Part 8 (1/2)
As our train-load of Activity came to a stand, this other train-load of Exhaustion rumbled slowly away, the smoky lamps glinting on polished, olive-coloured flesh, on hairy arms, and swarthy faces shut to consciousness.
Close to the tunnel-head we alighted, and went on into the dream on foot, the gallery contracting to a few feet in height, where a group of black figures bent over rock-drills which creaked and groaned. I saw the drill-holes filled with dynamite, and retired with the others while the fuse was lighted. I heard from afar off the thunderous detonations as the rock-face was shattered. I saw the debris being cleared away, before the drills should begin to grind again; and the remembrance that, in another rathole on the Swiss side, another party of workers was patiently advancing towards us, in precisely the same way, sent a mysterious thrill through my blood.
”Suppose the two galleries don't meet end to end?” I spoke out my thought.
”But they will,” said Bolzano. ”Our calculations are precise, and we have allowed for an error of two inches: I do not think there will be more. There is a great system of triangulation across the mountains, and every few months our reckonings are verified. By-and-bye, we shall hear the sound of each other's drills; then, down will come the last dividing wall of rock, and Swiss and Italians will be shaking hands.”
I think, in coming out of the dark tunnels and windy galleries, I felt somewhat as Jonah must have felt after he had been discarded in distaste by the whale. The light dazzled my eyes. I could have shouted aloud with joy at sight of the sun. I made Bolzano breakfast with me in the little inn at Iselle, and got upon my way again, at something past noon. The vast turmoil of the growing railway was left behind. It was like putting down a volume of Walt Whitman, and taking up Tennyson.
The Pa.s.s had the extraordinary individuality of one face as compared with another. It had not even a family resemblance to the St. Gothard.
The air was sweet with the good smell of newly cut wood and resinous pines. There were sudden glimpses of icy peaks, cut diamonds in the sun, seen for a moment, then swallowed up by stealthily creeping white clouds, or caressed by them with a benediction in pa.s.sing. Thin streaks of cascades on precipitous rocks made silver veinings in ebony. Side valleys opened unexpectedly, and one knew from hearsay that gold mines were hidden there. Treading the road built by Napoleon, I was enveloped in the gloom of the wondrous Gondo Schlucht, to come out into a broad valley,--a green amphitheatre, above which a company of white, mountain G.o.ds sat grouped to watch a cloud-fight.
If I had not been heart-broken by the cruelty of Helen Blantock, I should have been almost minded to thank her for sending me here. But then,--I reminded myself hastily when this thought winked at me over my shoulder,--I was stunned still, by my heavy disappointment. I was not conscious to the full of my suffering now, but I should wake up to it by-and-bye, and then it would be awful--as awful as the desolation left by a recent great avalanche whose appalling traces I had just seen.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”TREADING THE ROAD BUILT BY NAPOLeON”.]
I refused to be interested in the old Hospice of St. Bernard, or the newer Hospice, built by order of Napoleon, because neither seemed to me the real thing. If I could not see the Hospice of St. Bernard on the Pa.s.s of Great St. Bernard, I would not see any other hospices called by his name. If possible, I would have gone by them with my eyes shut; but at the new Hospice the yapping of a dozen adorable puppies in a kennel opposite lured me, and I paused to talk to them.
They did not understand my language, and this was disappointing; but if I had not stopped I should have missed a short cut which I half saw, half suspected, dimly zigzagging down the mountain into an extraordinarily deep valley, and tending in the direction of Brig. It would have been a pity to pa.s.s it by, for though I often thought myself lost, I eventually caught sight of a town, lying far below, which could be no other than the one for which I was bound. After three hours of fast walking down from the Hospice, I plunged through an old archway into the main street of Brig.
Coming into it, I stopped to gaze up in astonishment at an enormous house which looked to me as big as Windsor Castle. Indeed, to call it a house does not express its personality at all; yet it was hardly magnificent enough for a castle. At each corner was an immense tower, ornamented with a big bulb of copper, like a gigantic and glorified Spanish onion. A beautiful Renaissance gallery, flung across from one tall building to another, lent grace to the otherwise too solid pile, and I guessed that I must have come upon the ancient stronghold and mansion of the famous Stockalper family, still existing and still one of the most important in Switzerland. In the Pa.s.s I had seen the towers built by the first Stockalper--that Gaspar who in mediaeval days was called ”King of the Simplon”; who protected travellers and controlled the caravan traffic between Italy and Switzerland; now, to see the house which he had founded still occupied by his descendants, fixed more pictorially in my mind the stirring legends connected with the man.
The little town of Brig seemed noisy and gay after the great silence of the Pa.s.s. Church bells were ringing, whips were cracking; in the central place there were crowding shops, bright with colour, and lights were beginning to s.h.i.+ne out from the windows of the hotels.
I was to meet the Winstons at the Hotel Couronne; and as I ventured to show my travel-stained person in the hall, I was greeted by a vision: Molly in white muslin, dressed for dinner.
”What, you already!” she exclaimed. ”You must have come over the Pa.s.s by steam or electricity. We didn't expect you for an hour. We've lots to tell you, and oh, I've bought you a sweet revolver, which you are always to have about you, on your walking trip, though Jack laughed at me for doing it. But now, for your adventures.”
In a few words I sketched them, and learned that the motor had again pulled wool over the eyes of the law; then Molly must have seen in mine that there was a question which I wished, but hesitated, to ask.
If a man may have a beam in his eye, why not a mule?
”We've been interviewing animals of various sorts for you all day,”
she said. ”I've had a kind of employment agency for mules, and have taken their characters and capacities. But----”
”There's a 'but,' is there?” I cut into her ominous pause.
”Well, the nicest beasts are all engaged for days ahead, or else their owners can't spare them for a long trip; or else they're too young; or else they're too old; or else they're _hideous_. At least, there's one who's hideous, and I'm sorry to say he's the only one you can have.”
”'Twas ever thus, from childhood's hour.'”
”But the landlord says there are dozens of mules at Martigny.”
”A mere mirage.”
”No, he has telephoned. But you'll look at the one here, I suppose, if only as a matter of form? I think he's outside now.”
”Let him be brought before me,” I said, with the air of a tyrant in a melodrama; and, by the way, I have always thought it would be very pleasant being a tyrant by profession, like Him of Syracuse, for instance. You could do all the things you wanted to do, without consulting the convenience of anybody else, or having it on your conscience that you hadn't.
At this moment Jack appeared. It seemed that he had been putting the mule (the one available mule) through his paces, and the wretched fellow was laughing. ”It's not funny, at all,” said I, thinking it was the situation which amused him. But Jack explained that it wasn't that. ”It's the brute's tail,” said he. ”When you see it, you'll know what I mean.”