But oh! he wished he could drive all care from her path, and that this
glorious life should go on for ever.
When they got to the farm in the soft late afternoon light, the most
gracious mood came over his lady. It was just a Swiss farmhouse of many
storeys, the lower one for the cows and other animals, and the rest for
the family and industries. All was clean and in order, with that wonderful
outside neatness which makes Swiss châlets look like painted toy houses
popped down on the greensward without yard or byre. And these people were
well-to-do, and it was the best of its kind.
The _Bäuerin_, a buxom mother of many little ones, was nursing another not
four weeks old, a fat, prosperous infant in its quaint Swiss clothes. Her
broad face beamed with pride as she welcomed the gracious lady. Old
acquaintances they appeared, and they exchanged greetings. Foreign
languages were not Paul's strong point, and he caught not a word of
meaning in the German _patois_ the good woman talked. But his lady was
voluble, and seemed to know each flaxen-haired child by name, though it
was the infant which longest arrested her attention. She held it in her
arms. And Paul had never seen her look so young or so beautiful.
The good woman left them alone while she prepared some coffee for them in
the adjoining kitchen, followed by her troop of _kinder_. Only the little
one still lay in the lady's arms. She spoke not a word--she sang to it a
cradle-song, and the thought came to Paul that she seemed as an angel, and
this must be an echo of his own early heaven before his life had descended
to earth.
A strange peace came over him as he sat there watching her, his thoughts
vague and dreamy of some beautiful sweet tenderness--he knew not what.
Ere the woman returned with the coffee the lady looked up from her
crooning and met his eyes--all her soul was aglow in hers--while she
whispered as he bent over to meet her lips:
"Yes, some day, my sweetheart--yes."
And that magic current of sympathy which was between them made Paul know
what she meant. And the gladness of the gods fell upon him and exalted
him, and his blue eyes swam with tears.
Ah! that was a thought, if that could ever be!
All the way back in the carriage he could only kiss her. Their emotion
seemed too deep for words.
And this night was the most divine of any they had spent on the
Bürgenstock. But there was in it an essence about which only the angels
could write.
CHAPTER XIII
Do you know the Belvedere at the Rigi Kaltbad, looking over the corner to
a vast world below, on a fair day in May, when the air is clear as crystal
and the lake ultra-marine? When the Bernese Oberland undulates away in
unbroken snow, its pure whiteness like cold marble, the shadows grey-blue?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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