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Page 90
We arrived late at St. Moritz, and the little German, on a very
fraternal footing, was still talking as the party descended from the
_int�rieur_. He spoke of the butterflies the day before in Pontresina,
and he laughed with delight as he recounted.
"Vorty maybe der vas, vifty der vas, mit der diligence vlying along; und
der brittiest of all I catch; he _vill_ come at my nose"
CHAPTER XXIV.
Leaving out the scenery--the Senator declares that nothing
spoils a book of travels like scenery--the impressions of St. Moritz
which remain with me have something of the quality, for me, of the
illustrations in a French novel. I like to consult them; they are so
crisp and daintily defined and isolated and individual. Yet I can only
write about an upper class German mamma eating brodchen and honey with
three fair square daughters, young, younger, youngest, and not a flaxen
hair mislaid among them, and the intelligent accuracy with which they
looked out of the window and said that it was a horse, the horse was
lame, and it was a pity to drive a lame horse. Or about the two American
ladies from the south, creeping, wrapped up in sealskins, along the
still white road from the Hof to the Bad, and saying one to the other,
"Isn't it nice to feel the sun on yo' back?" Or about the curio shops on
the ridge where the politest little Frenchwomen endeavour to persuade
you that you have come to the very top of the Engadine for the purpose
of buying Japanese candlesticks and Italian scarves to carry down again.
It was all so clear and sharp and still at St. Moritz; everything drew
a double significance from its height and its loneliness. But, as poppa
says, a great deal of trouble would be saved if people who feel that
they can't describe things would be willing to consider the alternative
of leaving them alone; and I will only dwell on St. Moritz long enough
to say that it nearly shattered one of Mr. Mafferton's most cherished
principles. Never in his life before, he said, had he felt inclined to
take warm water in his bath in the morning. He made a note of the
temperature of his tub to send to the _Times_. "You never can tell," he
said, "the effect these little things may have." I was beginning to be
accustomed to the effect they had on me.
Before we got to Coire the cool rushing night had come and the glaciers
had blotted themselves out. I find a mere note against Coire to the
effect that it often rains when you arrive there, and also that it is a
place in which you may count on sleeping particularly sound if you come
by diligence; but there is no reason why I should not mention that it
was under the sway of the Dukes of Swabia until 1268, as momma wishes me
to do so. We took the train there for Constance, and between Coire and
Constance, on the Bodensee, occurred Rorshach and Romanshorn; but we
didn't get out, and, as momma says, there was nothing in the least
individual about their railway stations. We went on that Bodensee,
however, I remember with animosity, taking a small steamer at Constance
for Neuhausen. It was a gray and sulky Bodensee, full of little dull
waves and a cold head wind that never changed its mind for a moment.
Isabel and I huddled together for comfort on the very hard wooden seat
that ran round the deck, and the depth of our misery may be gathered
from the fact that, when the wind caught Isabel's floral hat under the
brim and cast it suddenly into that body of water, neither of us looked
round! Mrs. Portheris was very much annoyed at our unhappy indifference.
She implied that it was precisely to enable Isabel to stop a steamer on
the Bodensee in an emergency of this sort that she had had her taught
German. Dicky told me privately that if it had happened a week before he
would have gone overboard in pursuit, for the sake of business, without
hesitation, but, under the present happy circumstances, he preferred the
prospect of buying a new hat. Nothing else actually transpired during
the afternoon, though there were times when other events seemed as
precipitant, to most of us, as upon the tossing Atlantic, and we made
port without having realised anything about the Bodensee, except that we
would rather not be on it.
Neuhausen was the port, but Schaffhausen was of course the place, two or
three dusty miles along a river the identity of which revealed itself to
Mrs. Portheris through the hotel omnibus windows as an inspiration. "Do
we all fully understand," she demanded, "that we are looking upon the
Rhine?" And we endeavoured to do so, though the Senator said that if it
were not so intimately connected with the lake we had just been
delivered from he would have felt more cordial about it. I should like
to have it understood that relations were hardly what might be called
strained at this time between the Senator and myself. There were
subjects which we avoided, and we had enough regard for our dignity,
respectively, not to drop into personalities whatever we did, but we had
a _modus vivendi_, we got along. Dicky maintained a noble and pained
reserve, giving poppa hours of thought, out of which he emerged with the
almost visible reflection that a Wick never changed his mind.
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