The Wings of the Wind
"Oh, still solitude, only matched in the skies;
Perilous in steep places,
Soft in the level races,
Where sweeping in phantom silence the cloudland
flies."
--R. BRIDGES.
The wind howled a menace to Mercédès, as she glided down the winding
road towards the comfortable, domestic-looking suburbs of Lucerne.
Banks of cloud raced each other across the sky, and, crossing the
bridge over the Reuss, we saw that the waters of the Lake, turquoise
yesterday, were to-day a sullen indigo. The big steamers rolled at
their moorings; white-crested waves were leaping against the quays,
and thick mists clung like rolls of wool to the lower slopes of
Pilatus.
Molly's spirits rose as the mercury in the barometer fell. "Would you
care for people if they were always good-tempered, or weather if it
were always fair?" she asked me (we were sitting together in the
tonneau, Jack driving). "I revel in storms, and if we have one
to-night, when we are on the Pass, one of the dearest wishes of my
life will be gratified. 'A storm on the St. Gothard!' Haven't the
words a thunder-roll? Sunlight and mountain passes don't belong
together. I like to think of great Alpine roads as the fastnesses of
giants, who threaten death to puny man when he ventures into their
power."
It had been arranged that we should "potter" (as Winston called it)
round the arms of the star-fish lake, until we reached Flüelen; that
from there we should steal as far as we dared up the Reussthal while
daylight lasted, dine at some village inn, and then, instead of
returning to the lowlands of Lucerne, make a dash across the mighty
barrier that shut us away from Italy. Under a lowering sky, and
buffeted by short, sharp gusts of wind, which seemed the heralds of
fiercer blasts, we swung along the reedy shores of the narrowing lake,
the broken sides of the Rigi standing finely up on our right hand.
Winston was satirical about the poor Rigi and its railway, calling it
the Primrose Hill and the Devil's Dyke of Switzerland, the paradise of
trippers, a mountain whose sides are hidden under cataracts of
beer-bottles; but from our point of view, the vulgarities of the
maligned mountain were mellowed by distance, and I neither could nor
would look upon it as contemptible.
Leaving the Lake of the Forest Cantons, we spun along the margin of
the tamer sheet of Zug, to pass, beyond Arth, into the great
wilderness caused by the fearful landslide of a century ago, when a
mighty mass of rock and earth split off from the main bulk of the
Rossberg and thundered down into the valley. The slow processes of
nature had done much to cover up decently all traces of the Titan's
rage, but the huge, bare scar on the side of the Rossberg still told
its tale of tragedy. By the peaceful Lowerzer See the road undulated
pleasantly, and at Schwyz (the hub of Swiss history) we had tea, the
torn and imposing pyramids of the two Myten bravely rearing their
heads above the mists that encumbered the valleys.
There was no need to hurry, for we had the night before us, so we
passed slowly, halting often, along the marvellous Axenstrasse, while
Jack distilled into Molly's willing ears legends from the old heroic
days of Switzerland, before it became the happy haven of
hotel-keepers. From the car we could note the characteristics of the
Cantons which had entered into the famous bond; pastoral and leafy
Unterwalden, with green fields and orchards; Schwyz, also green and
fertile; but Uri (the cold, highland partner in this great alliance),
a country of towering mountains and savage rocks. Molly wanted to get
a boat, and row across to the Rütli to stand on that spot where, in
1307, Walter Fürst, Arnold of Melchthal, and Werner Stauffacher took
the famous oath, and very reluctantly she gave up the wish when Jack
pointed to the rising waves, painting in lurid colours the sudden and
dangerous storms that sweep the Lake of Uri. When he went on, however,
to insinuate doubts as to the historic accuracy of these old stories,
and to hint that even William Tell might himself he an incorporeal
legend, Molly clapped a little hand over his mouth, crying out that
even if he had tried to destroy the Maid of Orleans he must spare
William Tell. Further on, she made us confide the car to Gotteland on
the Axenstrasse, while we descended the path to Tell's chapel and did
reverence to the hero's memory. On such a day as this must it have
been that Tell leaped ashore from the boat, leaving Gessler to look
after himself; for the blasts were shrieking down the lake, and the
waves dashed their foam over the ledge where stands the chapel.
Jack stopped several times in the rock galleries of the Axenstrasse
before we reached Flüelen; consequently it was evening when we
slipped into little Altdorf, where Molly insisted on making a curtsey
to the statue of Tell and his agreeable little boy. Winston predicted
that we should probably not be challenged until we got to Göschenen,
as up to that point the road does not take on a true Alpine character.
