We were not to be without our own experience in motor mountain climbing. We did not want it or invite it; it was thrust upon us. We were returning from Martigny late one Sunday afternoon, expecting to reach Vevey for dinner. It was pleasant and we did not hurry. We could not, in fact, for below Villeneuve we fell in with the homing cows, and traveled with attending herds—beside us, before us, behind us—fat, sleek, handsome animals, an escort which did not permit of haste. Perhaps it was avoiding them that caused our mistake; at any rate, we began to realize presently that we were not on our old road. Still, we seemed headed in the right direction and we kept on. Then presently we were climbing a hill—climbing by a narrow road, one that did not permit of turning around.
Very well, we said, it could not be very high or steep; we would go over the hill. But that was a wrong estimate. The hill was high and it was steep. Up and up and up on second speed, then back to first, until we were getting on a level with the clouds themselves. It was a good road of its kind, but it had no end. The water was boiling in the radiator—boiling over. We must stop to reduce temperature a little and to make inquiries. It was getting late—far too late to attempt an ascension of the Alps.
We were on a sort of bend, and there was a peasant chalet a few rods ahead. I went up there, and from a little old woman in short skirts got a tub of cool water, also some information. The water cooled off our engine, and the information our enthusiasm for further travel in that direction. We were on the road to Château d'Oex, a hilltop resort for winter sports.
We were not in a good place to turn around, there on the edge of a semi-precipice, but we managed to do it, and started back. It was a steep descent. I cut off the spark and put the engine on low speed, which made it serve as a brake, but it required the foot and emergency brake besides. It would have been a poor place to let the car get away. Then I began to worry for fear the hind wheels were sliding, which would quickly cut through the tires. I don't know why I thought I could see them, for mud guards make that quite impossible. Nevertheless I leaned out and looked back. It was a poor place to do that, too. We were hugging a wall as it was, and one does not steer well looking backward. In five seconds we gouged into the wall, and the front guard on that side crumpled up like a piece of tinfoil. I had to get out and pull and haul it before there was room for the wheel to turn.
I never felt so in disgrace in my life. I couldn't look at anything but the disfigured guard all the way down the mountain. The passengers were sorry and tried to say comforting things, but that guard was fairly shrieking its reproach. What a thing to go home with! I felt that I could never live it down.
Happily it was dark by the time we found the right road and were drawing into Montreux—dark and raining. I was glad it was dark, but the rain did not help, and I should have been happier if the streets had not been full of dodging pedestrians and vehicles and blinding lights. The streets of Montreux are narrow enough at best, and what with a busy tram and all the rest of the medley, driving, for a man already in disgrace, was not real recreation. A railway train passed us just below, and I envied the engineer his clear right of way and fenced track, and decided that his job was an easy one by comparison. One used to hear a good deal about the dangers of engine driving, and no doubt an engineer would be glad to turn to the right or left now and then when meeting a train head on—a thing, however, not likely to happen often, though I suppose once is about enough. All the same, a straight, fenced and more or less exclusive track has advantages, and I wished I had one, plunging, weaving, diving through the rain as we were, among pedestrians, cyclists, trams, carriages, other motors, and the like; misled by the cross lights from the shops, dazzled by oncoming headlights, blinded by rain splashing in one's face.
It is no great distance from Montreux to Vevey, but in that night it seemed interminable. And what a relief at last were Vevey's quiet streets, what a path of peace the semi-private road to the hotel, what a haven of bliss the seclusion of the solid little garage! Next morning before anybody was astir I got the car with that maltreated mud guard to the shop. It was an awful-looking thing. It had a real expression. It looked as if it were going to cry. I told the repair man that the roads had been wet and the car had skidded into a wall. He did not care how it happened, of course, but I did; besides, it was easier to explain it that way in French.
It took a week to repair the guard. I suppose they had to straighten it out with a steam roller. I don't know, but it looked new and fine when it came back, and I felt better. The bill was sixteen francs. I never got so much disgrace before at such a reasonable figure.