The Car That Went Abroad Part 21

Chapter x.x.xIII

STRa.s.sBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST

Our tires were distressingly bad now. I had to do some quick repairing at Domremy, also between Domremy and Vaucouleurs, where we spent the night. Then next morning at Vaucouleurs, in an unfrequented back street behind our ancient inn, I established a general overhauling plant, and patched and relined and trepanned during almost an entire forenoon, while the rest of the family scoured the town for the materials. We put in most of our time at Vaucouleurs in this way. However, there was really little to see in the old town. Our inn was as ancient as anything, and our landlord a.s.sured us that Joan's knights probably stopped there, and even Uncle Laxart, but he could not produce his register to prove it. There are the remains of the chateau where Joan is said to have met the governor, and a monument to the Maid's memory has been begun, but remains unfinished through lack of funds. The real interest in Vaucouleurs, to-day, is that it was the starting point of Joan's great march. One could reflect upon that and repair tires simultaneously.

We got away in time to have luncheon in the beautiful country below Toul, and then kept on to Nancy. At both places there seemed to be nothing but soldiers and barracks, and one did not have to get out of the car to see those. Not that Nancy is not a fine big town, but its cathedral and its Arch of Triumph are both of the eighteenth century.

Such things seemed rather raw and new, while museums did not interest us any more.

Lorraine itself is beautiful. It seemed especially fair where we crossed the line into Germany, and we did not wonder that France could not forget her loss of that fertile land. There was no difficulty at the customs. We were politely O. K.'d by the French officials and courteously pa.s.sed by the Germans, with no examination beyond our _triptyques_. Then another stretch of fine road and fair fields, and we were in a village of cobbled streets and soldiers--German soldiers--and were told that it was Dieuze; also that there was an inn--a very good inn--a little way down the street. So there was--an inn where they spoke French and German and even a variety of English, and had plenty of good food and good beds for a very modest sum indeed. Dieuze was soon to become a war town, but beyond a few soldiers--nothing unusual--we saw no signs of it that first week in July.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STRa.s.sBURG, SHOWING THE CATHEDRAL]

Stra.s.sburg was our next stopping place. We put in a day there wandering about its fine streets, looking at its picturesque old houses, its royal palace, and its cathedral. I do not think we cared for the cathedral as we did for those of France. It is very old and very wonderful, and exhibits every form of architecture that has been employed in church building for nearly a thousand years; but in spite of its great size, its imposing height, its rich facade, there was something repellant about it all, and particularly in its great bare interior. It seemed to lack a certain light of romance, of poetry, of spiritual sympathy that belongs to every French church of whatever size.

And we were disappointed in the wonderful clock. It was very wonderful, no doubt, but we had expected too much. We waited for an hour for the great midday exhibition, and collected with a jam of other visitors in the little clock chapel, expecting all the things to happen that we had dreamed of since childhood. They all did happen, too, but they came so deliberately and with so little liveliness of demonstration that one had to watch pretty closely sometimes to know that anything was happening at all. I think I, for one, had expected that the saints and apostles, and the months and seasons, would all come out and do a grand walk around to lively music. As for the rooster that crows, he does not crow as well as Narcissa, who has the gift of imitation and could have astonished that crowd if she had let me persuade her to try.

There have been several of these Stra.s.sburg clocks. There was one of them in the cathedral as far back as 1352. It ran for about two centuries, when another, finished in 1574, took its place. The mechanism of the new clock was worn out in another two centuries, but its framework forms a portion of the great clock of to-day, which dates from 1840. It does a number of very wonderful things, but in this age of contrivance, when men have made mechanical marvels past all belief, the wonder of the Stra.s.sburg clock is largely traditional. The rooster that crows and flaps his wings is really the chief feature, for it is the rooster of the original clock, and thus has daily amused the generations for five hundred years.

