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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I answered by hooking the ring, which was far too small for the least
of my fingers, into the spring-loop which held my watch on its chain.

"My watch and I are one," I said. "Only burglary or death can separate
me from the ring now; and if I'm smashed next time Jack Winston lets
me drive his motor car, there will probably be a romantic little
paragraph in the papers--perhaps even a pathetic verse--about the ring
on the dead man's watch-chain, which will give you every
satisfaction."

"The boat's whistling," said the Boy. "We'd better run, if we want to
see the Abbey of Hautecombe before lunch."

We did run, and caught the boat in that uncertain and exciting manner
which brings into play a physical appurtenance unrecognised by
science, _i.e._, the skin of the teeth. Under the awning which shaded
the deck, we took the only two seats not occupied by an abnormally
large German family,--abnormally large individually as well as
collectively,--and settled ourselves for half an hour's enjoyment of a
charming water-panorama.

"What a heavenly place Aix is!" exclaimed the Boy fervently. "I'm so
glad I came."

"I thought yesterday that you were disappointed in the place."

"Oh, yesterday was yesterday. To-day's to-day. How glorious everything
is, in the world. I do love living. And I like everybody so much. What
nice, good creatures one's fellow beings are. My heart warms to them.
I don't believe anybody's really horrid, through and through. I should
like to pat somebody on the shoulder."

"Queer thing; I feel exactly the same way this morning," said I.
"Shall we throw ourselves on one another's bosom, and kiss each other
on both cheeks, German fashion, to show our good will towards all
mankind? I'm sure our travelling companions would warmly sympathize
with our _schwaermerei_."

"No-o, perhaps we'd better not risk setting them the example, for fear
they should follow it."

"Then let's shake hands."

He put out his little slim brown paw, and I seized it with such
heartiness that he visibly winced, but not a squeak did the pain draw
from him; and the large Germans, looking on gravely, no doubt thought
that, according to some queer English rite, we had registered an
important vow.

Really the world was a nice place that day, though I might not have
noticed it so much if the Boy and I had been still at loggerheads.

Yesterday, as we entered Aix, I had said to myself that the mountains
surrounding the town had descended to depths of dumpy ugliness
unworthy the name and dignity of mountains. I had formulated the idea
that there should be world landscape-gardeners appointed, to work on a
grand scale, and alter hills or mountains which Nature had neglected
or bungled. But to-day, as we steamed down the long, narrow Lac de
Bourget, sitting shoulder to shoulder, the light breeze fluttering
butterfly-wings against our faces, I could not see that there was
anything for the most fastidious taste to alter, anywhere.

As the lake at Annecy had been incredibly blue, this lake was
incredibly green. No weekly penny paper in England, even in its
fattest holiday number, would have room enough to compute the vast
number of emeralds which must have been melted to give that vivid tint
to the sparkling water. It was as easy to see the inhabitants of the
lake having their luncheon at the bottom, on tables exquisitely
decorated with coloured pebbles, as it is to look in through the
plate-glass window of a restaurant. As our course changed, the
mountains girdling the lake and filling in the perspective, grouped
themselves in graceful attitudes, like professional beauties sitting
for their photographs. There were chateaux dotted here and there on
the hillside, and I no longer peopled them with myself and Helen
Blantock. I realised that if one had a palace on the Lake of Como or
Bourget, or any other romantic sheet of water, one could be happy as
an elderly bachelor, if one's days were occasionally enlivened by
visits from congenial friends, such as the Winstons and the Boy. No
wonder that Lamartine was happy at Chatillon, writing his Meditations!
I felt that a long residence on the shores of the Lac de Bourget would
inspire me to some modest meditations of my own, and I could even have
taken down a few memoranda for them, had I not feared that the Boy
would laugh to see my notebook come out.

I remembered Hautecombe, with its ancient Abbey, deep cream-coloured,
like old ivory or the marbles of the Vatican, glimmering among dark
trees, and mirrored in the lake so clearly that, gazing long at the
reflection, one felt as if standing on one's head. I pointed it out to
the Boy from a distance, on its jutting promontory, with the pride of
the well-informed guide, and talked of the place with a superficial
appearance of erudition. But after all, when he came to pin me down
with questions, my bubble-reputation burst. Not a date could I pump up
from the drained depths of my recollection, and in the end I had to
accept ignominiously from the Boy such crumbs as he had collected from
a guide-book larder. What was it to us, I contended, that the
monastery was said to have been built in 1125? What did it matter that
it had originally been the home of Cistercians? Why clog one's mind
with such details, since it was enough for all purposes of romance to
know that the old building had weathered many wars and many centuries,
and that a special clause had protected the monks when Savoie was
ceded by Italy to France? The great charm of the place for me, apart
from its natural beauty, lay in the thought that it was the last home
of dead kings, the vanished Princes of Savoie; I did not want to know
the facts of its restoration at different dates, and would indeed
shut my eyes upon all such traces if I could.

