 16 A man from the dark Desperate, proud, fond, sick, rejected by men, Walt Whitman. As we drank our cafe dube, tap, tap came at the door, a message from the Contessa de Ravolo, 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 tet-a-tet. 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 phrases, 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, Nesbah. 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 Rosetti's, Her Chance You May Remember, Her Chance 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 gaita, following the song, jarred on my ears as she praised the boy, and pleaded for more. I can't sing again tonight, 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 X, 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 bitten 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 analyze 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. It 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 Chamonix next day. But Guetta frankly announced her intention of waiting, so that we might make the journey together. They were driving over the Tête Noir, 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 cold abomb, 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 treased hour. Why should you be imposed upon by them? If they don't amuse you, I ventured to ask. Or Guetta 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 moo 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 airship, and many honors and dinners given him in Paris. So without stopping to think, I invited the Baron and Baronessa to visit me in X. 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. Once afterwards he may run out to X. The boys' face fell when I told him that I had promised the Contessa to walk along the high-road over the Tête Noire. In a centina and eye he began, then his eyes wandered to Gaeta, who stood with her friends at the other end of the hall. She was looking extremely pretty, and chose that instant to throw a quick glance at me, expecting 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 Salamange, at the same table with Gaeta and her friends, a message came that a man desired to see the young messir who had advertised or lost bag. The boy excused himself and jumped up. I should have liked to go with him, but courtesy to the ladies were bad, 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 loath, 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, messir. 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 messir, 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 a fountain in the garden. Some 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 sent it rich prey in a tourist offering a reward of five thousand francs for a lost piece of luggage. As I thought of the brave little innocent 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, messir. 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-banded cap of the concierge, not carrying tuppence 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 meters 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 lamp-lighter 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 gray mud for three hundred meters, 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 deserved 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... Would the contessa send you after me, or did... She doesn't know what's become of you. There was no time for politeness. 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 roadmender, 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 hand-bills. 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. Eventually 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 Martin E. Borg, 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 hallowed 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 Cantina de Prots and Borg Saint-Pierre. It had been lying in the road, in the rucksack, 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 hand-bills, he paused. There is the priest's house, he said. There is a light in the window now. Perhaps he has come back. We will stop and ask where the bag said I, watching the face of the man. I did not blench, and I began to wonder if, after all, he might not be honest. The priest, a delightful late-haired old fellow, himself of the peasant class, had returned, and from a locked cupboard in his bare little dining-room study produced the much-talked of bag in its rucksack. The boy sprang at it eagerly, so secure had he believed it to be on the gray donkey's back, that he had not been in the habit of taking out the key. It was still in the lock, and the bag standing on the priest's dinner-table. The boy opened it with visible excitement. Then he dived down into the contents, without bringing them into sight, and a bright color flamed in his cheeks. Everything is safe, he said, with a long sigh of relief. I'm thankful. He turned to the priest, speaking in French, and his French was very good. I have offered a large reward to the finder of this bag, but the man will not have it. Can you tell me why, Montpère? I cannot tell you, monsieur. Doubtless he has a reason, which seems to him good, answered the priest, who evidently knew that reason, but was pledged not to tell. He and his family have not been in my parish long, but I believe them to be worthy people. I have been trying to get work for Andriolo, since he has been well again, and able to undertake it, but so far I have not been fortunate. The boy took a handful of gold from his pocket, for the poor of your parish, Montpère, if you will be