After an appetizing luncheon which atoned for the bitter disappointment of this morning, we strolled upwards in the sunshine, slowly and comfortably, towards the village of Tiefis. The ancient Dorfberg road which started opposite the sawmill to climb the height now lies obliterated and forgotten; it was so steep that coachmen and all the rest of us—save one or other of those awesome Scotch grand-aunts, fragile and frowsy—had to get out of the carriage and walk. Here, on the upper level, stood certain immense walnut trees of ours, in whose shade I used to crawl about before I could walk. They are gone. But the distant iron target against the hill-side behind them, which served my father for rifle-practice, is in its old place; they have not troubled to pull it down. I glance into the back regions of our old house; no great change here; some of the present proprietor’s children are bathing in that fountain which used to be covered with water-lilies. Then, a couple of hundred yards further on, the ochre-tinted bed of that wonderful stream which petrified leaves and grasses, a ceaseless marvel of childhood. There it is as of old, trickling downhill in the same miniature cascade. Up again, to the next level and beyond, where the forest begins and where, looking back, you have a fine view upon the Zimba.
Now these are the things for which I have come here; things for which you will vainly ransack England and the whole Mediterranean basin. You are confronted, all of a sudden, by a dusky precipice, a wall of ancient firs, glittering in the sun; their branches droop earthward in curtain-like fringes. Here the path enters the forest—an inspiring portal! To step from those bright meadows into the solemn and friendly twilight of the trees is like stepping into a vast green cavern, into another world; involuntarily one lowers one’s voice. I shall be much surprised if these benign woodlands do not have a chastening influence upon the character and the whole worldly outlook of Mr. R., to whom this country and its people and language and customs are so utterly strange that he has not yet recovered from his first bewilderment; they are what he needs—what all of us need; one should return to them again and again, to breathe a cleaner air, to rectify one’s perspective, to escape from the herd and the contamination of its unsteady brain.
There is a short break in the wood soon afterwards, a steep grassy slope with a hay-hut at its foot. The place is called Hirsch-sprung, because in olden days a hunted stag took the whole descent at a single leap. Any one who has seen stags pursued by a hound will admit that they are remarkable jumpers. They seldom get as good a chance as this, of showing what they can do. The distance aerially traversed must be about eighty yards.
Tiefis is a new and prosperous village; the old one was burnt down in the sixties. We went to my old inn where we discovered, among other things, a pretty fair-haired child, daughter of the proprietress; she has the clearest complexion imaginable and the sweetest smile, and her eyes are not blue, but of a mysterious golden-gray; the very picture of innocence, and just the kind of person to trouble desperately Mr. R., who is of the other color and at an inflammable age, though far more decent-minded than I used to be. The charm is fleeting; she will lose some of her looks; already I detect an ever so slight thickening of her throat. Goitrous throats are none too rare hereabouts and nobody seems to mind them, but Mr. R. knows nothing about such things as yet. At my invitation she came and sat down beside him, which disconcerted both of them at first, while I discussed the price of wine and other commodities with the mother, whose nervous twitch in one eye must not be mistaken for a wink. Where would it end, I enquired? Did innkeepers like herself still stock the better qualities of white, the Nieder-oesterreicher and so-called Terlaner, or red kinds like Veltliner and Kalterer See and Magdalener? Would not people, at this rate, soon give up drinking wine altogether? They were giving it up fast, she said. No peasant cared to pay 1500 kronen for a quarter of a liter. Only last week it was 800; in another fortnight it might be 2500 (it is now 4000). And so forth.
“I think it would be polite to shake hands with the little baby,” said Mr. R., as we rose to depart.
“The little baby? I see. Go ahead. She won’t bite.”
“Of course not. But one ought to say something. What is the German for au revoir?”
“Say nothing to-day. Keep that for next time. Look straight into her face and smile; put your soul into it.”
“I was going to do that anyhow.”
Down again, by that pleasant road which connects the villages of Tiefis and Bludesch. At the foot of the hill we abandoned it and turned to the left, eastwards, up a swampy dell which, I knew, would bring us back once more to the Stag’s Leap—a winding, narrow vale encompassed by woodlands and drenched, just then, in a magical light from the sunset at our back. It is called the “Eulenloch” (owl’s den), and a streamlet runs down its center; the only streamlet in the district which contains crayfish and therefore used to supply us, in former days, with potage bisque. We captured one of these crustaceans; the brook is hereafter to be known as “ruisseau des écrevisses” (its real name is “Riedbach,” from the rushes through which it flows). They dig peat here, as in many of these upland bogs, and the rank vegetation with its pungent odors, sweet and savage, has not yet been mowed down—a maze of tall blue gentians and mint and mare’s-tail, and flame-like pyramids of ruby color, and meadowsweet, and the two yellows, the lusty and the frail, all tenderly confused among the mauve mist of flowering reeds. I am glad I have arrived in time to enjoy such sights; these wood-engirdled marshes have a fascination of their own. How good it is to be at home again, simmering and bubbling with contentment as you recognize the old things in their old places!