Though the Abbey and its double in the lake had remained a picture in
my mind, through the years since I had seen them, I was struck anew
with the peaceful loveliness of the place as we approached the little
landing-stage. The Kings of Savoie had chosen well in choosing to
sleep their last sleep at Hautecombe.

The Boy and I slowly ascended the deeply shadowed road which led up
the hill to the Abbey, but leisurely as we walked, we soon outpaced
the Germans. For this we were not sorry, since it gave us the silent
grey church to ourselves--and the sleeping Kings. We bestowed money
for his charities upon the white-robed monk who would have shown us
the tombs and the chapels, conscientiously gabbling history the while;
and then, with compliments, we freed him from the duty. His hard facts
would have been like dogs yapping at our heels, and, as the Boy said,
we would not have been able to hear ourselves think.

We whispered as if fearing to wake the sleepers, as we wandered from
one bed of marble in its dim niche, to another. Never, perhaps, did so
many crowned heads lie under the same roof as at peaceful Hautecombe,
sleeping longer, more soundly far, than the Princess in her enchanted
Palace in the Wood. For centuries the convent bells have rung, calling
the monks to prayer; and sometimes the walls have trembled with the
thunder of cannon: yet the sleepers have not stirred. There they have
lain, those stately, royal figures, with hands folded placidly on
placid bosoms, resting well after stress and storm.

It was difficult to keep in mind that the real kings and queens had
mouldered into dust under the stone where reposed their counterfeit
presentments. Again and again we had to send away the impression that
we were looking at the actual bodies, transformed by the slow process
of centuries into marble, together with their guardian lions, their
favourite hounds, and their curly lambs.

The endless slumber of these royal men and women of Savoie seemed
magical, mysterious. We felt that, if we but had the secret of the
talisman, we could wake them; that they would slowly rise on elbow,
and gaze at us, stony-eyed, and reproachful for shattering their
dreams.

The murmurous silence of the church whispered broken snatches of their
life stories--not that part which we could read in history, or see
graven in Latin on their tombs, but that part of which they might
choose to dream. Had those knightly men in carven armour loved the
marble ladies lying in stately right of possession by their sides, or
had their fancy wandered to others whose dust lay now in some far,
obscure corner of earth?

If my homage could have compensated in any small degree for kingly
unfaith, a drop of balm would have fallen upon the marble heart of
each royal lady to whom such injustice had perchance been done; for I
loved them all for their noble dignity, and the sweet femininity which
remained to them even under the mask of stone. Their names alone
warmed the blood with the wine of romance: the Princess Yolande; the
Duchess Beatrix; the Lady Melusine. Surely, with such names and such
profiles, they had been worth a man's living or dying for; and if life
had not been so vivid for me that day, I should have wished myself
back in the far past, in heavy, uncomfortable armour, fighting their
battles.

"'Where are all the dear, dead women?'" asked the Boy. "'What's become
of all the gold that used to hang, and brush their shoulders?' Maybe
part of the answer to Browning's question lies in those tombs."

"They were Princesses, like your sister," said I. "I've been fancying
them with her eyes."

"What do you know about her eyes?" he asked quickly.

"I imagine them like yours."

"Let's get out into the sunshine again," said the Boy. "I'm afraid
it's time to leave the Princesses, and go back to the Contessa."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXIV

The Revenge of the Mountain

"Contending with the fretful elements."
--SHAKESPEARE.

It is the early bird which gathers the worm, if the worm has
thoughtlessly got up early too; but it is also the bird which comes
flying from afar off, whatever his engagements elsewhere may be; the
bird which, having come, remains on the spot favoured by the worm,
singing sweet songs to charm it into a mood ripe for the gathering.

Such a bird was Paolo, and such--but perhaps it would be more gallant
not to carry the simile further, since even poetry could scarcely
license it.

