With the approach of evening all is changed.
A mountain will suddenly intercept the sun; a shadow
fall upon the valley; in ten minutes the thermometer
will drop as many degrees; the peaks that are no longer
shone upon dwindle into ghosts; and meanwhile, overhead,
if the weather be rightly characteristic of the place,
the sky fades towards night through a surprising key
of colours. The latest gold leaps from the last
mountain. Soon, perhaps, the moon shall rise,
and in her gentler light the valley shall be mellowed
and misted, and here and there a wisp of silver cloud
upon a hilltop, and here and there a warmly glowing
window in a house, between fire and starlight, kind
and homely in the fields of snow.
But the valley is not seated so high among the clouds
to be eternally exempt from changes. The clouds
gather, black as ink; the wind bursts rudely in; day
after day the mists drive overhead, the snow-flakes
flutter down in blinding disarray; daily the mail
comes in later from the top of the pass; people peer
through their windows and foresee no end but an entire
seclusion from Europe, and death by gradual dry-rot,
each in his indifferent inn; and when at last the
storm goes, and the sun comes again, behold a world
of unpolluted snow, glossy like fur, bright like daylight,
a joy to wallowing dogs and cheerful to the souls
of men. Or perhaps from across storied and malarious
Italy, a wind cunningly winds about the mountains
and breaks, warm and unclean, upon our mountain valley.
Every nerve is set ajar; the conscience recognises,
at a gust, a load of sins and negligences hitherto
unknown; and the whole invalid world huddles into
its private chambers, and silently recognises the
empire of the Fohn.
CHAPTER XI—ALPINE DIVERSIONS
There will be no lack of diversion in an Alpine sanitarium.
The place is half English, to be sure, the local
sheet appearing in double column, text and translation;
but it still remains half German; and hence we have
a band which is able to play, and a company of actors
able, as you will be told, to act. This last
you will take on trust, for the players, unlike the
local sheet, confine themselves to German and though
at the beginning of winter they come with their wig-boxes
to each hotel in turn, long before Christmas they
will have given up the English for a bad job.
There will follow, perhaps, a skirmish between the
two races; the German element seeking, in the interest
of their actors, to raise a mysterious item, the Kur-taxe,
which figures heavily enough already in the weekly
bills, the English element stoutly resisting.
Meantime in the English hotels home-played farces,
tableaux-vivants, and even balls enliven the evenings;
a charity bazaar sheds genial consternation; Christmas
and New Year are solemnised with Pantagruelian dinners,
and from time to time the young folks carol and revolve
untunefully enough through the figures of a singing
quadrille.
