“Do you mind taking me after dinner?” from Maude.
But in spite of the idleness of these two, the average amount of work achieved by the party was very creditable, and Edwards was satisfied.
At the end of the fixed three weeks, to the great regret of the landlord (for he found the young Oxonians thirsty to a degree) and of most of the guests, the party departed. They went as they came, on foot, with a couple of horses to carry their luggage, and a couple of guides to carry Lang, who had contrived to strain his ankle. They slept one night in Brieg—a short, restless night, with the diligences rolling through the streets and clattering into the courtyards, with jingling bells and cracking whips, the shouts of the drivers, and the agonized voices of weary and confused travellers. At six, in the fresh clear dawn, they took the diligence for the Rhone Glacier, and thence over the Furka to Andermatt. There, also, they slept one night—in fact, slept so soundly that when the diligence started next morning for Flüelen by the St. Gothard Pass, Edwards, Frank, and Royds alone were in time for breakfast and for choice of seats; Hoskins and Kingdon only saved their seats by chasing the diligence after it had started; while the first that Lang and Maude saw of the morning was the sight of the diligence turning a corner, with three of their companions seated outside, and two running frantically after it. But they consoled themselves with the reflection that this delay would furnish them with an excellent excuse for “cutting” the next day’s lesson with Edwards. Frank was separated from the rest of the party, having for his companion a little soldier who spoke neither French nor German, but an unintelligible patois which made conversation impossible.
About ten o’clock they passed Altdorf. The little town looked so bright and gay, full of reverence for its William Tell, and ignorant of, or despising, the knowledge that makes his story a myth. Thence to Flüelen, and thence over the clear waters of the Vierwaldstätter See to Lucerne. What a change from the Bel-alp! Here all is softened—grown Italian almost. Just in the distance a few snowy peaks; but the frowning heights have melted to soft wooded hills—running down to look at themselves in the glassy mirror. Lucerne was reached about one o’clock; and here, at the Englischer Hof, right on the quay, a hospitable welcome met them.
Lang and Maude revelled in the change. For them the Bel-alp was too cold, too dull; but here they had the lake, the shops, the cafés, the band at night, and all those countless charms which no English town seems to possess. Here even Frank relaxed a little. They made excursions every day, for the most part in the comfortable little steamers. They went up the Rigi luxuriously in the train. Edwards, Royds, and Frank climbed Pilatus; the rest were content with the Rigi. They bought presents, useless as well as useful; they strummed on the salon piano, and sang in broken German, to the intense delight of the waiters. They spent the evenings invariably in a little café round the corner, where Gretchen’s merry black eyes flashed from one to another, hardly divining the relationship of the party; or, if not there, on the boulevard, listening to the band; and sometimes on the lake; and it was on one of these occasions that Edwards astonished them by his vocal as well as his poetical powers.
He called his song, “The Lay of the Vice-Chancellor,” and it ran as follows:—
“I’ve sung you many a ditty, some stupid and some witty,
In our snug and cosy common-rooms after dinner many a day;
But there’s one I have omitted, of a blunder I committed,