Over the Alps to the Poor-House

by Louise Closser Hale

Over the Alps to the Poor-house

BY LOUISE CLOSSER HALE

THE Illustrator, who is a Squire of Dames, yet has a sort of spotty gallantry, declared that it was Arabella who drove us from Venice into the Austrian Tyrol, to the depletion of our purse.

This was unfair to Arabella. We had done some motoring over the Alps earlier in the year, and I had observed him enjoying to the full the stimulation that comes from heights. As each pass was conquered he took on a self-righteous air, as though he had overcome, by a moral effort, some great obstacle. One can permit this in an Alpine climber; although tied to guides by ropes, his legs, if not his courage, have carried him along the weary way. But to contend that it is the chauffeur and not the gasolene which is lifting us over the hills is to confuse the propeller with the thing propelled.

I am a cautious woman, financially speaking. I would have raised no objections to any expenditure of the Illustrator's physical or spiritual strength in gaining a peak, but gasolene is a luxury in Europe, and by August there is nothing more sickly than a letter of credit.

I spoke of these things, but Venice was hot, and, besides, there undeniably was our guest, Arabella. She was "Rabby" for short, which describes her more perfectly. That is, it gave both Arabella and ourselves less to live up to. It excused her neglect of art-galleries and indifference of churches, and condoned the length of time she spent in gondolas.

Yet Rabby's experience in Venetian cabs was not all that she had hoped for. One cannot define the "hoping" more fully, but no girl is born into the world without an intuitive appreciation of the romantic possibilities of this method of transit. She was a modern young woman—eager to fill her diary with experiences that would read well when she returned home—and we put down her failure not to any lack of initiative on her part, but to the select circle of austere young men that limited our acquaintance in Venice last year.

These were not care-free young men. They could not throw prudence into the Grand Canal as they stepped from the Piazza into these rocking cradles of flirtation. They maintained a standard. The Illustrator, who had never troubled much about standards in his own youth, longed to gondola past them as an object-lesson, with Arabella by his side, and I would generously have loaned him, had not the girl—with the hideous frankness of her years—assured us that she would as soon go out rowing with her grandfather. She always called it rowing.

The moon was at its roundest on the night that we settled definitely upon going north by the Austrian Tyrol, "quickly, coolly, and cheaply," as the Illustrator attractively phrased it. We did not know that we were to leave in haste the next day until Rabby came home from an hour's ride in a gondola. She was in company with the young gentleman whom we termed the survival of the fittest—the fittest to ride in a gondola, that is, We had observed his receding chin as he took her away, and had wondered if this possible weakness in his nature would permit him to forget the hand of time and join the serenata for the entire evening.

Yet they returned promptly. At the end of the hour she mounted the water steps of the hotel that an inquiring high tide was flappily climbing, and walked into the little garden where we were sitting. The young man was gondolaed primly away.

"Did you have a nice time, Rabby?" we asked, because it was due her to ask it.

"Oh yes, I suppose so," she replied, evasively. Then, with a passionate burst of truth, arms outstretched to the silver heavens: "My goodness! My goodness! You'd think on a night like this a boy would hold hands with a leper!" And she stalked off to her room.

The Illustrator made the most of this episode, and the next day we took our leave—jingling. I use the word not merrily, but solemnly, for it was necessary to deposit four hundred dollars in gold at the Austrian frontier as a bond for our motor-car before we could enter the country, and wherever gold coin could be hidden upon the three of us, there lay the treasure. The Illustrator carried his share easily, as though accustomed to large sums. He was very happy. At Mestre he would meet his automobile once more, and before nightfall he would be at the foot of the mountains, ready for the first pass.

He had declared his itinerary. With the frankness that conceals dishonesty he promised the shortest possible attack upon the Dolomites, and, arriving at Innsbruck, an immediate pressing north to the flat country, where the driving would demand but a mild expenditure of that ill-smelling commodity which makes the wheels go round. Pallid and depleted, the letter of credit lay at the bottom of his dressing-case.

