"Well, then, everything's settled," said Jack, "except the start."
Molly thought a day in Domodossola too much. It was decided, therefore, that they should rest till eleven, and that the motor should be ready at midnight. They could reach Brig between two and three, and being a posting town, the hotel people were sure to be up. I was to start early in the morning, and meet my friends at Brig, after walking over the Pass.
I saw them off, and then plunged fathoms deep into sleep, dreaming of a land flowing with mules and donkeys. At five, I was up, and was surprised to find that the despised Domodossola was a beautiful and interesting old town, with curiously Spanish effects in its shadowy streets, lined with ancient, arcaded houses. I thought to save time and fatigue by taking a carriage to the frontier village of Iselle at the foot of the Pass, and was glad I had done so, for the road was rough and covered inches deep with a deposit of peculiar, grey dust. But things mended when we climbed a hill, turned out of the main valley, and followed the course of the river Diveria into a lateral gorge of the mountains, the real porchway or entrance of the Simplon Pass.
At Last!
"A Jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire,
A dare, a bliss, and a desire."
—Bliss Carman.
"Here a great personal deed has room."
—Walt Whitman.
The further I penetrated into the mountains, the more like a vast engineering workshop did the long Alpine valley become. Yet, curiously enough, instead of destroying romance, this gave a certain majestic romance of its own; the romance of man's struggle to conquer the stupendous forces of Nature with his science. It was as if Vulcan's stithy had been dropped down into a profound ravine of the Alps, and the drone of machinery mingled with the music of the fleeting river—a strange diapason.
On the right of the highroad, the flat mountain face opened a black, egg-shaped mouth at me. I got out of the carriage to approach it, and while I stood peering down the dark throat, as if I were a Lilliputian doctor examining the tongue of Giant Gulliver, I was suddenly clapped upon the shoulder. It flashed into my mind that perhaps it was forbidden to stare at the tunnel-in-making; and turning to defend myself from a lash of red tape, with the adage that "a cat may look at a king," I saw a man I had known years ago smiling at me.