Squib and His Friends

“Oh, every way, you know. But I was thinking of the horses just then. I like the horses here, but I think it’s very confusing for them to have to go the wrong side of the road always. I can’t think how they remember so well. I think perhaps it’s because they grow their manes the wrong side too – to help them to remember. Most of them have them manes on the wrong side. I asked Johann about it, but he didn’t seem to understand that it was wrong. I’m glad we didn’t bring Charger; he wouldn’t have liked it at all. But the horses here don’t mind it. I think they are very good-tempered. They have such kind faces, and they like to be talked to. They don’t wear blinkers, hardly ever, except in the carriages. I think that’s rather nice for them. They can see the country as they go along. I wonder if they like seeing the snow-mountains very much! I think it’s nice that they can look about them the same as we do.”

But after all, the pleasure and excitement of getting to their mountain home was greater than anything else. It took the best part of a day to reach it, because, although the distance was not very great, there was no direct road, and they had to take a circuitous route, which Squib found very delightful, though some of the party wished it had been a little less tedious.

First, there was a long carriage drive with Johann, behind a great coach-like conveyance and four horses, through winding, ascending roads, with the usual accompaniments of men with great horns, children selling flowers, women at work by the wayside at their lacemaking, and all the sights and sounds of busy little village communities making the most of their short season of heat and brightness.

Later on there was a short journey in one of those strange funiculaire railways, which were such a source of interest and curiosity to Squib. The little trains seemed to him to crawl about the mountains like gigantic serpents, moving silently upwards or downwards, quite independent of the level which had been indispensable to the railway travelling with which he had been previously acquainted. And the sensation of mounting up and up in one of these silent, mysterious little vehicles kept him spellbound with wonder and admiration. Uncle Ronald had explained to him many times already the principle upon which they were worked, but nothing seemed to him to lessen the sense of mystery and unreality that attached to this mode of progression, as he felt himself lifted higher and higher into those regions and altitudes which fascinated him so strangely.

When they left the train they found themselves in a region unlike any that Squib had seen before. They were all amongst pine woods and those green alps which lie beneath the sterner altitudes of the snow ranges, and are full of flowers and sunshine, and the bleat of goats, and the soft sound of wood and water. There was no regular road here to the chalet, but only a mule path. Some mules were waiting in readiness for the party, but only the ladies cared to ride. The baggage was cleverly packed and strapped on the rest of the docile animals, and the march began through these silent stretches of pine wood, and across bright sloping meadows gemmed with flowers, now dipping downwards to cross a plank-bridge through which the shining water could be seen foaming beneath, now rising by many a zigzag upwards and onwards towards the sloping shoulder of the hillside – onward, ever onward, each turn in the path revealing new beauties, till at last the lad who was leading the way rounded a corner in a woodland path, turned back with a broad smile to Squib, who had kept near to him all the while, the faithful Czar always at his heels, and pointing a little downwards and along the hillside, he said, —

“There!”

Squib reached his side with a bound and looked. They were just clear of the wood now, and were able to see plainly before them. They had crossed the ridge of the hills they had been steadily mounting ever since they left the rail, and now were able to look down into the valley on the other side.

What a valley it was! The sides were clothed with little woods, some of fir trees, some of young forest trees, clad now in the tender tints of early summer; at the bottom ran a leaping torrent of foaming water, spanned by many a little frail plank-bridge giving access to the green slopes opposite. And these green slopes were dotted with those little low chalets which are used for the shelter of the flocks in bad weather, and for the temporary abode of those who tend them there during the brief summer of the mountains. Above these again lay grim stretches of rock, seamed with dark fissures, and above that again the whiteness of the everlasting snow, as the chain of dazzling peaks lifted itself against the dark blue of the sky.

Squib gazed and gazed with a sense of tremulous wonder and delight. It seemed to him as if this quiet valley were the realization of all his ideals ever since he had begun to think about his sojourn in Switzerland. Wood and water, meadows bright with flowers, green alps and snow mountains beyond! What could the child of man desire more? In one place he could even see the green, mysterious depths of a glacier, and as he stood watching and listening spellbound, the silence was broken by the rumbling sound of the fall of an avalanche! Truly there was nothing left for him to wish for!

