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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Close to the tunnel-head we alighted, and went on into the dream on
foot, the gallery contracting to a few feet in height, where a group
of black figures bent over rock-drills which creaked and groaned. I
saw the drill-holes filled with dynamite, and retired with the others
while the fuse was lighted. I heard from afar off the thunderous
detonations as the rock-face was shattered. I saw the debris being
cleared away, before the drills should begin to grind again; and the
remembrance that, in another rathole on the Swiss side, another party
of workers was patiently advancing towards us, in precisely the same
way, sent a mysterious thrill through my blood.

"Suppose the two galleries don't meet end to end?" I spoke out my
thought.

"But they will," said Bolzano. "Our calculations are precise, and we
have allowed for an error of two inches: I do not think there will be
more. There is a great system of triangulation across the mountains,
and every few months our reckonings are verified. By-and-bye, we shall
hear the sound of each other's drills; then, down will come the last
dividing wall of rock, and Swiss and Italians will be shaking hands."

I think, in coming out of the dark tunnels and windy galleries, I felt
somewhat as Jonah must have felt after he had been discarded in
distaste by the whale. The light dazzled my eyes. I could have shouted
aloud with joy at sight of the sun. I made Bolzano breakfast with me
in the little inn at Iselle, and got upon my way again, at something
past noon. The vast turmoil of the growing railway was left behind. It
was like putting down a volume of Walt Whitman, and taking up
Tennyson.

The Pass had the extraordinary individuality of one face as compared
with another. It had not even a family resemblance to the St. Gothard.
The air was sweet with the good smell of newly cut wood and resinous
pines. There were sudden glimpses of icy peaks, cut diamonds in the
sun, seen for a moment, then swallowed up by stealthily creeping white
clouds, or caressed by them with a benediction in passing. Thin
streaks of cascades on precipitous rocks made silver veinings in
ebony. Side valleys opened unexpectedly, and one knew from hearsay
that gold mines were hidden there. Treading the road built by
Napoleon, I was enveloped in the gloom of the wondrous Gondo Schlucht,
to come out into a broad valley,--a green amphitheatre, above which a
company of white, mountain gods sat grouped to watch a cloud-fight.

If I had not been heart-broken by the cruelty of Helen Blantock, I
should have been almost minded to thank her for sending me here. But
then,--I reminded myself hastily when this thought winked at me over
my shoulder,--I was stunned still, by my heavy disappointment. I was
not conscious to the full of my suffering now, but I should wake up to
it by-and-bye, and then it would be awful--as awful as the desolation
left by a recent great avalanche whose appalling traces I had just
seen.

[Illustration: "TREADING THE ROAD BUILT BY NAPOLEON".]

I refused to be interested in the old Hospice of St. Bernard, or the
newer Hospice, built by order of Napoleon, because neither seemed to
me the real thing. If I could not see the Hospice of St. Bernard on
the Pass of Great St. Bernard, I would not see any other hospices
called by his name. If possible, I would have gone by them with my
eyes shut; but at the new Hospice the yapping of a dozen adorable
puppies in a kennel opposite lured me, and I paused to talk to them.
They did not understand my language, and this was disappointing; but
if I had not stopped I should have missed a short cut which I half
saw, half suspected, dimly zigzagging down the mountain into an
extraordinarily deep valley, and tending in the direction of Brig. It
would have been a pity to pass it by, for though I often thought
myself lost, I eventually caught sight of a town, lying far below,
which could be no other than the one for which I was bound. After
three hours of fast walking down from the Hospice, I plunged through
an old archway into the main street of Brig.

Coming into it, I stopped to gaze up in astonishment at an enormous
house which looked to me as big as Windsor Castle. Indeed, to call it
a house does not express its personality at all; yet it was hardly
magnificent enough for a castle. At each corner was an immense tower,
ornamented with a big bulb of copper, like a gigantic and glorified
Spanish onion. A beautiful Renaissance gallery, flung across from one
tall building to another, lent grace to the otherwise too solid pile,
and I guessed that I must have come upon the ancient stronghold and
mansion of the famous Stockalper family, still existing and still one
of the most important in Switzerland. In the Pass I had seen the
towers built by the first Stockalper--that Gaspar who in mediaeval days
was called "King of the Simplon"; who protected travellers and
controlled the caravan traffic between Italy and Switzerland; now, to
see the house which he had founded still occupied by his descendants,
fixed more pictorially in my mind the stirring legends connected with
the man.