good enough to accept it for them, said he with great charm and simplicity of manner. The old priest flushed with pleasure, saying that he had many poor, and was constantly distressed because he could do so little. This would be a godsend. I glanced at the Italian, and saw that his weary, dark eyes were fixed with a passionate wistfulness upon the gold. This look, his whole appearance, bespoke poverty. Yet he had deliberately refused five thousand francs, a fortune to most men of his condition. Now that he was vouched for by the priest, extreme curiosity took the place of suspicion in my mind. I hid the blue cap of the concierge behind my back in the priest's house. But the boy saw it, and saw that I was drenched with rain. I must have been a figure for laughter, but he did not laugh. You see, I was in a hurry. I excused myself, under a long, comprehending gaze of his. It's your fault if I look and ask. You didn't stop even to go and get a hat, he said. You came out in the rain just as you were, and you ran. I heard you running, behind me. But, of course, it's because you're kind-hearted. You would have done just the same for anybody, for the Contessa. Not for the Baronessa anyhow, said I. I should have stopped for a Macintosh, and even Galoshes had her safety been hanging in the balance. Then we both laughed, and Stefani, who by this time was showing us the way through the rain to his own home, looked over his shoulder, surprised and self-conscious, as if he feared that we were laughing at him. On the outskirts of straggling Martin E. Bourg, he stopped before a gloomy, gray stone house with four rows of closed wooden shutters, which meant four floors of packed humanity. Then Martin E. has its tenements for poor workers, or those who would be workers if they could, and this was one of them. We followed Andriolo Stefani up four flights of narrow stone stairs, picking our way by testing each step with a cautious foot. Since light there was none. Arrived at the top floor, we groped along a passage to the back of the house, and our guide opened the door. There was a yellow haze, which meant one candle flame fighting for its life in the dark, and we waited outside while the Italians spoke for a moment to someone we could not see. There came a note of protest in a woman's voice, but the man beat it down with some argument, and then Stefani returned to ask us in. Two women sat in a room almost bare of furniture, and both tried to rise on our entrance, but one who was young as years ago had her lap full of little worn shoes, and the other, who looked older than the allotted span, was nursing a wailing baby, half undressed. I found myself strangely embarrassed with the coarse guilt of intrusion. I was suddenly oppressed with self-conscious awkwardness, wishing myself anywhere else, and not knowing what to do or say. In all probability I looked haughty and disagreeable, though I felt humble as a worm. How the boy felt I have no means of knowing. I can only tell how he acted. One would have thought that he had known these poor people all his life. I lingered near the door, taking notes of the sad picture, the two rough wooden boxes in which slept three little dark children, all apparently of exactly the same size. The mattress on the floor nearby, for the parents, the open door leading into a dark garret, where no doubt the grandmother crept to sleep, the shelves on the wall, bare save for a few dishes of peasant-made pottery, the pile of dried mud on the tiled floor, which the young mother had been carefully scraping with a knife from the little worn boots in her lap, the rickety uncovered table with a bunch of endives on a plate, and a candle guttering in a bottle. This was the picture, redeemed from squalor only by the lithograph of the virgin on the wall, draped with fresh wild flowers and its perfect cleanliness. This was the home of the supposed kidnapper, the man who had refused to accept five thousand francs as a reward. While I stood stiff and uncomfortable, the boy went forward quickly, begging the two women not to rise. "'Hoor dear little baby,' he said in Italian, looking down at the dark scrap of humanity in the grandmother's arms. She is ill, isn't she? Now how did he know that the creature was a she? If it were a guess, it was a lucky one.' For both women replied together that the little girl had been ailing since yesterday. They could not tell what was the matter. They had hoped that she would be better today. But instead she seemed worse, and with this, a glittering film, which had been overspreading the mother's eyes, suddenly dissolved into silently falling rain, there were no sobs, no gaspings from this tired woman, too used to sorrow to rail against it. Yet it was plain to see that her heart was breaking. Still life must go on, and so, while she grieved for a little one, she feared to lose. She cleaned the boots of those she hoped to keep. "'Have you called a doctor for her?' asked the boy. "'The good priest is half a doctor. He came to see the Bambina. What did he say?' "'Oh, senor, we cannot give her all the things he said she should have, nor can he help us to them, for he has much to do for others, and little to do it with. Yet you would not let your husband take the reward I was offering for finding my bag. He is out of work, and you are poor. You have four children to feed, and one of them is ill. Why will you not have the money? I have come to ask you that. You see, I want you to have it, for the bag is worth all I've offered, and even more to