The Princess Passes by Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

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"Could we do the St. Bernard at night?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes, we could, if we saved ourselves by driving up from here to St.
Rhemy, after dejeuner, otherwise it would mean being on foot all day
and all night too. We could send Joseph, Innocentina, and the animals
on very early to-morrow morning, to the Hospice, where they might rest
till evening. The good monks would give us a meal of some sort about
six, and at seven we could leave the Hospice. There would be an
interval of starry darkness, and then we should have the full moon."

"Splendid to see the Pass by moonlight, after knowing it by day, and
sunset, and dawn! It would be like finding out wonderful new qualities
in your friends, which you'd never guessed they had."

Thus the Boy; and a few moments later the details of our journey were
arranged. Joseph and Innocentina were interrupted in the midst of
ardent attempts to convert one another, to be told what was in store
for them. They did not appear averse to the arrangement, for a slight
pout of the young woman's hardly counted; there was no doubt that a
journey _a deux_ would offer infinite opportunities for religious
disputation.

As for the Little Pal and me, we carried out the first part of our
programme to the letter. Two barrel-shaped nags instead of one took us
to St. Rhemy, the little mountain village whose men are exempt from
conscription, and called, poetically yet literally, "Soldiers of the
Snow." Further up the jewelled way, our little victoria could not
venture, and we trod the steep path side by side, the Boy stepping out
bravely, the top of his panama on a level with my ear.

Some magnetic cord of communication between his brain and mine
telegraphed back and forth, without personal intervention on either
part, my keen enjoyment of the scene, and his. We did not talk much,
but each knew what the other was feeling. Most people disappoint you
by their lack of capacity to enjoy nature, in moments which are
superlative to you--moments which alone would repay you for the whole
trouble of living through blank years. But this boy's spirit responded
to beauty, up to an extreme point which was highly satisfactory. I saw
it in the exaltation on his little sunburned face.

Joseph and Innocentina were ostentatiously delighted to greet us at
the Hospice. They and the animals had had their evening meal, and were
ready to start when we wished. We went to the refectory and dined in
company with many persons of many nationalities, who had just arrived
from the Swiss and Italian valleys. Some of them manipulated their
food strangely, as I had noticed here before; and Boy confided to me
his opinion that it was a pity human beings were still obliged to eat
with their mouths, like the lower animals. "It's a disgrace to one's
face, which ought to be exclusively for better things. It's really too
primitive, this penny-in-the-slot sort of arrangement. There ought to
be a tiny trap-door in one's chest somewhere, so that one could just
slip food in unobtrusively, at a meal, and go on talking and laughing
as if nothing had happened."

We were not long in dining, but by the time we came out again into the
biting cold, late afternoon had changed to early evening.

It was sunset. The great mountain shapes of glittering, red gold were
clear as the profiles of goddesses, against a sky of rose. One--the
grandest goddess of all--wore on her proud head a crown of snow which
sparkled with diamond coruscations, rainbow-tinted in the pink light.
Below her golden forehead hovered a thin cloud-veil, of pale lilac;
and we had gone a long way down the mountain before the ineffable
colour burned to ashes-of-rose. Then darkness caught and engulfed us,
in the Valley of Death. The rushing of the river in its ravine was
like the voice of night, not a separate sound at all, for hearing it
was to hear the silence.

By-and-bye we grew conscious of a faint, gradual revealing of the
mountain-tops, which for a time had been black, jagged pieces cut out
from the spangled fabric of a starry sky. A ripple of pearly light
wavered over them, like the reflection of the unseen river mirrored
for the Lady of Shalott.

It was a strange, living light, beating with a visible pulse, and it
slowly grew until its white radiance had extinguished the individual
lamps of the stars. Waterfalls flashed out of darkness, like white,
laughing nymphs flinging off black masks and dominoes; silver goblets
and diamond necklaces were flung into the river bed, and vanished
forever with a mystic gleam.

"If there's a heaven, can there be anything in it better than this,
Little Pal?" I asked.

"There can be God," he said. "I'm a pagan sometimes in the sun, but
never on a night like this. Then one _knows_ things one isn't sure of
at other times. Why, I suppose there isn't really a world at all! God
is simply thinking of these things, and of us, so we and they seem to
be. We are his thoughts; the mountains, and the river, and the
wild-flowers are his thoughts. It's just as if an author writes a
story. In the story, all the people and the things which concern them
are real, but you close the volume and they simply don't exist. Only
God doesn't close the volume, I think, until the next is ready."

