The Princess Passes by Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

A >> Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson >> The Princess Passes

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"'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands," might be said
of a hotel bath-tub as well as of a stolen purse; and having once
known the linen-lined bath of Aosta, I was promptly spoiled for
common, un-lined tubs. This was a lesson not to form hasty opinions;
but being a normal man, I shall no doubt continue to do so until the
day of my death.

The Boy and I broke our fast together on the loggia, which was even
more entertaining as a _salle-a-manger_ by morning than by night. The
coffee was exquisite; the hot, foaming milk had but lately been drawn
from its original source, a little biscuit-coloured Alderney with the
pleading eyes of that fair nymph stricken to heiferhood by jealous
Juno. The strawberries and figs came to the table from the hotel
garden, and so did the luscious roses, which filled a bowl in the
centre of our small white table.

This was Arcadia. The very simplicities of the hotel endeared it to
our hearts, and there was no real comfort lacking which we could have
obtained in London or in Paris.

After breakfast we set off with our cameras to the town, a walk of ten
or fifteen minutes. It was strange, in this pilgrimage of mine, how
often I found myself running back into the Feudal or Middle Ages, as
far removed from the familiar bustle of modern days as if an iron door
had been shut and padlocked behind me.

There was little of the Twentieth Century in Aosta (named by Augustus
the "Rome of the Alps"), except the monument to "Le Roi Chasseur," and
the bookshops, which seemed extraordinarily well supplied with the
best literature of all countries. The type of face we met was
primitive; scarcely one which would have been out of place on some old
Roman coin. Here, at the end of a narrow, shadowed street, where St.
Anselm first saw the light (it must have been with difficulty) we came
upon a magnificent archway, built to do honour to Augustus Caesar's
defeat of the brave Salasses, four and twenty years before the world
had a Saviour. A few steps further on, and we were under the majestic
mass of the Porta Pretoria; or we were crossing a Roman bridge, or
gazing at the ruins of Roman ramparts. Or, we lost our way in
searching for the amphitheatre, and found ourselves suddenly skipping
over centuries into the Middle Ages, represented by the mysterious
Tour Bramafam, the Tour des Prisons, or the Tour du Lepreux, round
which Xavier Maistre wrote his pathetic dialogue. Then, there was the
cathedral with its extraordinary painted facade, like a great coloured
picture-book; and the tall cross, straddling a spring in a paved
street, put up in thanksgiving by the Aostans when they joyfully saw
Calvin's back for the last time.

We spent all day in sightseeing, and had another moonlight evening on
the loggia. We were great pals now, Boy and I. I had never met anyone
in the least like him. At one moment he was a human boy, almost a
child; at another his brain leaped beyond mine, and he became a poet
or a philosopher; again he was an elfin sprite, a creature for whom
Puck was the one thinkable name. There was a single thing only, about
which you could always be sure. He would never be twice the same.

Still, though we were friends, "Boy" and "Man" we remained. He kept
his name a secret, and he had forbidden me to mention mine. Nor had he
spoken of his route or destination, after Aosta. As to this I was
curious, for I knew now that it would be a wrench to part with the
strange little being whose ears I had tingled to box three days (or
was it three years?) ago. Already he had done me good; and though I
had hardly reached the point of confessing as much to myself, as a
plain matter of fact I would not have exchanged his quaint
companionship for that of my lost love. How she would have hated this
idyllic Arcadia! How _triste_ she would have been; how weary after a
day's tour among relics of past ages; and how much she would have
preferred Bond Street to the Arch of Augustus, or the park to our snow
mountains and green valley! Even Davos she would have found
intolerable had it not been for the tobogganing, the dances and the
theatricals, in all of which she had played a leading part. Deep down
in the darkest corner of my soul, I now knew that I would not have
fallen in love with Helen Blantock had I first met her in Aosta.

The Boy and I agreed that our head waiter was one of the nicest men we
had ever met, and when he pledged his personal honour that a day's
wandering among neighbouring castles would be "very repaying," we
determined to bolt the five he most recommended in one gulp, on our
second and last afternoon. If he could, he would have sent us spinning
like teetotums from one concentric ring of historic chateaux to
another, until goodness knows how far from Aosta, Finois, Souris, and
Fanny-anny, we should have ended. He would also have despatched us on
a two or three days' excursion to Courmayeur; and I fear that his
respect for us went down like mercury in a chilled thermometer, when
he understood that we had not come to the country to do any of the
famous climbs. He named so many, dear to the hearts of my Alpine Club
acquaintances, that it would have taken us well into the new year to
accomplish half; and he accepted with mild, disapproving resignation
our fiat that there were other parts of the world worth seeing.

