“Now what am I to do?”
“Well, you might review the situation, like Hermann did. If I were in your place, I should have no objection to being ultimately connected, by marriage, with the management of a tavern; the position strikes me as offering sundry advantages over the common lot of man. So think it over and, when you have made up your mind for good and all, confide in me and rest assured that I shall be only too delighted to act as interpreter between you and the parents, provided, of course, that your intentions are as honorable as they ought to be.”
“Is this the time to make fun of me?”
How sensitive they are, these young people of the guileless variety!
The path we were now following, from the Tiefis “Bädle” to the source of the Montiola brook and thence to the reservoirs, is one of my special favorites. The ground rises slowly, and soon you reach a miniature watershed; whatever drains off behind you flows down westwards and finds its way into the “ruisseau des écrevisses”; the Montiola drops towards the east, at first. Before reaching its source you traverse a wood which Mr. R. immediately christened “la forêt nordique”; he has never seen such a forest save in pictures, yet it certainly recalls them to me, each of the firs resembling its fellow and all at their most uninteresting life-period; this tract must have been cut down and replanted half a century ago, or less.[18]
On issuing from this “forêt nordique” you are already in the Montiola basin, a luscious dank valley surrounded by wooded heights. Presently, on your right, at the foot of the hill, you discern the Montiola fountain. It is an exuberant spring overhung by firs and beeches; almost the entire volume of the streamlet rises at this one point, and you will do well to rest awhile on those mossy stones, as I have done many and many a time, listening to the glad sound of bubbling waters and letting your eye roam across the narrow sunlit vale into the woodlands on its other side. From here the Montiola meanders for half a mile or so, icy cold and full of trout, through a flowery swamp region towards the reservoirs, where it takes its theatrical plunge into the village below.
A distant rocky peak, just to the left of the Hoher Frassen, confronts you on stepping out of the northern forest. This is the “Rothe Wand” which, considering its respectable height of 2701 meters, is a decidedly coy mountain, and more clever at hiding itself than most of them; you may obtain another clear view of it from the platform of Frastanz station. It seems incredible that this “Red Wall” which is now climbed by a hundred tourists every year, should in the days of my father have been deemed so inaccessible that he thought it worth while to describe an ascent of it in the transactions of our Alpine Club (1868) in which he speaks of it as “almost unknown.” The country has indeed changed since those days, and few pinnacles are left unclimbed; I can mention one of them, at least, for the benefit of anybody who cares to give it a trial. This is the so-called “Wildkirchle” or “Hexenthurm,” a fragment of the Kanisfluh massif near Mellau, a rock-needle; it has the apparent advantage of being only 140 meters high. All the same, no one has yet stood on its summit, though many have tried to do so; only a couple of weeks ago (23 July, 1922) two young men lost their lives while attempting the feat. My sister, who was the first woman that ever got up the Zimba—and well I remember the state of her leather knickers when she came down again—also had a try at the “Hexenthurm,” a little exploit of which I only learnt after her death. She and a guide, from all accounts, were roped together and wound themselves aloft somewhat after the fashion of a nigger climbing a cocoa-palm (I cannot quite visualize the operation); at a certain moment they were only too happy to be able to wind themselves down again.
These were the sports she loved; and I marvel to this hour what made her adopt the married state—she who cared no more for the joys of domesticity than does a tomcat. Talked into it, I fancy, by some stupid relation who ought to have known better.
While strolling homewards from that Montiola fountain hallowed by many memories of my past, I took to relating to my companion all I knew concerning my father’s fatal accident, which occurred as he was chamois shooting not far from the Rothe Wand; he fell down a ghastly precipice. Forthwith Mr. R., who has an imaginative and impressionable turn of mind, besought me to take him up there and show him the exact site on the condition, of course, that nothing but English was to be spoken during the trip. Well, why not? No harm in that, no harm whatever; the excursion may distract him, and he has so far seen nothing of these upper Alpine regions. I would gladly go there over the Spuller lake, but cannot bear to see the place again in its changed condition; for this fair sheet of water is now being mauled about by a legion of navvies for the purpose of some miserable railway electrification. Instead of that, we can take the train to Dalaas and mount to the Formarin lake, which lies even nearer to the scene of the accident. [19]