I
_A sleepy Sunday morning--and no need for any one to go to church._
It was at Neuchatel, under the trees by the lake, that I first became
conscious of what wonderful assistance Sweetheart might be to me in my
literary work. She corrected me as to the date upon which we had made
our pilgrimage to Chaumont, as to the color of the hair of the pretty
daughter of the innkeeper whom we had seen there--in her way quite a
Swiss Elizabeth Fortinbras. In a word, I became aware that she had kept
a diary. Sweetheart, like her nearest literary relative, began with
"poetry." That was what we called it then. We have both revised our
judgments since. Only Sweetheart has been more wise than I should have
been at her age. She has resisted temptation, and rigorously ruled out
all verse from the Diary as at present published! This is wonderful. I
published mine.
Since then, she and I have been preparing the present volume, just as
eagerly as if we had "yielded to the solicitations of numerous friends,"
as the privately-printed books say.
No, it was quite the contrary with us. Nobody, except one nice
publisher, knows anything about it. He asked us to let him print it, and
even he has not seen the very least little scrap. All he knows is that
Sweetheart has a good many thousand friends scattered up and down two
hemispheres, and he believes (as we also are vain enough to believe)
that they will not let _Sweetheart's Diary_ go a-begging to be bought.
* * * * *
There is something curiously dreamy about the Lake of Neuchatel. I knew
it and the school down by the pier long ago, when the little town still
preserved distinct traces of the hundred and fifty years of Prussian
drill-sergeants. Here and there the arms of Brandenburg were to be seen
curiously mixed, and almost entwined, with the strong red cross of the
Swiss Confederation.
Specially interesting is the opposite side of the lake, for there the
Cantons push forward their narrow necks of territory to the very lake
shore--possibly as the price of their support against the Eagles of the
North, whose claws have never let go their hold but this once. There,
within a day's easy walk, you can pass from Canton Vaud into Canton
Friburg and back again into Vaud. Then, Morat-way, you come on a little
inset square of Canton Berne, whose emblematic bears also have their
claws in every pie thereabout. And all the way, never a hotel for the
fleecing of the foreigner! Here and there, indeed, one passes a country
inn with sanded floor. More often it is only a rather superior house
with a bush hung out French-fashion over the threshold.
It is best, as Sweetheart and I found, to make for one of these.
Generally I had known them of old, and though since then the years had
done some stiff route-marching, most of their hosts and hostesses
remembered me.
How do you get there? Well, you cross the lake almost at its narrowest
part. A little stream drains into it, slowly and in Dutch fashion, as if
it were smoking a peaceful pipe by the way. Indeed, for a little while
you might fancy yourself actually in Holland, so thickly are the flowers
set. Only--only (and oh! the difference!) they are all wild. For I
cannot help my heart beating faster when I set foot on any of the
untrodden places of the earth, when I know that the next person I meet
will be different from anybody I have ever met before--that he will be
as frankly interested and very likely amused by me as I am by the moldy
and the quaint about him--things that nobody in his senses has ever
thought of looking at in that countryside for a hundred years! Privately
there is often a quiet, widespread, wholly unspoken doubt of my entire
sanity. That dry smile hovering about the mouth of the courteous mayor
of the commune says as much. Just the same with the quick, intelligent
glance that shoots betwixt husband and wife when you ask to see their
barn--once the chapel of a long-destroyed monastery (Carthusians from
the Italian valleys driven out by the religious wars). To them it is a
barn, commodious--only a little damp. But it is nothing more. A new
model one, now--all burnt brick, floor of concrete, with iron roof
pillars--now _that_ would be something worth crossing the lake to look
at. Hold--there is one at Estavayer! The farmer there would be glad to
show it, if only Monsieur and the young lady...? No! Well, there is no
accounting for tastes, and that shrug from Master Pierre said quite
plainly that he had the poorest opinion of our mental capacity. But all
the same Master Pierre is kind to the infirm--to those (as the Catechism
says) "of weaker understanding."
Yes, there is the key. We can take our own time, and when we have done
we can hang it up where we got it.
But good Master Pierre is curious too. Where might we be going? If it is
a fair question--or, indeed, whether or not! "To Madame Marie Brigue's!"
"Yes, but certainly!" "Had we known Madame Marie long?" The Elder of us
had known her for some twenty years or more.
"When she was with old Monsieur Alexander--yes, at the Upper Riffel
House, and everything in her charge?" Sanity was returned to us like a
passport examined doubtfully. We should not this time be committed to a
House of Retreat for the mentally infirm--no, not if fifty doctors, all
specialists, had so certified. _We knew Madame Marie!_ Master Pierre
would lay aside everything and come with us. It was not possible that we
could know the way.
