“No, thanks,” he cried. “We are just catching the range now; something the matter with the swivel. Oh, there he is, swinging his handkerchief on the piazza of the Murren Hotel! And now he is looking through a telescope, too. He sees us!” Excelsior thereupon fluttered his own signal for about one minute with great enthusiasm. By means of the two glasses the friends had exchanged salutes across an interval of eight miles.
This ceremony over, Excelsior apparently transferred his interest to the Jungfrau, the Monch, the Eiger, and lesser peaks, as well he might have done, for there is no single view in the Bernese Oberland more sublime and satisfactory in all its details than that of the mountain-chain seen from the Wengern Alp. Here, too, the telescope was continually getting out of gear and defying the joint efforts of Excelsior and the maiden to make it work right. I do not know if they would ever have quitted the task which occupied them so intently had not a horseman and a lady in a chaise-porte, swinging between two stalwart peasants, arrived on the scene. The new-comers, of course, required immediate attention, and the maiden was too good a niece of the landlord to neglect his interests. So, with this single remark, made so loud that all of us could hear it, “I think you understand how to do it now, sir,” she bounded up the slope like a chamois to look after the new guests. Excelsior followed a moment later, and sat down at the little table where his hot luncheon was about due.
I felt that a pretty comedy of real life had been interrupted by these arrivals. I hoped to see a second act of it when the maiden served Excelsior with his repast, but in this I was disappointed. She soon brought out the dishes and the half-bottle of Yvorne he had ordered, and put them before him. But she was silent and demure now, for there were new eyes upon her. Excelsior himself had an attack of gravity, for he ate and drank without saying a word to the maiden, who came and went. If it was not a case of love at first sight on his part, then I am no judge of the symptoms of that passion. As for the maiden, who can tell?
I am sorry not to gratify the legitimate curiosity of my readers further on this point; but I could not tarry longer on the Wengern Alp, even to report the progress of a genuine love-affair. An appointment at Grindelwald compelled me to hasten my departure. I bade good-by to Excelsior, with a hope that I should meet him at the Hôtel de l’Ours that night or next morning. He replied, in a confused manner, that he did not know. Perhaps he would spend just one night on the Wengern Alp; the house there seemed so snug and comfortable. “It would not be a bad idea, you know, to visit the glacier over there in the morning, while the snow is still hard and the footing good.”
I did not feel familiar enough with Excelsior to joke him about another attraction—a second Jungfrau—so I only smiled. When I said good-by to the maiden, I could not help adding that I hoped she would see America again some day, and perhaps stay there; and, by a natural association of ideas, I glanced at the same time at Excelsior. For, far-fetched as the thought may seem, the mountain air was so stimulating that I persisted in imagining that the chance meeting of these two emotional young persons on the Wengern Alp was the beginning of a romance destined to end in a happy marriage. What a good-looking couple they would make!
I have never seen him or her from that day to this. But we all find out for ourselves the truth of the old saying that the world is small. I should not be much astonished to meet Mr. and Mrs. Excelsior some day; and then I shall tell him how much more sensible I think him to be than the young man in the poem, who had no taste for pretty Swiss girls.
CHAPTER XV. AN ENGLISH ADMIRER OF THE “AMERICAN LANGUAGE.”
At the Hôtel de l’Ours (the Bear Hotel of Englishmen and Americans who do not care to expose their French) I added another to the list of my pleasant English acquaintances. One morning, while sauntering in front of the hotel before breakfast, I noticed a young man with bright-yellow hair, whiskers, and mustache, calm gray eyes, and that perfect freshness of complexion which one rarely sees in men’s faces outside of England. He was habited in corduroy from his jockey-cap down to his knee-breeches, and wore stout walking-shoes of the Alpine Club pattern. In his right hand he sported a sharp-pointed Alpenstock, which looked stained and worn with use, but was unscarred by branding-irons. His well-knit figure and his good face were a recommendation to all beholders. We exchanged glances, and would probably have spoken to each other then, if one of the long-bearded guides had not appeared and taken off Corduroy in the direction of the lower glacier. Corduroy was the name which, in absence of the authentic one, I conferred upon him. I regretted his hasty departure, for he seemed just the man to draw into an interesting conversation.