The storm (which seemed rising to a point of fury) was in our favour,
too, for no one would choose to be out on such a night, save mad
English automobilists and wilful American girls.
Dusk was beginning to shadow the Reussthal, as we ran past the railway
station at Erstfeld, and began at length the ascent of the St. Gothard
Road. The great railway (of which we had caught glimpses as we came
along the lake) was now our companion, while on the other hand roared
the tumbling Reuss. So hoarse and insistent was the voice of the
stream that Molly suggested it should be "had up for brawling." It did
us the service, however, of drowning the noise of our motor, at all
times a discreetly silent machine; and as Jack had given orders that
the big Bleriots should not be lighted (two good oil lamps showing us
the way), we had high hopes that we might fly by unnoticed, on the
wings of the storm. In Amsteg no one seemed to look upon us with
surprise, and here the road turned, to worm itself into the heart of
the mountains, while the railway, often disappearing into tunnels, ran
far above our heads.
By the time we had reached Gurtnellen night had fallen black and
close, and Molly issued an edict that we should dine in the open air,
instead of seeking the doubtful comforts of a village inn, where, too,
we might suffer from the solicitude of some officious policeman. The
car accordingly was run under the lee of a great rock, the
ever-inspired Gotteland extemporised a shelter with the waterproof
rugs, and the blue flame of the chafing-dish presently cheered us with
its glow. The wind bellowed along the precipices, the Reuss shouted in
its rocky bed, and once an express from Italy to the north passed high
above us, streaming its lights through the darkness like sparks from a
boy's squib. Yet those plutocratic travellers up in the _wagons lits_
were not having anything like the "good time" we enjoyed, warm in our
motor coats, sitting snug behind our rock, a lamp from the car
illuminating our little party and shining on Molly's piquant profile
as she brewed savoury messes in her magic cauldron. This was testing
thoroughly the resources of the automobile, which was playing the part
of travelling kitchen and larder as well as travelling chariot, and
could no doubt be made, with a little ingenuity, to play the parts
also of travelling bed and tent. Yet, as I said all this aloud to
Jack, my mind leaped forward to other nights which I should soon be
spending alone tinder the stars, and I thought tenderly of my
aluminium stove and tent, my sleeping-sack, and the other camping
tools I had bought in Bern.
From where we lay hid behind our rock to Airolo was only some
thirty-two miles, and the car ate up distance with so voracious an
appetite, that it was clear we should arrive in the little Italian
town in the dead waste and middle of the night. To travel a forbidden
road on an automobile, and then to knock up a snoring innkeeper at one
in the morning, to ask him where we could find a donkey, seemed to be
straining unduly the sense of humour; so after consultation we decided
that we should leave Airolo to its slumbers and speed down the Pass
into Italy until we ran to earth the object of our quest.
[Illustration: "THE BLUE FLAME OF THE CHAFING-DISH".]
Molly had produced excellent coffee; the smoke of our cigarettes
mingled its perfume with the night air. Our position had in it
something unique, for while we were "in the heart of one of nature's
most savage retreats" (as said a guide-book of my boyhood), we were at
the same time enjoying the refinements of civilisation, and I
suggested to Winston that our bivouac would form a fit subject for a
picture labelled, in the manner of some Dutch masters, "Automobilists
Reposing."
By the time Gotteland had packed up everything, and we were seated
once more in the car, it was nearly eleven o'clock at night. Coming
out from the shelter of our rock, so fierce a blast of wind smote us
that Molly would, I think, have been carried off her feet had I not
given her a steadying arm. We had to cram our caps on our heads, or
the wind would have torn them from us, and the voice of the motor was
swallowed up in the shrieking of the tempest. Molly was evidently
destined to have her wish.
The car ran swiftly up the road to Wasen, and some twinkling lights
and a huge crimson eye at the entrance to the great tunnel told us
that we had done the ten miles to Göschenen. No one stirred in the
streets of the village, and, gliding cat-like past the station, Jack
put the car at the beginning of the real ascent of the famous St.
Gothard Road. The higher we went, the more wildly roared the storm.
There was something appalling in the fierce volleyings of the wind
along the stark and broken faces of the precipice: it was like the
rattle of thunder. In the sombre defile of the Schöllenen the air
rushed as through a funnel. We could see nothing save the thread-like
road illuminated by our steadfast lanterns--the sole beacon of safety
in this welter. We had a ghostly impression of winding through a
narrow gorge, the river roaring in its depths; then, dashing through
an avalanche gallery (where the lights played strange tricks with the
vaulted roof), we came out upon the Devil's Bridge. The spray from the
Reuss, which here drops a full hundred feet into the abyss, lashed our
faces as with whips; the storm leaped at us out of the blackness like
a wolf; the car quivered, and for an instant it seemed that we should
be hurled against the parapet of the bridge. But we passed unharmed,
and a quarter of a mile further on Winston stopped in the welcome
shelter of the Urner Loch, a tunnelled passage in the rock.