Gutenberg, the first printer, began his earliest experiments in a cloister outside the Stra.s.sburg gates, and there is a small public square named for him, and in the center of it a fine statue with relief groups of the great printers of all nations. Of course Franklin was there and some other Americans. It gave us a sort of proprietary interest in that neighborhood, and a kindly feeling for the city in general.

It was afternoon when we left Stra.s.sburg, and by nightfall we were in the Black Forest--farther in than we had intended to be, by a good deal.

With our tires in a steady decline we had no intention of wandering off into dark depths inhabited by fairies and woodcutters and full of weird enchantments, with all of which Grimm's tales had made us quite familiar. We had intended merely to go in a little way, by a main road that would presently take us to Freiburg, where there would be a new supply of patches and linings, and even a possibility of tires, in case our need became very sore.

But the Black Forest made good its reputation for enchantments. When we came to the spot where, by our map, the road should lead to Freiburg, there were only a deserted mill, with a black depth of pine growing where the road should have been. Following along, we found ourselves getting deeper and deeper into the thick forest, while the lonely road became steeper and narrower and more and more awesome in the gathering evening. There were no villages, no more houses of any kind. There had been rain and the steep hills grew harder to climb. But perhaps a good fairy was helping us, too, a little, for our crippled tires held. Each time we mounted a perpendicular crest I listened for the back ones to go, but they remained firm.

By and by we started down--down _where_ we had no notion--but certainly down. Being under a spell, I forgot to put on the engine brake, and by the time we were halfway down the hill the brake bands were hot and smoking. By the time we were down the greasy linings were afire. There was a brook there, and we stopped and poured water on our hot-boxes and waited for them to cool. A woodcutter--he must have been one, for only woodcutters and fairies live in the Black Forest--came along and told us we must go to Haslach--that there was no other road to Freiburg, unless we turned around and went back nearly to Stra.s.sburg. I would not have gone back up that hill and through those darkening woods for much money.

So we went on and presently came out into a more open s.p.a.ce, and some houses; then we came to Haslach.

By our map we were in the depths of the Schwarzwald, and by observation we could see that we were in an old, beautiful village, of the right sort for that locality, and in front of a big inn, where frauleins came out to take our bags and show us up to big rooms--rooms that had great billowy beds, with other billowy beds for covering. After all, the enchantment was not so bad. And the supper that night of _Wiener schnitzel_ and _pfannekuchen_ was certainly good, and hot, and plentiful beyond belief.

But there was more trouble next morning. One of those old back tires was in a desperate condition, and trying to improve it I seemed to make matters worse. I took it off and put in a row of blow-out patches all the way around, after which the inner tubes popped as fast as I could put them in and blow them up. Three times I yanked that tire off, and then it began to occur to me that all those inside patches took up too much room. It would have occurred to any other man sooner, but it takes a long and violent period of pumping exercise to get a brain like mine really loosened up once it is caked by a good night's sleep.

So I yanked those patches out and put on our last hope--a spare tire in fairly decent condition, and patiently patched those bursted tubes--all of which work was done in a hot place under the eyes of a kindly but maddening audience.

Three times in the lovely land between Haslach and Freiburg Narcissa and I had to take off a tire and change tubes, those new patches being not air-proof. Still, we got on, and the scenery made up for a good deal.

Nothing could be more picturesque than the Black Forest houses, with their great overhanging thatched roofs--their rows and cl.u.s.ters of little windows, their galleries and ladders, and their clinging vines.

And what kindly people they are. Many of the roads are lined with cherry trees and this was cherry season. The trees were full of gatherers, and we had only to stop and offer to buy to have them load us with the delicious black fruit, the sweetest, juiciest cherries in the world.

They accepted money, but reluctantly; they seemed to prefer to give them to us, and more than once a boy or a man ran along by the car and threw in a great loaded branch, and laughed, and waved and wished us _gute reise_. But this had happened to us in France, too, in the Lorraine.