The little town of Brig seemed noisy and gay after the great silence
of the Pass. Church bells were ringing, whips were cracking; in the
central place there were crowding shops, bright with colour, and
lights were beginning to shine out from the windows of the hotels.

I was to meet the Winstons at the Hotel Couronne; and as I ventured to
show my travel-stained person in the hall, I was greeted by a vision:
Molly in white muslin, dressed for dinner.

"What, you already!" she exclaimed. "You must have come over the Pass
by steam or electricity. We didn't expect you for an hour. We've lots
to tell you, and oh, I've bought you a sweet revolver, which you are
always to have about you, on your walking trip, though Jack laughed at
me for doing it. But now, for your adventures."

In a few words I sketched them, and learned that the motor had again
pulled wool over the eyes of the law; then Molly must have seen in
mine that there was a question which I wished, but hesitated, to ask.
If a man may have a beam in his eye, why not a mule?

"We've been interviewing animals of various sorts for you all day,"
she said. "I've had a kind of employment agency for mules, and have
taken their characters and capacities. But----"

"There's a 'but,' is there?" I cut into her ominous pause.

"Well, the nicest beasts are all engaged for days ahead, or else their
owners can't spare them for a long trip; or else they're too young; or
else they're too old; or else they're _hideous_. At least, there's one
who's hideous, and I'm sorry to say he's the only one you can have."

"'Twas ever thus, from childhood's hour.'"

"But the landlord says there are dozens of mules at Martigny."

"A mere mirage."

"No, he has telephoned. But you'll look at the one here, I suppose, if
only as a matter of form? I think he's outside now."

"Let him be brought before me," I said, with the air of a tyrant in a
melodrama; and, by the way, I have always thought it would be very
pleasant being a tyrant by profession, like Him of Syracuse, for
instance. You could do all the things you wanted to do, without
consulting the convenience of anybody else, or having it on your
conscience that you hadn't.

At this moment Jack appeared. It seemed that he had been putting the
mule (the one available mule) through his paces, and the wretched
fellow was laughing. "It's not funny, at all," said I, thinking it was
the situation which amused him. But Jack explained that it wasn't
that. "It's the brute's tail," said he. "When you see it, you'll know
what I mean."

I did know, at sight. The organ--if a mule's tail can be called an
organ--had mean proportions and a hideous activity which expressed to
my mind a base and depraved nature. Had there been no other of his
kind on earth, I would still have refused to take this beast as my
companion; and after a few moments' feverish discussion, it was
arranged that after all we must go through the Rhone Valley to-morrow
to Martigny.

But the Rhone Valley, radiant in morning light, heaped coals of fire
upon my head. I had maligned perfection. There was all the difference
between the country between Brig and Martigny seen from a
railway-carriage window, and seen from a motor car, that there is
between the back of a woman's head when she is giving you the cut
direct, and her face when she is smiling on you.

The Rhone Valley tame! The Rhone Valley monotonous! It was poetry
ready for the pen of Shelley, and a scene for the brush of Turner. The
little towns sleeping on the shoulders of the mountains, or rising
turreted from hardy rocks bathed by the golden river; the peeps up
cool lateral valleys to blue glaciers; the near green slopes and
distant, waving seas of snowy splendour left a series of pictures in
the mind; and best of all was Martigny's tower pointing a slender
finger skyward from its high hill.

Late in the afternoon, as the car whirled us into the garden of the
Hotel Mont Blanc, we came face to face with two mules. They had
brought back a man and a girl from some excursion. The landlord was at
the door to receive his guests. Jack, Molly, and I flung the same
question at his head, at the same moment. Was the situation as it had
been when he telephoned? Could I hire a mule and a man, not for a day
or two, but for a long journey--a journey half across the world if I
liked?

The answer was that I might have five mules and five men for a
journey all across the world if it were my pleasure.

It sounded like a problem in mental arithmetic, but I thanked my stars
that there seemed no further need for me to struggle over its
solution.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VIII

The Making of a Mystery

"There was the secret . . .
Hid in . . . grey, young eyes."
--ALICE MEYNELL.

"Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more."
--WALT WHITMAN.