As we had to cover a radius of many miles, in our rounds of visits at
the few sample chateaux we had selected from the waiter's list, we
decided to spare our legs and those of the animals. It was hardly
playing the game we had set out to play--we two strangely-met
friends--to amble conventionally from show-house to show-house, in a
carriage, with guide-books in our hands, like everyday tourists;
nevertheless, we did this unworthy thing. Perhaps, therefore, I
deserved the punishment which fell upon me.

Little did I dream, when I flippantly spoke of our expedition as
"driving out to pay calls," how nearly my thoughtless words were to be
realised. We started immediately after an early _dejeuner_, sitting
side by side in a little low-swung carriage, a superior phaeton, or
poor relation of a victoria. The day was hot, but a delicious breeze
came to us from the snow mountains, and there was a peculiar buoyancy
in the air.

Our first castle was Sarre, the Chateau Royal, an enormous brown
building with a disproportionately high tower. This hunting-lodge of
the King would have been grimly ugly, were it not for its rocky
throne, high above the river bed, and its background of glistening
white mountains. The huge pile looked like a sleeping dragon with its
hundreds of window-eyes close-lidded, and I could not imagine it an
amusing place for a house party. I was glad that the Boy was not
animated with that wild mania for squeezing the last drop from the
orange of sightseeing which makes some travelling companions so
depressing. The castle was closed to visitors, yet many people would
have insisted on climbing the steep hill for the barren satisfaction
of saying that they had been there. I rejoiced that my little Pal was
not one of these; but I should have been more prudent had I waited.

We drove on, after a pause for inspection, along a road which would
have rejoiced the motor-loving heart of Jack Winston, and I made a
note to tell him what a magnificent tour he might have in this
enchanted country one day with his car, tooling down from Milan. As I
mentally arranged my next letter to the Winstons, the Boy gave a
little cry of delight. "Oh, what a queer, delightful place! It's all
towers, just held together by a thread of castle. It must be
Aymaville."

I looked up and beheld on a high hill an extraordinary chateau,
something like four chess castles grouped together at the corners of a
square heap of dice. It does not sound an attractive description, yet
the place deserved that adjective. It was charming, and wonderfully
"liveable," among its vineyards, commanding such a view as is given to
few show-places in the world.

"The descendants of the original family have restored it, and live
there, don't they?" asked the Boy in Italian of the _cocher_.

The man answered that this was the case, and was inspired by my evil
genius to enquire if _ces messieurs_ would like to go over the
chateau.

"Is it allowed?" the Boy questioned eagerly.

"But certainly. Shall I drive up to the house? It will be only an all
little ten minutes."

Without waiting for my answer, the Boy took my consent for granted,
and said yes.

Instantly we left the broad white road, and began winding up a narrow,
steep, and stony way, among vineyards. The _cocher's_ all little ten
minutes lengthened into half an hour, but at last we halted before a
garden gate--a high, uncompromising, reserved-looking gate.

"The fellow must be mistaken," said I. "This place has not the air of
encouraging visitors;" but, before the words were out of my mouth, the
enterprising _cocher_ had rung the gate bell.

After an interval a gardener appeared, and betrayed such mild,
ingenuous surprise at sight of us that I wished ourselves anywhere
else than before the portals of the Chateau d'Aymaville. Gladly would
I have whipped up our fat, barrel-shaped nag, and driven into the
nearest rabbit-hole, but it was too late. The gardener took the
enquiry as to whether visitors were admitted, with the gravity he
would have given to a question in the catechism: Is your name N. or
M.? Can one see your master's house?

Oh, without doubt, one could see the house. Would _les messieurs_
kindly accompany him? His aspect wept, and mine (unless it belied me)
copied his. "Isn't it hateful?" I asked, _sotto voce_, of the Boy,
expecting sympathy which I did not get. "No, I think it's great fun,"
said he.

"But I'm sure they are not in the habit of showing the house. You can
tell by the man's manner. He's nonplussed. I should think no one has
ever had the cheek to apply for permission before."

"Then they ought to be complimented because we have."