Chapter x.x.xIV

A LAND WHERE STORKS LIVE

We were at Freiburg in the lower edge of the Black Forest some time during the afternoon, one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen, one of the richest in color scheme. Large towns are not likely to be picturesque, but Freiburg, in spite of its general freshness, has a look of solid antiquity--an antiquity that has not been allowed to go to seed. Many of the houses, including the cathedral, are built of a rich red stone, and some of them have outer decorations, and nearly all of them have beautiful flowers in the windows and along the balconies. I should think a dweller in Freiburg would love the place.

Freiburg has been, and still is, celebrated for many things; its universities, its cathedral, its ancient buildings, in recent years for its discovery of "twilight sleep," the latest boon which science has offered to sorrow-laden humanity.

It is a curious road from Freiburg to Basle. Sometimes it is a highway, sometimes it is merely a farm road across fields. More than once we felt sure we were lost and must presently bring up in a farmyard. Then suddenly we would be between fine hedges or trees, on a wide road entering a village.

We had seen no storks when we left Freiburg. We had been told there were some in Stra.s.sburg, but no one had been able to point them out. We were disappointed, for we had pictured in our minds that, once really in the Black Forest, there would be, in almost any direction, a tall chimney surmounted by a big brushy nest, with a stork sitting in it, and standing by, supported on one very slim, very long, very perpendicular leg, another stork, keeping guard. This is the picture we had seen many times in the books, and we were grieved, even rather resentful, that it was not to be found in reality. We decided that it probably belonged only in the books, fairy books, and that while there might have been storks once, just as there had once been fairies, they had disappeared from mortal vision about the same time--that n.o.body in late years had really seen storks--that--

But just then we really saw some ourselves--sure-enough storks on an old steeple, two of them, exactly as they always are in the pictures, one nice mother stork sitting in a brushy nest and one nice father stork standing on his stiff, perpendicular leg.

We stopped the car to gaze. The church was in an old lost-looking village, which this stork seemed to own, for there were no others, and the few people we saw did not appear to have anything like the stork's proprietary interest. We could hardly take our eyes from that old picture, suddenly made reality.

We concluded, however, that it was probably the only stork family in Germany; but that, also, was a mistake. A little farther along, at another village, was another old stubby steeple, and another pair of storks, both standing this time, probably to see us go by. Every village had them now, but I think in only one village did we see more than a single pair. That little corner of the Schwarzwald will always remain to us a part separated from the rest of the world--a sort of back-water of fairyland.

The German customs office is on one side of a road, the Swiss on the other, and we stopped in a shady place and interviewed both. We did not dread these encounters any more. We had long since learned that if there was one cla.s.s of persons abroad likely to be more courteous than others to travelers, that cla.s.s is the customs officials.

This particular frontier was in the edge of Basle, and presently we had crossed a bridge and were in the city, a big, beautiful city, though not so handsome as Freiburg, not so rich in color, not quite so clean and floral.

We did not stop in Basle. There are wonders to be seen, but, all things considered, we thought it better to go on. With good luck we might reach Vevey next day, our European headquarters and base of supplies. We had been more than two months on the road already; it was important that we get to headquarters--more important than we knew.

Chapter x.x.xV

BACK TO VEVEY

So we went wandering through a rather unpopulous, semi-mountainous land--a prosperous land, from the look of it, with big isolated factory plants here and there by strongly flowing streams. They seemed to be making almost everything along those streams. The Swiss are an industrious people. Toward evening we came to a place we had never heard of before, a town of size and of lofty buildings--a place of much manufacturing, completely lost up in the hills, by name Moutier. It was better not to go farther that night, for I could see by our road map that there was going to be some steep climbing between Moutier and the Lake Geneva slope. There are at least two divides between Moutier and Geneva, and Swiss watersheds are something more than mere gentle slopes such as one might meet in Ohio, for instance, or Illinois. They are generally scrambles--they sometimes resemble ladders, though the road surface is usually pretty good, with a few notable exceptions. We met one of these exceptions next morning below Moutier. There had been rains, and the slippery roads between those perpendicular skysc.r.a.ping bluffs had not dried at all. Our route followed a rushing stream a little way; then it turned into the hill, and at that point I saw ahead of me a road that was not a road at all, but a semi-perpendicular wallow of mud and stone that went writhing up and up until it was lost somewhere among the trees. I had expected a good deal, but nothing as bad as this. I gave one wild, hopeless thought to our poor crippled rear tires, threw the lever from third to second, from second back to first, and let in every ounce of gasoline the engine would take. It really never occurred to me that we were going to make it. I did not believe anything could hold in that mud, and I expected in another minute to be on the side of the road, with nothing to do but hunt up an ox-team.