me. "'Ah, senor, how can I tell you? It was to save my baby I refused.' "'Please tell. You need not mind saying anything to me, or to my friend. We are interested and want to help you. Now the young woman's tears were falling fast, but silently still, as if she knew that her heartbreak was unimportant in the great scheme of things, and she wished to make no noise about it. Her lips moved, but no words came. "'She will not speak against me,' Stefani said suddenly. "'Nor will my poor mother, but I will tell you the story. I meant to steal your bag and sell the gold things and all the valuables that were in it. It was a great temptation, for we had scarce a penny left, and there was no work anywhere. I was tired, tired all through to my heart, senor, that night on the pass, and then I found the bag. I brought it home, and charged Emilia and my mother to say nothing to anyone outside. The children were at school, so they did not see, or they might have lisped out something and set people talking. The two women begged me to give up the bag and try for a reward in case one should be offered, but I was desperate. I said that the gold was worth more than anything that would be offered. The gold and some jewellery in a little box. I knew a man who would buy of me, and I had gone out to find him yesterday, when as if heaven had sent a curse upon us for my sin, the Bambina was struck down with this illness, a terrible aching of her little head and a fever. When I came home to take away the things out of the bag, my wife begged me on her knees for the child's sake to change my mind, and at last I did, for who can hold out against the prayers of those he loves? Quickly, lest I should repent, I carried the bag to our priest and told him all. He thought as a penance for the sin which had been in my heart. I should take no reward if it were offered, though he did not lay this upon me as a command. Emilia was with him, for, said she, our lady will save the baby if we make this great sacrifice. Now you know all the truth. And I know that you are good people, better than I would have been in your places, better than any one I know. There's no credit in keeping straight if one's not tempted to go wrong, is there? I won't offend you by begging that you'll take the reward. I offer you no reward, but I am going to give your children a present, and you are to use it for the comfort of your family. I have enough with me, because, you see, I had to get something ready today in case the reward had to be paid. Now it isn't needed for that. So I can use it in this other way. And you have done all that is right, and you would hurt me very much if you refused to let me do what I wish. It is always wrong to hurt people, you know, and you must send me word early tomorrow morning before I go, whether the baby is better. I feel sure, somehow, that she will be. Then a roll of notes was thrust into one of the little boots, still caked with mud, which the mother kept mechanically in her hand. There was a pat on the shoulder, too, and an instant later the boy's arm was hooked into mine. I was whisked away with him in as rapid a flight as if he had been a thief and not a benefactor. How much did you give them, young Santa Claus? I asked when he had me out in the rain again. About one thousand three hundred dollars. I can't stop to calculate it for you in pounds or francs. I'm too excited. Oh, how wet you are, poor man, and all for me. But wasn't it splendid? And I just know that baby'll be better tomorrow. You see if she isn't. She was. The news was brought to us early in the morning, by a poor man half out of his wits with joy and gratitude. CHAPTER 17 The Little Game of Flirtation To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you, Walt Whitman. The Contessa had to be pacified, but she adored romance, and she was pleased to say that the story of the bag lost and found, which I, not the boy, told her, came under that category. She was in the best of tempers for a day of traveling, and saw us off, before her friends were dressed and ready to begin their drive to Chamonix. They are taking as long as they can, on purpose, she whispered to me, with the air of a naughty child planning mischief behind the backs of its elders, anything to keep me to themselves and away from you. But you are walking, and the way is uphill for a very long time. So the hotel people say, we shall catch you up, and just despite the denivolies, if nothing more, I shall beg first one of you than the other, to let me give you a lift. Remember if you must refuse, or I shall cry, and no man has ever made me cry yet. I'm sure no man ever will, I answered promptly. And no boy? she asked, with a long lashed glance at my companion, who had given no answer save a smile. I wonder how you would look when you cried, Contessa, was the only reply the little wretch deigned. But instead of offending, it appeared to amuse her. She watched our cavalcade out of the hotel garden, the rucksack once more on Suri's vape was back, and the silver bells of her laughter lightly rang us down the road. Again we had to pass through Martinie Borg, and presently, turning aside from the road which had led me to the Grand Saint Bernard. We took the way on the right, almost at once feeling the rise of the hill. Steeper and steeper it grew, and warmer and warmer we, though the day was young. Often we were glad of the excuse the view gave us to stop and look back down into the wide bowl of the Rhone Valley, with a heat haze of quivering blue, creating