Chapter 1: an Inheritance

There was a red-headed slattern sweeping the veranda—nobody else visible about the house. All the shutters of the stone and timber chalet were closed; cow-barn, stable, springhouse and bottling house appeared to be deserted. Weeds smothered the garden where a fountain played above a brimming basin of gray stone; cat-grass grew rank on the oval lawn around the white-washed flag-pole from which no banner flapped. An intense and heated silence possessed the place. Tall mountains circled it, cloud-high, enormous, gathered around the little valley as though met in solemn council there under the vast pavilion of sky.

From the zenith of the azure-tinted tent hung that Olympian lantern called the sun, flooding every crested snow-peak with a nimbus of pallid fire.

In these terms of belles-lettres I called Smith’s attention to the majesty of the scene.

“Very impressive,” remarked Smith, lighting a cigarette and getting out of the Flivver;—”I trust that our luncheon may impress us as favorably.” And he looked across the weedy drive at the red-headed slattern who was now grooming the veranda with a slopping mop.

“Her ankles might be far less ornamental,” he observed. I did not look. Ankles had long ceased to mean anything to me.

After another moment’s hesitation I handed Smith his suit-case, picked up my own, and descended from the Flivver. The Swiss officer at the wheel, Captain Schey, and the Swiss officer of Gendarmerie beside him, Major Schoot, remained heavily uninterested in the proceedings. To think of nothing is bovine; to think of nothing at all, and do that thinking in German, is porcine. I inspected their stolid features: no glimmer of human intelligence illuminated them. Their complexions reminded me of that moist pink hue which characterizes a freshly cut boiled ham.

Smith leisurely examined the buildings and their surroundings, including the red-headed girl, and I saw him shrug his shoulders. He was right; it was a silly situation and a ridiculous property for a New Yorker to inherit. And the longer I surveyed my new property the more worried I became.

I said in English to Major Schoot, one of the ample, pig-pink gentlemen in eye-glasses and the uniform of the Swiss Gendarmerie: “So this is Schwindlewald, is it?”

He blinked his pale little eyes without interest at the low chalet and out-buildings; then his vague, weak gaze flickered up at the terrific mountains around us.

“Yes,” he replied, “this is now your property, Mr. O’Ryan.”

“Well, I don’t want it,” I said irritably. “I’ve told you that several times.”

“Quite right,” remarked Smith; “what is Mr. O’Ryan going to do with a Swiss hotel, a cow-barn, a bottling factory, one red-headed girl, and several large mountains? I ask you that, Major?”

I was growing madder and madder; and Smith’s flippancy offended me.

“I’m an interior decorator,” I said to Major Schoot. “I’ve told you that a dozen times, too. I don’t wish to conduct a hotel in Switzerland or Greenland or Coney Island or any other land! I do not desire either to possess kine or to deprive them of their milk. Moreover, I do not wish to bottle spring water. Why then am I not permitted to sell this bunch of Swiss scenery and go home? What about my perfectly harmless business?”

Major Schoot rolled his solemn fish-blue eyes: “The laws of the canton and of the Federal Government,” he began in his weak tenor voice, “require that any alien inheriting property in the Swiss Republic, shall reside upon that property and administer it for the period of not less than one year before offering the said property for sale or rent——”

He already had told me that a dozen times; and a dozen times I had resisted, insisting that there must be some way to circumvent such a ridiculous Swiss law. Of what use are laws unless one can circumvent them, as we do?

I now gazed at him with increasing animosity. In his uniform of Major of Swiss Gendarmes he appeared the personification of everything officially and Teutonically obtuse.

“Do you realize,” I said, “that my treatment by the Swiss Confederation and by the Federal police has been most extraordinary? A year ago when my uncle’s will was probated, and that German attorney in Berne notified me in New York that I had inherited this meaningless mess of house and landscape, he also wrote that upon coming here and complying with the Swiss law, I could immediately dispose of the property if I so desired? Why the devil did he write that?”

“That was a year ago,” nodded Major Schoot. Captain Schey regarded me owlishly. “A new law,” he remarked, “has been since enacted.”

