Chapter 32

CHAPTER XXXII [The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano]

We located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one of those huge
establishments which the needs of modern travel have created in every
attractive spot on the continent. There was a great gathering at dinner,
and, as usual, one heard all sorts of languages.

The table d'hôte was served by waitresses dressed in the quaint and
comely costume of the Swiss peasants. This consists of a simple gros de
laine, trimmed with ashes of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre
saint gris, cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise
and narrow insertions of pâte de foie gras backstitched to the mise
en scène in the form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives to the wearer a
singularly piquant and alluring aspect.

One of these waitresses, a woman of forty, had side-whiskers reaching
half-way down her jaws. They were two fingers broad, dark in color,
pretty thick, and the hairs were an inch long. One sees many women on
the continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this was the only
woman I saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers.

After dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves about the
front porches and the ornamental grounds belonging to the hotel, to
enjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight deepened toward darkness, they
gathered themselves together in that saddest and solemnest and most
constrained of all places, the great blank drawing-room which is the
chief feature of all continental summer hotels. There they grouped
themselves about, in couples and threes, and mumbled in bated voices,
and looked timid and homeless and forlorn.

There was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy, asthmatic
thing, certainly the very worst miscarriage in the way of a piano that
the world has seen. In turn, five or six dejected and homesick ladies
approached it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, and
retired with the lockjaw. But the boss of that instrument was to come,
nevertheless; and from my own country--from Arkansaw.

She was a brand-new bride, innocent, girlish, happy in herself and her
grave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was about eighteen,
just out of school, free from affections, unconscious of that
passionless multitude around her; and the very first time she smote
that old wreck one recognized that it had met its destiny. Her stripling
brought an armful of aged sheet-music from their room--for this bride
went "heeled," as you might say--and bent himself lovingly over and got
ready to turn the pages.

The bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from one end of the keyboard
to the other, just to get her bearings, as it were, and you could see
the congregation