I thanked Master Pierre, but for my own reasons preferred to go
alone--that is to say, alone with Sweetheart, which is the best kind of
loneliness.
"There is going to be a storm!" I said to my Maid, as we paced along
side by side. Sweetheart looked at the cloudless September sky, at the
boldly-designed splashes of the leaf-shadows making Japanese patterns on
the narrow path through the wood. Then she regarded me inquiringly. Of a
storm in the heaven above or on the earth beneath there was certainly no
visible sign.
Then I explained that the tempest was a moral one, and would certainly
break when we met in with Madame Marie. And I set her this riddle to
read, for she is fond of such.
I had always been first favorite with Madame Marie. She had spoiled me
as a wandering boy. She has assisted me as a callow youth to the
sweetmeats under her control. In my earlier manhood she had taken me to
see her brother, who was a _cure_ of a great parish in the Valais.
Yes, boy and man, she had always scolded me, railed upon me, declared to
my face that I was of a surety "the Last of the Last," and that,
altogether apart from my being a heretic, my misdeeds would inevitably
render my future far from enviable! According to Madame Marie I was
certainly bound for an ice-free port!
"And what had you done to her, father, to make her so angry with you--or
at least scold you so much?"
"Only come in late for my meals!" I said. Sweetheart took one look at
me, as one who would say, "Pray remember that I am no more a simple
child!" But what she said aloud was, "Did all this happen before I was
born?"
And I knew instantly that I was underlying an unjust suspicion, from
which the very first glimpse of Madame Marie would instantly free me.
For even when I knew her Madame had long passed the canonical age, and
must now be verging on the three-score years and ten.
It was, however, quiet unlikely that she would ever refrain from
scolding me, even in the presence of my eldest daughter.
By and by we came in sight of a little white house, and upon the path
which passed beneath it. Over the door, half hidden by the yellow
splashes of _Canariensis_, was the sign, "_Madame Marie Brigue ...
Restaurant_." There was a great quiet everywhere about the place. Some
pigeons were coo-cooing in the Basse Cour. A cat regarded us with the
sleepy dispassion of its race. However, there was certainly a stirring
among earthenware somewhere towards the entrance of the cellar. We could
make out the grating of carrots, or, as it might be, the scraping of
potatoes. I motioned Sweetheart to get behind me--which she did, eager
to take a hand in one of "father's ploys."
Then I went to the front door, and in the loud, confident voice of one
who, after a short absence, has come back at the proper hour, to find
his dinner not ready, I called out, "Marie, are those chops not done
yet?"
A dish clattered on the floor. We could hear the splash of the fragments
on the cool flagstones of the inner kitchen.
"Marie, old Lazybones! Here have I been twelve hours on the mountains,
and not even an omelette ready!"
"It is the Herr-with-the-Long-Legs--the Herr who kept my good dinner
waiting while he ran about the '_bergen_'! And now--oh, the
Good-for-Nothing, the _Vaurien_, he come back to old Marie crying
hunger--just as he used to do more than a score of years ago up in the
Riffel House!"
And before I knew it I was embraced and kissed on both cheeks by this
tall, gaunt old woman--greatly, of course, to the joy of Sweetheart. But
her turn was yet to come. Madame Marie continued scolding me even in the
utmost expansion of her greeting. She held me at arm's length and
scolded. She scolded because I had come without warning, and because I
had not come sooner. Scolded because I had let the years slip past till
her hair was white like the snow on the mountains, on which I had so
often tarried till my dinner was burnt to a cinder! While mine--but
there--who was this with me? Was I married? "Your daughter!" A daughter
like that, and old Marie getting so blind that she had called me bad
names--the names of the old time--in her hearing. But Mademoiselle would
understand! She would pardon a poor old woman who had known her father,
and been a mother to him, years and years before the young lady was
born, or even thought of!
So, indeed, Mademoiselle understood very well. No forgiveness was
necessary. She was all too happy. And while the dinner was preparing,
she set down all these facts in her notebook, so that when Madame Marie
came to the door to say that the omelette was ready to be put before us
on the table, she called to Sweetheart that she was indeed her father's
own daughter. For that in the old days at the Riffel House he had always
been like that, sitting down on the very glacier to scribble in his
notebook all about nothing, and so letting good food spoil because of
his foolishness!
And so it happened that on our way back from Madame Marie's, Sweetheart
let me see the first pages of her Diary. I found them so interesting
that we arranged on the spot how they were to be published. And so here
they are, ready (if you be simple) to please you as well as they pleased
me.