It would betray too great a sympathy with husbands to admit that I also was glad to be strapping on the baggage and hunting for the camera. Venice is lovely, but how green is the earth, how swift the flowing road! "Aiee! Aiee!" cry the gondoliers, but our companions on the dusty way set us straight with "Destra, signore—Sinestra, signore!" The car throbs responsively to the right or left, and our "Grazie" reaches their ears faintly, so keen is our engine to show its paces. The sun set clearly, as suns should when one has a long way to travel in the morning. The jagged teeth of the Dolomites shot up disappointingly.

The Illustrator took a hand from the wheel to wave toward them with all the enthusiasm of personal discovery. Gazing at them, Rabby and I dwelt bitterly on the false prophecies of colored postal cards. Nature has been referred to as a lavish creature, but her tints are pale as compared to the glowing replicas on the cartes postales.

"Madame, where is the red on your cheeks?" So Bonaparte once admonished a court lady, accustomed as he was to Josephine's rouge- pots. And "Mountains, why aren't you pink?" we severely apostrophized the soft blue peaks.

Our driver glared back at us fleetingly. He possesses a maddening quality of adopting as his own the country through which he is passing, and resents any reflection upon its appearance or character as a slight that embodies him. "They are pink," he asserted, doggedly. "It's just the way you squint."

I reflected upon this, then, and many times during the next few days of frantic pass-climbing into which I had been cunningly lured. Squinting couleur de rose into his life is part of his happy philosophy, and I have no doubt that he squinted himself into believing all the sophistries which he propounded daily to tease me through the lengths and heights and depths of the Tyrol.

We slept at Feltre, an occurrence of which I remember nothing except the noise of intrepid motors honking up the Rolle Pass through the night, and, toward morning, the sound of gold coins rolling on a wooden floor. The clatter was followed by cries of petulance from Rabby—who had thought the handkerchief wouldn't come untied.

At starting-time the patron of the hotel, with the personnel, wished us good speed gloomily. One will notice that they do this when a car goes up a pass. Not that they think there is any danger, or that they care, but it delicately compliments the guests who suggest that they are attempting a risky thing with so much courage. We put on brave faces and pressed forward, as conscious as they that the grades in the Alps are seldom as steep as those of the hills in America, and that the roadbed is infinitely better.

Half-way up the pass slouchy Italian officers, humming their war song, "Tripoli," returned to us the modest sum that bonds an automobile into their country; a few steps farther on stiff Austrian officials, saluting threateningly, relieved us of that amount and all the rest of our golden impedimenta. A small child presented us with a bunch of mountain pinks; we presented her with a kreutzer—we were in the Tyrol. Fearful of the Illustrator's backward glances, we chanted pæans of praise, and endeavored not to take the hairpin turns with our spines. It was a steep but human way. When awed to the point of discomfort, there was ever a toll-gate attended by clean, stern old ladies to jerk us gladly back to commonplaces. "It is only Heaven that is given away"—we pay for earth's privileges, if it is macadam.

Yet there must still be space in this great country for the explorer—pine forests that have seen man only by peeping from their tree-tops down into the road. Doubtless the gods, gone from Olympus for the summer, are enjoying themselves in such stray nooks with a view that does not contain hotels for the holiday-making of the Teuton. It is a known fact that the gods shun the habitations of mankind, but one would think that they might take an interest in these days in an open-plumbed hotel, and, disguised as mountain climbers—with feathers in their hats—put up for a night just to see what it was like.

We had accomplished the Rolle Pass and were lunching at the Alpen Rose when we spoke of these things. And we were agreed, in looking over the guests, that there was not a god among them, for there was a material satisfaction in those about us that was far removed from Jupiters and Venuses. Outside of the windows all was green herbage, blue space, and, ever in the distance, white (not pink) peaks. Within all was Schwartenmagen and Konigsberger Klopps, and people eating these dishes.

The Alpen Rose had one distinguishing feature: it was the kind of hotel where one unpacked one's bag—or even a trunk. To judge by the continual starting off of motor-buses throughout the Tyrol, it is difficult believing that the traveler stays longer than a meal, or that he sleeps anywhere. But those who entered the dining-room had the New Jersey hotel manner which is gained only by a weekly rate. There the similarity ended. To be sure, husband and wife came in together, and the tables bowed to each other. Yet the enjoyment, while solid, was not gay, the attitude of the wives toward their husbands had not that conscious Sunday-dinner quality which we possess. There was no desire among the women to show off their trophies; no hint in the air of "this is he of whom I have been telling you through the week."

