I went to the front door, and in the loud, confident voice of one who, after a short absence, has come back at the proper hour, to find his dinner not ready, I called out, "Marie, are those chops not done yet?"
A dish clattered on the floor. We could hear the splash of the fragments on the cool flagstones of the inner kitchen.
"Marie, old Lazybones! Here have I been twelve hours on the mountains, and not even an omelette ready!"
"It is the Herr-with-the-Long-Legs – the Herr who kept my good dinner waiting while he ran about the 'bergen'! And now – oh, the Good-for-Nothing, the Vaurien, he come back to old Marie crying hunger – just as he used to do more than a score of years ago up in the Riffel House!"
And before I knew it I was embraced and kissed on both cheeks by this tall, gaunt old woman – greatly, of course, to the joy of Sweetheart. But her turn was yet to come. Madame Marie continued scolding me even in the utmost expansion of her greeting. She held me at arm's length and scolded. She scolded because I had come without warning, and because I had not come sooner. Scolded because I had let the years slip past till her hair was white like the snow on the mountains, on which I had so often tarried till my dinner was burnt to a cinder! While mine – but there – who was this with me? Was I married? "Your daughter!" A daughter like that, and old Marie getting so blind that she had called me bad names – the names of the old time – in her hearing. But Mademoiselle would understand! She would pardon a poor old woman who had known her father, and been a mother to him, years and years before the young lady was born, or even thought of!
So, indeed, Mademoiselle understood very well. No forgiveness was necessary. She was all too happy. And while the dinner was preparing, she set down all these facts in her notebook, so that when Madame Marie came to the door to say that the omelette was ready to be put before us on the table, she called to Sweetheart that she was indeed her father's own daughter. For that in the old days at the Riffel House he had always been like that, sitting down on the very glacier to scribble in his notebook all about nothing, and so letting good food spoil because of his foolishness!
And so it happened that on our way back from Madame Marie's, Sweetheart let me see the first pages of her Diary. I found them so interesting that we arranged on the spot how they were to be published. And so here they are, ready (if you be simple) to please you as well as they pleased me.
II
When the Roads Were Sweet, Safe and Silent.
So, preliminaries being settled, the elder of the Sweetheart Travelers was entrusted with the editing of this book, on the express condition that he must not edit it! Strange but true! It is just sixteen years since, with the assistance of Mr. Gordon Browne's pencil, he began the preparation of the first series of Sweetheart. Ever since which, for him, fortunate day, he has been under promise to supply a second volume having for title Sweethearts at Home. From all over the world children keep writing to ask him for more adventures with his little companion on the front basket-seat of his tricycle. Gladly would he respond to this wish of unseen baby lips, generally expressed on ruled paper in straggly lines of doubtful spelling. But, alas! Sweetheart is nineteen and tall. She would be the death of her poor father (and of the machine) at the very first hill. Now she rides a "free-wheel" of her own, and saddest of all to relate, prefers Hugh John or other younger company to her ancientest of comrades. That is, on cycling trips. But she makes up to him in other ways, and hardly anything gives her greater pleasure than to "revisit the roads and ridges" where, sixteen years ago, her baby fingers, vigilant on the cycle bell, called the preceding wayfarer to attention.
Then we had the world to ourselves, save for a red farm cart or so. Then there were no motor-cars, no motor-buses, no clappering insolent monocycles! It was in some wise the rider's age of gold. The country still lay waste and sweet and silent about him. The ignoble "toot-toot" and rhinoceros snort of the pursuing monster was unknown – unknown, too, the odors which leave the wayfarer fretful and angry behind them.
"Get out of the way, all you mean little people!" was not yet the commonest of highway sounds. The green hedgerows were not hidden under a gray dust veil. The Trossachs, the Highlands, the English lakes, and our own fair Galloway roads were not splashed with the iridescent fragrance of petrol. Ah, we took Time by the forelock, Sweetheart, you and I, in those old days when the hawthorn was untainted and the wayside honeysuckles still gave forth a good smell. True, Sweetheart (as above stated) sounded a bell. But even she did it with relish, and the trill carried tenderly on the ear, like the mass-bell rung in some great cathedral as the service culminates, each time more thrilling and insistent. And it was good to see the smile of the folk as they stood aside, and the nod which red-cloaked Sweetheart gave them as we glided noiselessly past!
Ah, a good time! Neither of us are in the least likely to see a better! For during these fifteen years there has come upon our land a strange thing, a kind of plague of heartlessness; the return, perhaps, of mechanically civilized man to the brute, or (if that be too strong) at least to the ruling-out of all gracious consideration for the rights of wayfarers.
I am sure that the "motoring-habit" is more poisonous and more injurious to the nations in this Year of Grace, 1911, than all the poisons that ever were "listed." It is the Indian hemp of the soul, which makes even good men mad. The earth may still belong to the Lord, though, standing afar off, I have sometimes my doubts. But of a certainty the roads between city and city, the creeper-hung village street where, generation after generation, children played, the quiet lanes where the old folk walked arm in arm, are now given over to the Minotaur whose name is "My Lord Teuf-Teuf."
Every day in all lands (called civilized) the journals are filled with a lengthening tale of victims – of the little child going to school, bag on back; the bairn playing with his soldiers in the dust; the deaf old lady walking along the lanes, so safe and quiet a few years ago. I can see her pattering about, looking for a few roses to grace her room – roses to dream over, roses to call back the good days now past for ever.
"HRRUMPH! HRRUMPH!" It is the trump of doom – behind her, unseen, to her unheard. And in the next number of the local paper there will be the briefest of paragraphs: "No blame attaches to the proprietor or to his excellent and competent chauffeur."
Sometimes, if one has the honor to be run over by the Highest of the High Born, they do inquire for you at the hospital, or even send a wreath for the coffin. For this one should even be content to die. And the paragraphs in the papers recording the gift quite make up to the mourners for their loss.
But even so, this is on the heights of motoring generosity. For at least noblesse does sometimes oblige. But the more recently and the more ignobly the Over-Slaughterman has been enriched, the more ignorant of all knowledge he is, the less he has seen of other lands, the fewer incursions he has made into the world of books and art, the less he possesses of that kindly natural consideration which the King-Gentleman shares with the Working-Gentleman – the more cruel and selfish he is when he gets himself upon the road, rushing along, disguised to the eyes, fakir-mad in a kind of devilish Juggernaut joy, to the holocaust of innumerable innocent victims.
"The police failed to obtain the number of the car which caused the accident."
Naturally! Excellent Under-Slaughterman, vulgarly called Chauffeur! Knows his business! He will ask for a rise next week and he will get it. That paragraph about the little girl trailed along for fifty yards under the rear wheels, with – Hold your tongue, you understand, Higgins – the details would not look well posted up in my club! Brave Under-Slaughterman! He winks an eye, as he has a right to do when he puts his latest-earned gratuity in his pocket.
But, halt there! I will do no man an injustice if I can help it. There are motorists and drivers of motor-cars who are noways "motor-fiends," who conduct a car as safely and carefully as in other times they would a pair of horses.