I was silenced, though far from convinced; but if you have made an
engagement with an executioner, it is a point of honour not to sneak
off and leave him in the lurch, when he has taken the trouble to
sharpen his axe, and put on his red suit and mask for your benefit.

We arrived, after a walk through a pretty garden, upon a terrace where
there was a marvellous view. The gardener showed it to us solemnly, we
pacing after him all round the chateau, as if we played a game. At the
open front door we were left alone for a few minutes, heavy with
suspense, while our guide held secret conclave with a personable woman
who was no doubt a housekeeper. Astonished, but civil, with dignified
Italian courtesy she finally invited us in, and I was coward enough
to let the Boy lead, I following with a casual air, meant to show that
I had been dragged into this business against my will; that I was, in
fact, the tail of a comet which must go where the cornet leads.

Everywhere, inside the castle, were traces that the family had fled
with precipitation. Here was a bicycle leaning abject against a wall;
there, an open book thrown on the floor; here, a fallen chair; there,
a dropped piece of sewing.

Once or twice in England, I had stayed in a famous show-house, and my
experience on the public Thursdays there had taught me what these
people were enduring now. At Waldron Castle we had been hunted from
pillar to post; if we darted from the hall into a drawing-room, the
public would file in before we could escape to the boudoir; the lives
of foxes in the hunting season could have been little less disturbed
than ours, and we were practically only safe in our own or each
other's bedrooms--indeed, any port was precious in a storm.

By the time that the Boy and I had been led, like stalled oxen,
through a long series of living-rooms, I knowing that the rightful
inhabitants were panting in wardrobes, my nerves were shattered. I
admired everything, volubly but hastily, and broke into fireworks of
adjectives, always edging a little nearer to the exit, though not, I
regret to say, invariably aided by the Boy. He, indeed, seemed to find
an impish pleasure in my discomfiture.

During the round, I was dimly conscious that the entire staff of
servants, most of them maids, and embarrassingly beautiful, flitted
after us like the ghosts who accompanied Dante and his guide on their
tour of the Seven Circles. As, at last, we returned to the square
entrance hail, they melted out of sight, still like shadows, and I had
a final moment of extreme anguish when, at the door, the housekeeper
refused the ten francs I attempted to press into her haughty Italian
palm.

"No more afternoon calls on chateaux for me, after _that_ experience,"
I gasped, when we were safely seated in the homelike vehicle which I
had not sufficiently appreciated before.

"Oh, I shall be disappointed if you won't go with me to the Chateau of
St. Pierre which we saw in the photograph--that quaint mass of towers
and pinnacles, on the very top of a peaked rock," said the Boy. "I've
been looking forward to it more than to anything else, but I shan't
have courage to do it alone."

"Courage?" I echoed. "After the brazen way in which you stalked
through the scattered belongings of the family at Aymaville, you would
stop at nothing."

"In other words, I suppose you think me a typical Yankee boy? But I
really was nervous, and inclined to apologise to somebody for being
alive. That's why I can't go through another such ordeal without
company; yet I wouldn't miss this eleventh-century castle for a bag of
your English sovereigns."

"If only it had been left alone, and not restored!" I groaned. "In
that case we should meet no one but bats."

"We? Then you will go with me?"

"I suppose so," I sighed. "It can't add more than a dozen grey hairs,
and what are they among so many?"

A few kilometres further on we reached the "bizarre monticule," from
which sprouted a still more bizarre chateau. From our low level, it
was impossible to tell where the rock stopped, and where the castle
began, so deftly had man seized every point of vantage offered by
Nature--and "points" they literally were.

The ascent from the road to the chateau was much like climbing a
fire-escape to the top of a New York sky-scraper, but we earned the
right to cry "Excelsior!" at last, had we not by that moment been
speechless. History now repeated itself. I rang; the castle gate was
opened, but this time by a major-domo who had already in some
marvellous way learned that strangers might be expected.

Never was so appallingly hospitable a man, and I trusted that even the
Boy suffered from his kindness. Madame la Baronne, who was away for
the afternoon, would chide him if guests were allowed to leave her
house without refreshment. Eat we must, and drink we must, in the
beautiful hall evidently used as a sitting-room by the absent
chatelaine. Her wine and her cakes were served on an ancient silver
tray, almost as old as the family traditions, and it was not until we
had done to both such justice as the major-domo thought fair that he
would consent to let us go further.

