Over the Stelvio Pass

"Over the Stelvio Pass" by Robert Barr is a captivating travelogue that chronicles the author's adventurous journey through the stunning landscapes of the Stelvio Pass, one of the highest mountain passes in the Alps. Blending personal anecdotes with vivid descriptive passages, Barr explores the rich culture, breathtaking vistas, and challenges of traversing this iconic route. The book combines elements of adventure, exploration, and a deep appreciation for nature, making it a delightful read for anyone who enjoys travel literature and the allure of the great outdoors.

• Short story

								
There is no question about it, Tina Lenz was a flirt, as she had a
perfect right to be, living as she did on the romantic shores of Como,
celebrated in song, story, and drama as the lover's blue lake. Tina had
many admirers, and it was just like her perversity to favor the one to
whom her father most objected. Pietro, as the father truly said, was a
beggarly Italian driver, glad of the few francs he got from the
travellers he took over the humble Maloga to the Engadine, or over the
elevated Stelvio to the Tyrol, the lowest and the highest passes in
Europe. It was a sad blow to the hopes as well as the family pride of
old Lenz when Tina defiantly announced her preference for the driver of
the Zweispanner. Old Lenz came of a long and distinguished line of
Swiss hotel-keepers, noted for the success with which they squeezed the
last attainable centime from the reluctant traveller. It was bad enough
that he had no son to inherit his justly celebrated hotel
(pension rates for a stay of not less than eight days), but he
hoped for a son-in-law, preferably of Swiss extraction, to whom he
might, in his old age, hand over the lucrative profession of
deferentially skinning the wealthy Englishman. And now Tina had
deliberately chosen a reckless, unstable Italian who would, in a short
time, scatter to the winds the careful accumulation of years.

"Pietro, the scoundrel, will not have one piastra of my money," cried
the old man wrathfully, dropping into Italian as he was speaking about
a native of Italy.

"No, I shall see that he doesn't," said the girl. "I shall hold the
purse, and he must earn what he spends."

"But if you marry him, you will not have any of it."

"Oh yes, I shall, papa," said Tina confidently; "you have no one else
to leave it to. Besides, you are not old, and you will be reconciled to
our marriage long before there is any question of leaving money."

"Don't be so sure of that," returned the hotel-keeper, much mollified,
because he was old and corpulent, and red in the face.

He felt that he was no match for his daughter, and that she would
likely have her own way in the long run, but he groaned when he thought
of Pietro as proprietor of the prosperous pension. Tina insisted
that she would manage the hotel on the strictest principles of her
ancestors, and that she would keep Pietro lounging about the place as a
picturesque ornament to attract sentimental visitors, who seemed to see
some unaccountable beauty about the lake and its surroundings.

Meanwhile Landlord Lenz promptly discharged Pietro, and cursed the day
and hour he had first engaged him. He informed the picturesque young
man that if he caught him talking to his daughter he would promptly
have him arrested for some little thefts from travellers of which he
had been guilty, although the landlord had condoned them at the time of
discovery, probably because he had a fellow-feeling in the matter, and
saw the making of a successful hotel proprietor in the Zweispanner
driver. Pietro, on his part, to make things pleasant all round, swore
that on the first favourable opportunity he would run six inches of
knife into the extensive corporation of the landlord, hoping in that
length of steel to reach a vital spot. The ruddy face of old Lenz paled
at this threat, for the Swiss are a peace-loving people, and he told
his daughter sadly that she was going to bring her father's grey hairs
in sorrow to the grave through the medium of her lover's stiletto. This
feat, however, would have been difficult to perform, as the girl
flippantly pointed out to him, for the old man was as bald as the
smooth round top of the Ortler; nevertheless, she spoke to her lover
about it, and told him frankly that if there was any knife practice in
that vicinity he need never come to see her again. So the young man
with the curly black hair and the face of an angel, swallowed his
resentment against his desired father-in-law, and promised to behave
himself. He secured a position as driver at another hotel, for the
season was brisk, and he met Tina when he could, at the bottom of the
garden overlooking the placid lake, he on one side of the stone wall,
she on the other.

If Landlord Lenz knew of these meetings he did not interfere; perhaps
he was frightened of Pietro's stiletto, or perhaps he feared his
daughter's tongue; nevertheless, the stars in their courses were
fighting for the old man. Tina was naturally of a changeable
disposition, and now that all opposition had vanished, she began to
lose interest in Pietro. He could talk of little else than horses, and
interesting as such conversation undoubtedly is, it palls upon a girl
of eighteen leaning over a stone wall in the golden evening light that
hovers above Como. There are other subjects, but that is neither here
nor there, as Pietro did not recognise the fact, and, unfortunately for
him, there happened to come along a member of the great army of the
unemployed who did.

He came that way just in the nick of time, and proud as old Lenz was of
his pension and its situation, it was not the unrivalled
prospect (as stated in the hotel advertisements) that stopped him. It
was the sight of a most lovely girl leaning over the stone wall at the
foot of the garden, gazing down at the lake and singing softly to
herself.

"By Jove!" said young Standish, "she looks as if she were waiting for
her lover." Which, indeed, was exactly what Tina was doing, and it
augured ill for the missing man that she was not the least impatient
at his delay.

"The missing lover is a defect in the landscape which ought to be
supplied," murmured young Standish as he unslung his knapsack, which,
like that of the late John Brown, was strapped upon his back. He
entered the pension and inquired the rates. Old Lenz took one
glance at the knickerbockers, and at once asked twice as much as he
would have charged a native. Standish agreed to the terms with that
financial recklessness characteristic of his island, and the old man
regretted he had not asked a third more.

"But never mind," he said to himself as the newly arrived guest
disappeared to his room, "I shall make it up on the extras."

With deep regret it must be here admitted that young Standish was an
artist. Artists are met with so often in fiction that it is a matter of
genuine grief to have to deal with one in a narrative of fact, but it
must be remembered that artists flock as naturally to the lake of Como
as stock-brokers to the Exchange, and in setting down an actual
statement of occurrences in that locality the unfortunate writer finds
himself confronted with artists at every turn. Standish was an artist
in water-colours, but whether that is a mitigation or an aggravation of
the original offense the relater knoweth not. He speedily took to
painting Tina amidst various combinations of lake and mountain scenery.
Tina over the garden wall as he first saw her; Tina under an arch of

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes