Then it did actually begin to rain. I was just going down a short hill.
So I sat under a bush and watched the trees drip. I was so glad to be
there, homeless, without place or belonging, crouching under the leaves
in the copse by the road, that I felt I had, like the meek, inherited
the earth. Some men went by, with their coat-collars turned up, and the
rain making still blacker their black broadcloth shoulders. They did not
see me. I was as safe and separate as a ghost. So I ate the remains of
my food that I had bought in Zurich, and waited for the rain.
Later, in the wet Sunday afternoon, I went on to the little lake, past
many inert, neutral, material people, down an ugly road where trams ran.
The blight of Sunday was almost intolerable near the town.
So on I went, by the side of the steamy, reedy lake, walking the length
of it. Then suddenly I went in to a little villa by the water for tea.
In Switzerland every house is a villa.
But this villa, was kept by two old ladies and a delicate dog, who must
not get his feet wet. I was very happy there. I had good jam and strange
honey-cakes for tea, that I liked, and the little old ladies pattered
round in a great stir, always whirling like two dry leaves after the
restless dog.
'Why must he not go out?' I said.
'Because it is wet,' they answered, 'and he coughs and sneezes.'
'Without a handkerchief, that is not _angenehm_' I said.
So we became bosom friends.
'You are Austrian?' they said to me.
I said I was from Graz; that my father was a doctor in Graz, and that I
was walking for my pleasure through the countries of Europe.
I said this because I knew a doctor from Graz who was always wandering
about, and because I did not want to be myself, an Englishman, to these
two old ladies. I wanted to be something else. So we exchanged
confidences.
They told me, in their queer, old, toothless fashion, about their
visitors, a man who used to fish all day, every day for three weeks,
fish every hour of the day, though many a day he caught nothing--nothing
at all--still he fished from the boat; and so on, such trivialities.
Then they told me of a third sister who had died, a third little old
lady. One could feel the gap in the house. They cried; and I, being an
Austrian from Graz, to my astonishment felt my tears slip over on to the
table. I also _was_ sorry, and I would have kissed the little old ladies
to comfort them.
'Only in heaven it is warm, and it doesn't rain, and no one dies,' I
said, looking at the wet leaves.
Then I went away. I would have stayed the night at this house: I wanted
to. But I had developed my Austrian character too far.
So I went on to a detestable brutal inn in the town. And the next day I
climbed over the back of the detestable Rigi, with its vile hotel, to
come to Lucerne. There, on the Rigi, I met a lost young Frenchman who
could speak no German, and who said he could not find people to speak
French. So we sat on a stone and became close friends, and I promised
faithfully to go and visit him in his barracks in Algiers: I was to sail
from Naples to Algiers. He wrote me the address on his card, and told me
he had friends in the regiment, to whom I should be introduced, and we
could have a good time, if I would stay a week or two, down there
in Algiers.
How much more real Algiers was than the rock on the Rigi where we sat,
or the lake beneath, or the mountains beyond. Algiers is very real,
though I have never seen it, and my friend is my friend for ever, though
I have lost his card and forgotten his name. He was a Government clerk
from Lyons, making this his first foreign tour before he began his
military service. He showed me his 'circular excursion ticket'. Then at
last we parted, for he must get to the top of the Rigi, and I must get
to the bottom.
Lucerne and its lake were as irritating as ever--like the wrapper round
milk chocolate. I could not sleep even one night there: I took the
steamer down the lake, to the very last station. There I found a good
<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>