an effect of great distance like a gauze drop on the stage. Surely this was the longest hill on earth, and when we reached the top, if we ever did, we should find that we had been climbing Jack's Beanstalk, coming out into a different world. Up and up we dragged for hours, the boy determined not to take to donkey-back, despite the protestations of innocentina, emphatic but slightly modified by constant association with the man she was engaged in converting. Sometimes we were ministered to by small maidens with marvelously neat sleek hair, who sprang up under our eyes, apparently from rabbit holes, their arms hooked into the handles of big fruit baskets which might easily have been their bathtubs or cradles. If we seemed inclined to turn away with an expressionless gaze, the little creatures forged after us with a determined trot, laid back with tiny brown hands the dainty white napkin hiding the basket's contents, and tempted us with purple plums or mellow pears. In the end we invariably succumbed to these wiles, even when we had sickened at the thought of fruit, and were obliged surreptitiously to hide our purchases by the wayside, when the sturdy young vendors' backs were turned. We carried our Panama's in our hands, and the boy's short chestnut curls clung to his forehead in damp rings, making him look absurdly childish. I wondered at myself for discussing with eager interest, as I often did, so many of life's unanswerable questions, with such a slip of boyhood. Still I knew that I should often do it again, while we remain together, and that he would know how to measure wits with mine, to my disadvantage, compelling always my respect for his opinions, unless he happened to be in an inconsequential or impish mood. After a long climb we called a halt at the most attractive of several little wayside chalet we had passed. Each was thoughtfully provided with an awning or wooden roof stretching across the road to give shade to travellers, who were lured to pause by bottles of bright-colored syrups, wine, and beer displayed on flower-decked tables. Our chosen chalet made a specialty of milk, and of you. There was a rough balcony at the back, built over a sheer precipice, and far beneath the Rhone Valley spread itself for our eyes. We sat resting, with glasses of rich yellow milk in our hands, when a voice under the road-shelter in front roused us from reverie. It was the Contessa greeting Joseph in innocentina, who were reposing on a bench in the delicious shade. I was just thinking it was rather queer they hadn't caught us up, I said, rising, and then I asked myself why I had said it. For when I came to cross-question my own thoughts, they had to own up that the Contessa had not been in them. Oh, it was the Contessa you were thinking of, then, when you sat looking as if you were a thousand miles away, and had left your body behind to keep your place, said the boy, jumping up quickly. Well, here she is. Your mind may be at ease. We returned to the front of the house, through the neat bar-living-room, the boy a step or two ahead of me, as if anxious to greet the new arrivals. Off came his hat, and he stood leaning against the carriage, looking up into the warm brown eyes of Gata, which were warmer and brighter than ever, because of this sudden show of devotion. Had the magnetism of her coquetry fired him, I wondered. It would be strange if it were not so, for she was beautiful, and her manner flattering to a boy so young. Somehow my spirits were dashed at the thought that my companion's last words to me might be explained by jealousy of an older man with a pretty woman. It would be hard if it were to come to this between us, though I had talked of going to see her in Monte Carlo. The butterfly Contessa was no more to me than a delicate pastel on someone else's wall, or a gay refrain, which charms the ear without haunting the memory. I would not interfere with the boy. If he chose to encourage Gata to flirt with him, he need not fear me. But I had liked to think he valued my comradeship. Now a fancy for this child-woman would rob me of him, instead of being peaked by the Contessa's growing preference for the boy, as I ought to have been by all the rules of the game of flirtation. I was conscious of anger against her as an intruder. This feeling increased almost to sulkiness when the boy was invited to take a seat in the carriage beside the gloomy baron and accepted promptly. The driving-party had been delayed a long time in starting, Gata explained, making large eyes which blamed her friends for everything, and the driver had brought his horses slowly, oh so slowly up the long hill, the stupid fellow. But now the carriage flashed ahead, and I was left to tramp on alone, while the Contessa and the boy flirted, and Joseph and Innocentina bickered, all alike unmindful of me. We lunched at the cold of four o'clock, where the hill, tired of going up, ran down to another valley. There was a god-like assemblage of mountains, white and blue, mountains as far as the eye could reach, and I had a thought or two which I would have liked to exchange for some of the boys. But if he had ever really had any thoughts, save for the fun of the moment, he had the error of forgetting them all for Gata. When in a tone of unenthusiastic politeness she asked if I would not take my friend's place in the carriage for a while. Then we started on again, out of pure spite against the little wretch who had dropped me for her, I said that I would. I could not see the boy's face, to make sure if