It is enough to say, in proof of the proverb, that when the Boy and I
arrived at the villa in time for _dejeuner_, to which I had been
invited over night, we found Paolo with Gaeta, under the red umbrella,
unencumbered by any irrelevant Barons or Baronesses.

Gaeta was looking pale and a little frightened. Her dimples were in
abeyance, as if waiting to learn whether something had happened to
twinkle about, or something which would more likely extinguish them
forever. But the aeronaut might have invented an air-ship to take the
place of ordinary Channel traffic, so great with pride was he. He
appeared to have grown several inches in height, and to have
increased considerably in chest measurement, as he sprang from his
chair to welcome us, as if we had been long-lost brothers.

"Congratulate me," said he. "The Contessa has just consented to be my
wife."

Gaeta clutched the arm of her rustic seat with a tiny hand upon which
a new ring glittered, like a new star in the firmament. Her warm dark
eyes, eager, expectant, deliciously fearful, were on the Boy. If the
discarded favourite of yesterday had leaped to the throat of the
accepted lover of to-day (her "Whirlwind"), she would have screamed a
silvery little scream and implored him for _her_ sake to accept the
inevitable calmly; she would have given him a reproachful flash of the
eyes, to say, "Why didn't _you_ take me, instead of letting him carry
me away? What could I do, when you left me alone, at his mercy--I so
frail, he so big and strong?" Her glance would then have telegraphed
to Paolo, "You have won me and my love; you can afford to spare a
defeated rival who is desperate"; and perhaps she might even have
thrown me a crumb for auld flirtation's sake.

But the Boy did not, apparently, feel the least magnetic attraction
towards Paolo's throat, or any other vulnerable part of the aeronaut's
person. Nor did he stamp on the ground, crying upon earth to open and
swallow the master of the air. I, too, kept an unmoved front; but
then, being English, that might have been pardoned to my national
_sang-froid_. There was, however, no such excuse for the mercurial
young American, and flat disappointment struck out the spark in
Gaeta's eye. The second act of her little drama seemed doomed to
failure.

"_Mille congratulations_," said the Boy cordially, I basely echoing
him. We shook hands with Gaeta; we shook hands with Paolo, and
something was said about weddings and wedding-cake. Then the Baron and
Baronessa appeared so opportunely as to give rise to the base
suspicion that they had been eavesdropping. More polite things were
mumbled, and we went to luncheon, Gaeta on Paolo's arm, with a
disappointed droop of her pretty shoulders. We drank to the health and
happiness of the newly affianced pair, a habit which seemed to be
growing upon me of late, and might lead me down the fatal grade of
bachelordom. The Boy and I were unable to conceal, as we ought to have
done out of politeness, the fact that our appetites had sustained the
shock of our lady's engagement, and I saw in her eyes that she could
never wholly forgive us, no, not even if we made love to her after
marriage.

"Shall you take your wedding trip in a balloon?" asked the Boy
demurely; and this was the last straw. Gaeta did not make the faintest
protest when, soon after, it was announced that he and I thought of
leaving Aix on the morrow. I am not sure that she even heard my vague
apologies concerning a telegram from friends.

We all went to the opera at one of the Casinos that night. It was
"Rigoletto," and Gaeta and Paolo sat side by side, looking into each
other's eyes during the love scene in the first act. But the Boy was
adamant, and I did not turn a hair. He and I were much occupied in
wondering at the strange infatuation of the stage hero, but especially
the villain--quite a superior villain--for the heroine, who looked
like an elderly papoose: therefore we had no time to be jealous of
anything that went on under our noses. The party supped with me, _en
masse_, at my hotel; and afterwards I said good-bye to Gaeta.

She did not know that I had planned my journey with a thought of
seeing her at the end, and drowning my sorrows in flirtation; but the
Boy knew, and had not forgotten--the little wretch. I saw his thought
twinkling in his eyes, as I said debonairly that we might all meet on
the Riviera. If I had not sternly removed my gaze, I should probably
have burst out laughing, and precipitated a second duel in which I,
and not the Boy, would have been a principal.

When I had been in Aix-les-Bains before, I had made the excursion to
Mont Revard, as all the world makes it, by the funicular railway; and
after half an hour in the little train, I had arrived at the top for
lunch and the view, both being enjoyed in a conventional manner. Now,
all was to be changed. The Boy and I did not regard ourselves as
tourists, but as pilgrims.

