THE NEW START
It was the first week in May when we started--the 5th, in fact. The car
had been thoroughly overhauled, and I had spent a week personally on it,
scraping and polishing, so that we might make a fine appearance as we
stood in front of the hotel in the bright morning sunlight where our
fellow guests would gather to see us glide away.
I have had many such showy dreams as that, and they have turned out
pretty much alike. We did not start in the bright morning. It was not
bright. It was raining, and it continued to rain until after eleven
o'clock. By that time our fellow guests were not on hand. They had got
tired and gone to secluded corners, or to their rooms, or drabbling into
the village. When the sun finally came out only a straggler or two
appeared. It was too bad.
We glided away, but not very far. I remembered, as we were passing
through the town, that it might be well to take some funds along, so we
drove around to the bank to see what we could raise in that line. We
couldn't raise anything--not a centime. It was just past twelve o'clock
and, according to Swiss custom, the bank was closed for two hours. Not a
soul was there--the place was locked, curtained, barred. Only dynamite
would have opened it.
We consulted. We had some supplies in our basket to eat by the roadside
as soon as we were well into the country. Very good; we would drive to
some quiet back street in the suburbs and eat them now. We had two hours
to wait--we need feel no sense of hurry. So we drove down into Vevey la
Tour and, behind an old arch, where friends would not be likely to
notice us, we sat in the car and ate our first luncheon, with a smocked
boy for audience--a boy with a basket on his arm, probably delaying the
machinery of his own household to study the working economies of ours.
Afterward we drove back to the bank, got our finances arranged, slipped
down a side street to the lake-front, and fled away toward Montreux
without looking behind us. It was not at all the departure we had
planned.
It rained again at Montreux, but the sun was shining at Chillon, and the
lake was blue. Through openings in the trees we could see the picture
towns of Territet, Montreux, Clarens, and Vevey, skirting the shore--the
white steamers plying up and down; the high-perched hotels, half lost in
cloudland, and we thought that our travels could hardly provide a more
charming vision than that. Then we were in Villeneuve, then in the open
flat fields of the Rhone Valley, where, for Europe, the roads are poor;
on through a jolty village to a bridge across the Rhone, and so along
the south shore by Bouveret, to St. Gingolph, where we exhibited our
papers at the Swiss _douane_, crossed a little brook, and were again in
France. We were making the circuit of the lake, you see. All winter we
had looked across to that shore, with its villages and snow-mantled
hills. We would now see it at close range.
We realized one thing immediately. Swiss roads are not bad roads, by any
means, but French roads are better. In fact, I have made up my mind that
there is nothing more perfect in this world than a French road. I have
touched upon this subject before, and I am likely to dwell upon it
unduly, for it always excites me. Those roads are a perfect network in
France, and I can never cease marveling at the money and labor they must
have cost. They are so hard and smooth, so carefully graded and curved,
so beautifully shaded, so scrupulously repaired--it would seem that half
the wealth and effort of France must be expended on her highways. The
road from St. Gingolph was wider than the one we had left behind. It was
also a better road and in better repair. It was a floor. Here and there
we came to groups of men working at it, though it needed nothing, that
we could see. It skirted the mountains and lake-front. We could look
across to our own side now--to Vevey and those other towns, and the
cloud-climbing hotels, all bright in the sunshine.
We passed a nameless village or two and were at Evian, a watering-place
which has grown in fame and wealth these later years--a resort of fine
residences and handsome hotels--not our kind of hotels, but plenty good
enough for persons whose tastes have not been refined down to our budget
and daily program of economies.
It was at Thonon--quaint old Thonon, once a residence of the Counts and
Dukes of Savoy--that we found a hostelry of our kind. It had begun
raining again, and, besides, it was well toward evening. We pulled up in
front of the Hotel d'Europe, one of the least extravagant of the
red-book hostelries, and I went in. The "_Bureau_" as the French call
the office, was not very inviting. It was rather dingy and somber, and
nobody was there. I found a bell and rang it and a woman appeared--not a
very attractive woman, but a kindly person who could understand my
"_Vous avez des chambres?_" which went a good ways. She had "_des
chambres_" and certainly no fault could be found with those. They were
of immense size, the beds were soft, smooth, and spotlessly clean. Yes,
there was a garage, free. I went back with my report. The dinner might
be bad, we said, but it would only be for once--besides, it was raining
harder. So we went in, and when the shower passed we took a walk along
the lake-front, where there is an old chateau, once the home of royalty,
now the storehouse of plaster or something, and we stopped to look at a
public laundry--a square stone pool under a shed, where the women get
down on their knees and place the garments on a board and scrub them
with a brush, while the cold water from the mountains runs in and out
and is never warmed at all.
Returning by another way, we found about the smallest church in the
world, built at one corner of the old domain. A woman came with a key
and let us into it and we sat in the little chairs and inspected the
tiny altar and all the sacred things with especial interest, for one of
the purposes of our pilgrimages was to see churches--the great
cathedrals of France. Across from the church stood a ruined tower,
matted with vines, the remains of a tenth-century chateau--already old
when the one on the lake-front was new. We speak lightly of a few
centuries more or less, but, after all, there was a goodly period
between the tenth and the fourteenth, a period long enough to cover
American history from Montezuma to date. These old towers, once filled
with life and voices and movement, are fascinating things. We stood
looking at this one while the dusk gathered. Then it began sprinkling
again and it was dinner time.
So we returned to the hotel and I may as well say here, at once, that I
do not believe there are any bad dinners in France. I have forgotten
what we had, but I suppose it was fish and omelet, and meat and chicken,
and salad and dessert, and I know it was all hot and delicious, and
served daintily in courses, and we went to those soft beds happy and
soothed, fell asleep to the sound of the rain pattering outside, and
felt not a care in the world.