An Oberland Châlet

by Edith Elmer Wood

To our great disgust we found the hotel full. We were just wound up to last that far, and the few hundred yards to the next hotel seemed an almost impossible exertion. Besides, the painful thought occurred to us that maybe it was contrary to Swiss etiquette to take in unescorted women after dark, and we would find all the hotels “full.” However, this dreadful fear did not prove to be well founded, for at the next hotel they had a room for us, and we retired to it joyously. It was a sophisticated place with brass beds and electric bells and liveried attendants, and we felt eminently safe and well cared for.

We had intended taking the diligence from Kandersteg to Frutigen, but as we found it involved either starting at 5 A. M. or waiting till afternoon, we resolved to walk the eight miles involved at our leisure next morning.

This we did, interrupted only by a shower, which led us to call on a peasant woman in her châlet. Our road was adorned by a ruined castle or so, pertaining to extinct robber barons who used to lord it over the valley. I remember the intense interest manifested by the postmaster of an infinitesimal village post-office we passed, over a letter I mailed there addressed to my husband in the Philippines. I had to give him an epitome of our family history before I could get away. But somehow his questions were only amusing, not annoying like those of the man from Kokomo. In the one instance one instinctively felt the questions an impertinence, in the other they were merely childlike. What is it makes the difference?

Frutigen is a railway terminus. We took the train from here to Spiez on Lake Thun, thence another to Interlaken, caught the afternoon express to Grindelwald, and walked safe and sound into the Châlet Edelweiss.

XIV

Our first question, after greeting the Mother and the Babes, was, “Have you heard from the boys? Do you know where they are?” The Mother admitted that she had received a telegram from them at Leuk Susten the day before, requesting money, and a letter that morning, and that they would probably get home the next day.

They did, and the hatchet was buried, and we swapped yarns about our adventures. It seems that after we left them on the mountain-side, they decided it would be healthier for them not to return to the hotel till our wrath had had time to cool. So they went on to the Staffel Alp, got lost, and thought they would have to stay out all night, but finally found the path and arrived home, footsore and weary, long after dark. The pretty waitress handed them my letter and watched them read it, but I understand they betrayed no unbecoming emotion for her satisfaction. It seems that the claim of wealth they had made to us was a bluff. When it came to the point, they could muster only about eight francs between them! And then that unkind pretty waitress appeared with our wash clothes which she had succeeded in getting back from the laundress (we had arranged to have them sent after us by mail), and there was four francs to pay on them, and the poor lads had to fill up their knapsacks with Belle Soeur’s and my lingerie (that was the unkindest cut of all) and go forth into the cold world with only four francs between them.

They were too tired to go any distance. A mile or so out of Zermatt they encountered a haymow and slept in it. Next morning they breakfasted on dry bread and continued down the road to Visp, but not, I take it, at a very snappy gait. They found a few of our bulletins, including the one that told them when we were going to leave Visp, but they arrived at the station just too late to catch us there. If we had waited for the next train, as Belle Soeur suggested, what a beautiful and touching reunion we might have had! They had started down that hot Rhone valley about 3 P. M., still subsisting on dry bread, had tried short cuts and brought up in marshes and had to retrace their steps. Finally, they decided to give it up and lodged in another haymow. They found next morning that they were still some miles from Leuk Susten, so there was no chance of catching up with us. They therefore went to a good hotel, had a bath and a square meal on their expectations and used the last of their money to telegraph for funds. They got their reply the same afternoon, but resolved to recuperate till next morning and start fresh. So they passed over the Gemmi twenty-four hours behind us.