The house was really of superlative interest, though spoiled here and
there by eccentric modern decoration. Much of the window glass had
remained intact through centuries; the walls were twelve feet thick;
the oak-beamed ceilings magnificent, and the secret stairways and
rooms in the thickness of the walls, bewildering; but when our
conductor began leading us into the bedrooms in daily use by the
ladies of the castle, my gorge rose. "This is awful," I said. "I can't
go on. What if Madame la Baronne returns and finds a strange man and a
boy in her bedroom? Good heavens, now he's opening the door of the
bath!"

"We must go on," whispered the Boy, convulsed with silent laughter.
"If we don't, the major-domo won't understand our scruples. He'll
think we're tired, and don't appreciate the castle. It would never do
to hurt his feelings, when he has been so kind."

"To the bitter end, then," I answered desperately; and no sooner were
the words out of my mouth than the bitter end came. It consisted of a
collision with the Baronne's dressing-jacket, which hung from a hook,
and tapped me on the shoulder with one empty frilled sleeve, in soft
admonition. I could bear no more. One must draw the line somewhere,
and I drew the line at intruding upon ladies' dressing-jackets in
their most sacred fastnesses.

If I had been a woman, my pent-up emotion at this moment would have
culminated in hysterics, but being a man, I merely bolted, stumbling,
as I fled, over my absent hostess' bedroom slippers. I scuttled down a
winding flight of tower stairs, broke incontinently into a lighted
region which turned out to be a kitchen, startled the cook, apologised
incontinently, and somehow found myself, like Alice in Wonderland,
back in the great entrance hail. There, starting at every sound, lest
a returning family party should catch me "lurking," I awaited the Boy.

We left, finally, showering francs and compliments; but I crawled out
a decrepid wreck, and refused pitilessly to do more than view the
exterior of other chateaux. It was evening when we saw our white hotel
once more, and a haze of starlight dusted the sky and all the blue
distance with silver powder.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIV

The Path of the Moon

"And then they came to the turnstile of night."
--RUDYARD KIPLING.

This was to be our last night at Aosta, perhaps our last night
together, for the Boy's plans kept his name company in some secret
"hidie hole" of his mind. As, for the third time, we dined on the
loggia, before the rising of the moon, we drifted into talk of
intimate things. It was I who began it. I harked back to the broken
conversation which had first made us friends, and to his chance sketch
of Helen Blantock and her type. In that connection, I ventured to
bring up the subject of his sister.

"What you said about her disillusionment interested me very much," I
told him. "You see, I've just come through an experience something
like it myself, do you mind talking about her?"

"Not in this place--and this mood--and to you," he answered. "But
first--what disillusioned you?"

"Disappointment in someone I cared for,--and believed in."

"It was the same with--my sister."

"Poor Princess."

"Yes, poor Princess. Was it--a man friend who disappointed you?"

"A woman. The old story. As a matter of fact, she threw me over
because another fellow had a lot more money than I."

"Horrid creature."

"Oh, just an ordinary, conventional, well brought up girl. Now you see
I have as much right to a grudge against women, as your sister the
Princess has against men."

"But I don't believe the girl _could_ have been as cruel to you, as
this man I'm thinking of was to--her. They'd known each other for
years, since childhood. He used to call her his 'little sweetheart'
when she was ten and he was fifteen. How was she to dream that even
when he was a boy, he didn't really like her better than other little
girls, that already he was making calculations about her money? She
thought he was different from the others, that _he_ cared for herself.
They were engaged, the bridesmaids asked, the trousseau ready, the
invitations out for the wedding, and then--one night she overheard a
conversation between him and a cousin of his, who was to be one of her
bridesmaids. Only a few words--but they told everything. It was the
other girl he loved, and had always loved. But he was poor, and
so--well, you can guess the rest. My sister broke off her engagement
the next day, though the man went on his knees to her, and vowed he
had been mad. Then she left home at once, and soon she was taken very
ill."

"She loved that worthless scoundrel so much?"

"I don't know. I don't think she knows. It was the destruction of an
ideal which was terrible. She had clung to it. She had said to
herself: 'Many men may be false, and mercenary, and unscrupulous, but
this one is true.' Suddenly, he had ceased to exist for her. She stood
alone in the world--in the dark."

"Except for you."

