It was for others now that his desires
flowed so strongly. Mere personal aims lay behind him in a faded heap,
their seductiveness exhausted.... He was a man with a Big Scheme now--
a Scheme to help the world....
The village seemed a dull enough place in those days, for the big Alps
beckoned beyond, and day and night he longed to climb them instead of
reading dull French grammar. But now all was different. It dislocated
his sense of time to find the place so curiously unchanged. The years
had played some trick upon him. While he himself had altered,
developed, and the rest, this village had remained identically the
same, till it seemed as if no progress of the outer world need ever
change it. The very people were so little altered--hair grown a little
whiter, shoulders more rounded, steps here and there a trifle slower,
but one and all following the old routine he knew so well as a boy.
Tante Jeanne, in particular, but for wrinkles that looked as though a
night of good sound sleep would smooth them all away, was the same
brave woman, still 'running' that Wistaria Pension against the burden
of inherited debts and mortgages. 'We're still alive,' she had said to
him, after greetings delayed a quarter of a century, 'and if we
haven't got ahead much, at least we haven't gone back!' There was no
more hint of complaint than this.
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