"I wonder whether we'll both come into the next story?"

"Who knows? Perhaps you'll wander into one story, and I'll get lost in
another."

A certain sadness fell upon me, born partly of our talk, partly of the
poignant beauty of the night. We came to the Cantine de Proz, fast
asleep in its lonely valley, and so we went on and on, our souls tuned
to music and poetry by the song of the stars and the beauty of the
night: But slowly a change stole over us. For a long time I was only
dimly conscious of it, in a puzzled way, in myself. Why was it that my
spirit stood no longer on the heights? Why did the moonlight look cold
and metallic? Why had the rushing sound of the river got on my nerves,
like the monotonous crying of a fretful child? Why did our frequent
silences no longer tingle with a meaning which there was no need to
express in words? Why was my brain empty of impressions as a squeezed
sponge of water? Why, in fact, though everything was outwardly the
same, why was all in reality different?

"Oh, Man, I'm so hungry!" sighed Boy.

"By Jove, that's what's been the matter with me this last half-hour,
and I didn't know it!" said I.

"I feel as if I could form a hollow square, all by myself."

"I only wish there were something to form it round."

"But there isn't--except a few chocolate creams I bought in Aosta
because I respected their old age, poor things."

"Perhaps even decrepid chocolates are better than nothing. Let's give
'em honourable burial--unless you want them all to yourself, as you
did the chicken at the 'Dejeuner,' and the room at the Cantine de
Proz."

"Oh, you _must_ have thought I was selfish! But truly, I don't think I
am. It wasn't that. Only--I can't explain."

"You needn't," said I. "I was 'kidding'--a most appropriate treatment
for a man of your size. What I want is food, not explanations."

The chocolates, which proved to be eighteen in number, were fairly
divided, Boy refusing to accept more than his half. We each ate one
with distaste, because the celebrated "Right Spot" was not to be
pacified by unsuitable sacrifices; but presently it relented and
demanded more. Appeased for the moment, the Spot allowed us to
proceed, but incredibly soon it began again to clamour. We ate several
more chocolates, though our gorge rose against them as a means of
refreshment. Still Bourg St. Pierre, where we were sooner or later to
sleep, was far away, and for the third time we were driven to
chocolate. It was a loathsome business eating the remaining morsels of
our supply, and we felt that the very name of the food would in
future be abhorrent to us. The night had become unfriendly, the Pass a
_Via Dolorosa_, and the last drop was poured into our cup of misery at
Bourg St. Pierre.

We had wired from the Hospice for rooms, and expected to find the
little "Dejeuner" cheerfully lighted, the plump landlady amusingly
surprised to see the guests who had lately brought dissension into her
house returning peaceably together. But the roadside inn was asleep
like a comfortable white goose with its head under its wing. Not a
gleam in any window, save the bleak glint of moonlight on glass.

Joseph and Innocentina were behind us with their charges, whose stored
crusts of bread they had probably shared. I knocked at the doors No
responsive sound from within. I pounded with my walking stick. A thin
imp of echo mocked us, and, my worst passions roused by this
inhospitality falling on top of nine chocolate creams, I almost beat
the door down.

Two sleepy eyelid-windows flew up, and a moment later a little servant
who had served me the other afternoon, appeared at the door like a
frightened rabbit at bay.

I demanded the wherefore of this reception; I demanded rooms and food
and reparation. What, was I the monsieur who had telegraphed from the
Hospice? But madame had answered that she had not a room in the house.
The carriage of a large party of very high nobility had broken down
late in the afternoon, and they were remaining for the night, until
the damage could be repaired. What to do? But there was nothing,
unless _les messieurs_ would sleep, one on the sofa, the other on the
floor, in the room of the "dejeuner."

"I suppose we'll have to put up with that accommodation, then. What do
you say, Boy?" I asked.

"I would rather go on," he replied, in a tone of misery tempered by
desperate resignation, as if he had been giving orders for his own
funeral.

"Go on where?" I enquired grimly.

"I don't know. Anywhere."

"'Anywhere' means in this instance the open road."

"Well--I'm not so _very_ cold, are you? And I'm sure they'll give us a
little bread and cheese here."

"I think it would be wiser to stop," said I. "We might see the ghost
of Napoleon eating the _dejeuner_. Isn't that an inducement?"

"Not enough."