We gasped out broken expressions of a fearful joy; then, seeing that
Molly was well, and that the wind-wolf's teeth had torn nothing from
the car, Jack went full speed ahead again, steering along the open
Urseren Valley, where we had fleeting glimpses of green fields instead
of granite rocks. Thus we came to Andermatt, where not the eye of a
mouse seemed open to mark our quick and stealthy passage. We were now
on that great mountain highroad that slants in a straight line across
almost all Switzerland from Coire to Martigny; but we kept on it only
for a little while, to steal through Hospenthal--as dead asleep as the
other villages (for Labour had not yet begun to waken in its hard
bed), and take the southern road that leads to Italy.
Thus far, audacity had been laurelled by success. It was near one in
the morning, and we were spinning fast up a valley which showed
bleakly in the flying lights of our car. Soon Jack called to us that
we had crossed the border line of the Canton Ticino, and presently
through the blackness twinkled the little lakes which mark the summit
of the Pass. We were nearly seven thousand feet above the sea, and
suddenly, as we crossed the ridge and began to sail down the dismal
Val Tremolo towards Airolo, the great wind that had made majestic
music all day and night ceased to blow. We ran into a zone of
motionless, ice-cold air, and what seemed an unnatural silence, only
the hum of the motor breaking the frozen stillness of these high
Alpine solitudes.
The road plunged to lower levels in interminable windings, the car
swooping in a series of bird-like flights, exhilarating to the nerves,
thrilling to the imagination; for in the blackness that held us we
could but guess at abysses which dropped away almost from under the
tyres of our wheels. Sometimes we dashed over foaming rivers, and soon
we sped through Airolo, where yet no one moved. Now the loud-voiced
Ticino was our companion, and we swept down through an open valley to
Faido, where we met the first human being we had seen since we left
Gurtnellen. It was a very old man, with a red cap, like a stocking,
pulled close upon his head. He had a rake on his shoulder, and we were
close on him before he knew; for the car was coasting, and ran with
hardly any noise save the whir of the chains. For a flashing instant
that old face shone out of the circle of our lights, concave with
astonishment; then we lost it forever.
"No fear that _he_ will telephone to have us stopped lower down," said
Molly. "He thinks we are supernatural, and will go home and tell his
grandchildren that he has seen witches tearing home after a revel up
among the glaciers."
Faster still the car flew down the road. The air that streamed past us
held the faint, elusive perfume of Italy, which softly hints the
presence of the walnut, the chestnut, and the grape. Through village
after village we swept at speed, our lamps shining now on mulberry and
fig trees, and on vines trained over trellises held up by splintered
granite slabs. Next we came suddenly upon an Italian-looking town with
bad _pavé_ and dimly lighted streets, where three or four workmen,
early astir, stared at us in bewilderment. It was Bellinzona; but
passing through, we came out presently on the margin of an immense
sheet of water, and it was only in Locarno on the edge of Lago
Maggiore, when dawn was paling the eastern sky, that Jack at last drew
rein.
No one was tired; no one wanted to rest. On the contrary, our rapid
flight over the Alps had intoxicated us with the sense of speed; and
we were all excitedly for going on until we should reach the frontier.
As pink dawn blossomed in the sky, like a heavenly orchard, and the
mountain tops were beaten into copper, we glided along the edge of the
lake, past picturesque villages and _campanili_, and cypress trees. At
the Italian frontier there were the usual tedious formalities of
payment and sealing the car with a leaden seal; but when all this was
done by sleepy officials, surly at our early passage, though little
recking of our crimes, we sailed on again, Molly driving now, through
a landscape magically clear in the young morning light.
Suddenly we all started in joyous astonishment, and Molly brought the
car to a stop. Each had seen the same thing, each had been struck with
the same thought. Here, at last, we had found what we had come so far
to seek; what Switzerland denied us, Italy offered. Standing alone in
a field by the roadside was a small, dark grey donkey, tethered to a
stone; and no other living being was in sight. The creature was not
eating; it was only thinking; and it looked at us with an eye that
seemed to speak of loneliness and the desire for human fellowship.
"The very thing for you!" cried Molly; and the long-sought-for
treasure, finding itself observed, flicked one of its heavy ears.
