When young Mark heard a soft tapping at his door, though out of bed, he was getting on but dreamily--it was so jolly to watch the mountains lying out in this early light like huge beasts.That one they were going up, with his head just raised above his paws, looked very far away out there! Opening the door an inch, he whispered:
"Is it late?"
"Five o'clock; aren't you ready?"
It was awfully rude of him to keep her waiting! And he was soon down in the empty dining-room, where a sleepy maid was already bringing in their coffee.Anna was there alone.She had on a flax-blue shirt, open at the neck, a short green skirt, and a grey-green velvety hat, small, with one black-cock's feather.Why could not people always wear such nice things, and be as splendid-looking! And he said:
"You do look jolly, Mrs.Stormer!"
She did not answer for so long that he wondered if it had been rude to say that.But she DID look so strong, and swift, and happy-looking.
Down the hill, through a wood of larch-trees, to the river, and across the bridge, to mount at once by a path through hay-fields.
How could old Stormer stay in bed on such a morning! The peasant girls in their blue linen skirts were already gathering into bundles what the men had scythed.One, raking at the edge of a field, paused and shyly nodded to them.She had the face of a Madonna, very calm and grave and sweet, with delicate arched brows--a face it was pure pleasure to see.The boy looked back at her.
Everything to him, who had never been out of England before, seemed strange and glamorous.The chalets, with their long wide burnt-brown wooden balconies and low-hanging eaves jutting far beyond the walls; these bright dresses of the peasant women; the friendly little cream-coloured cows, with blunt, smoke-grey muzzles.Even the feel in the air was new, that delicious crisp burning warmth that lay so lightly as it were on the surface of frozen stillness;and the special sweetness of all places at the foot of mountains--scent of pine-gum, burning larch-wood, and all the meadow flowers and grasses.But newest of all was the feeling within him--a sort of pride, a sense of importance, a queer exhilaration at being alone with her, chosen companion of one so beautiful.
They passed all the other pilgrims bound the same way--stout square Germans with their coats slung through straps, who trailed behind them heavy alpenstocks, carried greenish bags, and marched stolidly at a pace that never varied, growling, as Anna and the boy went by:
"Aber eilen ist nichts!"
But those two could not go fast enough to keep pace with their spirits.This was no real climb--just a training walk to the top of the Nuvolau; and they were up before noon, and soon again descending, very hungry.When they entered the little dining-room of the Cinque Torre Hutte, they found it occupied by a party of English people, eating omelettes, who looked at Anna with faint signs of recognition, but did not cease talking in voices that all had a certain half-languid precision, a slight but brisk pinching of sounds, as if determined not to tolerate a drawl, and yet to have one.Most of them had field-glasses slung round them, and cameras were dotted here and there about the room.Their faces were not really much alike, but they all had a peculiar drooping smile, and a particular lift of the eyebrows, that made them seem reproductions of a single type.Their teeth, too, for the most part were a little prominent, as though the drooping of their mouths had forced them forward.They were eating as people eat who distrust the lower senses, preferring not to be compelled to taste or smell.