"I assure you that I don't snore or howl in my sleep. And you could
have the sofa to curl up on."

"Ye-es; but I'd rather go on. You and Joseph can stop. Innocentina and
I will be all right."

I was annoyed with the child. I felt that he fully deserved to be
taken at his word, and deserted on the Pass, but I had not the heart
to punish him. If anything should happen to the poor Babe in the Wood,
I should never forgive myself; and besides, it would have been
hopeless to seek sleep, with visions of disaster to this strange
Little Pal of mine painting my brain red.

"Of course I won't do anything of the kind," I said crossly. "If one
party goes on, both will go on." I then snappishly ordered food of
some sort, any sort--except chocolate,--and having, after a blank
interval, obtained enough bread, cheese, and ham for at least ten
persons, I divided the rations with Joseph and Innocentina, who had
now come up.

We had a short halt for rest and refreshment, taken simultaneously,
and presently set out again, with a vague idea of plodding on as far
as Orsieres. The Boy refused so obstinately to ride his donkey (I
believe because I must go on foot), that Innocentina, thwarted, did
frightful execution among her favourite saints. Joseph reproved her;
she retorted by calling him a black heretic, and vowing that she had a
right to talk as she pleased to her own saints; it was not his affair.
Thus it was that our chastened cavalcade left the "Dejeuner."

After this, our journey was punctuated by frequent pauses. The donkeys
were tired; everybody was cross; the calm indifference of the glorious
night was as irritating as must have been the "icily regular,
splendidly null" perfection of Maud herself.

Only the Boy kept up any pretence of spirits, and I knew well that his
counterfeited buoyancy was merely to distract attention from guilt. If
it had not been for him, we should all have been tucked away in some
corner or other of the "Dejeuner." No doubt he would have dropped, had
he not feared an "I told you so."

We were still some miles on the wrong side of Orsieres, when
Innocentina came running up from behind, exclaiming that a dreadful
thing, an appalling thing, had happened. No, no, not an accident to
Joseph Marcoz. A trouble far worse than that. Nothing to the _mulet ou
les anes_. Ah, but how could she break the news? It was that in some
way--some mad, magical way only to be accounted for by the
intervention of evil spirits, probably attracted by the heretic
presence of Joseph--the _ruecksack_ containing the fitted bag had
disappeared. If she were to be killed for it, she--Innocentina--could
not tell how this great calamity had occurred.

I thought that after such an alarming preface, the Boy would laugh
when the mountain had brought forth its mouse, but he did no such
thing. His little face looked anxious and forlorn in the white
moonlight. And all for a mere bag, which was an absurd article of
luggage, at best, for an excursion such as his!

"I _can't_ lose it," he said. "There are things in it which I wouldn't
have anyone's--which I couldn't replace."

"Your sister the Princess will buy you another," I tried to console
him.

"This is her bag. She would feel dreadfully if it were gone. Besides,
my diary-notes for the book I want to write are in it. I would give a
thousand dollars to get it again--or more. I shall have to go back."

"No, you won't," I said. "As to that, I shall put my foot down. If
anyone goes----"

"Nobody shall go but myself. I won't have it. I----"

"And I won't have you go, if I'm forced to snatch you up and put you
in my pocket. When I get you safely to Orsieres, I don't mind a
bit----"

"No, no, you needn't say it. If we must go on to Orsieres, I'll pay
someone to come back from there, and search."

"Why shouldn't I be the one? I'm not tired, only rather cross, and for
all you know, I may be in urgent need of the reward you mean to
offer."

"You must be satisfied with your virtue. I've my own reasons,
and--and I suppose I'm my own master?"

"By Jove!" I exclaimed, laughing. "Eton would have done you a lot of
good. You would have had some of your girly whims knocked out of you
there, my kid."

"I wonder if that _would_ have done me good?"

"It isn't too late to try. You haven't passed the age."

"I dare say travelling about with you will have much the same effect,"
said the Boy, suddenly become an imp again. "I think I'll just
'sample' that experiment first. But I _do_ want my bag."

"Dash your bag! I'll lend you some night things out of the mule-pack.
The lost treasure is sure to turn up again, like all bad pennies,
to-morrow."

We reached Orsieres and roused the people of the inn with comparative
ease. They could give us accommodation, but the man of the house
looked dubious when he heard that a runner must at once be found to
search for a travelling bag, lost nobody knew where.

