Her pretty face and innocent, winning ways had divided my attention with the avalanches. I am not sure but that I missed some little ones while chatting with her. As I sipped the delicious coffee, my imagination paired her off with that headstrong youth in “Excelsior.” I could not help thinking what a fool he was not to rest his weary head on that breast, as per invitation, instead of climbing the terrible mountain after dark.
Perhaps it was the mountain air—perhaps it was the coffee. Anyhow, my imagination became so excited that I thought I saw that same young man right before me, coming up the steep road from Lauterbrunnen. He was not two hundred feet away. There was no mistaking him. He had on the knee-breeches, the bob-tailed jacket, the cut-away collar and flowing necktie of the picture, and a small knapsack of the roll-pattern was strapped to his back. There, too, was the attractive face stamped with fierce resolution. But the most striking mark of identity was a white flag attached to a walking-stick which he carried over his shoulder like a musket. The wind was brisk and blew the flag out straight behind him. It did not, so far as I could see, bear the inscription “Excelsior,” and this was the first shock to the illusion. As I looked wonderingly at him, he turned on his heels and shook his flag, which I could now see was only a pocket-handkerchief, high in the air, as if signaling some distant person.
This dumb show lasted about half a minute. Then he lowered his flag and strode up to the hotel. As he drew near enough, I saw that his eyes were deep blue, like those of the hero of the poem. So, for all these reasons, I at once christened him “Excelsior.”
Excelsior, though a young man, was not a green traveler. He knew a good thing when he saw it. There was a pretty girl, and there was a little table covered with a clean white cloth, all set out with plates, glasses, knives, forks, and napkins, under an awning that screened it from the sun, with the peerless Jungfrau in full view. So, when he took his seat at the spare table near me, I was not surprised. He looked at the maiden, and she looked at him. Everybody would have said they were made for each other, so far as good looks are reasons for mating. She was not a full-blooded brunette, but her deep-brown hair and eyes and swarthy ruddiness of cheeks differentiated her from the blonde school of beauty. He was fair-haired, with a skin which the sun had reddened but not freckled, and just such a forehead (now that he had cast his slouched hat aside) as you see in Shelley’s portraits. As he sat there, with his strong, shapely arm flung over the back of his chair, he looked the embodiment of youthful vigor and careless grace. The misleading outlines of modern clothes could not conceal the symmetry of his figure. How the sculptors must have wanted him for a model, if he ever came under their eyes, in Rome or Florence. And they would have been equally glad, I am sure, to secure a like favor from the Swiss maiden.
Suddenly he glanced at his watch, and then accosted me in the language I expected to hear, for I knew him to be an American at first sight.
“Not a bad job, that—only four hours and ten minutes from Interlaken, and the muddiest road I ever saw, up the Wengern Alp.”
“Well done,” I replied. “The guide-books give six hours for it. But aren’t you tired?”
“Not the slightest,” he said, laughing pleasantly, and showing his fine white teeth. “Lucky for me, as I must do Grindelwald and the lower glacier before night.”
This astonished me. I had found the ascent from Grindelwald over thousands of rude stone steps and through seas of mud, hard enough on horseback, and was dreading the descent as still more trying. And here was Excelsior talking about it as if it were only a little promenade on Broadway, not to mention the visit to the lower glacier, a good two hours’ stretch (going and returning) from Grindelwald and more mud from three to six inches deep all the way, except for the stepping-stones.
“Well, you are plucky—young America all over!” I at length remarked, with a pride in the gameness of my countryman.