In my opinion it is a sign of strength rather than of weakness, to
change one's mind with a good grace. For my part, I find pleasure in
the experience, feeling refreshed by it, as if I had had a bath, and
got into clean linen after a hot walk. Changing the mind gives also
somewhat the same sensation as waking in the morning with the
consciousness that no one on earth has ever seen this day before; or
the satisfaction one has on breaking an egg, the inside of which no
human eye has beheld until that moment. A change of mind bestows on
one for the time being a new Ego; therefore I did not grudge myself my
delight in the once despised Rhone Valley. Nevertheless, I was glad
that the Mule of Brig had been one with which I could conscientiously
decline to associate. My resolve not to take a pack-mule there had
become so fixed, that to have uprooted it would have seemed a
confession of failure. Besides, the need to go on to Martigny had
given an excuse for another day with Jack, Molly, and Mercedes.

I had been as happy as a man whose duty it is to be broken-hearted,
may dare to be. But the next morning came at Martigny, and with my
bath the news that the five promised men with their five mules awaited
my choice.

I had secretly hoped that the day might be mule-less till evening, for
in that case Jack and Molly would probably stay on, and I should not
be left alone in the world until to-morrow.

However, it was not to be. I gave myself the satisfaction of keeping
the mules waiting, on the principle of always doing unto others what
they have done unto you; and after a leisurely toilet, I went down to
hold the review.

Four men, with four mules, started forward eagerly, jostling each
other, at sight of me accompanied by the landlord. But one held back a
little, with a modest dignity, as if he were too proud to push himself
into notice, or too generous to exalt himself at the expense of
others. He was a slim, dark man of middle height, past thirty in age,
perhaps, with a look of the soldier in the bearing of his shoulders
and head. He had very short black hair; high cheekbones, where the
rich brown of his skin was touched with russet; deep-set, thoughtful
eyes, and a melancholy droop of the moustache. His collar was
incredibly tall and shiny, with turn-down points; he wore a red tie;
his thick brown clothes might have been bought ready made in the
Edgeware Road; evidently he had honoured the occasion with his Sunday
best. While his comrades jabbered together, in patois which flung in a
French word now and then, like a sop to Cerberus, he spoke not a word;
yet I saw his lips tighten, as he laid his arm over the neck of a
small but well-built mule of a colour which matched its master's
clothing. The animal rubbed a brown velvet head against the brown
waistcoat which, perhaps, covered a fast-beating heart. From that
instant I knew that this was my man, and this my mule, as certainly as
if they had been tattooed with my family crest and truculent motto:
"What I will, I take."

"You've been a soldier, haven't you?" I asked the muleteer in French.

He saluted as he replied that he had, and that for several years he
had served a French general, as orderly. His name was Joseph Marcoz,
and--he added--he was a Protestant.

"And your mule?" I asked.

"Finois, Monsieur."

"Ah, but his persuasion? He is Protestant, too?" If Joseph had looked
puzzled, I should have been disappointed, but a spark of humour lit
the gloom of his sombre eye. "Finois is Pantheist, I think you call
it, Monsieur. I am persuaded that he has a soul, for which there will
be a place in the Beyond; and if he goes there first, I hope that he
will be looking out for me."

It seemed a sudden drop, after this preface, to turn to bargaining.
The landlord made the break for me, however, when he saw that I had
set my mind upon Marcoz and his Finois. It then appeared that Joseph
was not his own master, but worked for the real owner of Finois and
other mules. The price he would have to ask for such a journey as I
proposed was twenty-five francs a day. This would include the services
of man and mule, food for the one, and fodder for the other. Without
any beating down, I accepted the terms proposed, and the only part of
the arrangement left in doubt was the time of starting. It was not
eight o'clock, yet already the diligences and private carriages going
over the Grand St. Bernard had departed with a jingling of bells and
sharp cracking of whips which had first informed me that it was day.
With me, it was different, however. Speed was no longer my aim. I
would not be in a hurry about arriving anywhere, and when I learned
that there were a couple of small towns on the Pass, at either of
which I could lie for a night, there seemed no fair excuse for keeping
Jack and Molly at Martigny.

As I was wondering when they would wake, that I might consult them on
the details of my journey, I glanced up and saw Molly, as fresh as if
she had been born with the morning, standing on a balcony just over my
head. In her hand was a letter, and as she waved a greeting, something
came fluttering uncertainly down. I managed to catch this something
before it touched earth, and had inadvertently seen that it was an
unmounted photograph, probably taken by an amateur correspondent, when
Molly leaned over the railing, with an excited cry. "Oh, don't look.
Please, _please_ don't look at that photograph!" she exclaimed.

