AN exhaustive account of the causes leading up to my famous elopement with the cash capital would lead us far afield. If the man from Kokomo were here to cross-examine me, he would probably get it all out of me. But he is not. I shall, therefore, make no attempt to gain credit for the really noble and altruistic motives which animated me, and the reader will have to make his own diagnosis. He will probably decide that eight days of being called Fräulein and Mademoiselle had turned my matronly head and produced an Indian-summer florescence of the practical-joking age. Or he may explain my conduct as one of those occasional eccentric outbursts in usually well-disciplined characters, such as have been celebrated in a whole cycle of short stories of “The Revolt of Mother” and “Wild Oats of a Spinster” type. It really doesn’t matter. My shoulders are broad, and my reputation, I think, will stand the strain. At all events, I hope so.
It happened that on the day following the Gornergrat trip we resolved to take it easy. We slept late in the morning, had our lunch put up for us at the hotel and wandered out with it in the direction of the Staffel Alp, resolved not to go all the way unless we felt like it. Now, we had been living a pretty strenuous life, and relaxing the bent bow all at once was a little risky. We were in prime physical condition, and the masculine half of the party, not having wholly emerged from the colt stage, were distinctly feeling their oats. I don’t wish to go into horrid details, but when it came time for luncheon Belle Soeur and I found ourselves without any.
“I give you infants fair warning,” said I, “that if the bearer of the common purse should be pushed too far, she might take her doll rags and go home, and it might prove inconvenient.”
This threat referred to the fact that they had all given me their money to take care of at the beginning of the trip, I being the one who made the business arrangements and paid the bills and who was supposed to be least likely to leave it all under a pillow. But Frater replied jeeringly, “Oh, you can’t frighten me that way! I’ve got eight francs in my pocket!” And Antonio chimed in, “I’ve got six-fifty.”
“All right,” said I, “good-bye. Shall we go get some luncheon, Belle Soeur?”
As soon as we were out of hearing on the path back to Zermatt, we began to discuss what we should do. For one wild moment we considered the expediency of just disappearing—taking a train and going off somewhere and leaving the boys to settle the hotel bill with their fourteen francs fifty as best they could. We soon decided that this would be too low-down mean. So little by little we plotted the details of a modified disappearance, including the fairy story which was supposed to save our “face” and the boys’ at the hotel. We rushed in with an air of great haste. Would they show us the time-table? Would they get our bill ready? We had received word which made it necessary to curtail our visit and go home immediately. We could not even wait for the two gentlemen, who had gone on a long tramp and might not be back till late. We would leave a note of explanation for them, and they would doubtless take the first train. Yes, we would pay for all. It would make it easier for them if they had just time to catch a train. So we hustled our belongings into our knapsacks, and I wrote a letter to Frater saying we had decided to go to Leuk (on the hill) that evening by rail, that they could rejoin us there on foot the next day if they wished to, and that the second morning, if they had not appeared, we would continue over the Gemmi Pass and home according to program. I also mentioned that the hotel bill had been paid.
All this time we were momentarily expecting the arrival of the boys to make their peace. But they did not come.
We took a belated lunch at the station buffet and had time to perfect our plans a little further. We had all originally intended to walk from Zermatt to Visp. It was an easy and pretty walk, and why should we give it up? And what on earth could we do with ourselves for a whole day at Leuk in that hot Rhone valley? But we had to get out of Zermatt. So we bought our tickets to a little station called Randa, only six miles away. And when we got there, having considerable daylight still on our hands, walked five or six miles further to St. Niklaus.
We went to the Grand Hotel, which was not excessively grand, but English curates and such like eminently respectable people were boarding there. We felt that it would not just do for two lone females to experiment in cheap lodgings.
The hotel did not quite rate clean napkins at each meal, so the curates and their friends kept theirs from contamination by buttoning them up, ring and all, in neat little embroidered shawl-strap covers. It was beautifully in character, and we loved them for it. We were further rejoiced by their signatures in the hotel register, especially that of a very small, dapper, timid little clerical gentleman who in a microscopic but superlatively correct hand described himself as a “Clerk in Holy Orders.”
The excitement of our successful elopement had put us into the highest spirits. We had enjoyed our walk greatly. And we had no compunctions—ah, not the ghost of a one! But when, after the evening meal was over, we had retired to our room in the Grand Hotel and looked out on the darkening landscape, we began to wish we knew where the boys were. We were tolerably sure they would be sleeping in the open air that night. They would hardly waste any of their small hoard on lodgings. It wouldn’t hurt them, of course. In fact, it would do them good. But we wouldn’t greatly object, now that our dignity was vindicated, to seeing those long-legged objects with knapsacks on backs swing into view under our window. However, they didn’t. And we went to bed and to sleep.
