FAREWELL TO THE CHÂLET
At fourteen, conditions establish themselves quickly, and become--to
the fourteen-year-old mind--permanent. Honor had been a short week at
the _Châlet des Rochers_, and it seemed her home; Vevay, the Pension
Madeleine, the girls, even dear Madame Madeleine and Soeur Séraphine,
were like a dream. A pleasant dream--some day, she supposed, she must
go back, for a time at least; she was not yet old enough or strong
enough to be a sennerin of the Alps, she realized that. How surprised
they would be when she told them--
To the outward eye, on this beautiful June morning, Honor appeared
an extremely pretty, red-haired child in a blue dress, curled up
comfortably in the barn doorway with bright musing eyes looking out
over the mountains. In reality--_her_ reality--she was a woman, tall,
grave and beautiful, dressed in full Swiss costume, velvet bodice,
embroidered apron, silver earrings and all the rest of it. She was
receiving with dignified cordiality her former friends, the friends of
her childhood: the Lady of Virelai with her lordly husband; Stephanie,
Patricia and the rest; was answering their eager questions with simple
grace and candor. Yes, she was happy, very, very happy. This was the
life she had chosen. Gay cities had beckoned to her, throngs of knights
and heroes bold had sighed to do her homage. “The mountains called me
and I came. My brother Zitli and I dwell apart, in the sanctuary of
Nature, at peace with all men!”
Then she would bid them be seated, and would bring them cream and
honey and _biscuits des Rochers_, and they would marvel at the
exquisite daintiness of all her surroundings; “the simplicity which is
perfection!” as Soeur Séraphine said; at the calm majesty of her mien
and carriage. Her magnificent hair was braided now, and hung in two
heavy dark ropes--
“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle Honor! where art thou? Come, my child, and
see who is here!”
Alas! the dignified sennerin vanished; not even a strand of her
magnificent hair, not even a twinkle of her silver earrings remained.
Only little Honor in her blue dress, her curly gold mane tossing about
her shoulders, pulled herself up by the barn door, and limped across
the green (no need of crutches now!) to meet--Fate, in the person of
Margoton!
Not an unkindly Fate, it would appear. Margoton’s massive face was
radiant, Margoton’s columnar arms were outstretched; she was altogether
a pleasant figure in her neat Sunday dress, with the pink ribbon in her
snowy cap.
“Ah, my little mademoiselle! Ah, but it is good to see thee again.
We have missed thee--ah, for example! my faith, it seemed to us all a
year that thou hast been away. Thou art all pale, little cherished one!
_Tiens!_ thou regardest me with great eyes, as if I were a wolf! How,
then! Thou art not glad to see Margoton?”
“I--I was startled!” faltered Honor. “I--didn’t know--dear Margoton,
forgive me! but--have you come--”
She could not say it. She could smile through her tears on the kind
giantess, could press her hand in genuine affection, but she could not
speak.
Margoton replied with a shower of nods. But yes, assuredly, she was
come for mademoiselle, to take her home; what else?
“Has the time seemed long to thee also, my little cabbage? Ah!
Mademoiselle Stephanie, for example, has been a fountain of tears,
desiring thee. A fête awaits thee _là-bas_--but--chut! that is not
to tell. Gretli has been good to thee, yes? She is not all bad, our
Gretli!”
The sisters beamed on each other affectionately.
“One does one’s possible!” said Gretli.
“She has been an angel,” cried Honor. “A perfect angel, Margoton! I
never can tell--”
“_Tiens!_” said Gretli cheerfully. “The holy angels are probably less
solid than I, Mademoiselle. For example! it would take a strong pair
of wings to sustain me, is it not so? You are to tell my honored
Ladies, sister, that M’lle Honor has been good as--bread, I do not say!
_galette_ could not be better. And the ankle--naturally it is not yet
of like strength with the other, that comes slowly; but it marches, it
marches. A little week or so more, and Mademoiselle will be running
and leaping like--but like that evil-disposed Séraphine, whom behold
yonder, annoying poor Nanni as of custom!”
Good Gretli! she had seen the tears in Honor’s eyes, had marked the
tremor in her voice; she talked on easily, giving the child time to
recover from the surprise. To leave the mountains, thought Gretli, even
after a short week; naturally that rent the heart. Margoton had lived
so long down there, she had forgotten--though never ceasing to love the
mountains--how desolating it was to leave them. Ah, yes! and the little
one had a mountain heart, that was to say a heart of gold.
“Figure to thyself what Mademoiselle has done this morning!” she
cried, as they walked slowly toward the châlet, the sisters regulating
their powerful stride by Honor’s limping little steps. “She has made a
cheese!”
“My faith!” cried Margoton. “For example! that was well done.”
“Well done indeed!” Gretli nodded sagaciously. “When I tell thee that
it is a cream cheese of the most perfect! Had she passed her life on
the Alp, it could have been no better.”
“You helped me, Gretli!” said downright Honor. “I couldn’t have done it
by myself.”
“Naturally! that understands itself. A little advice here or there,
what is that? I tell thee, sister, friend Gruyère has no better cheese
in his shop this day; and were it not that my honored Ladies might like
it for their supper, I would send it to him, demanding a fancy price,
my faith!”
