Laura Richards
Honor Bright

CHAPTER V
BIMBO

The living room (kitchen, sitting room and dining room in one) of the Châlet was also in festal trim as Gretli ushered her guests in; good, faithful Gretli, who had planned all, gladly giving up her part in the mountain feast for the sake of entertaining her “honored patrons” and their pupils. The floor was white with scrubbing; the little windows gleamed like diamonds; the sunbeams darting through them made lively play among the brass and copper vessels ranged on the dresser, or hanging on the whitewashed walls.

The only dark thing in the room was the fireplace, and that had a good right to its warm sootiness. All about it hung hams and flitches of bacon, and strings of sausages, the pride of the thrifty Twins: there was bread, too, though some people might not have recognized it in the large flat round cakes with a hole in the middle, strung on ropeyarn and hanging in festoons from the rafters. Madame Madeleine glanced upward and nodded approval.

“A fine showing, my Gretli! Thou hast provision for many winters there.”

Gretli beamed with modest pride. “We do our possible!” she said. “Atli is indeed a marvel of strength and industry; and we have our Zitli!” she added, glancing at the lame boy, a lovely look in her face. “Without Zitli, where should we be? He turns the hams, he keeps the fire at the proper height, he stuffs the sausages; unaided he does it! As for the cheese – it is well known that he is called the little Prince of Cheesemakers. Let my gracious Ladies descend, if they will have the condescension, and inspect the cheese room!”

The cheese room was dark and cool – and dripping! No ice in mountain châlets, but through the middle of the room ran a little crystal stream whose water needed no ice.

“It comes down from the Alps!” Zitli explained. “My brother persuaded it, with a wooden conduit; my faith, the good Nix was willing enough; ever since then she sends her stream; in the dryest summer, it never fails. No other châlet has such a stream. It is because of the virtue of my brother and sister!” he added simply.

“Zitli!” Gretli spoke in gentle reproof. “These are not words to say before honorable guests, though I love thee for them, my little one. See, my ladies! here stand the pans, thus, on either side the stream; these are for the cream cheeses, the other for those of milk alone. Observe now the cheeses!”

She led the way proudly to the end of the room – it was really more like a cavern – where, on broad shelves, stood the great round cheeses, tier on tier, all neatly marked with date and weight.

“I didn’t suppose there was so much cheese in the world!” said Honor.

Gretli laughed merrily. “My faith, mademoiselle! Twice in the year we send forth this quantity, from this one châlet, by no means one of the largest of this Alp.”

“But assuredly one of the best!” said Madame Madeleine.

“Madame is kindness in person! We do our possible. Consider then, mademoiselle, that in fifty châlets on this single Alp, equal numbers or larger are made, are sent out twice in the year; and that there are countless Alps in our dear country; mademoiselle sees, without doubt, that there is no danger of the world being without cheese. Look! on this shelf, behold the little cheeses of cream, called Neufchatel from that good town where first they were produced. If Madame permits, we would like, Zitli and I, to present to each of the demoiselles one of these small objects.”

“Oh!” cried the girls in chorus. “Oh, Gretli! Oh, Madame, may we?”

Madame looked doubtful. “It is too much – ” she began.

“With respect!” cried Gretli. “They are made entirely of cream; is it not so, Zitli? Yesterday we made them, Zitli and I, expressly for our demoiselles. Quite frankly, the new-born infant might eat them without injury. They are even thought to be stomachic in their quality.”

“That was far from being my thought,” Madame explained graciously. “I feared we might rob you, my Gretli; but since you have made this charming present for my pupils – come, my children! you have permission to accept – not forgetting, I trust, the thanks that are due!”

A chorus of delight and thanks broke out, as the neat little rolls of silver-papered cheese, each stamped Châlet des Rochers, were dealt out. Maria Patterson and Vivette proposed to eat theirs on the spot; Loulou tried to stuff hers into her pocket.

Gretli offered a better suggestion. “This basket,” she said, “will hold all, and my young ladies will, I trust, enjoy at their supper the little fruits of the Châlet. For the moment, I will ask you to mount once more to the room.”

Then, bending down from her towering height, she whispered in Honor’s ear. “In the basket is already a fromage Camembert for the evening repast of my Ladies. It is their favorite cheese; we send it, Atli, Zitli and I, as a little surprise, Mademoiselle understands.”

Honor nodded comprehension, and took the basket, in which the silver rolls were now neatly stored.

Zitli had preceded them some minutes ago, up the ladder-stair which led down to the cheese room. As they came up blinking into the strong sunlight, they saw his beaming face behind a little table, on which was a plate of curious little biscuits or cookies stamped in the shape of a cow, a glass pitcher of rich cream, and a number of little wooden bowls and spoons.