But the lad was hardly content with this long silence, and touched the arm of the little boy.

“There!” he said in his rude patois; “there is the place – look! That is the house where the gracious lords and ladies are going.”

Squib started into keen interest now. He had realized from the first moment that this valley was the right one, but he had not had time to think of the chalet itself in his joy at the surroundings.

“Where?” he asked eagerly.

The lad pointed again, and Squib then saw about a mile farther on, and standing upon a little eminence of its own, with a belt of whispering pines behind it, a chalet such as a wealthy man may build for himself as a summer residence amongst the mountains, with the wide-peaked roof, great overhanging eaves, light wooden exterior staircase, and all those accessories in the way of balconies and so forth which tend to make residence in such houses so delightful during the brief but hot summer season of mountain regions.

With a cry of delight and rapture, Squib sprang forward. He had walked far already, but was not in the least tired. He saw before him the home of his dreams, where Lisa was awaiting him, and without thinking of pausing for the rest of the party to come up, he rushed helter-skelter along the narrow mule path, with Czar tearing along beside him, bounding on ahead in his excitement (caught from the child), and then rushing back to see that all was well, and giving vent to a series of deep bays that awoke the echoes in the silent valley.

That sound was heard by a pair of listening ears within the walls of the chalet. As Squib ran breathlessly onwards, he was aware that something human in a fluttering dress, and with something white about the head, was coming rapidly out towards him. In a few minutes, with a rapturous cry, the warm-hearted little fellow had flung himself into the outstretched arms of his ex-nurse.

“Lisa! Lisa! Lisa!”

“Liebchen! mein Liebchen!”

As for Czar, he was as excited as anybody, and he remembered Lisa as well as his little master. His great black muzzle was thrust between the pair, and faithful Lisa, with a sound between laughing and weeping, threw her arms about the great dog’s neck and kissed him between the eyes.

“Kaiser – the good Kaiser!” she cried. “And he knew poor Lisa too. Oh, the good dog – the grand Kaiser!”

Lisa always called him Kaiser. Squib had forgotten that till now, and the familiar sound of it made him laugh with pleasure.

“Oh, Lisa, it is so nice to see you again! I have been looking forward to it all the time. Now take me in and show me the house. I don’t think the others will be here just yet; the mules come so slowly up the zigzags. Czar and I just came up straight with the boy, I was in such a hurry to get here. I shall have time to see everything before the rest come.”

Lisa led the way back, holding Squib’s hand fast in hers, and hardly taking her eyes from his face the whole time. As for Squib, he was perfectly happy having his old nurse back again, answering her questions about home, asking her innumerable questions himself about this valley, and all the wonders and delights he knew it contained.

The chalet itself was soon seen over. After the large house at home, and the big hotels he had been in since, it seemed to the child quite a little place, fascinating and attractive in its very smallness and queer bareness, but soon seen and disposed of. The rooms were all spotlessly clean, and the polished floors shone like mirrors. The balconies to the rooms were the chief attraction to Squib; and he was greatly charmed at finding that not only had his own little room one of these, but also that it was provided with a tiny external staircase, by which he could get in and out at will. He saw by Lisa’s face that she knew she had prepared a pleasant surprise for him in this, and his bright smile and hug of acknowledgment were ample reward.

But it was the outer world that really fascinated Squib. The chalet was very nice as the necessary home during his stay amongst the mountains, but it was the mountains themselves that were everything to the imaginative little boy – the mountains and the brawling torrents, and the whispering woods and the flowers. He had seen gentians by the hundred as he ascended by the mule path, and already he was planning how he should make collections of all the Alpine flowers, pressing some in a book he had brought for the purpose, and taking roots of others home to try to make a bit of Alpine garden in his own special border. Squib was a born collector and naturalist, as well as a dreamer of dreams, and had collections innumerable at home. Lisa had always been his faithful ally in days of old, keeping his rubbish carefully so that the head-nurse might not order wholesale destruction, and she took as keen an interest in the collections as Squib did himself. He knew that she would help him now, and he soon saw that she knew where every flower of the hills was to be found.