One could not blame them for their moderation. The husbands were not much to look at, but the cause of this languid acceptance of the presence of their lords was explained by the maître d' hotel. It seems that there are no holidays for wives without husbands among the Teutons. They come together and they go together—there is no thrilling expectancy late Friday afternoon or mildly tempestuous partings early Monday morning.

The conclusion of the discussion was not a happy one. The Illustrator, agreeing with the maître d'hotel (he was a Frenchman) that men could see too much of their wives, caught my eye, and went out to put water in his engine without finishing his prune Kuchen. Still we went on, as husbands and wives do, and he "ate up" the Pordoi Pass, and, very humbly, his words in the course of the afternoon.

Eating up passes was the Illustrator's expression, not mine. I would have said that they ate us up. Even by squinting one cannot turn a gallon of gasolene into a quart as it is being poured into the tank. There is no perspective. Mindful of this, when the hot-water jugs were brought to our rooms that night, I felt it necessitous as a complete wife to express relief that the expensive hill-climbing was about over.

We had chosen Pieve di Livinallongo for a sleeping-place, a small town stunted in its youth by the weight of its name. It had an Old World air, not as old as the mountains but old enough for us, and we made a further effort to escape the summer boarders, and see "the people" by putting up at the most ancient of the inns. The rooms were stuffy, however, and the Turkey-red feather beds lowered at us, and we ended in a new hostelry where the landlord spoke the newest English in the world.

I had no sooner declared myself anent the passing of the passes than the Illustrator, clanking his fancy wash-bowl and pitcher with an assumption of ease, advised me to look at the map. I did so, but could make nothing out of the caterpillars crawling over the surface of Austria in their effort to give an imitation of mountains, until Rabby came to my assistance.

It was her keen eyes that detected Pieve di Livinallongo and deducted, by its situation among the caterpillars, that we were only at the beginning of the passes. We turned upon the Illustrator, who assumed a hostile air to cover his guilt, and asked why, in the name of a number of things, we should hold him responsible for the construction of the Tyrol. "We are in the midst of passes," he stated coldly, "and we will have to cross a few more to get out. You want to get out, don't you?"

We went down to dinner, driven from the third-class Gastzimmer into the Speisesaal. It was a good dinner, but as is usual with us when we are among the Teutons, we did not get what we thought we had ordered. The German language has never failed to baffle us, although there is a family tradition that I should know German. At my first symptom of defeat the Illustrator broke out, "Was haben sie zu eaten," with a hasty slurring of syllables in case he was wrong.

"Bitte?" queried the vacant-eyed waitress.

Three Austrian officers near by, one dachshund (apparently), and two ladies with the Illustrator "made to laugh." He glared at the officers. "It is only among the German countries that one jeers at the errors of strangers," he safely reproved in English. "If this girl could speak Italian I would have no trouble.

It is common belief that one speaks very well the language of the country he has just left. When in the Tyrol the mistake lies in dwelling insistently upon this accomplishment, for those who come and go across the border have both tongues at their command.

The Illustrator should have remembered this, but he is not the man to remember the disagreeable in life. It always comes to him as a surprise. It came to him the next morning when we stopped to draw a castle. Our erratic halting in the middle of a steep ascent over the Falzarego Pass is indicative of the artist devouring the mechanic. These occasional conflicts lend color to our journeying. I like them, and any mechanical indiscretion when the artist is in the ascendant I condone. In proof of this, when we found that our car had been backed too deeply into the ditch (to prevent it from impeding traffic) both Rabby and I were keen for pushing.

The Illustrator, every inch a mechanic now, sat in the driver's seat putting in the clutch and changing gears like a zylophone-player. Rabby and I puffed against the wheels, but that muscular weakness which comes with a sense of the ridiculous rendered our efforts futile. Our driver, ashamed to look around and see us, pretended we were not there. The situation was very German. "The new woman," said Rabby, nodding toward him. Then, as ever in our darkest hour, assistance drew near.

Assistance was two horses and a man. I pointed out the usefulness of the approaching beasts. But our mechanician roared at me. "I will not be helped out by animals," he said, with that automobile pride which could be pushed by ladies but not pulled by horses. "Speak to him in German and ask him to help us."