Among other things that self-respecting pilgrims cannot do, is to
ascend a mountain by means of a funicular railway; better stay at the
bottom, and look up with reverence. Therefore, instead of strolling
out to the little station about twelve o'clock, with the view of
reaching the restaurant on the plateau in time for _dejeuner_, we met
on the balcony of the Bristol at seven in the morning. There we
fortified ourselves for a long walk, with eggs and _cafe au lait_,
while Innocentina and Joseph grouped the animals at the foot of the
steps.

The day was divinely young, and most divinely fair, when we set forth.
Only the soft fall of an occasional leaf, weary of keeping up
appearances on no visible means of support, told that autumn had
come. The weather put me in mind of a beautiful woman of forty, who
can still cheat the world into believing that she is in the full
summer of her prime, and is making the most of the few good years left
before the crash.

As we struck up the steep hill that leads out of Aix-les-Bains and
civilisation, passing with all our little procession into the oak
copses which fringe the lower slopes of Mont Revard, the Boy and I
agreed that nothing became the town so well as the leaving it behind.
At last little Aix unveiled her face to us, as we looked down upon it
from airy altitudes. We had space to see how pretty she was, how
charmingly she was dressed, and how gracefully she sat in her
mountain-backed chair, with her dainty white feet in the lake, which,
as Joseph said, we could now follow with our eyes _dans toute son
etendue_. A beautiful _etendue_ it was, the water keeping its
extraordinary brilliance of colour, even in the far distance; vivid in
changing blue-greens, flecked with gold, like the spread tail of a
peacock burnished by the sun.

Mont Revard is chiselled on the same pattern as all the other
mountains, big and little, of this part of Savoie; first, the long,
steep slope decently covered with a belt of wood, oak below, and pine
above; then a grey, precipitous wall, scarred and furrowed by the
frost and storm of a million years or more. This block-and-socket
arrangement of Nature is, generally speaking, one of the least
interesting of mountain forms, and its crudity was the more noticeable
as we were fresh from the soaring pinnacles and stupendous pyramids of
Switzerland. But Mont Revard is the perfection of its type; and as we
plodded in single file up the threadlike path wound round the
mountain (Joseph and Innocentina in front, driving the animals), my
respect for Revard increased with each steeply ascending step.

Aromatic-scented branches brushed our faces, and we had to part them
before we could pass on. Then they flew back into their accustomed
places, resenting our intrusion by shaking over us a shower of
fragrant dew. The path, which was always narrow, had fallen away a
little here and there, for it is no one's business to repair it now,
since the making of the railway has turned pilgrims into tourists.
There was just room for man or beast to walk without danger, but so
sheer were the descents below us, so great the drop, that a woman
might have been pardoned a few tremors. "It's a good thing you're not
a girl," said I to the Little Pal, across my shoulder, holding back a
particularly obstinate branch which would have liked to push us over
the precipice, with its lean black arm. "You would be screaming, and I
shouldn't know what to do for you."

"Not if I were an American girl," he replied, bristling with
patriotism.

"Is your sister plucky?"

"As plucky as I am; but perhaps that's not saying much. So you're glad
I'm not a girl?"

"I wouldn't metamorphose you, and lose my comrade. Still, if your
sister were like you, and not an heiress, I should----"

"You would--what?"

"Like to meet her. But she would probably detest me, and wonder how
her brother could have endured my society for weeks on end."

I was looking back, as I spoke, at the Boy, who was close behind, when
suddenly his smile seemed to freeze, and springing forward he caught
me by the coat sleeve.

"What's the matter?" I asked, for he was pale under the brown tan.

For an instant he did not answer. Then, with his lips trembling
slightly, he smiled again. "I thought you were going to be killed,
that's all," said he, "so I stopped you. You were looking back at me,
but I saw that--that you were just going to tread on a stone which
Fanny had loosened with her hoof as she passed. If you had stepped
there, before you could regain your balance, you--but there's no use
talking of it. Only do look where you're walking, won't you, when
we're on a path like this? Now we can go on."

"Why, you little duffer, you're as white as a ghost!" I exclaimed. "If
the stone had slipped I should have jumped back. The path isn't really
so narrow. It only gives that effect because it's steep, and hangs
over the edge of a precipice. Still, many thanks for your solicitude."

