The Princess Passes by Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

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"You know him, then?"

"We've been travelling companions for days, and have got to be
tremendous pals."

"How old is he?" asked the Contessa, a deep glow of interest and
curiosity kindling in her warm brown eyes.

"I don't know. He has talked freely about himself only once or twice,
though we've discussed together most other subjects under the sun."

"How deliciously mysterious. Mysterious! yes, that's the word for him.
He has mysterious eyes; a mysterious face. There is a shadow upon it.
That is part of the fascination, is it not? I am sure he is
fascinating."

"Extraordinarily so. I have never met anyone at all like him."

"He might be a boy Tasso. But he has suffered; he is not a child any
more, though his face is smooth as mine. He must be eighteen or
nineteen?"

"I should give him less, though he has read and thought a tremendous
lot for a boy."

"Men are not judges of age, thank heaven. Women are. I _will_ have it
that your friend is nineteen. I should be too silly to take an
interest in him, were he less, if it were not motherly; and that
wouldn't be entertaining. You see, I am already twenty-two."

"You look eighteen," I said; and it was true. Widow as she was, it was
not possible to think of the Contessa as a responsible, grown woman.

"I told you that you were no judge of age. I was married at eighteen,
a widow at nineteen. _Dio mio!_ but it all seems a long time ago,
already! Lord Lane, you must introduce to me your friend the boy."

Here was a dilemma, but I got out of it by telling the truth, which is
usually, in the end, the best policy, many wise opinions to the
contrary notwithstanding. "You will laugh," I said, "but I don't know
his name."

"Not possible."

"True, nevertheless, like most things that seem impossible; nor does
he know mine, unless he heard you speak it driving up to the hotel. He
was at the door."

"Men are extraordinary! But, introduce him. You can manage somehow.
It's not his name I care for. It is those eyes. I shall invite him to
come and see me in Aix. Please bring him to me now. The Baron is
arranging about our rooms, and there is sure to be a misunderstanding
of some sort, as we had engaged for last night and did not come. The
Baronessa? Oh, never mind; she had better listen to her husband. She
is my friend, and is soon to be my guest, but she has got upon my
nerves to-day."

Thus bidden, I could do no less than walk away down the hall to where
the Boy stood with his book, leaning against the baluster.

"I've done all I could about the bag," I said. "The people in the
post-office seemed hopeful that the big reward would do the trick."

"Thank you. You are very good," he returned. Something in his tone
made me look at him closely. There was a change in him, though for my
life I could not have told what it was or why it had come; there was
ice in his voice, though I had spent nearly two dusty, unwashed hours
in his service, while he refreshed himself at leisure.

"I hope it will be all right," I went on, rather heavily. "Look here,
that pretty little fairy would like to know you. She's the Contessa di
Ravello. Come along and be introduced."

The Boy flung up his head, his blue eyes flashing. "Why am I to be
dragged at her chariot wheels?" he demanded.

"Oh, rot, my child. Don't put on airs. Men twice your age would snatch
at such a chance."

"I can't tell what I may be capable of when I'm twice my age. It's
difficult enough to know myself now. But I know----"

"Come on, do, like the dear Little Old Pal you really are," I cut in.
"You don't want to put me in a false position, do you? Besides, I'd
like particularly to get your opinion on the Contessa. I may have to
ask your advice about something connected with her, later."

This fetched him, though with not too good a grace. "You don't know my
name," he said, with a return of impishness, as we walked together
towards the Contessa.

"I think that you have the advantage of me in that way, now."

"If you call it an advantage. I had a presentiment you weren't plain
mister, so I'm not surprised. You may tell your Countess that my name
is Laurence."

"Christian name or 'Pagan' name?"

"Make the Christian name Roy."

In another moment I was introducing Mr. Roy Laurence to the Contessa
di Ravello; and as they stood eyeing each other, the fairy Gaeta
pulsing with coquetry through all her hot-blooded Italian veins, the
Boy aloof and critical, I was struck with the picture that the two
figures made.