“Oh! oh! oh!” cried the girls in chorus.

“A little goûter!” (luncheon) Gretli hastened forward to explain. “Before making the descent! My Ladies remember well the biscuits des Rochers, to be eaten with cream; sustaining, you observe, and wholesome – ah! par example!”

“Remember them!” cried Soeur Séraphine. “Could we forget? Regard, my children! When we were young girls of your age, the good grandmother of our friends prepared this feast yearly for us. We came with our honored parents, now in glory; it is to make weep with pleasure and remembrance, the sight of them!”

And indeed, the little Sister actually wiped a tear from her blue eyes.

Tears were far from the eyes of Honor, Patricia, and the rest, as they clustered round the table. It is highly improbable that any of my readers ever tasted the cream of the Châlet des Rochers; I, therefore, declare boldly that they do not know what cream is. As for the biscuits, made of cream and honey and wheat flour – they also are not to be described.

“And how do you make them like a cow?” asked little Loulou, a newcomer to the school. “Tiens! they resemble La Dumaine!”

Gretli cast a proud glance at her brother, who blushed crimson and dropped his eyes.

“It is a portrait of our Queen!” she said. “Behold the cutter, carved by our Zitli. All unconscious, La Dumaine sat – I should rather say stood – for her portrait – while he carved it. The former one, made by our honored grandfather in his youth, had lost its clearness of outline; through age and long use, you understand. Nor – with respect to our venerable ancestor be it said – did it ever equal in beauty the present one.”

I trust that the Madeleinettes, as the Vevay children called our girls, were no more greedy than other young persons of their age. They had certainly eaten a great deal of luncheon barely two hours before; yet they fell upon the biscuits and cream, and on the shining combs of honey which supplemented them, “as if after a three days’ fast,” said Soeur Séraphine in gentle reproof.

“Voyons! they are young!” said motherly Madame Madeleine.

“It is like that!” cried Gretli, who was manifestly enjoying every mouthful they ate. “Youth, my Ladies,” (Gretli was twenty-two!), “demands nutrition. If simple and wholesome, can there be too much of it? For example! did my Sister ever try to fill a young goat to repletion? There, if you will, is gluttony!”

The little feast over, Madame declared that it was time to begin the descent. They must go slowly, more slowly even than in ascending, and they had no more than time to reach the pier in good time. Every one knew that Madame’s “good time” meant a full half hour before the boat started, so it was without too much haste that the girls took leave of Zitli and the châlet. Gretli, as they knew, would see them safe at the foot of the Alp before saying good-by.

“Oh!” said Honor, as they came out on the green space before the house, “but we have not seen the goats, Gretli!”

“A la bonne heure!” said Gretli. “And on the instant, Mademoiselle Honor, here the creatures come!”

The goats knew it was not yet supper-time. Very leisurely they came up the track, old Moufflon in advance, young Bimbo bringing up the rear. Between them the she-goats, twenty or thirty of them, straggled along, stopping here to nibble a tuft of grass or clover, there to investigate a bush or stone. They are inquisitive creatures, goats. Now and then a shrill bleat was heard, and some goat would canter a few paces ahead, then fall to nibbling again.

“It is Séraphine who annoys them!” Gretli said. “The creature! Look, my demoiselles. Nanni, her own aunt, you observe, has found a green tuft of the most succulent, and begins to take her pleasure. Now in a moment – regard! comes la Séraphine! biff! it is over! Poor Nanni flies, and that one enjoys the morsel. My faith, she is really of an evil nature, the Séraphine, and gluttonous beyond description. Again, I make my heartfelt apologies to my Sister for giving her holy name to this creature. For example! if I had named La Dumaine for her, now, it would be different!”

Soeur Séraphine laughed heartily at the antics of her namesake, and declared that she had had much the same disposition in her youth. “But not the beauty!” she added. “As Atli says, it is difficult to be severe with so charming a creature.”

“It’s funny that the best cow and the worst goat should be white, isn’t it?” said Vivette.

“As mademoiselle says! A thing very curious. Bimbo, now! a black goat may by right be mischievous, is it not so, my ladies? Yet Bimbo also is handsome, we think.”

As if he heard and understood, Bimbo, the young he-goat, lifted his head, and reconnoitered the party standing on the green; then, slowly and with an air of elaborate carelessness, he detached himself from the flock, and began a circuitous approach, pausing to nibble – or to make a pretence of nibbling – at every other step. He was jet black, with white horns and hoofs; a superb animal, already larger than Moufflon, his father and leader.