M. Gruyère was the cheese merchant to whom Margoton was betrothed.
Honor knew him well by sight, a little dried-up, snuff-colored man, who
might go into Margoton’s pocket, she thought.
“He goes always well, this good Gruyère?” asked Gretli.
Margoton shook her head. Not too well, it appeared. He had been
assassinated by rheumatism this past week; in the legs it seized him,
in the arms, everywhere. To hear his cries, that lacerated the heart.
“He needs a wife, that one!” said Gretli slyly.
Margoton assented calmly. It was true, she said. He had no sense.
Another year or so, when the garden had so to speak grown up a little
more, understood itself as it were, one might begin to think about
that. At present, with the cabbages what they were, and the snails
devastating the cauliflowers, and the peas annihilated by a malediction
of black rust, it was out of the question.
“Mademoiselle asks nothing about the _pension_?” Margoton dismissed
the unfortunate Gruyère with a wave of the hand, and turned smiling
to Honor. “These other demoiselles are in a despair till they behold
her; as I said. M. le Professeur, when he came yesterday--for the
lesson of French history, as Mademoiselle knows--actually his venerable
countenance was to make weep when he found no M’lle. Honor. ‘Where
is my Fair One with golden locks?’ demands that poor gentleman.
‘I have prepared a genealogy of the Merovingians for her; she has
the historical sense, that young person.’ I heard it with my ears,
Mademoiselle.”
“What is that, Merovingian?” asked Gretli. “It sounds like a cheese,
but I know of no such.”
“They were early kings of France!” said Honor, brightening a little.
“First the Merovingians, then the Carlovingians, then the Capets. St.
Louis was a Capet, you know.”
Both sisters nodded vigorously. “That was a very holy saint!” said
Gretli. “His goodness to the poor was well known. He also washed the
feet of holy pilgrims. Also there was Louis XVI, a martyr, as every
child knows. Ah! that unhappy France! what terrible histories! To be
Swiss,” she added; “that is to pray for, if these things were in our
hands, which the good God has in nowise permitted. M’lle Stephanie
found herself not too ill, Margoton, after the attack of that
thoughtless animal?”
“Oh, yes!” Honor’s heart smote her. What a selfish creature she was!
she had not thought of poor Stephanie all these days.
“Do tell us how Stephanie is, Margoton! I hope she was not really hurt.”
It was Gretli who answered, a shade of asperity in her kind voice.
“She was hurt, Mademoiselle, as much as a flea is hurt that falls on
a featherbed. Precisely so much, and no more. Did she not knock you
down and descend upon your prostrate form? I ask you! Not of her free
will, I grant you, but so it was. She was frightened, she rent the air
with her shrieks, the mountains rang with them; but of injury--ah! for
example! not one particle of that, believe me!”
Margoton demurred; was not her sister perhaps a trifle severe? There
was a bruise on the child’s forehead, that was visible to the eye.
There was no doubt that Bimbo was an evil beast. To attack from behind
like that; Margoton asked you, was that well-conducted?
“He had provocation!” cried Gretli. “I do not wholly defend our Bimbo;
he has the faults of youth, and of his nature. A goat, that is not a
philosopher, _hein_? But, it is a fact that he had provocation. Who
in her senses would bring a scarlet parasol to a châlet of the Alps?
No! my faith, that was not well done. A bruise on the forehead? That
is a small matter indeed; while behold our little Mademoiselle here a
prisoner for a whole week, deprived of her studies, of her companions,
of--”
“But yet,” added Gretli quickly, seeing Honor’s eyes starry with tears
again, “she has not been altogether unhappy, _hein_, M’lle Honor? And
to stay once at the _Châlet des Rochers_, that is to stay again; it
is like that. Mademoiselle will come again in the autumn, is it not
so, to see the homecoming of the herd? That is another festival of
our mountains, dear to our hearts. Now--a little _goûter_, is it not
so? Before making the descent; a glass of cream, a little honey, a
biscuit--hold! that I bring them on the instant!”
There was little packing to do. M’me Madeleine had sent a few
necessaries by post, and these were all too quickly made into a neat
roll. A basket must be packed, with Honor’s cream cheese for the
Ladies’ supper, a bottle of whey and a packet of biscuits in case of
hunger or thirst during the journey. While Gretli was bustling about on
these matters, chatting the while with her sister of affairs here at
the châlet, there at the Maison Madeleine, Honor stole into her little
room to say good-by. How homelike it had grown! how she loved the
little bed with its four faces smiling from the posts! Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John, she named them; they had certainly blessed the bed that
she lay on. The carvings on the narrow shelf, Zitli’s work, as she now
knew; the windows through which the mountains greeted her so kindly
morning, noon and evening, with a new glory for every time of day or
night; even the bare walls, with their fresh rough plaster, white as
snow, were dearer to her than any imaginable hangings or tapestries of
queens’ palaces.
“Good-by!” said Honor softly. “Good-by, dear room! good-by, dear little
châlet, and all the tiny cows and goats! I’ll come back to you some
day!”