The Boy had three or four inches more of height than the Contessa, and
looked almost tall beside her, though I had thought of him as small.
Her round, dimpled face seemed no older than his oval brown one, in
this moment of his gravity, and the haughty air of a young prince
which he wore now, consciously or unconsciously, had a certain
provoking charm for a spoiled beauty used to conquest. The big blue
stars which lit his face expressed a resolve not to yield to any
blandishment, and this no doubt piqued Gaeta, before whom all the boys
and youths at Davos had gone down like grass before the scythe. Helen
Blantock came after she had left the place, otherwise she might have
had to fight for her rights as queen; but as it was, she had been
without rivals and probably had known few dangerous ones elsewhere.
Never had I seen her take as much real pains to be charming to a grown
man, as she took with this silent boy, during the few moments that her
friends spent in wrestling with the landlord. What lamps she lit in
the windows of her eyes, suddenly raising their curtains on dazzling
glances! What rosy flags she hung out in his honour, on dimpled
cheeks; what rich display of pearls and coral her cupid-mouth gave
him! but all in vain, so far as any change in his cold young face
showed. I had seen it warm for a gleam of light on the wing of a
swooping bird, or an effect of cloud-shadow on a mountain, as it would
not warm for this galaxy of bewitchments, and his quiet civility was
but a sharper pin-prick, I should fancy, to a woman's vanity.

The little scene was not long in playing, however. Soon the Baronessa
swept to her friend's side, and bore her away, like a large steam-tug
making off against wind and tide with a dainty sailing yacht.

Ignoring the subject of the lady; Boy began questioning me about the
business of the bag, thanking me again more cordially for what I had
done, when I had answered.

"I must have a bath and change now," said I at last. "At what time
shall we dine?"

"We? You will be dining with your new friend."

"She's an old friend, if one counts by time of acquaintance, and
charming, as you've seen; still, we're rather tired perhaps, and not
up to dinner pitch. I'm not sure but we'd get on better alone
together, you and I."

"I've taken a private sitting-room, and I'm going to dine there."

"Will you have me with you?"

"If you like."

"It will be a good opportunity to get your advice."

The Boy did not answer; but when we sat at table, and had talked for a
while of indifferent things, he said abruptly: "What were you going to
ask me?"

"Your advice as to whether it would be well to fall in love with the
little Contessa."

"Has she money?"

"Hang it all, do you think I'm the kind of man to want a woman for her
money?"

"I've known you about six days."

"Don't hedge. Can't six days tell you as much as six years--such six
days as we've had?"

"Yes. It's true. I would stake a good deal that you're not that kind
of man. I don't know why I said it. Something hateful made me. The
Contessa is very pretty. Could you--fall in love with her?"

"It would be an interesting experiment to try."

"If you think so, you must already have begun."

"No, not yet. I assure you I have an open mind. But it's an odd
coincidence meeting her like this. I was making the fact that she has
a house at Monte Carlo an excuse for going down there--sooner or
later--as an end to my journey. Now, she is to be in Chamounix, and
she intends to invite us both, it seems, to visit her in
Aix-les-Bains, where she has taken a villa."

The Boy looked at me suddenly, with a slight start. "She is going to
Chamounix?"

"So she says."

"And--she will invite you to visit her at her villa in Aix-les-Bains."

"You, too. You said yesterday you wanted to go to Aix, as you had
never been; and we planned an expedition by the mule-path up Mont
Revard."

"I know. But--but would you visit the Contessa?"

"We might amuse ourselves. She would be well chaperoned, no doubt by
the Baronessa. There's a brother of the Baron's in the background.
Probably he'll turn up at Aix. Certainly he will if his relatives
have any control over his actions. He's no other, it turns out, than
Paolo di Nivoli, the young Italian whose airship invention has been
made a fuss about lately. It would be rather a joke to try and cut him
out with the Contessa--if one could."

"Oh--cut him out." The Boy seemed thoughtful. "Though you aren't in
love with her?"

"Yes."

"I see."

"Will you go if I do--that is, if she really asks us?"

I expected him to flash out a refusal, but he brooded under a deep
shadow of eyelashes for a while, looking half cross, half mischievous,
and finally said: "I'll think it over."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVI

A Man from the Dark

"Desperate, proud, fond, sick, . . . rejected by men."
--WALT WHITMAN.

As we drank our _cafe double_, tap, tap, came at the door; a message
from the Contessa di Ravello asking if we would not take coffee with
her and her friends in their private sitting-room.

I would have preferred to finish my talk with the Little Pal, which
had reached an entertaining point in the announcement that he seemed
to know me less well since he had heard my name--that names, and past
histories, and circumstances were barriers between lives. But the Boy,
reluctant a short time ago to be drawn into the Contessa's society,
was now apparently willing to give up the tete-a-tete.