Squib was positively radiant with happiness by the time the rest of the party arrived, and was everybody’s assistant and messenger as the task of unpacking and settling down was commenced.

There were other servants in the house, but only Lisa knew anything of English, and Squib’s fluency in the odd vernacular of the district was very useful. He had made firm friends with everybody on the place before the first evening had passed, and when they sat down at last to the nondescript travellers’ meal that was like dinner and tea rolled into one, Colonel Rutland looked across at his wife, who, tired, but smiling, was seated at the head of the table and doing the honours of the simple repast, and said, —

“I think I did well to bring Squib along with us.”

“He is very useful, a capital little interpreter,” answered Lady Mary with a smile. “I was horrified once at the frightful jargon Lisa was teaching the child to talk, and almost sent her away for it, fearing that it would be the ruin both of his English and of his German, but it has come in wonderfully useful now. They do not understand my German half so well as his patois. And Lisa’s English has got very rusty.”

It was very exhilarating to Squib to feel himself of use, and there was nothing which he more desired than to win the approval of his beautiful mother. Lady Mary was not one of those mothers who are always caressing and fondling their children, and yet they loved her with an almost adoring love, and desired her approval above everything in the world. As she bent a soft, smiling glance on Squib when she spoke, he felt his heart give a great bound, and slipping round the table till he reached her side, he put his small hand gently upon hers.

“I shall have to take care of you when father and Uncle Ronald go to climb the mountains with Mr. Lorimer, shan’t I, mother? You see I can take care of you now, don’t you? I can be useful, and there will always be Czar to keep away anybody who would frighten you. But I don’t think there will be anybody to do that in our valley. I think the mountains keep watch over it, as Lisa says, and keep the evil spirits out!”

The mother, who understood the child’s mind best, smiled and kissed him as she dismissed him to bed, for the time was getting on now, and the long daylight fading. The gentlemen laughed and teased him a little about his “queer fancies,” but Squib did not think them queer at all, he was so sure that there was something personal and protective about those white watchers opposite; and when he knelt to say his prayers that night, he knelt where he had them full in view all the time.

“They have been there always,” he said to himself, with a sensation akin to awe, “just as they are now, with nothing between them and God. I think He must have made them so grand and white and beautiful because He liked to look at them, and if He likes to look down at them, why, it must make them good!”

There was something very grand and wonderful in the way those white peaks stood out against the darkening sky in that clear transparent air. A short time ago they had been dyed a wonderful rose pink, as they caught the reflected glory of the setting sun; now they were rather grey than red, with a look of almost awful aloofness and grandeur as they stood up in their spotless whiteness and purity.

And then as the child watched this change with a strange sense of fascination, the great round moon rose slowly above the ridge, and at once new beauty and grandeur were thrown over the whole world. Great towering shadows seemed to be cast athwart the valley, and then the snow-slopes began to glimmer and shine with a new and almost unearthly radiance. Squib held his breath as he watched the moon rise over the snow-covered ridge, and the transformation of those rugged peaks and fissures into a new world of ebony and silver.

How long he would have watched it, forgetting all besides, may well be questioned, but he was quickly disturbed by an anxious voice, —

“Liebchen! – Liebchen! – what art thou doing? Thou wilt catch thy death of cold up here in the nipping mountain air!”

And Squib was quickly caught up in a pair of strong arms and hustled with ignominious rapidity into the queer little bed which seemed a necessary part of Swiss life.

But he was altogether too happy to be seriously ruffled by any such summary proceeding; and all he did by way of retaliation was to keep fast hold of Lisa’s hand and refuse to let her go till she had talked him to sleep with the most entrancing of her stories of the mountains.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LITTLE GOAT-HERD

Surely never had boy been so happy before as was little Squib in his mountain home!

He had perfect liberty to rove where he would, so long as he went nowhere that Czar could not follow him. This stipulation, as Colonel Rutland observed, would keep him from any precipitous ascents or descents, and restrict his wanderings to safe paths; and the fidelity and sagacity of the dog were quite to be trusted should the child lose his way. Czar would be certain to bring him safe home again; but, indeed, there was not much fear that Squib would lose his way. He had a decided “bump of locality,” as Uncle Ronald called it, and the green valley with its many attractions was a safe place for the boy to wander in.

