Late that night he returned home, bearing the message of death to the house that now belonged to sorrow. His aunt was silent; she did not cry until the following day when her husband’s body was carried to the house.
The poor Cretin stayed in bed the whole day, but in the evening he got up and approached Rudy. “Will you write a letter for me? Saperli cannot write, but Saperli can go to the post office.”
“Whom do you want to write a letter to?” Rudy asked.
“To our Master Christ,” replied the Cretin.
“What are you talking about?”
The half-wit, as they called him, looked with pleading eyes at Rudy, folded his hands, and said very solemnly and piously but in a gentle voice, “Jesus Christ. Saperli wants to beg him to let Saperli lie dead and not the master of this house.”
Rudy took Saperli’s hands in his. “Such a letter would never be delivered, and it would not bring him back to us.” It was difficult for Rudy to explain to the Cretin why what he was asking was impossible.
“Now you are master of the house,” Rudy’s aunt said to him. And Rudy became the master.
CHAPTER FOUR: BABETTE
“Who is the best hunter in the canton of Valais?” The chamois could answer that question. “Watch out for Rudy,” they would say.
“Who is the handsomest hunter?”
“Rudy is the handsomest,” the girls would reply, but they did not add, “Watch out for Rudy.” Not even the strictest mothers said that, for he nodded as pleasantly to them as he did to their daughters.
He was always happy, with a smile on his lips. His cheeks were tanned bronze by the sun, his teeth were white, and his eyes were dark as coal. A handsome lad and only twenty years old. The ice water in the lakes did not seem freezing to him, he swam like a fish. He could hang onto the sheer, granite mountainside as if he were a snail; no one could climb as well as he. His sinews and his muscles were good. How to leap and to jump he had learned first from the cat and later from the chamois.
With Rudy as a guide any traveler was safe, and he could have made a fortune that way. Barrelmaking he had learned from his uncle, but he never thought of making a living that way either. Rudy was a hunter, and to stalk the chamois was his greatest pleasure. Good hunters weren’t poor, and everyone in the district agreed that Rudy was a good match, as long as he did not set his eyes on those above him.
“He kissed me while we were dancing,” said the schoolmaster’s daughter Annette to her dearest friend. But Annette should never have told such a thing to her dearest friend, for a secret like that is as hard to keep as it is to stop sand from running out of a bag with a hole in it. Soon everyone knew that Rudy, in spite of being so honest and good-natured, could steal a kiss while he was dancing—and yet he had never kissed the girl whom he wanted most to kiss.
“Keep an eye on him,” said an old hunter. “He has kissed Annette, and since he has started with A, he’ll kiss through the whole alphabet.”
A kiss during a dance was as yet all the gossips could bring to market. He had kissed Annette and yet she was not the flower his heart pined for.
Down at Bex, between two great walnut trees and beside a rushing mountain stream, lived a rich miller. His house was large: three stories high with small towers at each corner, and roofed with shingles that were held fast by strips of lead that reflected the light of both the sun and the moon. The highest of the towers had a weather vane in the form of an apple with a golden arrow piercing it, in honor of William Tell. The mill looked prosperous and decorative, and with a bit of skill one could describe it or sketch it; but the miller’s daughter was another matter. In any case, Rudy would have said that you could not possibly draw or tell about such beauty in words. Yet her picture was in his heart, and there her eyes shone with such brilliance that they had set his heart afire. Like all fires, it had broken out suddenly; and the strangest part of it was that the miller’s daughter Babette did not even know about it, for she and Rudy had never exchanged a single word.
The miller was rich, and his wealth put Babette a good many notches above a hunter. “But nothing is up so high that it cannot be reached,” thought Rudy. “All you have to do is climb, and you never fall unless you believe that you are going to.” This was his philosophy and he had learned it at home.