Whir! slop! slosh! slide!--grind!--on one side and on the other--into a hole and out of it, b.u.mp! thump! bang!--why, certainly we are climbing, but we would never make the top, never in the world--it was hardly to be expected of any car; and with those old tires! Never mind, we would go till we stalled, or skidded out of the road.

We were at the turn! We had made the turn! We were going straight up the last rise! Only a little more, now--ten feet--five feet, _six inches_!

_Hooray!_ we were on top of the hill, b'gosh!

I got out and looked at the back tires. It was incredible, impossible, but they were as sound and solid as when we left Moutier. Practically our whole weight had been on those tires all the way up that fearful log-haul, for that is what it was, yet those old tubes and outer envelopes had not shown a sign. Explain it if you can.

There was really no trouble after that. There were hills, but the roads were good. Our last day was a panorama of Swiss scenery in every form; deep gorges where we stopped on bridges to look down at rushing torrents far below; lofty mountains with narrow, skirting roads; beautiful water-fronts and lake towns along the lakes of Biel and Neufchatel, a final luncheon under a great spreading shade--a birthday luncheon, as it happened--and then, toward the end of the lovely July afternoon, a sudden vision, from high harvest meadows, of the snow-clad mountaintops beyond Lake Geneva--the peaks of the true Alps. And presently one saw the lake itself, the water--hazy, dreamy, summery, with little steamers so gay and toylike, plying up and down--all far below us as yet, for we were still among the high hayfields, where harvesters were pitching and raking, while before and behind us our road was a procession of hay wagons.

It was a continuous coast, now, down to Lausanne--the lake, as it seemed, rising up to meet us, its colors and outlines becoming more vivid, the lofty mountains beyond it approaching a little nearer, while almost underneath us a beautiful city was gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine.

We were by this time among the vineyards that terrace those south-facing steeps to the water's edge. Then we were at the outskirts of the city itself, still descending, still coasting, for Lausanne is built mainly on a mountainside. When we came to a comparative level at last, we were crossing a great bridge--one of those that tie the several slopes of the city together; then presently we were at St. Frances's church, the chief center, and felt almost at home, for we had been here a good many times before.

We did not stop. Vevey was twelve miles down the lake--we had a feverish desire to arrive there without having to pump those tires again, if possible. Leisurely, happily, we covered that final lap of our long tour. There is no more beautiful drive in Europe than that along Lake Geneva, from Lausanne to Vevey on a summer evening, and there never was a calmer, sweeter summer evening than that of our return. Oh, one must drive slowly on such an evening! We were anxious to arrive, but not to have the drive ended. Far down the lake the little towns we knew so well began to appear--Territet, Montreux, Clarens, Vevey la Tour--we could even make out the towers of Chillon. Then we pa.s.sed below the ancient village hanging to the mountainside, and there was Vevey, and there at its outskirts our pretty hotel with its big gay garden, the blue lake just in front, the driveway open. A moment more and the best landlady in Europe was welcoming us in the most musical French and German in the world. Our long round was ended--three thousand miles of the happiest travel to be found this side of paradise. By and by I went out to look at our faithful car in the little hotel garage. It had stood up to the last moment on those old tires. I suppose then the tension was too much.

The left rear was quite flat.

Chapter x.x.xVI

THE GREAT UPHEAVAL