They walked together down the hill, through the fields, past the little chapel and cemetery where they stopped. On the headstones he read again and again the name, “Martin Staehli.” He would bring his grandfather, his parents and lay them where they belonged, and he would lie there beside them.
The pastor looked up at the great mountain, already casting a shadow over the valley; even in summer the day was short. The night came early and lingered.
“We are not all here. My son was the best guide in the Canton. He was lost in a snow-drift up there.”
At the châlet with its black beams, centuries old, still strong, unyielding, he put his hand over Martin’s head and blessed his entrance into the home of his fathers.
Martin stood in the long hall, vaguely conscious of atmosphere. A cuckoo sprang out of an old clock, chanting the hour; a spinning wheel with threaded flax; new linen piled up; a living thing, that wheel, it clothed the people. Carved chests, plaques of fruit, birds cut out by the natives, when the country was Italian—everything in the room bearing witness,—a living story-teller of the lives and times of the vanished family. For the first time he felt the antique. He was swayed by a kind of psychic storm, like a rush of wind through the pass of a mountain.
The pastor at the door called, “Angela, Angela.”
A clear voice answered; she came down the path—a girl of sixteen, with bits of hay in her flaxen hair, a child-like look of wonder in her blue eyes, and something more—of mystery. Martin thought of Joan of Arc in the orchard.
On seeing Martin, she gave a quick impulsive cry. The pastor put his arm around her.
“What frightens you, Angela? It is my brother, Martin’s son from America.”
Angela extended her hand, but her warm radiance had vanished. “Come out in the sun, it is cold here.”