We left our coffee, and went to drink the Contessa's, which reached
our lips chilled by the silent enmity of her friends. But, whether
because their example had been a warning, or because he had suffered a
"change, into something new and strange," the Boy was no longer a wet
blanket. He did not show the self which I had learned to know in some
of its phases, but he was shyly conciliatory with the Contessa, the
blue eyes hinting that, if she were persistent, his admiration might
be won. Still, he often answered in monosyllables or briefly, when she
spoke to him, a smile curving his short upper lip. I could not
understand what his manner meant, nor, I am sure, could she; but she
was evidently bent on solving the puzzle.

"Do you play tennis?" she asked him.

"Yes."

"Ah, so do I, and well, too, though I'm not English. Lord Lane will
tell you that. And you dance, I know."

"Yes."

"You love it? I do."

"I used to."

"That sounds as if you were a hundred, instead of--nineteen, is it
not?"

"I'm not quite ninety-nine."

"I should like to dance with you. We are the right size for each other
in the dance, are we not?"

"I'd try not to disappoint you."

"Oh, we must have a dance. You love music, I know. One sees it by your
eyes. Once, when I asked Lord Lane if he sang or played, he said that
he 'had no drawing-room tricks.' Rude of him, _n'est-ce pas_? But you?
Is it that you play?"

"The violin will talk for me, if I coax it."

"Ah, I was sure. We are going to be congenial. But the singing? I see
by your face that you sing, though you won't say so. Here is a piano.
I will accompany you, if you like, and if we know the same things.
Perhaps our voices would be well together."

I was surprised to see the Boy get up and go to the piano. "I will
sing if you like; but I accompany myself, always," he said. "I don't
sing things that many people know."

For a moment he sat at the piano, as if thinking. Then he, who had
never told me that he sang, never even spoken of singing, turned into
a young angel, and gripped my heart with a voice as strangely
haunting as his eyes and his little brown face. Had he been a girl, I
suppose his voice would have been called a deep contralto. As he was a
boy--I do not know how to classify it.

I can say only that, while the mellow music rippled from his parted
lips, it seemed as if the gates of Paradise had fallen ajar. He sang
an old ballad that I had never heard. It was all about "Douglas
Gordon," whose story flowed with the tide of a plaintive accompaniment
which I think he must have arranged himself: for somehow, it was like
him. All the sadness, all the sweetness in this sweet, sad, old world
seemed concentrated in the Boy's angel voice, and listening, I was
Douglas Gordon, and he was putting my life-sorrow into words. He took
my heart and broke it, yet I would not have had him stop. Then,
suddenly, he did stop, and the Contessa was in tears. "Bravo! bravo!"
she cried, diamonds raining over two spasmodic dimples. "Again;
something else."

He sang Christina Rossetti's "Perchance you may remember, perchance
you may forget," and the thrill of it was in the marrow of my bones. I
had scarcely known before what music could do with me, and the voice
of the little Gaeta, following the song, jarred on my ears as she
praised the Boy, and pleaded for more.

"I can't sing again to-night," said he. "I'm sorry, but I can sing
only when I feel in the mood."

"But you will come with Lord Lane, and stay at my villa, which I have
taken at Aix--yes, if only for a few days? The Baron and Baronessa
will be with me, too. You are going that way. Lord Lane has told me.
Will you come?"

"Is he coming?"

"Lord Lane, tell him that you are."

"You are very good, Contessa----"

"There! You hear, it is settled."

"If--Lord Lane makes you a visit, I will also, as you are kind enough
to want me."

Afterwards, when we had bidden the Contessa and her guardian dragons
good-night, and it was arranged that we were to stay over to-morrow,
on account of the lost bag, I said to the Boy on the way upstairs,
"You've made a conquest of the Contessa."

He blushed furiously, looked angry, and then burst out laughing. "Are
you jealous?" he asked.

"I ought to be."

"But are you?"

"I haven't had time to analyse my emotions. Why did you never tell me
you sang?"

"I wasn't ready--till to-night. Now--I sang for you."

"I thought it was for the Contessa."

"Did you? Well"--with sudden crossness--"you may go on thinking so, if
you like. Can she sing?"

"Rather well."

"As--better than I can?"

"You must judge for yourself when you hear her."

"You might tell me. But no! I don't want you to, now. It's spoiled.
Good-night."

"Good-night. Dream of your conquest."

"Probably she's only trying to--to bring you to the point, by being
nice to me. I wonder if you care?"

