ALBERDINA SCHOENBACHLER
"You no lig I shall dos clothes coog?" asked Alberdina, the Monday after
her arrival.
"Boil, you mean?" corrected Miss Campbell. "Certainly. There is a
clothes boiler, and goodness knows the things need it, and a good
bleaching afterwards in the sun. They are as yellow as gold."
When Alberdina, the new German-Swiss maid, had alighted from the train
with her absurd little iron-bound trunk, about as big as a bread basket,
Billie had felt no misgivings. Here, indeed, was a creature too healthy
to know the name of fear, and too good-natured to object to hard work.
The brilliant red cheeks and broad engaging smile immediately decided
Billie to put all her accumulated linen in wash at once.
On top of Alberdina's large peasant head was perched a small round hat,
positively the most ludicrous thing ever seen in the shape of millinery.
With its band of red satin ribbon and tiny bunch of field flowers, it
seemed to defy the world to find anything funnier.
"It's a real comedy hat," Dr. Hume observed. "The kind they wear when
they sing:
"'Hi-lee-hi-lo-hi-lee-hi-lo,
I joost come over; I joost come over.'"
"But she's really a ministering angel, you know," said Billie, "sent to
do the washing and ironing and scullery work. Except for cooking meals,
we expect to take life easy from now on."
And so, right gladly, they had carried Alberdina Schoenbachler over the
twenty-five miles of mountain road and established her in Sunrise Camp.
"I think she is the very person we needed, Cousin Helen," Billie said.
"Not accomplished, you know, or trained in any way, but good enough for
camping. And there is no reason now why we shouldn't take the trip to
the lower lake if you feel well enough. The weather is perfect."
"Do you think we ought to leave her on the first day?" Miss Campbell
replied somewhat doubtfully.
"Why not? She has enough to occupy her, goodness knows, with all that
washing."
"But suppose she should get lonely or frightened--?"
Just then a melodious Swiss yodel broke the stillness of the early
morning and Billie laughed.
"She isn't going to be lonesome. She is accustomed to the mountains. Do
let's take a holiday, Cousin Helen, please," and with Miss Helen's
assent, Billie rushed off to find the others and tell the good news.
Perhaps some people would regard it as a fault in Billie's character
that, having formed a plan, she was always filled with wild impatience
to carry it out. But when we consider that Billie's plans concerned the
pleasure and entertainment of other people and that her impatience was
only another form of earnest enthusiasm, it would be difficult to
criticise her.
While three of the Motor Maids busied themselves preparing the luncheon,
Billie and Ben worked over the motor car, putting it in condition for a
long trip, and Percy, in blue overalls, washed the body of the car.
"I am so glad to save you this drudgery," he observed, with an
ingratiating smile.
"You're not half as glad as we are, Percival Algernon," answered Ben.
"It's a double blessing, because it's good discipline for you and it
gives us a chance to show how much we know about machinery."
"Don't boast, my son. You may have a sure enough chance before the sun
sets," remarked Percy in the tone of a prophet.
"After you have washed him off well, rub him down with those cloths,"
ordered Billie from under the car. "Then stow the rubber curtains inside
and see to the lights. It may be late before we get back."
"All right, Captain," answered Percy respectfully.
It was still not nine o'clock when the "Comet," polished and oiled and
looking as neat in his dark blue and buff uniform as a soldier on
parade, stood ready for departure. The hamper of luncheon was strapped
on behind, and underneath the middle seats in a pan of ice were bottles
of root beer and ginger ale. Presently he started down the steep road
with his load. The rustic camp, perched on the ledge in the side of the
mountain, with its guard of pine trees crowding almost to its doors,
never looked more alluring.
"I declare I hate to leave the place," said Miss Campbell, peeping
through the glass window in the back curtain of the car.
"It's in good hands," laughed the doctor, as the voice of Alberdina
floated to them, singing in fulsome tones:
"Ach, mein lieber Augustine, Augustine, Augustine!"
But the motor car with its load of campers had not been long gone when
Alberdina withdrew her arms, elbow deep in soapsuds, from the wash tub,
and looked around her.
"Ach, mein lieber Gott," she said turning her large cow-like eyes on the
pile of linen, "I dis worg nod much lige. It is too many. I mag to coog
dos clothes and rest. Dis life it all hard worg ees."