Now it happened that Rudy had business in Bex. In those days it was quite a journey, for the railroad hadn’t reached there yet. From the Rhone glacier along the foothills of the Simplon, surrounded by mountains of varying heights, stretches the valley of Valais, and through it runs the mighty Rhone River. The river is master of the valley, and often in spring it swells over its banks to flood the fields and ruin the roads. Between the towns of Sion and St. Maurice the valley turns sharply, and at St. Maurice it becomes so narrow there is only room for the river and the road that connects the two towns.
An ancient tower stands guard on the mountainside and looks out across the bridge to the customs house on the other side of the river. Here the canton of Valais ends and the canton of Vaud begins. The nearest town is Bex; from there on the valley seems to grow wider with every step, and as it broadens it grows richer and more fertile. It becomes a garden with walnut, chestnut, and tall cypress trees. Here even the pomegranate will ripen, and it is so warm that you might think you were as far south as Italy.
Rudy soon finished his errand at Bex and walked about the town. But he did not even see any of the apprentices from the mill, let alone Babette. Luck, which was usually kind to him, seemed to frown upon him that day.
It was evening. The air was filled with the fragrance of flowering thyme and the blossoms of the linden trees. A blue veil seemed to cover the forest-clad mountains. The world was silent, not with the silence of sleep or death, but rather as if Nature were holding her breath because she was about to be photographed.
Across the valley ran the telegraph lines; the poles could be seen among the trees. Something was leaning against one of them. At a distance you would have mistaken it for a log because it looked so motionless, but it was Rudy. He was as completely still as his surroundings, and he, too, was neither dead nor asleep. As you cannot tell by looking at a telegraph line that the news it is carrying may change the course of a person’s life—or even shake the world—so you could not have guessed by looking at Rudy how overwhelming his thoughts were. He was thinking about happiness, life, and the purpose of existence, and he was wondering what would become of his “constant thought”: that thought which from now on would never leave him.
His glances rested on a light in the miller’s house where Babette lived. Rudy was standing as still as he did when he took aim before shooting a chamois, but at that moment he resembled the antelope itself, which can stand so motionless that it appears to be made of stone, only to leap and vanish if it hears a tiny pebble fall. And this was exactly what Rudy did when, like a falling pebble, a thought came to him.
“Don’t give up,” he said aloud. “I will visit the mill and say good evening to the miller and good day to Babette. Believe that you can’t fall and you won’t. After all, Babette has to meet me sooner or later if I am to be her husband.”
Rudy laughed. His spirits rose as he made his way to the mill. He knew what he wanted, he wanted Babette.
The path followed the river with its turbulent yellowish water. The willow and linden trees grew along the banks and their branches hung like tresses above the edges of the rapid flowing water. Rudy walked as it says in the nursery rhyme:
… till he came to the miller’s house
Where no one was home
But a cat and a mouse.
The cat was on the steps that led to the front door. It stretched itself, arched its back, and meowed. But Rudy paid no attention; he went straight up to the door and knocked. “Meow,” said the cat again. Had Rudy been still a child, he would have understood that the cat said, “There is no one at home.” But now Rudy was a grownup, so he had to ask one of the workers in the mill to learn why the miller’s
house was empty.
They had gone to Interlaken: inter lacus, as Annette’s father, the schoolteacher, called it, “among the lakes.” There on the following day were to begin the competitions for marksmanship, and people would be there from all the German-speaking cantons to watch them. The contests would last a whole week. Poor Rudy, he had not timed his visit to Bex very well and now there was nothing for him to do but start on the long road home: back over the mountains via St. Maurice and Sion, to his own valley; and that’s what he did. But the next morning, by the time the sun had risen, his spirits had risen too.
“Babette is at Interlaken,” he thought. “It is far from here, several days’ journey, if you follow the road. But not if you go over the mountains, then it’s not nearly as far. And that’s the way for a hunter to travel, by climbing the mountains. Haven’t I done it before? Don’t I come from there? Didn’t I live there with my grandfather? I will win the competition at Interlaken just as I will win Babette’s heart … as soon as she gets to know me, that is.”