I would not give the little wretch any satisfaction. I merely
laughed, and an odd blue light flashed in his eyes. He was making up
his mind to something, for the life of me I could not tell what.

The Contessa and her satellites should have gone on to Chamounix next
day, but Gaeta frankly announced her intention of waiting, so that we
might make the journey together. They were driving over the Tete
Noire, and we would go afoot, to be sure; still, said she, we could
keep more or less together, exchanging impressions from time to time,
and lunching at the same place. She made me promise, as a reward to
her for this delay, that the Boy and I would not take the way of the
Col de Balme, by which no carriage could pass. If we did this, our
party and hers must part company early in the day, and she would be
left to the tender mercies of the Baron and Baronessa for many a
_triste_ hour.

"But why should you be imposed upon by them, if they don't amuse you?"
I ventured to ask; for Gaeta was so frank about her affairs that one
was sometimes led inadvertently to take liberties.

"Oh, it was the brother who amused me, and he amuses me still,"
replied she, with a _moue_, and a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "At
least, I don't _think_ I shall be tired of him, when I see him again.
He is a whirlwind; he carries a woman off her feet, before she knows
what is happening, and we like that in a man, we Italians. We adore
temperament. I was nice to the Baron and Baronessa for Paolo's sake.
He had to go away from Milan, which is my real home, you know--(if I
have a home anywhere)--to have a medal for his air-ship, and many
honours and dinners given him in Paris; so, without stopping to think,
I invited the Baron and Baronessa to visit me in Aix. Then they
suggested that we should have a little tour first; and we are having
it--_Dio mio_, so much the worse for me, till I met you! And now they
make me feel like a naughty child."

"Will Paolo come also to the villa?" I asked, smiling.

"He has engagements to last a fortnight still. Perhaps afterwards he
may run out to Aix."

The Boy's face fell when I told him that I had promised the Contessa
to walk along the highroad, over the Tete Noire.

"Innocentina and I----" he began. Then his eyes wandered to Gaeta, who
stood with her friends at the other end of the hail. She was looking
extremely pretty, and chose that instant to throw a quick glance at
me, demanding sympathy for some _ennui_ or other caused by the
Baronessa. "Oh, very well," he finished, "it doesn't matter."

He was in suspense all day about his mysteriously important bag.
Though handbills had been hastily printed and scattered over the
country, there was no certainty as to when we should hear or whether
we should hear at all. Late in the evening, however, as we were
finishing dinner in the _salle-a-manger_, at the same table with Gaeta
and her friends, a message came that a man desired to see the young
monsieur who had advertised for a lost bag.

The Boy excused himself, and jumped up. I should have liked to go with
him, but courtesy to the ladies forbade, and I sat still, feeling
guilty of disloyalty somehow, nevertheless, because of a look he threw
me. It seemed to say, "We were such friends, but a woman has come
between. My affairs are nothing to you now."

I had thought that he would be back in time for coffee, but he did
not appear, and the curiosity of Gaeta, who had been restless since
the Boy's departure, could no longer be kept within bounds. "Do go and
see if he has got that wonderful bag," she said. "He might come to
tell us!"

I obeyed, nothing loth, but only to learn from the concierge that the
young gentleman had gone away with the man who had called.

"Did he leave no message?" I asked.

"No, Monsieur. He talked with the man here in the hall for a few
minutes; then he ran upstairs and soon came down again with a cap and
coat. Immediately after, he and the man went out together."

"What sort of man was he?"

"An Italian, Monsieur; a very rough-looking peasant-fellow of middle
age, poorly dressed in his working clothes. I have never seen him
before."

I did not like this description, nor the news the concierge had given.
It was nine o'clock, and very dark, for it had begun to rain towards
evening, and a monotonous drip, drip mingled with the plash of the
fountain in the garden. Grim fancies came knocking at the door of my
brain. It was a mad thing for a boy, little more than a child, to go
out alone in the night with a stranger, a "rough-looking
peasant-fellow," who pretended to know something of the vanished bag;
to go out, leaving no word of his intentions, nor the direction he
would take. As like as not, the man was a villain who scented rich
prey in a tourist offering a reward of five thousand francs for a lost
piece of luggage.

As I thought of the brave, innocent little comrade walking
unsuspectingly into some trap from which I could have saved him had I
been by his side, a sensation of physical sickness came over me.

"How long is it since they went out?" I asked quickly.

"Ten minutes, at most, Monsieur."