“On the Alp the grass is sweetest,
Li-u-o, my Queen!”
Zitli’s voice sounded clear and sweet from the garden patch where he
was working. Honor leaned out of the window. “Zitli, wait!” she cried.
“I am going! I am coming!”
Zitli looked up with a twinkle. “How then, Mademoiselle? Coming and
going, both at once?”
In another moment Honor had joined him, and with trembling voice and
brimming eyes was telling her sad little story. Margoton had come for
her. As soon as Atli came from the Alp, she must go; must leave the
_Châlet des Rochers_ and go back to the hot, dusty town, to schoolbooks
and school talk. How could she bear it?
Zitli’s bright face grew sober; he pondered a moment, leaning on his
hoe.
“_Sapperli poppette!_” he murmured. “This is an apoplexy for us indeed,
Mademoiselle.”
“Say ‘Honor,’” cried the girl. “We are friends, Zitli. Why should you
call me Mademoiselle?”
Zitli shook his head decidedly. As to the why, he was not altogether
clear. To begin with, that did not say itself in his tongue; not, at
least, with any degree of comfort. And besides, the sisters and brother
called her Mademoiselle, doubtless because it was fitting; he would
prefer to do as they did, with Honor’s permission.
“And for the departure,--” the boy looked up, and his face was bright
again,-- “My brother and sister,” he announced, “have instructed me
thus, Mademoiselle. That which we do ourselves, for that we may be
glad or sorry, according as it is done well or ill. That which the
good God sends, for that we are to be thankful, whatever it is, since
He sends nothing without reason. It was thus my revered grandmother
instructed them, and they me in turn. So, though--” he made a quaint
grimace,--“though it is very grievous for me to have Mademoiselle go
away, still I say to myself, ‘She goes to school,’ to learn wonderful
things out of books. Ah! Mademoiselle, what happiness! hold! but when I
am apprenticed to the maker of musical boxes, I, too, shall have some
schooling, he has promised it. Not, of course, such as Mademoiselle has
with the holy Ladies, but in some measure, yes! Books! ah, my faith!
that is to dream of, _hein_?”
Honor looked at him, wondering. His face was like a lamp. Books? Of
course, one always had books; some of them were good, but others were
dull.
“But--but you have the mountains, Zitli,” she cried.
A perfect shower of nods responded. “Ah! yes! I return to the
mountains, that understands itself. But with a little learning, too,
all I can get, my faith! I shall love my mountains the better for it,
and they also will understand. They are not ignorant fellows, those!”
He nodded toward the grave giants, who seemed to watch them kindly.
“And--who knows, Mademoiselle? We may meet some day in Vevay. I might
even sell Mademoiselle a cheese, if old Gruyère would permit it. My
faith! if my sister Margoton waits too long, that one will dry up and
blow away. Better might she marry a cockchafer, to my thinking. But
he is a kind man, and a sober,” he added hastily. Honor knew he was
thinking of Uncle Kissel.
Now Gretli was heard calling.
“I must go!” cried Honor. “We will surely meet in Vevay, Zitli. You
will come to see me, won’t you? And you’ll tell me--”
Both were hobbling as fast as they could, for Gretli sounded
imperative, though cheerful. Sure enough, when they reached the front
of the châlet, there was Atli, smiling his broadest (which was very
broad!) and holding in his hands a curious kind of chair; canvas seat,
wooden arms, with an arrangement of straps and buckles fastened to the
top. These straps, he explained, went round his neck and waist; one
even encircled his head. As thus!
Suiting the action to the word, with Gretli’s help he assumed the
harness, shifting a strap here, a buckle there, till, he said, it was
easy enough to sleep in.
“Now if Mademoiselle will take her seat, she will find herself as if in
the pocket of Ste. Gêneviève!” he declared, as Gretli had declared a
week ago. Ah! a week ago!
Honor flung herself into Gretli’s arms, murmuring in a half-choked
voice her good-by, thanks, love, many things that at fourteen one feels
as never before or after. The good giantess was quite overcome, and
returned the caress heartily.
“Au revoir, my little Mademoiselle,” she cried. “Till thou comest
again, my cabbage! ah! for example! thou takest our hearts with thee,
little one!”
“Good-by, Zitli!” said Honor, making a brave effort to steady her
voice. She _would not_ cry any more!
“Don’t forget me, Zitli!”
“_Sapperli poppette!_” Zitli’s own eyes were suspiciously bright, and
he was blinking hard. “Does one forget the sunshine, Mademoiselle?
And--and remember the cheese I am to sell you!”
“All ready, Atli! oh, yes, as comfy as can be, thank you! Good-by,
dear, dear châlet! Good-by, Gretli! good-by, Zitli! don’t forget
me! Oh! there are the goats! good-by, Nanni, Séraphine, Moufflon!
where--oh, there is Bimbo! Good-by, dear Bimbo! and thank you, oh,
thank you a hundred thousand times, for knocking me down!”
A waving hand; a bright head turning ever backward for a last look; a
clear voice calling, faint and fainter as the big shepherd strode down
the mountain path; so Honor left her Alps, and went back to her other
world.