He packed his Sunday suit in a small knapsack, slung his hunting bag across his shoulders, and with his rifle in his hand set out to climb the mountains that separated him from Interlaken. But even this short route was long enough. However, the competition would only begin today, and he had been told that Babette and the miller were staying with relatives at Interlaken for the whole week. Rudy decided to cross the great glacier Gemmi because he wanted to descend the mountains near his old home at Grindelwald.
Healthy and happy, he was a fine sight, if anyone had been there to look at him. As he strode along, the valley disappeared and the horizon broadened. First one and then another of the snow-capped mountains came into view. Rudy knew them all. He walked toward Schreckhorn, which stretched upward into the blue sky like a snow-covered stone finger.
Finally, he had crossed the mountains and the green meadows of his childhood stretched themselves toward him. His soul was as light as the mountain air. The valleys were green and filled with the flowers of spring, and in his heart was the wisdom of youth: One cannot die! One cannot age! Live! Live and enjoy! Be free as a bird. Light as a bird he was, walking and dancing along the path, the swallows singing above him as they had when he was a child: “You and we! You and we!”
Below on the velvet green meadow, he saw the little brown wooden houses and the Lütschine River. He saw the glacier covered with dirty gray snow, and its clear green glass borders, lined with deep crevasses, for he could see both the top and the bottom of the great field of ice. The bells of the village rang to greet him and welcome him home. For a moment the memories of childhood so filled his heart that he forgot Babette.
Again he was walking the road alongside which, as a child, he had stood waiting to sell the little wooden toy houses his grandfather had carved. Up among the pine trees was his grandfather’s house, but strangers were living in it. Children came. They wanted him to buy their parents’ handicraft. Rudy smiled and one of the children gave him a rhododendron. “The rose of the mountains,” he whispered. “It is a good omen.” And at that moment Babette came back into his mind.
He crossed the bridge where the two streams meet to become the river Lütschine. The evergreens gave way to the birch and oak and elm, and finally he was walking in the shade of the walnut tree. In the distance he saw flags flying: a white cross on a red background, the national banners of both Switzerland and Denmark. Spread out in front of him lay Interlaken.
Rudy thought it was one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen, a Swiss town dressed up for Sunday. It was not like any other city. It was not a collection of big stone buildings: stodgy, forbidding, and important. No, it was as if all the small wooden houses from the mountainsides had decided to move down into the green valley and had lined themselves up as they pleased, in not too straight rows along the banks of the clear river.
The houses looked exactly like the ones his grandfather had carved, the ones that had stood in the closet of his childhood home. For a moment Rudy imagined that it was so, that the toy houses had grown up like the old chestnut trees that lined the streets.
Each house had intricately carved woodwork around its windows and balconies; the latter were protected by overhanging roofs from rain and snow. On the loveliest street all the houses were new; they had not been there when Rudy, as a boy, visited Interlaken. They were hotels, every one; each had a flower garden in front of it and the road was macadamized. Here there were buildings only on one side of the street, so as not to hide from view the green meadow with its grazing cows, who wore bells around their necks just as they did in the mountains. The pasture was encircled by mountains. In the middle of the chain towered the snow-capped “Maiden,” and it was as if the other mountains had stepped aside to give the onlooker a better view of this shining white mountain that is the most beauitfully shaped of all the mountains of Switzerland.
How many elegantly dressed foreigners one saw in the streets, which were already crowded with hunters and farmers from the different cantons. The hunters who were participating in the competition wore ribbons with numbers on them in their hats. The houses and bridges were draped with banners, and on some of them there were verses. There was music—trumpets and horns and barrel organs. There were the screams of children and the shouts of adults as they hailed old friends and new acquaintances. Yet all the while could be heard shooting, one shot after another. The sound of the guns was the most inspiring music to Rudy’s ears, and once more he forgot Babette and why he had come to Interlaken.