Gotteland and I dismounted and went nearer. As we approached, the
donkey nickered; and as its family is famed for reticence, such proof
of friendliness made me yearn to possess the deserted little beast.
But its legs were very thin, its hoofs exceedingly small, and the
thought of loading so frail a structure with the great packs that held
my camping kit seemed a barbarity. Meanwhile Gotteland, who knows
something of everything, had carefully examined the tiny animal, and
just as I was growing sentimental over its perfections, he broke the
charm by pronouncing it to be incredibly old, and unfit for work. He
also drew my attention to a disagreeable sore upon its shoulder. It
was sad; but indisputably the man was right; in any case there was no
one with whom a bargain could have been arranged, and with poignant
regret I was forced to leave my treasure-trove to its solitary
thoughts. After this we did not stop again until Molly steered the car
to the door of a beautiful hotel in Pallanza, where the shirt-sleeved
concierge hurried into his gold-laced coat, to receive in fitting
style the unusually early guests.
My first care, after coffee and a bath, was to examine the landlord
of the hotel on momentous question of mules and donkeys. At Lucerne, I
told him, they had assured me that the animals "flourished" in Canton
Ticino and the neighbourhood of the Italian Lakes. But I met with no
encouragement. Mules and donkeys were rarely seen in these parts, the
host declared. True, a few peasants employed them in the fields; but
those were poor things, unfit for an excursion such as Monsieur
purposed. At Piedimulera, perhaps, Monsieur would find what he wanted;
yes, at Piedimulera, or if not, at Domodossola; or--his face
brightened--in the Valais, preferably at Brig. Yes, he was certain
that mules and asses in abundance could be found at Brig in the Rhone
Valley. Brig! My heart sank. It was the old story. Counterfeiting
patience, I explained that I had an antipathy to the Rhone Valley, and
had actually crossed the Alps to find animals in Italy rather than be
driven to seek them in Brig.
Crushed by a hopeless, answering gesture, I made my report to Molly
and Jack. "It will end," I said, "in my traversing the world, and
eventually arriving in Japan, still searching the _rara avis_. By that
time I shall have become a harmless lunatic, and people will treat my
babblings with indulgent forbearance, when I go from house to house
begging to be supplied with a pack-mule or a pack-donkey."
At _déjeuner_, in a garden which was a successful imitation of Eden,
the situation did not, however, look so dark. The perfume of flowers,
distilled by the hot sun, was of Araby the Blest; the Borromean
Islands spread their enchantments before us, across a glittering blue
expanse of lake, and the world was after all endurable, though empty
of mules. Besides, Molly was a sweet consoler. She dwelt on the
hopeful suggestion in the name Piedimulera. It could not be wholly
deceiving, she argued. Why name a place Foot-of-a-Mule, if there were
no mules there?
"If there aren't," I exclaimed, "I swear to you that I will, by fair
means or foul, dispose of at Piedimulera all the things with which I
fondly thought to deck the animal my fancy had painted. Everything I
bought at Bern shall go, if I have to dig a grave by night in which to
bury them. This is a vow, and though my heart be wrung, I'll keep it."
Molly listened to this outburst as gravely as if I had been
threatening to sacrifice a son, did not some incredible good fortune
supply a ram caught by his horns in the bushes.
For Piedimulera we left in the afternoon, somewhat buoyed up by the
omen of the name. The way led back towards the Alps, up a broad and
beautiful valley strewn with evidences of the works for the Simplon
railway: embankments, bridges, quarries, and occasional groups of
workmen hauling rhythmically on the many ropes of a pile-driver.
Presently we swerved from the main road, and crossed the valley bed,
obedient to the map, which was our only guide to Piedimulera. We
passed one or two romantically placed, ancient villages, each of which
I hoped might be our goal; but, as usual in life, the town for which
we were bound did not appear as alluring as other towns, where we had
no need to stop.
"I feel there will be not so much as the ghost of a long-perished
Roman mule in this hamlet," I said despondently, hoping that Molly
would contradict me. But she, too, looked anxious, now that the great
moment had come, for we were driving into a town, at the mouth of a
deep gorge already dusky with purpling shadows, and there was no doubt
that it was Piedimulera.
The gloom of the twilight settled upon our spirits, dissimulate as we
might, as the car swept into the cobble-paved courtyard of an
_albergo_, a venerable grandfather of a hostelry, old, grim, and
forbidding. Out came a large, fair man to welcome us, with calculation
in his cold grey eye. He looked to me like a spider in his web,
greeting some inviting flies. We broke the ice by asking for coffee,
and when we were told that we must have it without milk, as there were
no cows within a radius of many miles, I would have staked all my
possessions (especially those acquired at Bern) that there would be no
such comparatively useless animals as mules or donkeys.