There was a deadly pause. I could not speak to him in German. "Then I will speak in Italian," he flung at us. This is where the recklessness comes in.

"Parlate italiano?" he called to the man.

Si, signore."

Another pause. He had not counted on the man's linguistic abilities. "Very well, then," he responded in an angry burst of English, "get down and shove this infernal machine into the middle of the road."

The man wonderfully comprehended, and we all three pushed to the Illustrator's mild "Uno, due, tre—andiamo!" But it was "One, two, three—let us go!" a number of times before we were once more on the climb. However, as he said when we had reached the summit and were mailing triumphant postal cards, "There is always a way out if you use your intelligence.

We lunched on the hotel balcony at Cortina, which lies at the foot of the Ampezzo Pass, taking plates and going to the bakery to choose our little cakes. A fine rain had set in, necessitating a hurried sketch to give time to tire-chains. These are verboten on the fine roads which Emperor Franz Josef has built for his fractious Tyrolese, yet we employed them without arrest.

Rabby and I would have lingered in Cortina. "Those who love come here," she had pleaded, and I would have enjoyed a vicarious romance but for the letter of credit. We did not stay. Our path-finder, in spite of his excellent meal, was hungry. He wished to eat more passes. Besides that, it was in a spirit of benevolence that he hoped to make Sterzing for the night. He had been there once before, had played billiards with the proprietor, and the hotel was the quaintest in the world.

We climbed the Ampezzo in the rain, going up to meet the clouds and coming down with most of them resting on the canopy. Through the mist I strained my eyes for the more modest foothills which must begin soon, but there was no suggestion of them. Beyond Toblach, where we quitted the Dolomites (looking gray), we came upon the vast Pusterthal Range, the Illustrator greeting it with a forced manner of perplexity, as though he had expected to find a prairie around the corner from the village church.

I was not deceived by this, but I was confused, as the day passed, at a certain manner he had developed of turning to me frequently and asking in kindly tones if I had noticed that we coasted down each descent. I felt that this devotion was ominous, yet the import did not reach me until curtain-lecture time.

Sterzing was half-way up the Brenner Pass. When I had asked if we could avoid this stiff ascent I had been told that if we did I could not see the quaint hotel and the landlord who played billiards. He was not much of a landlord to look at, after all. And he did not recognize the Illustrator, who had come this great way to meet him again. He was a small man with large rooms, and would not show us the less expensive ones until we had threatened to leave. We finally were disposed along a corridor that was rounded like a tunnel, leaving it to our individual taste as to whether we were in the subway or a beer-cellar. We ate in a private room, much against our will, full of steins and horns; but it would have been unseemly to raise objections of any sort to the indifferent service, for upon the walls were signed protocols that various royal highnesses had stopped there and found everything, including the landlord, satisfactory.

At the end of the meal the guide-books were spread out on the red table-cloth, and just as I began to clear my throat in preparation for a few words, the Illustrator forestalled me. He wished to call my attention to the amount of gasolene that he had saved that day in coasting. I admitted that I had noticed it. After which he wished me to grant that the more passes we crossed the more we coasted, and therefore we were saving rather than spending money. It seemed plausible.

"Then," said he, reaching his peroration, accompanied by certain hypnotic gestures, "is it not economy for us to drive over a few more passes to-morrow to pretty little Landeck instead of delaying in Innsbruck, and from Landeck cut north out of the mountains?"

I felt the spell of his waving hands, and instinctively I turned to Rabby. My heart warmed toward her. Had we not marched in the same parade, generally keeping step? Yet Rabby did not meet my gaze. She avoided its level shaft, preferring the twisting caterpillars on the map. "You see," she muttered, lamely, "Innsbruck is most expensive, and we do coast a lot."

It was plain that she had gone over to the passes. She had caught the trick of squinting. She grew mean in my eyes. I remembered how she had allowed her banner to sag in the parade, while she held on to her hat. But I would not tell her this. Instead, I nodded acquiescence, while I took out the letter of credit for a recounting. It was not my fault that the stiff pages rattled like a skeleton. The Illustrator leaped away to billiards.

