.
The old Snow-man growls;
His blanket is thin, his feet stick out;
They are warm, he is melting.
He flies to the heights, in his
March-wind aeroplane.
There he can keep cool.
The bride robes herself in
Green and gold.
Flowers fall from her long curls.
The nuptial couch is white
With blossoms.
Wedding bells, birds caroling—
Cattle calls—Alpine horns,
Love time!
He threw back his head and laughed—Ruth would like it. He would bring her and show her where he wrote it—on their wedding day!
He read it again; it was a whimsical thing. He was sorry for the poets of the past who were chained in rhyme. The world had been rhyming so long, about everything—love, religion, the soul, the origin of man. People rhymed themselves into a state of poetic fiction; then suddenly they found out it was all rhyme and no reason.