A little excitement had lately come into his life from the advent of a new uncle from India, whom Squib did not remember ever to have seen before. Uncle Ronald was their father’s youngest brother, and he had had a bad attack of jungle fever, and was to spend two years in Europe. He came straight to Rutland Chase, and Squib gave up much of his time to the entertainment of this new uncle, who spent a good part of every day in a long bamboo chair in the big hall, and seemed amused by the chatter of his small nephew. Squib felt it the more incumbent upon him to look after his uncle because his father was very busy, and his mother had been ailing all the spring-time, so that there was often nobody else to act as companion to this other invalid – who did not, however, seem to be suffering from anything worse than a little lassitude and languor. Still the doctor came regularly to see both him and Lady Mary Rutland, and one day as the little boy was perched up in the window seat of the big hall, getting up a lesson for Mademoiselle and keeping an eye upon Uncle Ronald at the same time, something very interesting happened.
It was a beautiful warm day early in May, and father had been driving mother out in the pony-carriage for the first time. As Squib was sitting there, the carriage returned, and when Colonel Rutland led his wife into the house the pair seemed to be discussing something very earnestly together. Catching sight of his brother in his favourite chair, the Colonel exclaimed, —
“I say, Ronald, what do you think of a three months’ run to Switzerland. We’ve just met Dr. Dawes in the village, and he says that’s what both you and Mary want, to set you up again. I’ve not had a holiday myself since I don’t know when. I’m half-bitten by the notion, and Mary is quite on fire to be off!”
“Oh, Bruce! I did not say that. I confess it has attractions for me; but there is so much to think of. There are the children – ”
“Oh, the children will be all right! Mademoiselle will keep guard over the girls, and as for the twins, why, they are as safe with nurse as with us, and the boys are safe at school till the end of July, when we shall be back. There’s only Squib, who might get into mischief if left altogether to petticoat government, but I’ve half a mind to take the child with us. His observations of foreign life would amuse us, and can’t he speak German as well as French? I’m sure that Swiss nursemaid of his taught him some barbarous patois of her own.”
“Ah yes – Lisa; I’m afraid she did teach him some very outlandish German-Swiss patois, if he hasn’t forgotten it by this time. I wonder if he would like to go with us. I should enjoy having one child with me, as you and Ronald are sure to go off mountaineering when he is stronger. Only it would be a great interruption to his lessons.”
“Oh, bother the lessons!” cried Uncle Ronald. “Squib knows as much as he needs to make a good start at school – more than I did when I went, I know. He’s a sharp little chap, and will soon pick up any lost time. Let’s take him along by all means. I shall want an interpreter; I expect Asiatic languages are more in my line than European. Squib shall come as my interpreter. He speaks French first-rate, I know, and he’ll do all the talking for me. Hallo! there he is! Come here, Squib, and tell us how you’d like to go to Switzerland.”
Squib came forward with eyes shining with excitement. Ever since he could remember anything it had been his dream to go to Switzerland, and he could hardly believe his ears now that he heard the thing spoken of as an immediate prospect. Switzerland was as a dream to him – a dream of wonder and enchantment. From his earliest infancy he had heard entrancing stories of great, lonely snow-peaks, whispering pine woods, little chalets perched high up in green alps, brawling torrents, great, awful glaciers with dark mysterious crevasses, and spirits of the mountains who revealed themselves only to those upon whom the spell of the mountains had fallen. Crowds of images rose up in the child’s mind as he slowly came forward, and the stress of his imaginative flights was so great that it held him mute for a longer time than usual; but when he did give expression to his opinion, it was with such enthusiasm and emphasis that his father and uncle both laughed aloud, and it became a settled thing from that time forward that Squib was to accompany the party to Switzerland, whenever the start should be made.
Squib, who was told that he might consider himself free of lessons from this very day until he went to school in September, closed the book he was still holding as though in a dream, and wandered out into the sunny garden with a heart swelling with wonder and delight.
Switzerland! He was really going to Switzerland! He should see with his own eyes the dazzling snow peaks, hear the roar of the avalanches breaking the eternal silence of those lonely valleys. He would see (as he thought at least) the chamois springing from peak to peak, and hear the yodeling of the peasants as they took their cattle up into the green pastures. He would see it all – hear it all – all those things of which Lisa had told him, of which he had dreamed until he seemed to be able to see them at will when he shut his eyes. Perhaps he would even see Lisa again herself; for had she not returned to Switzerland? And Switzerland was such a little country on the map!
Lisa had been Squib’s own peculiar attendant, and he had given to her a very large slice of his childish affections. As has been said in the preceding chapter, Squib had had a little baby brother when he was not much more than a baby himself, and this little brother had been so ailing that nurse had had to give up almost all her time to him, and so Lisa – a young Swiss maid who was leaving a friend’s nursery just at that juncture – was engaged to take entire charge of the elder little boy.
Having once come in that capacity, she stayed on for many years – until, in fact, Squib had no longer any need of a nurse; the delicate little brother who died, and the little twin sisters who were still in the nursery, had always occupied all nurse’s attention, and Lisa had been retained year after year to attend to Master Squib, and to help with her needle in the care of the little girls’ clothes. Lisa had loved Squib from the first with a singular devotion, which he repaid by a warm affection. He had learned to speak her curious patois as naturally as he had learned the English of his parents and sisters, and it seemed as if the power of using her native tongue again unsealed the silent Lisa’s lips, for to Squib she would talk by the hour together of her country, her home, her people, and all the glories and the wonders of that land of mountains and wood and water whence she had come. She had much of the imaginative temperament which is so often found amongst a mountain race, and to her nursling she talked with the utmost freedom and unreserve. Not only did she speak of the things she had heard and seen, but she also told him long stories of fairies and water-spirits, genii of the mountain, and the little brown men who dwelt in the caves and rocks, till the child’s head was as full of enthusiasm as her own for her native land, as crowded with fanciful imaginings as if he had been a son of the soil himself.
Lisa had now been gone for nearly a year, and some of these imaginings had been growing a little faint and hazy; but they were all there, lying dormant, and ready to wake into active life on the smallest provocation, and as Squib wandered down the garden and into the yard, and found Czar all ready to share his ramble and his talk, he poured a whole volley of excited information into the dog’s ears, lapsing almost unconsciously into Lisa’s German patois as he did so, which, however, seemed to make no difference to Czar’s power of comprehension.
The next days seemed to go by like magic. Squib found himself raised to a position of some importance in the nursery, on the strength of his approaching departure. The tailor from the next town called to measure him for two new suits of clothes; his sisters made much of him because they were so soon to lose him; and all the servants talked to him about his journey, and called him a lucky little boy to be taken.
It was rather hard to think of leaving Charger, who was such a very great friend and companion; but coachman said that it would do Charger a “world of good” to get a run out