I could have shaken the concierge's hand for this good news, for there
was hope of catching them up. I was in dinner jacket and pumps, but I
did not wait to make a dash upstairs for hat or coat. I borrowed the
blue, gold-handed cap of the concierge, not caring two pence for my
comical appearance, which would have sent Gaeta into peals of silver
laughter, and out into the rain I went, turning up the collar of my
jacket.

I had forgotten the Contessa, and my promise to return immediately
with tidings from the front. All I thought of was, which direction
should I take to find the Boy. Ought I to turn towards the town or
away from it?

Before I reached the garden gate, not many metres from the door, I had
decided to try the town way; and lest I should be doing the wrong
thing and have to rectify my mistake later, I ran as a lamplighter is
popularly supposed to run, but doesn't and never did.

The Boy and his companion would be walking, and, if I were on the
right track, I was almost sure to catch them up sooner or later at
this pace, before they could reach the town and turn off into some
side street.

I had not been galloping along through the fresh, grey mud for three
hundred metres when I saw two figures moving slowly a few paces ahead.
One was small and slender, the other of middle height and strongly
built.

"Boy, is that you?" I shouted.

The slim figure turned, and I mumbled a "Thank goodness!"

"Little wretch!" I exclaimed heartily, as I joined the couple ahead.
"How could you go off alone like this with a stranger, perhaps a
ruffian (he looks it), without leaving any word for me? You deserve to
be shaken."

"You wouldn't say he looked a ruffian, if you could see his face. I'm
sure he's honest. And as for sending word, I didn't care to disturb
you and--your Contessa."

"Hang the--no, of course, I don't mean that. Luckily I was in time to
catch you, and----"

"Did the Contessa send you after me, or did----"

"She doesn't know what's become of you. There was no time for
politenesses. You gave me some bad moments, little brute. Now, tell me
what you're about."

He explained that the peasant (who understood no word of English) was
an Italian who had come to Martigny to find work as a road mender,
that he had been taken ill and lost his job; that he had tramped back
over the St. Bernard to Aosta, near which place he had once lived;
that the work he had heard of there was already given to another; and
that, walking back to rejoin his family near Martigny, he had found
the bag on the Pass. He had brought it home, and had only just learned
the address of the owner, as set forth in the handbills.

"Why didn't he bring the bag to you, and claim the reward?" I asked.

"It is at the house of the priest, and the priest has been away all
day, visiting a relative in the country somewhere, who is ill, so this
man, Andriolo Stefani, couldn't get the bag. But he came to tell me
that it was found, and where it was."

"And he pretends to be guiding you to the house of the priest now?"

"No. I'm going to his house--or rather, the room where he and his wife
and children live."

"For goodness' sake, why?"

"Because he's refused to accept the reward for finding the bag."

"By Jove, he must have some deep game. What reason did he give, and
what excuse did he make, for dragging you off to his lair? It sounds
as if he meant to try and kidnap you for a ransom--(these things do
happen, you know)--and there are probably others in it besides
himself. I don't believe in the priest, nor the wife and children, nor
even in his having found the bag."

"He didn't ask me to go to his house. When I spoke of the reward, he
said that he couldn't take it, and though I questioned him, would not
tell me why, but was evidently distressed and unhappy. Finally he
admitted that it was his wife who would not allow him to accept a
reward. She had made him promise that he wouldn't. Then I said that
I'd like to talk to her, and might I go with him to his house. He
tried to make excuses; he had no house, only one room, not fit for me
to visit; and the place was a long way off, outside Martigny Bourg;
but I insisted, so at last he gave in. Now, do you still think he's
the leader of a band of kidnappers?"

"I don't know what to think. There's evidently something queer. I'll
talk to him."

During our hurried conversation, the man had walked on a few steps in
advance. I called him back, speaking in Italian. He came at once, and
now that we were in the town, where here and there a blur of light
made darkness visible, I could see his face distinctly. I had to
confess to myself at first glance that it was not the face of a
cunning villain,--this worn, weather-beaten countenance, with its
hollowed cheeks, and the sad dark eyes, out of which seemed to look
all the sorrows of the world.

He had found the bag night before last, he said, between the Cantine
de Proz and Bourg St. Pierre. It had been lying in the road, in the
_ruecksack_, and he judged by the strap that it had been attached to
the back of a man, or a mule. While I questioned him further, trying
to get some details of description not given in the handbills, he
paused. "There is the priest's house," he said. "There is a light in
the window now. Perhaps he has come back."

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