Rudy joined the men competing at target shooting. Every time he fired, his bullet hit the little dark spot at the center of the shield.
“Who is that very young hunter?” people began to ask each other.
“He talks French as if he came from the canton of Valais,” someone remarked. “Yet he can speak German as we do here.”
“They say,” someone else explained, “that when he was a child he lived near Grindel.”
Yes, Rudy was full of life! His hands were strong and steady, his eye sharp, so his bullets always hit their mark. Happiness is the mother of courage, and Rudy was always courageous. He made friends easily and soon was surrounded by a group of admirers wherever he went. Everyone knew who he was and spoke well of him; he had no time to think of Babette.
Suddenly a firm hand grasped his shoulder and a man asked him in French, “Are you from the canton of Valais?”
Rudy turned around and saw a fat man with a cheerful red face: it was the rich miller from Bex. He was so heavy-set that he almost hid his daughter Babette, who was standing on tiptoe behind him to get a better view of the young hunter.
The rich miller had been pleased when he heard that it was a hunter from a French-speaking canton who was winning all the competitions, and he had made up his mind to meet him. Fortune certainly was smiling on Rudy, when what he had set out to seek now sought him.
When you are in a strange place and you meet someone from home, you talk to him as if you had always been friends. Rudy was now a man of importance at Interlaken because of his skill at marksmanship just as the miller was a man of importance in Bex because of his mill and his money. They shook hands as equals, which under other circumstances they might never have done. Babette, too, offered Rudy her hand, and as he took it in his he looked so intently into her eyes that she blushed.
The miller told Rudy about their journey, of the many towns they had passed through, and how they had traveled by steamer, railroad, and stagecoach in order to reach Interlaken.
“I took a shorter route,” Rudy said. “I went over the mountains; they aren’t so high that you can’t climb them.”
“If you are willing to risk breaking your neck,” replied the miller. “And you may well break yours, if you are as daring as you look.”
“You can’t fall if you don’t believe you can,” Rudy said.
The miller’s relatives at Interlaken, at whose home he and Babette were staying, invited Rudy to visit them—after a
ll, he came from the same district as their own family. Rudy accepted readily. Luck was with him, as she always is with those who have confidence in themselves and remember the proverb: “God provides the nuts but He does not shell them for us.”
Rudy sat at the dinner table as if he were already a member of the family. A toast was made to the best marksman at Interlaken. They all lifted their glasses to Rudy, even Babette; and he made a short speech of thanks.
In the late afternoon they all went out for a walk along the beautiful street where all the hotels were. Here there was so much going on and such a throng that Rudy had to offer Babette his arm.
“I am so happy to have met someone from the canton of Vaud,” he declared. “The cantons of Vaud and Valais have always been such good neighbors.”
Babette thought that he sounded so sincere that she must hold his hand. Soon they were talking as if they had known each other for ever so long. And Rudy thought that he had never heard anyone speak so charmingly, so sweetly, as she pointed out to him how ridiculously the foreign women dressed and carried themselves.
“You mustn’t think I am making fun of them. Foreigners can be honest and very kind. And no one knows that better than I because my godmother is an English lady. She was visiting Bex when I was born.”
Babette was wearing a gold pin that her godmother had given her. “She has written to me twice, and I have been expecting her at Interlaken this year. She is supposed to come with her daughters. They are unmarried and quite old—nearly thirty.” Babette herself was only eighteen.
She gave her little mouth no rest and everything that she had to say seemed to Rudy of great importance. When his turn came, he told her everything that he could tell. He said that he had been in Bex often and knew her father’s mill. He admitted that he had seen her many times, though she probably had not noticed him. Finally he confided the thoughts he had had that night when he went to Bex and was told that Babette and her father had gone to Interlaken. “You were far, far away. But there are two ways to get around a wall, and the shorter is to climb over it.”