After an excellent breakfast next morning we started on our ten-mile walk down the valley to Visp. We went along laughing and singing and still enormously pleased with ourselves. We discussed from time to time such questions as whether the pretty waitress had really given Frater my letter, and whether the boys were now ahead of us or behind us on the road. I was inclined to the former theory, but it all depended on how soon after we left they had reached the Hotel du Trift. If they had gotten there shortly after our departure, they would doubtless have started immediately walking down the road to shorten the next day’s tramp all they could, for it was about thirty-two miles from Zermatt to Leuk on the hill. They should have spent the night in the vicinity of Randa or even farther along. And people who sleep out of doors usually do not sleep late in the morning. So doubtless they arose some two hours earlier than we did and were very likely even now ahead of us. If not, with their more rapid gait, they would soon catch up.
It was to meet this latter contingency that we decided it would be a kind attention to leave bulletins along the road for them. I have already alluded to our habit of putting notes of explanation for each other in conspicuous places. I tore a leaf from my account book and penciled on it “E. E. W. and M. F. W. passed this spot at 10:15 A. M., Aug. 10th, heading north, in excellent health.” Then folded it up and put Frater’s and Antonio’s initials on the outside and pinned it to a tree by the road.
After this we went along like Hop o’ My Thumb and his white pebbles, leaving a bulletin every half hour. These were of various sorts. Some gave little personal items about ourselves designed to allay any anxiety they might be supposed to be feeling about us, such as “11:45 A. M., M. F. W. and E. E. W. have just had a light refection of fruit and seltzer water and feel much refreshed.” Some were intended to administer spiritual consolation to our young friends in case they were feeling the pinch of any material want. Of this type was the text “Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled,” and “Allah ya tik.” This last is an Arabic phrase which my husband and I had picked up in Egypt. It signifies, “God will provide for you,” and you say it to beggars when you don’t want to give them anything yourself. One bulletin was really practical and informed them that M. F. W. and E. E. W. would lunch at the station buffet at Visp and take the two o’clock train to Leuk Susten.
As we approached Visp, it grew hotter and hotter and hotter. We reached the station about one o’clock and, choosing a little table on the shady side of the platform, ordered the most cooling lunch we could devise.
It was at this time that our hearts began to melt (no wonder in such a temperature) and we got rather sorry for the abandoned boys. The heat waves were fairly dancing out in the Rhone valley, and it made our heads ache just to think of walking ten miles in that fiery furnace to Leuk Susten. And we doubted their having the wherewithal to buy railroad tickets.
We watched along the road, expecting them every minute to appear in sight.
“Shall we wait for the four o’clock train,” suggested Belle Soeur, “so we can take them along with us?”
“But suppose they are ahead of us and are actually at this minute staving down that dreadful Rhone valley? Supposing they get there before we do and don’t find us? We said we’d be there, and they would have no way of understanding our change of program. They’d be boiled and worn out and penniless and would think themselves abandoned for sure.” So we took the train and went on.
The truthful Baedeker says it is only a mile from Leuk Susten, the station, to old Leuk on the hill, but Belle Soeur and I agreed as we toiled up the shadeless road in the middle of the hot afternoon that it was quite the longest mile we had ever traversed. It was a picturesque little old place when we got to it, with a ruined castle and just two inns, very modest looking, and obligingly side by side.
We got a room and bespoke another for the gentlemen of our party when they should arrive. We cooled ourselves off by dint of bathing and clean collars, sallied out and had a look at the ruins of the castle, then found a turn of the road that commanded all the lower windings to the railroad station, including a long bridge across the river, and sat ourselves down to watch. Every time we saw two specks of humanity approaching we were sure it was our boys. We developed various theories. Perhaps they had economized on eating so as to come by rail from Visp. If so, that later train was just in, and they ought to be appearing any minute. A carriage was seen winding up the road. “Perhaps they are in it,” suggested Belle Soeur; “it would be just like their enterprise to charter a carriage and have themselves delivered C. O. D.”
But they weren’t in the carriage. And the various pedestrians whom we had taken for them turned into peasants returning from work, women, priests, or commercial travelers, on nearer approach.
Twilight was stealing over the Rhone valley, and a little wistful sense of loneliness was stealing over us. It had been a fine game, this eloping, but we had now reached the time scheduled for it to end in a happy reunion—all hands around and everything forgiven.
We went back to the hotel and got them to set a little table for our dinner on the balcony outside the dining-room. Of course it was cooler and in every way pleasanter out there. And it also commanded the street.
Afterwards, we sat at our window and watched that street till bed-time, though we kept up a pretense of talking. Belle Soeur says that I jumped up out of bed in the middle of the night and ran to the window because somebody was walking by on the stone pavement. I say she did it. Perhaps both stories are true.