It was eleven o’clock, and we had been pretty actively employed for twenty-one hours. The idea of food and a change of raiment was not, therefore, distasteful. A middle-aged female with an excessively “rational” and hygienic waist, who said she was the waitress, volunteered to serve the banquet, but the change of raiment necessary was naturally beyond her means, while the idea of borrowing from the aged person’s wardrobe did not commend itself to us, so we [pg 125]ordered in a large stock of towels. “But,” I remarked, “you can’t go about in a bath towel”—the truth of which assertion was immediately evident, for they were so small that it was difficult to fasten them with any degree of security; accordingly blankets were requisitioned, and a very classical effect in costume was thus produced, though what the Romans did when there was a gale of wind I do not know. To keep up the delusion we arranged the chairs after the fashion of couches, and appeased our hunger with a curious repast of stewed apples and mixed biscuits, the sole articles of food that could be discovered. However, to anticipate, we fared better the next day at breakfast; for though Bright Chanticleer proclaimed the morn at 3 A.M. he did not proclaim any subsequent period of time, as he was captured and cooked for our repast. The waitress while we supped was busily engaged in stoking up the stove, and seized upon our damp raiment with avidity to have it ready for the next morning; so energetic was she in fact that we felt it necessary to remonstrate, foreseeing the probability that our clothes might have to be brought back to us in a dust shovel: we remarked that, though sorry for our misdeeds, we would limit for choice the repentant nature of our apparel to the sackcloth we were then wearing and would dispense with the adjunct of ashes. The unreliable nature of the fastenings of our costume prevented us from accompanying our forcible remarks [pg 126]with properly impressive gestures. The remonstrance, however, had the desired effect, and our garments the next day, though somewhat shrivelled and inconveniently tight here and there, still proved that they had resisted effectively the fire as well as the water.
The old cure
The amount of luxury found in the Lötschthal since those days has materially improved. Time was when the only accommodation for the traveller was to be found at the humble tenement of Mons. le Curé, a worthy old creature as I remember him, who appeared to keep an apiary in his back drawing-room and was wont to produce the most excellent honey and the most uncompromising bread; the latter article, as one might judge, was baked about as often as the old gentleman washed himself. But the milk of human kindness flowed strongly in him (as it may be said to do in those who have been made the subjects of transfusion), though, to tell the truth, it was somewhat decidedly flavoured with garlic, and it needed much resolution to attentively listen to the confidential communications he was in the habit of whispering. A man of education and gentle refinement—at any rate of mind—his was a hard lot, buried away in a squalid little parish, with no earthly being to talk to possessed of more than one idea; yet he slaved on contentedly enough with no thought beyond the peasants in his own district and of how he might relieve their condition, too often at the expense of his [pg 127]own welfare; isolated more than any ascetic, for his mental existence was that of a hermit, from circumstances and not from will. The thought of solitary confinement is terrible, but utter mental isolation is hideous. Yet, while he entertained us hospitably with fare which, though rough, was the very best he could offer, he would not join in the repast: not, probably, from lack of appetite, but from a feeling that, owing to prolonged seclusion and association with the peasants, the more fashionable and accepted methods of preparing food for consumption and conveying it to the mouth, with subsequent details, were somewhat dim to his recollection. Yet his conversation flowed fast and he talked well: the while any reference to friends and fellow-travellers would cause him to pause for a moment or two, look upwards around the room, and fetch a rather long breath before he recommenced. A curiously gaunt old creature he seemed at first sight: with wonderful, bony, plastic hands capable of expressing anything; grotesque almost in his unkempt rustiness; provoking a smile at first, but sadness as one learnt more of him. And how closely are the two emotions associated. In truth Humour was born a twin, and her sister was christened Pathos.
I can recall that he accepted a sum of ten francs when we parted in the morning. His eyes glistened with pleasure as he took the coin and straightway made for a ramshackle hovel on the hill-side, where [pg 128]lay an aged person “très-malade.” Possibly after his visit there was left a happy peasant in that tumble-down cabin—an emotional object more often described than witnessed. But all this took place years ago, and as we passed the collection of dilapidated tenements in one of which our old friend once lived, I failed to recognise his former dwelling-place. The timbers grew old and worn, the bands rusty, and one day the wheel which had worked steadily for so long stopped. Yet the stream which had moved it ran on as if nothing had happened. Was it a wasted life? Who can say if there be such a thing?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them:
Alas! for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them.
We passed on: in a few minutes the houses were lost to view and there was left but the reflection of how much more, worthy of study, there was in this old curé’s nature than in the majority of Swiss with whom mountaineering brings us in close contact.
A “pension” in a train