For the first fortnight of his residence at the chalet, Squib had no disposition to stray very far away. There were so many attractions close at hand that it was needless to go far afield for his pleasures. Why, just by climbing up through the meadows and wood behind the house you could find more flowers than could be properly pressed and arranged in many days – gentians, small and large, the delicate little soldanella with its cyclamen leaf, the tiny and exquisite pinguicula with its fairy-like white bloom, and the yellow anemones which made quite a carpet in one little glade, hemmed in between the spurs of a dim fir wood. Then down by the bed of the little brawling torrent, which was always racing and tumbling down the hillside to join the wider river below, grew in obscure and shady corners the golden auriculas with their graceful bells and silvery leaves. As to the lower-lying meadows, they were glorious with their wealth of many-hued flowers, the blue salvia, purple crane’s-bill, yellow clover, the wild salsafy with its golden bloom, that Squib believed to be a rudbeckia until somebody told him to the contrary, and warned him against including it in his collection, as it was a tiresome thing to have in the garden, and grew rampant and masterful beyond bearing. The delicate Alpine roses, too, with their white and yellow clusters of blossom, were a perfect delight to the little botanist, and he hardly knew where to begin or where to stop in digging up roots to be kept in his garden behind the chalet, ready for final transportation to England.

His mother took great interest in his flowers and plants, and Mrs. Lorimer knew the names of almost all the Alpine plants, and whereabout they grew, whilst Lisa was able to give him practical help in digging and delving, and told him all sorts of stories about the different properties of the herbs he sometimes brought home, and how they could be distilled into Enzian-schnapps as she called it, though what sort of stuff that might be Squib could never make out.

And then there were all Lisa’s stories to be listened to again, with even a greater sense of fascination here amongst the mountains themselves than in the nursery at home. Why, the little men of the mountains – the Bergmännlein, as Lisa called them – might have their caves in the sides of any of these hills; and it always seemed as if everybody who once strayed in there came out a hundred years older at the end of what had seemed to him a very short time. Squib sometimes wondered with awe if he would ever find his way accidentally into one of these caves one day, and come back to find the chalet in ruins, the saplings grown to monster forest trees, and the glacier rolled farther down into the valley; for Lisa declared that it was always moving on – on – on-although Squib found it hard to believe.

Talking of the glacier always made Lisa speak of the Seligen Fräulein as she called them – the ice-maidens, who loved to woo to sleep the unwary travellers who trusted to their soft guiding voices, and let themselves be lured from the path and down – down – down into some cold dim crevasse or grotto whence no return could be made. Squib listened with a strange sense of fascination as Lisa told him of these snow-white maidens with shining eyes, and hair like powdered crystal, and how they sang to sleep the victims they had lured to destruction, and how that sleep lasted for years and years, and how the sleeper was found at last, still smiling in his dreams, when, after many generations had passed away, the ice-maidens would yield up their prey at a certain icy portal where the river came rushing and sweeping out of a great green ice grotto, in which the Seligen Fräulein were said to hold high revel.

“And do they wake when they come out?” asked Squib with breathless eagerness, but Lisa shook her head.

“Na! na! – they never woke again. Nobody ever woke who had felt the kisses of the ice-maidens. They were jealous – they would not have their captives leave them for others. Na! na! It was an ill thing to get with the Bergmännlein or the Seligen Fräulein. The little Herr must beware of all such things.”

How much Squib believed of all these mountain legends, and how much Lisa herself believed, it would be hard to say; but the fascination of the subject was the same, even though there might be a lingering doubt in the mind both of listener and teller. The sense of something weird and unseen, uncomprehended in these lonely mountain heights, grew upon the child rather than diminished as he came to dwell among them. The legends which had grown up in the mouths of the peasants were but the expression of those feelings which life in such lonely heights cannot but suggest – the sense of mystery and unreality, the consciousness of great overwhelming forces at work, the existence of a spiritual and eternal world just beyond the ken of human knowledge and experience.