"Of course I won't," I answered, slightly hurt. "What do you take me
for?"

"I know you wouldn't mean to," she answered. "But you might glance
involuntarily. You _didn't_ see it, did you?"

Suddenly I was tempted to tease her. "Would it be so very dreadful if
I did?"

"Yes, dreadful," she echoed solemnly. "Don't joke. Do please tell me,
one way or the other, if you saw what was in the picture?"

"You may set your mind at ease. If it were to save my life, I couldn't
tell whether the photograph was of man, woman, boy, girl, or beast;
and now I'm holding it face downward."

Molly broke into a laugh. "Good!" she exclaimed. "I'm coming to claim
my property, and to look at your new acquisitions. I've been
criticising them from the window, and I congratulate you."

A moment later she was beside me, had taken her mysterious photograph,
and hidden it between the pages of a letter, covered with writing in a
pretty and singularly individual hand. She explained that a whole
budget of "mail" had been forwarded to Martigny, in consequence of a
telegram sent to Lucerne, and then, as if forgetting the episode, she
applied herself to winning the hearts of the man Joseph and the mule
Finois.

Presently we were joined by Winston, and I broached the subject of the
start. "The idea is," I said, "to begin as I mean to go on, with a
walk of from twenty to thirty miles a day, according to the scenery
and my inclination. Marcoz thinks that we could pass the night
comfortably enough at a place called Bourg St. Pierre, even if we
didn't get away from here for an hour or so. Then early to-morrow we
would push on for the Hospice, and reach Aosta in the evening."

"It would be a mistake to leave here in the heat of the day, don't you
think so?" said Jack. "Much better if we all stopped on, did some
sightseeing, and then Molly and I bade you good speed about half-past
seven to-morrow morning."

"But, Lightning Conductor, you forget we can't stay. You know--_the
letters_," said Molly, with one of those deep, meaning glances which
her lovely eyes had more than once sent Jack, when there was some
question as to our ultimate parting. My heart invariably responded to
this glance with a pang, as a nerve responds to electricity. She
wished to go away with her Lightning Conductor, and leave me at the
mercy of a mule. Well, I would accept my lonely lot without
complaining, but not without silently reflecting that happy lovers are
selfish beings at best.

The forlorn consciousness that I was of superlative importance to no
one was heavy upon me. I wanted somebody to care a great deal what
became of me, and evidently nobody did. I was horribly homesick at
breakfast, and the Winstons' gaiety in the face of our parting seemed
the last straw in my burden. Perhaps Molly saw this straw in my eyes,
for she looked at me half wistfully for a moment, and then said, "If
we weren't sure this walking trip of yours will do you more good than
anything else, we wouldn't let you leave us, for we have loved having
you. We'll write to you at Aosta, where you will be staying for a
couple of days, and give you our itinerary, with lots of addresses. By
that time, you too will have made up your mind about your route. You
will have decided whether to branch off among the bye-ways, or go
straight on south, although you mustn't go _too_ quickly, and get
there too early----"

"I don't believe I shall have made up my mind to anything in Aosta,"
said I gloomily. "I feel that I shall still be unequal to that, or any
other mental effort, and what is to become of me, Heaven, Joseph, and
Finois alone know."

"Now, isn't it funny, I feel exactly the opposite? Something seems to
tell me that at Aosta, if not before, you will, so to speak, 'read
your title clear,'" said Molly, with aggravating cheerfulness. "As
soon as you've settled what way to take, you must write or wire; and
who knows but by-and-bye we shall cross each other's path again, on
the road to the Riviera?"

I revived a little. "I don't think you told me that you were going to
run down there. Jack was talking about keeping mostly to Switzerland,
I thought."

"But Switzerland will turn a cold shoulder upon us, as the autumn
comes to spoil its disposition, and we were saying only this morning
that it would be fine to make a rush to the Riviera, for a wind up to
our trip."