"I believe, after all, I'll have to rest for a minute," the Boy said
apologetically. "I feel--a little queer. You needn't wait. I'm sorry
you should see me like this. You'll think that there's nothing to
choose between me and a girl. But I'm not always a coward."

"I know that well enough," I assured him. "You're not a coward now.
But come on. You shall rest when the path widens, where the others are
stopping."

I caught his hand to pull him along, since we could not walk abreast,
and it was icy cold. Yet it was not for himself that he had feared,
and my heart was very warm for the Little Pal, as I steered him
carefully past the loose, flat stone on the edge of the narrow path.

Joseph and Innocentina, who had been driving Finois and Souris,
allowing Fanny to follow at will, had called a halt with the three
animals, in a green dell where the way widened. The muleteer had a
handful of exquisite pink cyclamen, fragrant as violets, which he had
been gathering from hidden nooks among the rocks, and he was in the
act of presenting the flowers to Innocentina when we arrived, but she
waved them aside, exclaiming at her young master's pale face.

The Boy explained that there might have been an accident, owing to
Fanny, and the donkey girl broke into violent abuse of the brown
velvet creature who was her favourite.

"Daughter of a thrice-accursed mother, and of a despicable race!" she
cried in her odd patois, which it was often better not to understand
too well. "Blighted and bloodthirsty beast! But look at her now,
eating with an enormous appetite a branch as big as herself. Anaconda!
She would eat if the world burned. If she had, with a stroke of her
twenty times condemned hoof, hurled us all to death on the rocks
below, she would still eat, not even looking over the cliff to see
what had become of us."

"But you should not talk so," broke in Joseph, lover of animals. "It
was not the fault of the little _ane_ that the stone was loosened. How
could she know? It is you who are hard of heart, to turn upon her
thus. It is because you are Catholic, and believe that the beasts have
no souls."

"It is better to have none than to be a heretic, and the soul burn,"
retorted Innocentina. "I am not hard-hearted. I love my young
Monsieur, and would not see him injured, that is all; while you care
for nothing in the world so much as your old Finois. Ah, I would I had
the _insouciance_ of the _anes_. It is after all that which keeps them
young."

At this we laughed, which annoyed Innocentina so much that she at once
fed to the maligned Fanny a bunch of charming yellow-pink mushrooms
which my prophetic soul told me had been originally intended for her
master's lunch.

Fortunately for us, Joseph--sadly wearing in his buttonhole the
despised cyclamen--discovered a few more of these agreeable little
vegetables, which he tested for our benefit by drawing his sturdy
thumbnail along the stem, showing how the fluted undersurface flushed
red at the touch, while the blood flowed carmine from the wound he
made.

A short rest brought the colour back to the Boy's lips, but we did not
go on again until we had eaten some of the chicken sandwiches which
had been put up for me at the hotel. Climbing had made us hungry,
although we had not been three hours on the way. And we had left the
summer behind, on lower levels; we did not need to remind ourselves
now that it was autumn. By noon we were _en route_ again, but the
brilliance of the day had gone. As we looked back at the world we were
leaving, serrated mountains were dark against flying silver clouds,
and when we neared the Col, a fierce north wind, which had been lying
in wait for us above, swooped down like a great bird of prey. We had
heard it shrieking from afar, but now we had penetrated into its very
eyrie; and as we crept, like flies upon a wall, along the tiny path
which merely roughened the sheer rock precipice, the wind caught and
clawed us with savage glee.

For a wonder, the much-travelled Joseph had never before made the
ascent of Mont Revard, therefore a certain pioneer instinct on which I
pride myself, and yesterday's research in the admirable map of the
Ministry of the Interior, alone gave us guidance. I did not see how we
could have come wrong, yet each moment it appeared that our neglected
path had reached its end, like an unwound tape-measure. Could it be
possible that this broken, ill-mended thread was the clue which would
eventually lead us to the Col de Pertuiset, and the chalet-hotel far
away upon the summit of the mountain?

The Boy and I were ahead now, I sheltering him slightly from the cold
blast with my body, as I walked before him. Presently the way turned
abruptly, to zig-zag up a gap in the rock face, and I shouted a
warning to Joseph to look after Innocentina and the animals, so steep
and ruinous was the path. But I need not have been alarmed. A backward
glance showed me that Joseph had anticipated my instructions, so far
as Innocentina was concerned.

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