"To-morrow morning, when it is light----" he began; but Boy cut him
short. "To-morrow morning may be too late. I will give five thousand
francs to whoever finds my bag, and brings it back with everything in
it undisturbed."

The man opened his eyes wide, and I formed my lips into a silent
whistle. I thought the Boy exceedingly foolish to name such a reward,
when the bag and its gold fittings could not have been worth more than
a hundred pounds, and an offer of three hundred francs would have been
ample. What could the strange little person have in his precious bag,
which he valued as the immediate jewel of his soul? and why would he
not let me be the one to find it, thus keeping his five thousand
francs in his pocket! He "had his reasons," forsooth! However, it was
not my business.

[Illustration: "LOOKING OUT OF THE WINDOW I SAW HIM IN
CONVERSATION".]

It must have been after three o'clock by the time I fell asleep in a
queer little room where you had but to sit up in bed and stretch out
your arm to reach anything you wanted. I dreamed of journeying through
the night with the Boy, but I forgot his lost bag: nor when I waked in
full morning light, did I recall its tragic disappearance. I found
that it was nearly eight, and bounded out of bed, performing my toilet
with maimed rites, since baths were not _comme il faut_ at Orsieres.

"The kid will be asleep still, I'll bet," I said to myself; but looking
out of the window at that moment, I saw him in conversation with
Joseph, Innocentina, and--apparently--half the inhabitants of the
village.

I hurried down, and learned that the bag--still a lost bag--had set
all Orsieres on fire with excitement. The searchers had returned
empty-handed, having gone back as far as the Cantine de Proz; and on
the oath of Innocentina (more than one, alas!), the _ruecksack_ and its
contents had been secure on the grey back of Souris when we passed the
Cantine. Desolate as was the Great St. Bernard at night, late as had
been the hour when the bag vanished, evidently someone had found and
gone off with it. Nevertheless, many young persons of both sexes were
eager to try their luck in a second quest.

The Boy, who had been up for hours, had it in mind to wait at Orsieres
until his treasure should be found, or hope abandoned; but I suggested
going on at once to Martigny. There, we could have handbills printed,
offering a large reward, and these could be distributed over the
country. The diligence drivers would help in the work, and we could
also advertise in a local paper. To this proposal the Little Pal
consented; and we started off again upon our way, a sadder if not a
wiser party.

It was late afternoon when we straggled into Martigny. Now, our far
away Alpine Rome with its crumbling towers and castles, our remote
heights where a grey monastery was ever mirrored in the blue eye of
the mountain lake, seemed like phases of a dream.

Friends of the Boy's (nameless to me, like all links with his outside
life) had stopped lately at the hotel where Molly, Jack, and I had
stayed; he therefore proposed to go to the same house, and this jumped
with my inclination: for the hotel had a cheerful and home-like
individuality which I liked.

Pitying the Little Pal's distress, though I chaffed him for it, I
undertook the business of getting out the handbills I had suggested,
and arranging for an advertisement in a paper with a local
circulation. I had to visit the post-office, engaging in a long
discussion with the officials who controlled the diligence, and the
business occupied more than an hour. In mercy to Boy, I had not
delayed for any selfish attention to personal comfort, and tramping
back through an inch of white dust to the hotel, I was still as
travel-worn as on our arrival in the town, nearly two hours ago. I had
forbidden the tired child to accompany me, and by this time he would
no doubt be refreshed with a bath and a change of clothing, as,
fortunately, not all his personal belongings had been contained in the
ill-fated bag. He would be impatiently waiting for me at the hotel
door, perhaps; and I quickened my steps, in haste to give him details
of my doings.

Entering the garden, I had to bound onto the grass, to escape being
run over by a pair of horses prancing round the curve, at my back. I
turned with a basilisk glare intended for the coachman, but instead
met the astonished gaze of the very last eyes I could possibly have
expected. My glare melted into a smile, but not one of my best, though
the eyes which called it forth were alluringly beautiful.

"Contessa!" I exclaimed. "Is this you, or your astral body?"

"Lord Lane!" the lovely lady-of-the-eyes responded. "But no, it is not
possible!"

Just as I was about to protest that it was not only possible, but
certain, I caught sight of the Boy, in the doorway. As, at the
Contessa's word, the carriage came to a sudden halt, she reaching out
to me two little grey suede hands, the slim figure at the door drew
back a step, as if involuntarily; but there was no getting round it,
my Italian beauty had made Boy a present of my name, whether he wanted
it or not.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XV

Enter the Contessa

"She was the smallest lady alive,
Made in a piece of nature's madness,
Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
That over-filled her."
--ROBERT BROWNING.