“I have suspected,” said I fiercely, “that this brand new law enacted in such a hellofa hurry was enacted expressly to cover this case of mine. Why? Why does your government occupy itself with me and my absurd property up here in these picture-book Alps? What difference does it make to Switzerland whether I sell it or try to run it? And another thing!—” I continued, madder than ever at the memory of recent wrongs—”Why do your police keep visiting me, inspecting me and my papers, trailing me around? Why do large, moon-faced gentlemen seat themselves beside me in restaurants and cafés and turn furtive eyes upon me? Why do they open newspapers and punch holes in them to scrutinize me? Why do they try to listen to my conversation addressed to other people? Why do strange ladies lurk at my elbow when hotel clerks hand me my mail? Dammit, why?”

Major Schoot and Captain Schey regarded me in tweedle-dum-and-tweedle-dee-like silence: then the Major said: “Under extraordinary conditions extraordinary precautions are necessary.” And the Captain added: “These are war times and Switzerland must observe an impartial neutrality.”

“You mean a German neutrality,” I thought to myself, already unpleasantly aware that all the banks and all the business of Switzerland are owned by Teutons and that ninety per cent of the Swiss are German-Swiss, and speak German habitually.

And still at the same time I realized that, unless brutally menaced and secretly coerced by the boche the Swiss were first of all passionately and patriotically Swiss, even if they might be German after that fact. They wished to be let alone and to remain a free people. And the Hun was blackmailing them.

Smith had now roamed away through the uncut grass, smoking a cigarette and probably cursing me out—a hungry, disconsolate figure against the background of deserted buildings.

I turned to Major Schoot and Captain Schey:

“Very well, gentlemen; if there’s no immediate way of selling this property I’ll live here until your law permits me to sell it. But in the meanwhile it’s mine. I own it. I insist on my right of privacy. I shall live here in indignant solitude. And if any stranger ever sets a profane foot upon this property I shall call in the Swiss police and institute legal proceedings which——”

“Pardon,” interrupted Major Schoot mildly, “but the law of Switzerland provides for Government regulation of all inns, rest-houses, chalets, and hotels. All such public resorts must remain open and receive guests.”

“I won’t open my chalet!” I said. “I’d rather fortify it and die fighting! I hereby formally refuse to open it to the public!”

“It is open,” remarked Captain Schey, “theoretically.”

“Theoretically,” added Major Schoot, “it never has been closed. The law says it must not be closed. Therefore it has not been closed. Therefore it is open. Therefore you are expected to entertain guests at a reasonable rate——”

“What if I don’t?” I demanded.

“Unhappily, in such a case, the Federal Government regretfully confiscates the property involved and administers it according to law.”

“But I wish to reside here privately until such time as I am permitted to sell the place! Can’t I do that? Am I not even permitted privacy in this third-rate musical comedy country?”

“Monsieur, the Chalet of Schwindlewald has always been a public ‘Cure, ‘ not a private estate. The tourist public is always at liberty to come here to drink the waters and enjoy the climate and the view. Monsieur, your late Uncle, purchased the property on that understanding.”

“My late Uncle,” said I, “was slightly eccentric. Why in God’s name he should have purchased a Swiss hotel and bottling works in the Alps he can perhaps explain to his Maker. None of his family know. And all I have ever heard is that somebody interested him in a plan to drench Europe with bottled spring-water at a franc a quart; and that a further fortune was to be extracted from this property by trapping a number of Swiss chamois and introducing the species into the Andes. Did anybody ever hear of such nonsense?”

The Swiss officers gaped at me. “Very remarkable,” said Major Schoot without any inflection in his voice or any expression upon his face.

Smith, weary of prowling about the place, came over and said in a low voice: “Cut it out, old chap, and start that red-headed girl to cooking. Aren’t you hungry?”

I was hungry, but I was also irritated and worried.

I stood still considering the situation for a few moments, one eye on my restless comrade, the other reverting now and then to the totally emotionless military countenances in front of me.

“Very well,” I said. “My inheritance appears to be valuable, according to the Swiss appraisal. I shall, therefore, pay my taxes, observe the laws of Switzerland, and reside here until I am at liberty to dispose of the property. And I’ll entertain guests if I must. But I don’t think I’m likely to be annoyed by tourists while this war lasts. Do you?”