Instinct is seldom wrong. If ever there was nothing in a name, there
was nothing in that of Piedimulera, which had evidently been applied
in sheer mockery, or because, untold generations ago, the foot of that
rare creature, a mule, had been preserved here in a museum. When the
landlord found that we did not intend to stop overnight, unless mules
were at once forthcoming, he visibly lost interest in us, as inedible
insects. He shrugged his shoulders at the bare idea that Piedimulera
might shelter such creatures as we were mad enough to desire, and
assured us that there was not the least use in trying Domodossola. We
had much better spend the night with him, and to-morrow morning go on
as best we might to Brig. No? Then he washed his hands of us.
I did not give my treasures to this person: rather would I have burnt
all, than picture him battening on my Instantaneous Breakfasts. Molly
would have had me keep them, at least until we knew what fate awaited
us at Domodossola. The moment I had irrevocably parted with my outfit,
bought in happier days, I should find a mule, and how annoyed would I
be, she prophesied. But I was adamant. Had I not made a vow? Besides,
if I were to find a mule or donkey the moment I had got rid of his
paraphernalia, that alone was an inducement to throw the cargo
overboard.
On our way to Domodossola, I saw a pretty dark-eyed young woman, with
a cherubic baby in her arms, standing in the doorway of a tumble-down
cottage. Evidently she was waiting to greet her husband when he should
come home, weary with his long day's work. Quickly I made a decision
and with the same abruptness I had used in urging Molly to draw before
the too attractive shop in Bern, I begged her now to stop. My white
elephants were stowed away in separate bundles in the tonneau, where,
ever since Lucerne, they had been the cause of cramps and "pins and
needles" to the feet of any member of the party who sat there. I
ruthlessly collected the lot, and, well-nigh swamped by the load, I
carried them to the cottage door, where I laid all at the feet of the
young mother. She suddenly became an incarnate point of admiration,
and could scarcely believe that I was sane, or that she was not
dreaming when I explained my wish to make her a present. If I had
stayed an hour, I could not have dissipated her bewilderment, so I
left the things to speak for themselves--if she did not take them for
infernal machines and throw them into the river.
It was evening when we arrived at Domodossola, and I felt nothing
save cold resignation when told emphatically by the concierge of our
chosen hotel that my quest was hopeless.
"You will have to go to Brig," he said; and though he was an
intelligent and worthy man, I could have smitten him to earth.
"You must abandon me to my fate," I told Jack and Molly. "_Il est trop
fort._ If I'm to walk the face of the earth, I want a pack-mule and a
man; and, 'somehow, somewhere, somewhen,' I mean to have them. But
you've more than done your duty by me. You can get back to Lucerne
from here comfortably, without daring any more mountain passes and
fines for law-breaking. Since to Brig I must go, I'll make a virtue of
necessity, and walk over the Simplon, to see the tunnel and railway
works."
"Walk, if you will," said Molly; "but if I know my Lightning Conductor
and myself, we'll see you through to the end, be it bitter or sweet."
"Echo answers," added Jack. "If you want to see things clearly, you
must have daylight, and if we wish to escape the arm of the law, we
must fly by night, which means that we can't join forces till the
journey's end."
"You needn't think we're sacrificing ourselves, for we should love
it," Molly capped him. "We're having the jam of adventure spread thick
on our bread now."
"Well, then, everything's settled," said Jack, "except the start."
Molly thought a day in Domodossola too much. It was decided, therefore,
that they should rest till eleven, and that the motor should be ready
at midnight. They could reach Brig between two and three, and being a
posting town, the hotel people were sure to be up. I was to start
early in the morning, and meet my friends at Brig, after walking over
the Pass.
I saw them off, and then plunged fathoms deep into sleep, dreaming of
a land flowing with mules and donkeys. At five, I was up, and was
surprised to find that the despised Domodossola was a beautiful and
interesting old town, with curiously Spanish effects in its shadowy
streets, lined with ancient, arcaded houses. I thought to save time
and fatigue by taking a carriage to the frontier village of Iselle at
the foot of the Pass, and was glad I had done so, for the road was
rough and covered inches deep with a deposit of peculiar, grey dust.
But things mended when we climbed a hill, turned out of the main
valley, and followed the course of the river Diveria into a lateral
gorge of the mountains, the real porchway or entrance of the Simplon
Pass.
[Illustration]