She lifted an armful of linen garments from the tub and stuffed them
into the clothes boiler which she filled with water and set on the coal
oil stove. Then drawing up a steamer chair, she settled herself
comfortably and closed her eyes, not noticing that in the boilerful of
white things she had plunged a red silk handkerchief of Percy's. Nearly
an hour had passed when Alberdina awoke from her healthy,
conscienceless slumber with a start. Turning her head lazily, she
noticed that the clothes were boiling and the water was running over the
sides of the boiler.
"Mein Gott!" she said in German. "That little mistress will make of me
the Hamburger. I must do some work."
But to her horror and astonishment, when Alberdina made an effort to
rise from the low, easy chair, she could not move. She had been bound to
the chair with a stout rope, the clothes line in fact. Each fat red hand
was secured to an arm of the chair, her feet tied together and her body
strapped to the seat and back.
Alberdina groaned and her stupid eyes became humid with terror.
"Helb! Helb!" she called. "Helb bring. Mein Gott in himmel, helb!"
No answer came from the silent camp.
"Ees it for dis, den, I haf to you come?" she cried, addressing the
circle of mountains shimmering in opalescent light. Far down from the
valley below came the long clear note of a bugle, probably of some
coaching party. An impudent woodpecker seated on a limb above her
commenced an insistent, aggravating tapping.
Alberdina made another struggle to loose her bonds and then settled back
weeping. At last merciful sleep brought her oblivion. The mountains
shimmered in the heat waves. The sunlight slanting through the trees
cast flickering golden shadows on the carpet of pine needles. The tinkle
of a cowbell broke the stillness. In her dreams the Swiss girl was
reminded of her own cherished uplands, where in the festive
cheese-making time she had gathered with other maids and youths and
danced to the music of the zither. Zither, did she say? But, had she
been dreaming then, all the while? Was not that a zither now mingling
its fairy music with the notes of the cow bell? Alberdina opened her
eyes.
"Helb! Helb! I asg you helb!" she called.
The music stopped instantly and a man, tall, slender, with an
indescribably distinguished air, approached, carrying the zither under
his arm.
"You called?" he asked courteously.
Alberdina burst into a torrent of excited German. She rolled her
prominent eyes to indicate her bonds. Streams of tears flowed down her
cheeks, or taking a short cut, ran over the bridge of her nose and
dropped down a precipice to her heaving bosom. Phoebe's father watched
her with an expression of gentle bewilderment. He seemed to be trying to
recall something an infinite distance away, like one of those
inexplicable reminiscences that flash through our minds and are gone
before we can grasp their significance.
"It's useless," he said, shaking his head. "But something has happened
to you? Oh, yes, you have been tied up."
Taking a bone-handled clasp knife from his pocket, he carefully cut the
ropes wound about her. Alberdina bounded out of the chair like a big,
fleshy catapult.
"Ach, himmel, I thangs mag to you, sir," she cried respectfully, for
there was something in this wanderer which commanded deference, although
he did wear a threadbare suit and mountain brogans.
"You know who did this, my girl?" he asked.
She shook her head and ran into the camp beyond. The locker rooms on the
two sleeping porches were in confusion. The contents of drawers and
trunks had been dumped to the floor and writing portfolios overhauled.
But, apparently, nothing had been taken, because there was nothing
valuable enough to tempt the most eager burglar. What little ready money
they had the campers had carried with them, and there was no jewelry to
steal. Only Alberdina had been robbed. With many deep guttural
exclamations she found that her own little emigrant trunk had not been
overlooked in the pillage and her purse, containing ten dollars, was
gone.
The gentleman with the zither turned to go.
"I came to find a physician," he said. "Is there none here?"
"I know nod," answered the girl, shaken with sobs.
He lifted his old slouch hat.
"I bid you good day," he said, and started away, then turning back, he
exclaimed: "Perhaps I ought not to leave you here alone. But I must not
stay away so long. Phoebe will be frightened. Will you come with me to
my home?"
Alberdina shook her head. She was half afraid of the strange man. Who
knows but it might have been this stranger, himself, who had robbed her
of her savings?