“He is a beauty!” said Patricia. “I should like to have a pair of him to drive, wouldn’t you, Moriole? We’d take Stephanie out – and upset her into the lake!” she added in an undertone.

Stephanie did not hear her. Her eyes were fixed in terror on the advancing flock, and especially on Moufflon, a goat of great dignity, with wide-branching horns and a notable beard.

Stephanie was naturally afraid of all animals. Their size mattered little; a cow or a mouse threw her into almost equal agonies of terror. Indeed, the mouse was the more to be dreaded of the two, since – horror! it could, and certainly would if given the opportunity – run up one’s sleeve, in which case one would die on the spot, on the instant. Moreover, the poor child’s nerves had been thoroughly upset by the Purple Cow episode (which naughty Patricia was already turning into verse in her mind!). She had made up her mind that Moufflon meant to attack her. Pressing close to Gretli’s side, shaking in every limb, she kept her eyes fixed on him in the fascination of terror. Ah! but she did not notice —nobody noticed Bimbo! Gretli herself, keeping a watchful eye on the mischievous Séraphine, prepared to check and punish any outbreak on the part of that obstreperous young beauty, had no eye for the black goat, quietly circling to the rear of the party, quietly moving forward, with a sharp glance now and then through his forelock. If any one had cast a glance at Bimbo, he would have been seen nibbling grass, serenely unconscious; the catastrophe might have come just the same: but no one did cast a glance.

Presently, Madame Madeleine called Gretli to her, to ask some question about the descent. Gretli, stepping forward some paces, left Stephanie for the moment standing alone, still holding the unlucky red parasol. Directly in front of her stood Honor, her eyes fixed on the mountains, lost in a dream of the Norse gods. Bimbo’s moment had arrived. Two at a time! glorious sport. Lowering his head, he advanced at a smart gallop. Biff! bang! a wild shriek rang out. Stephanie and Honor were rolling together at the feet of Soeur Séraphine, and the others, turning in bewilderment, saw the black goat quietly nibbling grass, apparently unconscious of them and of the world.

Stephanie sprang up and rushed sobbing and screaming to throw herself into the tender arms of Madame Madeleine. Honor lay still. The air was black and full of sparks; there was a pain somewhere, a rather sickening pain.

Gretli and Soeur Séraphine ran to raise her, and she uttered a little cry.

“It’s all right!” she said. “I hit my head, I think, and my ankle – but it’s all right!” Here she tried to get up, and instead crumpled into a little heap and fainted away.

CHAPTER VI
IN THE CHÂLET OF THE ROCKS

When Honor opened her eyes, it was to look round her in amazement. Where was she? Certainly not at home in the Maison Madeleine. This bed, with its fragrant sheets of coarse heavy linen and its wonderful quilt, was not her own, nor was the little room with its bare white walls and dormer windows.

A quaint little room, homely, yet friendly. Along one wall ran a shelf, on which were many pieces of wood-carving, some of exquisite delicacy. Honor’s still-bewildered eyes rested with delight on a miniature châlet, with tiny cattle and goats, half the length of her little finger, browsing round it, with a fairy sennerin smiling in the doorway. A wonderful piece of work it seemed to her. There must be a very skilful carver here. The wooden bedstead on which she lay was carved too, and its four tall posts were surmounted by four heads, with smiling, friendly faces. What a curious, delightful place!

“Where am I?” said Honor.

Soeur Séraphine was bending over her, her face full of tender anxiety.

“Thank God!” she said. “My little one, you are yourself again, is it not so? But no!” she added, as Honor tried to rise, and sank back with a little moan. “It is to lie quite still, my child! You have sprained your ankle, and must remain tranquil till it restores itself. Our Gretli will care for you, as tenderly as we ourselves could do. A few days only; then Atli will fashion a carrying chair and bring you down the mountain and home to us. Madame left her fondest love for you; she was forced to go, you understand, and now I must follow, lest the boat depart without me. My child, with no one save Gretli and Atli could we possibly have left thee, thou knowest that. The ankle is well bandaged, and Gretli is a skilful nurse; adieu, my little Honor! Thou wilt be good and not unhappy? Adieu!”

The Sister’s kind blue eyes were full of tears as she kissed Honor’s forehead and hurried away. A few moments after, Gretli appeared, and sat down by the bedside with an air of business-like cheerfulness.

“Voilà!” she said. “I have seen her well started, the holy Sister. My faith, she is a good mountaineer; she leaps like a goat. She will soon overtake Madame, who, being of a certain age, must proceed more cautiously. And how does mademoiselle find herself? Not too ill, I hope?”

