GOING TO THE NEW HOME.
Rudy was now a boy of eight. His uncle, who lived in the Rhone valley
at the other side of the mountains, wished him to come to him, and
learn how to make his way in the world; his grandfather approved of
this, and let him go.
Rudy therefore said good-by. He had to take leave of others beside his
grandfather; and the first of these was his old dog, Ajola.
"When your father was postilion, I was his post-dog," said Ajola. "We
traveled backwards and forwards together; and I know some dogs at the
other side of the mountains and some of the people. I was never a
chatterer, but now that we are not likely to have many more chances of
talking, I want to tell you a few things, I will tell you something I
have had in my head and thought over for a long time. I can't make it
out, and you won't make it out; but that doesn't matter. At least I
can see that things are not fairly divided in this world, whether for
dogs or for men. Only a few are privileged to sit in a lady's lap and
have milk to drink. I've never been used to it myself, but I've seen a
little lap-dog riding in the coach, and occupying the place of a
passenger. The lady to whom it belonged, or who belonged to it, took a
bottle of milk with her for the dog to drink; and she offered him
sweets, but he sniffed at them and refused them, so she ate them
herself. I had to run in the mud beside the coach, and was very
hungry, thinking all the time that this couldn't be right; but they
say that there are a great many things that aren't right. Would you
like to sit in a lady's lap and ride in a carriage? I wish you could.
But you can't arrange that for yourself. I never could, bark and howl
as I might!"
This is what Ajola said; and Rudy put his arms round him, and kissed
his cold, wet nose. Then he took up the cat, but puss tried to get
away, and said,--
"You're too strong! and I don't want to scratch you. Climb over the
mountains, as I taught you. Don't fancy you can fall, and then you
will always keep firm hold." As he said this, the cat ran away; for he
did not wish Rudy to see that he was crying.
The fowls strutted about the room. One of them had lost its tail
feathers. A tourist, who imagined he was a sportsman, had shot its
tail off, as he thought it was a wild bird.
"Rudy is going away over the mountains," said one of the fowls.
The other one replied, "He's in too great a hurry; I don't want to say
good-by." And then they both made off.
He then said good-by to the goats; they bleated "Med! med! may!" and
that made him feel sad.
Two neighboring guides, who wanted to cross the mountains to beyond
the Gemmi took Rudy with them, going on foot. It was a fatiguing walk
for such a little boy; but he was strong, and never feared anything.
The swallows flew part of the way with them. "We and you! and you and
we!" they sang. Their route lay across the roaring Lütschine, which
flows in many little streams from the Grindel glacier, and some fallen
trees served for a bridge. When they gained the forest at the other
side, they began to mount the slope where the glacier had quitted the
mountain, and then they had to climb over or make their way round the
blocks of ice on the glacier. Rudy sometimes was obliged to crawl
instead of walking; but his eyes sparkled with pleasure, and he
planted his feet so firmly that you would think he wanted to leave the
mark of his spiked shoes behind him at every step. The dark earth
which the mountain torrent had scattered over the glacier made it look
almost black, but still you could catch sight of the bluish-green ice.
They had to skirt the countless little pools which lay amongst the
huge blocks of ice; and sometimes they passed by a great stone that
had rested at the edge of a cleft, and then the stone would be upset,
and crash down into the crevasse, and the echoes would reverberate
from all the deep clefts in the glacier.
So they went on climbing. The mighty glacier seemed like a great river
frozen into ice, hemmed in by the steep rocks. Rudy remembered what he
had been told, of how he and his mother had been pulled up out of one
of those, deep, cold crevasses; but he soon thought no more of it, and
it seemed no more than many other stories which he had been told.
Occasionally, when the men thought the path too rough for the boy,
they offered him a hand; but he was not easily tired, and stood on the
ice as securely as a chamois. Now they got on rock, and clambered over
the rough stones; then they would have to walk through the pine-trees,
or over pasture-lands, whilst the landscape was constantly changing.
Around them were the great snow mountains--the Jungfrau, the Mönch and
the Eiger. Every child knew their names, and, of course, Rudy knew
them. Rudy had never before been up so high; he had never walked over
the wide snow-fields: like the ocean with its waves immovable, the
wind now and again blowing off some of the snow as if it were the foam
of the sea. The glaciers meet here as if they were joining hands; each
forms one of the palaces of the Ice-Maiden, whose power and aim is to
capture and overwhelm. The sunshine was hot, the snow was brilliantly
white, and seemed to sparkle as if covered with diamonds. Countless
insects, most of them butterflies or bees, were lying dead on the
snow; they had gone up too high, or been carried by the wind, and had
been frozen to death. A threatening cloud hung over the Wetterhorn,
looking like a bundle of black wool; it hung down, heavy with its own
weight, ready to burst with the resistless force of a whirlwind. The
recollection of this whole journey--the encamping for the night, at
such a height, the walk in the dark, the deep clefts in the rock, worn
away by the force of water during countless years--all this was fixed
in Rudy's memory.
An empty stone hut beyond the _mer de glace_ gave them shelter for the
night. Here they found pine branches for fuel, and they quickly made
a fire and arranged the bed as comfortably as they could. They then
seated themselves about the fire, lighted their pipes, and drank the
hot drink which they had prepared. They gave Rudy some of their
supper, and then began to tell tales and legends of the spirits of the
Alps; of the mighty serpents that lay coiled in the lakes; of the
spirits who were reported to have carried men in their sleep to the
marvelous floating city, Venice; of the mysterious shepherd, who
tended his black sheep on the mountain pastures, and how no one had
seen him, although many had heard the tones of his bell and the
bleating of his flock. Rudy listened to all this, though he was not
frightened, as he did not know what fear was; and as he was listening
he thought he heard the weird bleating; it grew more and more distinct
till the men heard it too, and left off talking to listen, and told
Rudy to keep awake.
This was the Föhn, the blast, the terrible tempest, which sweeps down
from the mountains upon the valleys, rending the trees as if they
were reeds, and sweeping away the houses by a flood as easily as one
moves chessmen.
[Illustration: They then seated themselves about the fire, and began
to tell tales of the spirits of the Alps.]
After a time they said to Rudy that it was all over, and he might go
to sleep; and he was so tired with his long tramp that he obeyed at
once.
When day broke, they pushed forward. The sun now shone for Rudy on new
mountains, new glaciers, and snow-fields. They were now in the canton
of Vallais, and had crossed the range which could be seen from
Grindelwald, but were yet far from his new home. Other ravines, other
pastures, woods, and mountain-paths now came into sight, other houses,
and other people; but they were strange and deformed-looking beings,
with pale faces, and huge wens hanging from their necks. They were
_crétins_, feebly moving about, and looking listlessly at Rudy and his
companions--the women were particularly repulsive to look at. Should
he find such people in his new home?