this moment Jack appeared. It seemed that he had been putting the
mule (the one available mule) through his paces, and the wretched
fellow was laughing. "It's not funny, at all," said I, thinking it was
the situation which amused him. But Jack explained that it wasn't
that. "It's the brute's tail," said he. "When you see it, you'll know
what I mean."
I did know, at sight. The organ--if a mule's tail can be called an
organ--had mean proportions and a hideous activity which expressed to
my mind a base and depraved nature. Had there been no other of his
kind on earth, I would still have refused to take this beast as my
companion; and after a few moments' feverish discussion, it was
arranged that after all we must go through the Rhone Valley to-morrow
to Martigny.
But the Rhone Valley, radiant in morning light, heaped coals of fire
upon my head. I had maligned perfection. There was all the difference
between the country between Brig and Martigny seen from a
railway-carriage window, and seen from a motor car, that there is
between the back of a woman's head when she is giving you the cut
direct, and her face when she is smiling on you.
The Rhone Valley tame! The Rhone Valley monotonous! It was poetry
ready for the pen of Shelley, and a scene for the brush of Turner. The
little towns sleeping on the shoulders of the mountains, or rising
turreted from hardy rocks bathed by the golden river; the peeps up
cool lateral valleys to blue glaciers; the near green slopes and
distant, waving seas of snowy splendour left a series of pictures in
the mind; and best of all was Martigny's tower pointing a slender
finger skyward from its high hill.
Late in the afternoon, as the car whirled us into the garden of the
Hotel Mont Blanc, we came face to face with two mules. They had
brought back a man and a girl from some excursion. The landlord was at
the door to receive his guests. Jack, Molly, and I flung the same
question at his head, at the same moment. Was the situation as it had
been when he telephoned? Could I hire a mule and a man, not for a day
or two, but for a long journey--a journey half across the world if I
liked?
The answer was that I might have five mules and five men for a
journey all across the world if it were my pleasure.
It sounded like a problem in mental arithmetic, but I thanked my stars
that there seemed no further need for me to struggle over its
solution.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VIII
The Mak
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