Yet, having conquered, he was kind. He made a sketch the next morning in the busy street because he knew it would please me, and came to my assistance when an old dame from whom I had purchased a clothes-brush tried to pull it away from me as I was leaving the shop. A mob collected, all siding with their citizeness and wishing to pull it away also, although the Illustrator told them it was verboten to rob me, and Rabby wept. In the end we discovered that I had paid her with a nickel kreutzer-piece instead of a silver krone. Order was restored, and we motored hastily away, feeling the hostility of Sterzing.

The episode served a purpose. As a circle of three we were again united, a common foe against a people whose language we did not understand. We entertained no animosity toward the topography of the country, however, and I found myself enjoying the Brenner Pass as opposed to streets full of men and women. The hills could not speak to us, nor have to be spoken to. We felt less alone in the solitudes. This comes to one after much traveling along the open ways. It is the gift Nature grants us for affecting her company throughout a season.

For this reason (and this alone, I sternly contended with myself), I was glad to quit Innsbruck, a city as brightly polished as a brass door-knob—a city full of delightful shops that one dared not enter, and possessing a rocky, iron-ribbed bank that gave us a flat packet of bank-notes and took in exchange our letter of credit. It was peering out at me from behind the bars as we turned to go, and I am not sure but that I heard it rustling out: "Leaving me, eh? Ah, things have come to a pretty pass!"

Innsbruck held on to us as long as it could, although the Illustrator had endeavored to propitiate it by drawing the House of Gold, as one who made offerings to the golden calf. At the edge of the town, en route for Landeck, we acquired a puncture; then a crowd, among them a gentleman in uniform, who put his sword on the front seat and assisted us ably. When the time came for us to resume our coats and kick the jack free, we, as usual, suffered from the fear of insulting the gallant officer by the offer of money. But, as usual, he took the sum without any show of resistance. He turned out to be the postman, which type of official can accept largesse, his sword being very short indeed.

And yet it was long enough to obstruct our progress! For we had no sooner said farewell to the crowd and swept around a corner than we were arrested by a great shout, and looked back to find the villagers following us, the postman in the lead. We could not blame him, as he wished this weapon of his which had been stowed away with the other tools, and without which no letters could have been delivered along his waiting route that evening. So the Illustrator said, "Sair goot" to show that he was sorry.

Night came down before we reached Landeck, hurried in by clouds that were as full of rain as their appearance threatened. Hills rose up to confront us suddenly, malicious hills that had no down side to them. The way was so narrow that in many places another vehicle could not have passed, much less seen us. At each sharp turn castles, high aloft, were gloating down upon the car, no doubt praying for collisions—they who had witnessed the grimmer conflicts of another age.

When we had given up our destination as a habitation submerged by the cloud-burst, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of it, for one is in the heart and on the edge of Landeck at the same time. From the doorway of the Alten Post, porters, behind green-felt aprons, descended; a head-waiter in his best Holborn Restaurant accent asked if we "would a cocktail haven," and the proprietor announced reproachfully "that we had rain broughten—his season was nothings," as though we had carried the deluge in the gasolene-tank, just to annoy him!

There was no curtain lecture that night, for the reason that it was past the hour. Besides, the Alten Post is the most charming inn in the world. Besides, our sharp fight with the elements had set us tingling with the joy of vicissitudes; and, in truth—in curious truth—I was too grieved to think that the passes were over to ask for the itinerary into the open country. I was not sure of this regret until the next day, when we went about in a sort of peaceful gloom, mild, like the wet sunshine. The Illustrator was busy with his maps blocking out the northern trail, and Rabby was looking at him regretfully.

"Beyond the Alps lies Italy," she quoted.

"Beyond the Stelvio Pass lies Italy," amended the Illustrator, "the highest carriage road in Europe." He paused, and eyed me as though I had stolen his happiness. "The highest carriage-road in Europe," he repeated.

Their sighs blew me through the door and up the gentle little street. A motor coming up from the south passed me; it bore a Stelvio banner. It would soon be neighboring with our car—soon boasting. But the money! I clutched my safety pocket where the pad of bank-notes reposed. "All that was left of it, left of six hundred!" I squinted a little mentally. It was not entirely my money, and, of course, if it was taken from me, I could not call for the police. I hurried back to them, with the idea of leaving it about carelessly.