Here was a case of Mahomet, _en route_ to pay his respects to the
Mountain, being met halfway by the object of his pilgrimage; though to
liken the Contessa di Ravello to a mountain is perhaps to brutalise a
poetic license. She is a fairy of a woman, a pocket Venus. Gaeta is
her name, and her sponsors in baptism must have been endowed with
prophetic souls, for she is the very spirit of irresponsible,
childlike gaiety.

Not that she has a sense of humour. There is all the difference in the
world between a sense of humour and a sense of fun, and truth to tell,
the Contessa had no more humour than a frolicsome kitten. She had
always been in a frolic of some sort, when I had known her in Davos,
whither she had gone because she thought it would be "what you call a
lark"; and she was in a frolic now, judging by her merry laughter when
she saw me.

Her great wine-brown eyes were laughing, her full, cupid-lips were
laughing, and more than all, the two deep, round dimples in the olive
cheeks were laughing. Even the little rings of black hair on her low
forehead seemed to quiver with mirth, as her head moved with quick,
bird-like gestures. She was dressed all in grey, and the cut-steel
buttons on her dress twinkled as if they too were in the joke.

"Fancy meeting you here, of all places!" she said, in her pretty
English, lisping but correct. "It is a good gift from the saints. We
have had such stupid adventures, and we have been so bored."

"We" were evidently the handsome, slightly moustached women of
thirty-five, and the thin, darkly dour man of fifty who were with the
Contessa in the carriage; and a moment later she had introduced me to
the Baron and Baronessa di Nivoli. I echoed the name with some
interest. "Have I the pleasure of meeting the inventor of the new
air-ship which is so much talked about?" I asked.

"That is my brother Paolo," replied the Baron, unbending slightly.

"He will join us later," added the Baronessa, with a quick look at the
pretty and rich little widow which betrayed to me a secret. She then
turned a dark, disapproving gaze upon me which told another, and I
could have laughed aloud. "They want to nobble my poor little Contessa
for brother-aeronaut, and they don't countenance chance meetings with
strange young men," I said to myself, greatly amused. "If they can see
through the dust, and suspect in me a possible rival for the absent,
they have sharp eyes, or keen imaginations, and I may be in for a
little fun."

We were at the hotel door, and I was allowed to help the Contessa out,
though the elder lady preferred the aid of the concierge. For the
moment Gaeta had forgotten the claims of her companions, and
remembered only mine. It is a butterfly way of hers to forget easily,
and flutter with delight in a new corner of the garden, just because
it is new.

"You are staying here? How nice!" she exclaimed, without giving me
time to answer. "We should have arrived last night, but we had an
accident to our carriage--a broken wheel. It was coming down from the
Hospice of St. Bernard, which we had been to visit--oh, not to please
_me_, do not think it. It was the Baron, here. In dim ages his people
and the saint were cousins, though the idea of a saint having cousins
seems actually sacrilegious, doesn't it? I do not love monks, I only
respect them, which is so disagreeable. But the Baron took us. _Dio
mio!_ I have no warm blood left. It was frozen up there. And then,
that our carriage should have broken down at a little place--the wrong
end of nowhere--Bourg St. Something! We had to stop all night. Fancy
me without my maid, who was to meet me here. I do not know if my dress
is not on wrong side before. Later, we all have to go on to Chamounix
and then to Aix-les-Bains. I've taken a villa there for a month. You
_must_ come and see me."

Thus she chattered on as we entered the hotel, and then, suddenly, her
bright eyes fell upon the Boy, who had retired near the stairway.
There he stood, with a book in his hand, and an unwonted colour in his
brown cheeks, glowing red under the strange blue jewels of his eyes.

"What a divine boy!" the Countess half whispered to me, not taking her
gaze from him. "He is exactly like a wonderful painting by some old
Master of my own dear country. What eyes! They are better and bigger
sapphires than any I own, though I've some famous ones. And how
strange they are--looking out of his brown face, from under such
black lashes, too. Oh, a picture, certainly. He is not like a modern,
every-day boy, at all. He can't be English, of that I'm sure, and
yet----"

"He is American," I said, when she paused thoughtfully, the Boy at his
distance reading or pretending to read, as he stood. "But you are
right. He is very far from being an every-day boy."

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