"No, no; I vill stay here. The vorst is over yet already. Dey haf me
robbed of my moneys. I no more haf. Dey vill not come bag."
Having so spoken, she returned to her labors and was presently hanging
on the line a long row of deep pink clothing, headed by the red silk
handkerchief, the iniquitous author of the wicked deed.
In the meantime the motorists had proceeded joyfully on their way. They
sang and joked and made so merry that Dr. Hume felt that he had gone
back fifteen years in his busy life and was a boy himself. The road as
indicated on the map in the road book was cut through forests of
primeval growth. Sometimes it descended into the valley past villages
and farm houses. Once it took them through a splendid tract of land
dedicated with its club house to St. Hubert, patron saint of the hunt.
At last it began by degrees to climb upward, and with a sudden turn
around the mountain side, they came into view of an exquisite little
lake, reflecting in its mirrored depths the peaks of the high mountains
encircling it. Hundreds of silver birches, slender and elegant, fringed
its edges, gleaming white against a background of impenetrable green.
At one corner of the lake were a small boathouse and restaurant, where
customers are perpetually served with tea and maple cake. Long ago they
had eaten lunch and were quite ready for more refreshments. Then
everybody but Miss Campbell took a dip in the lake. The hours sped past
and the sun was well on its downward grade before they realized it was
time to return.
In the meantime, Billie, always eager to find out about new roads and
new trails, had been questioning one of the guides at the boathouse.
"He says there's a walk called the 'river trail' only two miles long
that we could take, and meet the 'Comet' at a bridge at the end. Don't
you think some of us could take it, Dr. Hume? It's right through the
most wonderful pine forests,--one of the most beautiful walks in the
Adirondacks, he says."
"But who will run the motor car?" asked the doctor, beetling his shaggy
eyebrows.
"I will," Ben volunteered, and it was accordingly arranged that Dr. Hume
and Percy should conduct the girls along the river trail while Miss
Campbell and Ben proceeded by the road in the car.
It was all very simple. Miss Campbell was to take a nap while Ben looked
after the "Comet's" needs and in the course of half an hour, or at their
leisure, they were to take the road. In the meantime, the others, with
good walking, would have ample time to make the two miles through the
forest. They bade each other a casual farewell since they were to meet
again so soon, and led by the doctor, plunged into the forest.
The ground had been cleared of undergrowth, so that looking up the side
of the mountain, at the foot of which gurgled a little river, one could
see a vast multitude of tall straight pine trees and occasionally the
flash of a silver birch. Rank on rank they stood in infinite
perspective; and sometimes an aged beech tree generalled their march and
sometimes a magnificent oak spread out his venerable arms with a gesture
of command. But the rank and file were pines; gray grenadiers, still
upright with the years; young stripling pines, eager to be on the march.
And always they seemed to be going the same way over the mountains to
the frontiers of the world, and always through their branches came the
murmur of their martial song.
Nowhere had Billie seen so impressive, so magnificent a forest. She
thought of the cryptomerias in Japan, but they were more like the
gigantic pillars of a cathedral, while these hurrying hordes of pines
and birches were like human beings. They suggested romances: lovers in
the forests; knights in armor; wicked enchantresses.
Once Dr. Hume paused and pointed to a cleared space beyond. There,
standing under a great pine tree looking at them with startled eyes were
a doe and her young. In another instant they were gone, leaving the
campers holding their breath.
In a little more than an hour they reached the end of the trail, where a
foot bridge made of two logs took them over the turbulent little river.
But no "Comet" stood waiting for them at the rendezvous with Ben at the
wheel and Miss Campbell on the back seat. To be sure the road was twice
as long, as the trail had wound around the side of the mountain for some
five miles, but that was nothing to a motor car.
"Might as well sit down and wait," suggested the doctor.
They seated themselves in a row on a log expecting every minute to see
the familiar blue car loom into sight.
But the lagging moments dragged themselves into half an hour and still
the "Comet" lingered.
"I think we'd better walk back," said Billie, beginning to feel just a
tinge of uneasiness.
"Perhaps it would be as well," echoed the doctor. "They have had a
breakdown, no doubt."
The band of wayfarers feeling very weary after the rough walk along the
river trail began their march back toward the lake.