"You see, Molly had a letter----" Jack had begun to speak with an
absent-minded air, but suddenly recovered himself. "We don't care to
get back to England till November," he hastily went on. "I want Molly
to have some hunting and a jolly round of country houses just to see
what we can do to make an English winter tolerable. We've got four or
five ripping invitations, and in January Mistress Molly herself will
have to play hostess to a big house party, at Brighthelmston Park,
which the mater and governor have lent us till next season."

If he had wanted to take my mind off an inadvertence, he could
scarcely have manoeuvred better, but why the inadvertence (if it had
been one) could concern me, it was difficult to imagine.

There was a friendly dispute as to whether Molly and jack should see
me off, or whether I should wish them good-bye before starting on my
journey; but in the end it was settled that I should be the one to
leave first. Perhaps they believed that, if left to myself, I should
never start at all; perhaps they wished to add photographs of the
mule-party to their Kodak collection, already large; or perhaps they
thought only how to make the parting pleasantest for me, since I had
no one, and they had each other.

[Illustration: "THERE WAS A PANG WHEN I TURNED MY BACK".]

In any case, at ten o'clock all that was left of my store was placed
upon the back of Finois, who had the air of ignoring its existence,
and mine as well. Had he been a horse, he would at least have deigned
to exchange glances with me, friendly or otherwise; but being what he
was, he looked everywhere except at me, as if he had been some haughty
aristocrat conscientiously snubbing an offensive upstart. Joseph
appeared to be the one human being of more importance for Finois than
the moving bough of an inedible tree, bush, or shrub, and even Molly
could win him to no change of facial expression, though he ate her
offered sugar.

There was a pang when I turned my back irrevocably upon my friends,
having waved my hand or my panama so often that to do so again would
he ridiculous. We were off, Joseph, Finois, and I; there was no
getting round it; and as we ambled away along the hot white road, we
seemed but small things in the scheme of a busy and indifferent
world--mere cards, shuffled by the hands of an expert, for a game in
which our destination was unknown.

[Illustration: No Title]

CHAPTER IX

The Brat

"Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; hop in his walk
and gambol in his eyes."
--SHAKESPEARE.

In beginning our tramp, I trudged step for step with Joseph, who had
Finois' bridle over his arm, and answered my questions regarding the
various features of the landscape. Thus I was not long in discovering
that he had a knowledge of the English language of which he was
innocently proud. I made some enquiry concerning a fern which grew
above the roadside, when we had passed through Martigny Bourg, and
Joseph answered that one did not see it often in this country. "It is
a seldom plant," said he. "It live in high up places, where it was
_difficile_ to catch, for one shall have to walk over rocks, which do
not--what you say? They go down immediately, not by-and-bye."

I liked this description of a precipice, and later, when we had
engaged in a desultory discussion on politics, I was delighted when
Joseph spoke solemnly of the "Great Mights." He had formed opinions of
Lord Beaconsfield and Gladstone, but had not yet had time to do so of
Mr. Chamberlain, for, said he, "these things take a long time to think
about." Fifteen or twenty years from now, he will probably be ready
with an opinion on men and matters of the present. He asked gravely if
there had not been a great difference between the two long-dead Prime
Ministers?

"How do you mean?" I enquired. "A difference in politics or
disposition?"

"They would not like the same things," he explained. "The Lord
Beaconsfield, _par exemple_, he would not have enjoyed to come such a
tour like this, that will take you high in icy mountains. He would
want the sunshine, and sitting still in a beautiful _chaise_ with
people to listen while he talked, but Monsieur Gladstone, I think he
would love the mountains with the snow, as if they were his brothers."

"You are right," I said. "They were his brothers. One can fancy
edelweiss growing freely on Mr. Gladstone. His nature was of the white
North. You have hit it, Joseph."

"But I do not see a thing that I have hit," he replied, bewildered,
glancing at the stout staff in his hand, and then at Finois, who had
evidently not been brought up on blows. It was then my turn to
explain; and so we tossed back and forth the conversational
shuttlecock, until I found myself losing straw by straw my load of
homesickness, and becoming more buoyant of spirit in the muleteer's
society.

After the splendours of the Simplon it seemed to rue, as the windings
of the Great St. Bernard Pass shut us farther and farther away from
Martigny, that this was in comparison but a peaceful valley. It was a
cosey cleft among the mountains, with just room for the river to be
frilled with green between its walls. There was a look of homeliness
about the sloping pastures, which slept in the sunshine, lulled by the
song of the swift-flowing Dranse.

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