But he had already found a way. I knew by his gleaming eyes. If, he contended, there was money saved coasting down the minor passes, what might not be saved coasting down ten thousand feet! For reasons of my own I did not combat him, but "to save my face" we made a business-sounding arrangement which had to do with our both ascending and descending the Austrian side, and keeping out of Italy altogether.

The next day we went south again, acquiring the Reschen Scheideck Pass as a bonne bouche, and spending the night at Neu Spondinig, which is the starting-place for the Stelvio. About the place there was the excitement of the day before a race. Maps hung upon the walls, and men of all nations were poring over them. Motor-cars were being overhauled, and strict injunctions were exchanged to keep the engine cool, first speed, plenty of water. Adventure was in the air!

At sunrise the landlord bade us good-by, unmoved by the statement that we would return—misunderstanding us. "Some do," he cheerlessly admitted. "Keep the engine cool. Attempt not to speed maken."

"For the first few miles it seemed an easy thing, but as we drew nearer, the mountain, contrary to its kindred, did not recede. It came to meet us. It was as a bare stern wall, the turnings of the road as symmetrical in their crossing as the lacings of a woman's corset. There were forty-eight "hairpin" corners in eight miles of steady upward climbing.

Rabby kept clearing her throat as though about to be presented to a Grand Duke, and any song I could think of to hum sounded trivial. We found the flippancies of the modern hostelries along the lower stretches most welcome, and we left behind one waiter with regret, for he had worked in a Minnesota wheatfield. With skill we passed the yellow stage-coaches such as our forebears drove in. There are no motor-busses on this steep grade. The six horses are exchanged frequently; the post-boys, in the uniform of the Austrian emperor, run to and fro; long whips crack, and liquids are hurried out to the muffled passengers. But for us always, always, water for the engine.

We used hot-water bags for buckets at the springs, or wherever the water trickled, but beyond the Inn Franzenlohe, which is half-way up the pass, there was no more water. It was very cold, and above us was snow, implacable snow, across which the lacets showed their mechanical weaving in faint, black lines.

The stage-coaches take their noonday meal here, but we went on toward the snow—into it. It folded itself about us; a way had been plowed through, and the walls rose above us thirty feet on either side. I thought of the gentle snowflakes of my childhood. At one sharp turn I urged the Illustrator to scoop out the white wall rather than back repeatedly to make the curve. The mud-guard bent like a piece of paper as it struck the marbled hardness.

The fear of the thing, the power of the mass which could move stealthily down upon us and crush our weak uplifted hands, settled down upon me. "Even Venice!" muttered Rabby.

Yet we reached the top sooner than we had expected. The roof of the hotel rose, as glorious as any Alpine peak, ahead of us. In the square, open space the motors and coaches and post-chaises were drawn up in orderly array. We backed into our allotted space. The landlord approached and observed that the water was not boiling—"Das ist wunderschön!" We all felt repaid for any earlier anxieties.

Then we went in to eat! And there was Wiener schnitzel and postal cards and the simple things that preserve the balance of life. We were dining with goggles on, for the glare was intense, and we looked at one another, seeing pale green or brown—and some happiness. But complete satisfaction did not come. I knew what was the matter. It was the Italian descent for which we were longing—a fresh sensation, a new impression.

"Of course," said the Illustrator, finally, "there's no coasting down this side—it's too dangerous. Perhaps the other."

I rejoined sharply that there was no coasting down the other, and he knew it. I was very miserable. I wished intensely to try the other descent. But the money! We would be back in Italy once more with it all to do over. Suddenly I left them to photograph Alps and travelers aimlessly. It had occurred to me that the Illustrator had never yet failed in gaining that which he most desired, so I left them alone, as the man's mind works more craftily when I am not staring at him. I grew serene in the thought that he, like Sentimental Tommy, would surely "ken a wy."

He found a way. We went down the Italian side that afternoon. For, as he had appeared to explain, we would get back four hundred dollars from the Austrians and have to deposit but one hundred of that sum with the Italian customs. That would give us three hundred dollars to have a good time with, "and after that—"

"After that there's the poor-house," I said, hurrying pleasantly into the automobile.