Honor was still looking about her in a bewildered fashion. “I am all right,” she said, “only my head aches, and my ankle hurts when I try to move. What happened, Gretli? Did somebody knock me down? Why?”

“That,” said Gretli, “is a thing known only to the good God, who created goats. With sorrow and shame I avow it, Mademoiselle Honor; Bimbo, that child of Satan, attacked Mademoiselle Stephanie, from the rear, you understand, with a violence not to be credited had one not seen it. She was flung forward upon you, who stood before her; a loose stone, it would appear, turned under your foot. You fell to the ground, striking your head on another stone. I ran to raise you; you swooned in my arms, poor child. Ah! what confusion! Mademoiselle Stephanie shrieking to the skies that she was killed; Zitli belaboring the misguided beast with his crutch; the demoiselles clustering together in affright; my Ladies full of anxiety and distress. What would you? It was the hour of departure; there is no other boat to-day, and though all would be more than welcome to the Châlet, they could not pass the night in comfort.

“They proposed to carry you between them, these benevolent ladies; I respectfully begged them to reconsider. ‘Leave the little one’ – I demand pardon, mademoiselle; it is only yesterday, it appears, that I carry you in my arms! – ‘leave her with us!’ I said. ‘My faith, I am well used to the care of sprains; she will be safe as in Ste. Gêneviève’s pocket. I will give her soup of cream and onion with cheese, a restorative not worse than another; for her amusement Zitli will tell stories – but, par example! he is a story-teller, that little one! The creatures will all be at her feet, except that ruffian Bimbo, who will not be suffered to approach her. By and by, when all is well, Atli will carry her down the mountain like an egg of glass, will deposit her by your side. Et voilà!’ My Ladies perceived the reasonableness of the idea. They wept, but finally consented to leave their cherished pupil to make a good and beautiful recovery in the Châlet des Rochers. Finally, mademoiselle, behold us here, three of us – four, when Atli returns to-morrow from the higher Alp. We shall do well, is it not so? And now, to prepare the soup! It will be good, I promise you!”

Left alone, Honor looked round her, and tried to take in the situation. She remembered the sudden impact of some soft body – that was poor Stephanie, of course; then —crash! a sharp blow from something hard – that was the stone! – a shower of stars, red, blue, green, – then darkness. That was all, till this wonderful awakening to find herself in the châlet of her dreams, among the great mountains themselves. Ah! there they were; close, it seemed, outside the little window. Without moving her head, she saw a green giant towering, and behind him, looking over his shoulder, a white one.

“The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts!”

Certainly Honor’s thoughts were long to-day. Lying there in the narrow bed, they floated back to the wonderful day – was it a week ago, or a month? – when she had, as she solemnly declared to herself, “discovered the mountains.”

It all came, curiously enough, from English Literature. The mountains had always been there, but somehow she had taken them for granted, while the four walls of her room held the thrilling drama she enacted with Angélique and Fiordispina. She could recall the very day when she first came to her mountain world. She was in the garden, studying her English Literature. Soeur Séraphine was a great lover of English poetry, and the pupils, French and Anglo-Saxon, must, she maintained, be thoroughly grounded in the language of “le grand Shekspire et le sublime Meel-ton.” This was hard on Stephanie, to whom English was, as she expressed it, like throwing all the fire-irons downstairs together. Patricia Desmond, who had a keen sense of the ludicrous, had difficulty sometimes in keeping the twinkle out of her beautiful eyes and the smile from the corners of her perfect mouth, when dear Soeur Séraphine, erect as a little gray marionette on the estrade, recited, for example, the “Ancient Mariner”:

 
“Eet ees un ancien marinère,
And ’e stopess von of sree;
‘By zy longré birrd and gleetring eye,
No verefore stopp’st zou me?’”
 

Honor saw nothing funny in it; French-English was as natural to her as the Anglo-Saxon variety; she thrilled with Soeur Séraphine, her romantic little soul went forth with the Mariner over the perilous seas; for her as for him, the fair wind blew, the white foam flew, the furrow followed free.

“Ve vare ze foorst zat evare boorst – ”

shrilled Soeur Séraphine – “If necessary, Patricia, go, my child!”

For Patricia had flung up an imploring hand and burst into a fit of coughing; she now scuttled (her own word, not mine!) from the room, and gaining the shelter of her own, flung herself on the bed in paroxysms of laughter.

Honor did not stir; she was hardly conscious of the interruption. The “silent sea” absorbed her, soul and body.

