“Shall we wait for the four o’clock train,” suggested Belle Soeur, “so we can take them along with us?”
“But suppose they are ahead of us and are actually at this minute staving down that dreadful Rhone valley? Supposing they get there before we do and don’t find us? We said we’d be there, and they would have no way of understanding our change of program. They’d be boiled and worn out and penniless and would think themselves abandoned for sure.” So we took the train and went on.
The truthful Baedeker says it is only a mile from Leuk Susten, the station, to old Leuk on the hill, but Belle Soeur and I agreed as we toiled up the shadeless road in the middle of the hot afternoon that it was quite the longest mile we had ever traversed. It was a picturesque little old place when we got to it, with a ruined castle and just two inns, very modest looking, and obligingly side by side.
We got a room and bespoke another for the gentlemen of our party when they should arrive. We cooled ourselves off by dint of bathing and clean collars, sallied out and had a look at the ruins of the castle, then found a turn of the road that commanded all the lower windings to the railroad station, including a long bridge across the river, and sat ourselves down to watch. Every time we saw two specks of humanity approaching we were sure it was our boys. We developed various theories. Perhaps they had economized on eating so as to come by rail from Visp. If so, that later train was just in, and they ought to be appearing any minute. A carriage was seen winding up the road. “Perhaps they are in it,” suggested Belle Soeur; “it would be just like their enterprise to charter a carriage and have themselves delivered C. O. D.”
But they weren’t in the carriage. And the various pedestrians whom we had taken for them turned into peasants returning from work, women, priests, or commercial travelers, on nearer approach.
Twilight was stealing over the Rhone valley, and a little wistful sense of loneliness was stealing over us. It had been a fine game, this eloping, but we had now reached the time scheduled for it to end in a happy reunion—all hands around and everything forgiven.
We went back to the hotel and got them to set a little table for our dinner on the balcony outside the dining-room. Of course it was cooler and in every way pleasanter out there. And it also commanded the street.
Afterwards, we sat at our window and watched that street till bed-time, though we kept up a pretense of talking. Belle Soeur says that I jumped up out of bed in the middle of the night and ran to the window because somebody was walking by on the stone pavement. I say she did it. Perhaps both stories are true.