"Except for me, and a few friends,--one girl especially, who was
heavenly to her. But the dearest girl friend can't make up for the
loss of trust in a lover."

"That's true. By Jove, I thought I had been roughly used, but it's
nothing to this. I feel as if I knew your sister, somehow. I wonder,
since you and she are such pals, that you can bear to leave her."

"She wanted to be alone. She said she didn't feel at home in life any
more, and it made her restless to be with anyone who knew her trouble,
anyone who pitied her. I was ill too,--from sympathy, I suppose,
and--she thought a tramp like this would do me good. So it has. Being
close to nature, especially among mountains, as I've been for weeks
now, makes one's troubles and even one's sister's troubles seem
small."

"You are young to feel that."

"My soul isn't as young as my body. Maybe that's why nature is so much
to me. I am more alive when I'm away from big towns. Sunrises and
sunsets are more important than the rising and falling of money
markets. They--and the wind in the trees. What things they say to you!
You can't explain; you can only feel. And when you _have_ felt, when
you have heard colour, and seen sounds, you are never quite the same,
quite as sad, again,--I mean if you _have_ been sad."

"I've said all that--precisely that--to myself lately," I exclaimed,
forgetting that I was a man talking to a child. The strange little
person whom I had apostrophised as "Brat" seemed not only an equal,
but a superior. I found myself intensely interested in him, and all
that concerned him. "Odd, that you, too, should have thought that
thing about colour and sound! This evening-blue, for instance. Do you
hear the music of it?"

"Yes. I'm not sure it isn't that which has made me answer your
questions. But now let's talk of something else--or better still,
let's not talk at all, for a while."

We were silent, and I wondered if the Boy's thoughts ran with mine, or
if he had closed and locked the secret door in his brain, and listened
dreamily to the sweet evening voices of this Valley of Musical Bells.

Suddenly, into the many sounds of the silence, broke a loud and
jarring note; the trampling of men's feet and horses' hoofs; loud
laughter and the jingling of accoutrements. We looked over the
balustrade to see a battalion of soldiers marching at ease, on their
way back from some mountain manoeuvres, and as we gazed down, they
stared up, a young fellow shouting to the Boy that he had better join
them.

"It's like life calling one back," said the strange child. "I suppose
one must always go on, somewhere else. And we--we must go on, though
it is sweet here."

"It was what I was thinking of just now," I answered. "Are we to part
company?"

The Boy laughed--an odd little laugh. "Why, that depends," said he
abruptly, "on where you are going. I've planned to walk back over the
St. Bernard to Martigny, and so by way of the Tete Noire to Chamounix.
That name--Chamounix--has always been to my ears, as Stevenson says,
'like the horns of elf-land, or crimson lake.' I want to come face to
face with Mont Blanc, of which I've only seen a far-off mirage, long
ago when I was a little chap, at Geneva. What are your plans?"

"If I ever had any, I've forgotten them," said I. "Look here, Little
Pal, shall we join forces as far as--as far as----"

"The turnstile," he finished my broken sentence.

"Where is the turnstile?"

"At the place--whatever it may be--where we get tired of each other.
Isn't that what you meant?"

"According to my present views, that place might be at the other end
of the world. You must remember it was never I who tried to get away
from you. At the Cantine de Proz, I----"

"Don't let's remember to that time. Then, I didn't know that you
were--You. That makes all the difference. You looked as if you might
be nice, but I've learned not to trust first impressions, especially
of men--grown-up men. There are such lots of people one drifts across,
who are not _real_ people at all, but just shells, with little
rattling nuts of dull, imitation ideas inside, taken from newspapers,
or borrowed from their friends. Fancy what it would be to see glorious
places with such a companion! It would drive me mad. I determined not
to make aquaintances on this trip; but you--why, I feel now as if it
would be almost insulting you to call you 'an acquaintance.' We
are--oh, I'll take your word! We're 'pals,' and Something big that's
over all meant us to be pals. I don't mind telling you, Man, that I
should miss you, if we parted now."

"We won't part," I said quickly. "We'll jog along together. Have a
cigarette? I'm going to smoke a pipe, because I feel contented."

Between puffs of that pipe (an instrument which I strongly but vainly
recommended to the Boy) I told him of my night drive over the St.
Gothard. As it was his whim to consider names of no importance, I did
not mention that of Jack and Molly Winston, but spoke of them merely
as "my friends."

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