The “Choix de Poésies Anglaises” contained two other poems by Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” and the “Hymn at Sunrise in the Valley of Chamounix.” Honor already knew the former by heart; she was learning the latter, and had permission to study in the garden. Sitting on the bench under the great pear-tree, she murmured the opening lines over and over, all unconsciously following the familiar pronunciation.

“Hast zou a sharm to stay ze morningstar

In his stipp courrse?”

She lifted her eyes.

It was not Mont Blanc that towered in the distance across the blue lake, but the Dent du Midi, white and austere. It was not the morning star, but Hesperus, that glittered in the rosy sunset light: but these details did not matter. The spirit of the mountains seemed to pass into the child’s heart; it seemed to be herself, not the poet, who was chanting the great Hymn.

At first, it was as if she had never seen them before; she could only gaze and wonder. By and by they grew familiar again, but with a difference; they were her friends now, beloved and reverenced. Soon she began to weave webs of fancy about and about them, as was her way about everything.

The Dent du Midi himself was a vast giant; like Atlas, only snow-white, instead of earth-brown as she had always pictured the latter. He was not a king, Mont Blanc was the king, as “Lor’ Birron” told her in the one specimen of his poetry enshrined in the Choix. “Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains: they crowned him long ago”; yes, doubtless. But the Dent was one of the great princes of his court; held indeed a court of his own, with the Dent d’Oche and the Dent de Morche for his attendant dukes or marquises, and a host of other nobles who wore green robes under their white stoles. Some of these were lady-mountains, Honor loved to think; lovely maidens, with flashing jewels (those were the streams that danced and shone in the sunlight) and delicate trailing robes and veils of mist. They ministered to the Prince, singing to him with their musical voices – the streams again: it was quite simple to change them from jewels to voices – veiling and unveiling their beauty at his pleasure. But in the evening, the great star, Hesperus, who was Venus herself, Madame Madeleine said (which one did not understand, but that did not matter) rose out of the sunset over the Prince’s shoulder, kissed him, hovered radiant above him; and then the mountain maidens bowed their heads under their white veils and paid homage to their Queen.

All this Honor had dreamed, sitting there in the garden, when she ought to have been studying.

The dream came back to her to-night, with power; it seemed to fill the world. They were not, they could not be, mere masses of earth, these glorious forms towering into the sky. They surely were mighty beings, wrapped in their own deep thoughts, holding their own high converse one with another.

And now, she had come to the mountains. Not only were they her own, but she was theirs. Not a mountain child, like the mighty Twins, or even like Zitli – happy Zitli, who knew no other world than this glorious one; but an adopted child, say! She had come to visit them; they would be kind to her, would accept her love and reverence. It was very wonderful.

The châlet stood half way up one of the lesser Alps, on a ledge which jutted out from the green wooded slope. All around were other Alps, some green to the top, others capped or mantled with snow; others again, which seemed to scorn all covering, and towered gaunt and bare, their rocky sides seamed and scarred. These were dead giants, Honor thought. She did not love to look on them, they were too terrifying; she lifted her eyes to the loftiest summit of all, that of the Dent du Midi himself, the mighty Prince of her dreams. How glorious he was; how noble!

As she lay watching, a glow stole over the brow of the white giant; the green of the nearer ones grew warmer; the sun was going down, and the world was turning to rose and gold. A level shaft flamed through the window and fell on Honor’s bed, lighting up the quilt. “Look!” it seemed to say. “This too is wonderful!”

It certainly was; heaviest linen, so covered with embroidery that the groundwork could hardly be seen. All in white; yet with a bewildering variety about it, somehow. Looking closer, Honor saw that it was divided into five compartments, a round one in the centre, the others fitting into it. The centre-piece displayed the sun, moon and stars, beautifully wrought in shining linen. In one of the others were delicate shapes of Alpine flowers, so lovely that one hardly missed the color. Another held ferns and mosses, while a third was covered with birds, in full flight or perched on twig and bough. The fourth – at first Honor thought it was entirely empty, but soon she spied in one corner a bit of work, evidently the beginning of a design. She was puzzling over it when a sudden whiff struck her nostrils, a pungent, aromatic whiff which made her exclaim unconsciously, “Oh, how hungry I am!”

“A la bonne heure!” Gretli stood beaming in the doorway, carrying a tray; on the tray was a blue bowl, steaming, fragrant. “Behold the soup of Mademoiselle! Our mountain air brings the appetite; cream and onions, with a little of our oldest cheese – behold!”

Standing on one side, arms akimbo, the benevolent giantess watched the consumption of the “restorative” soup, and which face was brighter, hers or the consumer’s, it would have been hard to say.