he were disappointed, but I hoped it. As for myself, I would feign have walked. In the scene of such exalted beauty, Gata's little quips and quirks struck a wrong note. Sitting with my back to the horses, I could see the boy walking on behind, his face raised mountainward and skyward, and I longed to know of what he was thinking, for evidently he had left his aggravating, awfully jolly, don't you know, mood in the carriage with the Contessa. The Baron and his wife disputed voluably about the date of one of Paolo's grand dinners in Paris. Gata yawned, and I was stricken with dumbness. I could think of nothing to say which she would think worth hearing. Soon the tremendously steep descent into the valley gave me the best of excuses to jump down and relieve the horses which the coachman was leading. Somehow I don't quite know how I fell back a good distance behind the carriage, and then I found myself so near the boy, who had been slowly following, that it would have been rude not to join him. After all we had no quarrel, yet oddly enough we could not take up the thread of our intercourse exactly where it had been broken off. There seemed to be a knot or a tangle in it, which would have to be smoothed out. It was a wholly irrelevant incident which untied the knot, and left us as we had been, though there was no reason for it, but a laugh which we had together. The thing came about in this wise. He arrived at a small hotel which boasted a garden, and was famous as a viewpoint. From the door a carriage containing a man was about to drive away. The man was approaching middle age, and had an air of quiet self-reliance, which redeemed him from insignificance. He was plainly dressed, in clothes which were not new, and all together he did not appear to be a personage who, from the hotel keeper's point of view, would be of supreme importance. Yet the landlord and another besieged the quiet man with compliments and pleadings, to which he did not seem inclined to listen. Bowing gravely he told his coachman to drive on, and in a moment had passed us as we stood in the road. But when he had gone, the landlord and his assistant still had no eyes for us. My words exclaimed the former, in a tone of anguish, we shall lose our star. Were they astrologers, that they should fear this fate? Our curiosity was excited, and seeing a head-waiterly person, who wore a mean between awe and stifled amusement. I called for beer which I did not wish to drink. It was served on a table in the shady garden, and I inquired if the carriage, just out of sight, had contained a troublesome guest. Troublesome is not the word, monsieur, replied the waiter. But a thing has happened. That gentleman whom you saw arrived a few days ago, giving the name of Carl. He took the cheapest room in the house. He drank one of the cheapest wines. Having satisfied himself that the price was within his means, today he said that he was leaving, and asked for his bill. When it was made out, the wine came to a Frank more than he thought it ought. I do not complain, said he to our patron. If that is the price of the wine, I will pay. But I was told at the table it was less. I do not consider the wine good enough for the price. This vexed the patron, because one does not think the more of a person who haggles over a Frank, especially if that person has studied cheapness in all ways during his visit. Perhaps the patron spoke somewhat irritably, or he did not care whether the monsieur ever came back to his house or not. Then the monsieur paid the bill, without another word, and was going away, when a German gentleman, who had been sitting here in the garden, said to the patron, Do you know who that is? No, replied our patron. I do not know, nor do I care. It is Biedeker, said the gentleman. This was terrible, and the patron flew to correct the little mistake about the wine, with a thousand apologies. But the monsieur would not have his money back, and you saw him drive away. Now it is possible that our hotel will no longer keep its star, and that would be no less than a catastrophe. Evidently, what his cherished peacock feather is to a Chinese mandarin, that is a Biedeker star to a hotelkeeper, and the boy and I were so tickled at the little tragic comedy that we forgot, as we walked on side by side, that we had been upon official terms only. Again we were struck by the extraordinary individuality which differentiates one valley or mountain pass from another. We had seen nothing like this, nothing perhaps so purely beautiful. One could not imagine that winter snow and ice could still the pulse of summer here. It was as if we wandered from one green glade to another in fairyland, where all the little people who owned the magic land had turned themselves hurriedly into strangely delicate ferns and bluebells to watch us laughing as we went by. The village of Trion lay in deep shadow when we reached it, and found the others waiting for us in the carriage in front of the chief hotel. But there was no gloom in the shadow. It was only a deeper shade of green, with a hint of transparent blue streaked across it. Another remote dream village on the long list of places, where I really must stay for a lazy summer month when I have time. The list was growing long now, almost worryingly long, and the boy felt it so too, for he also had a list, and strange to say, it was much the same as mine. We had tea, and were vaguely surprised to see a number of people of our own kind. Most of them English and American, engaged in the same occupation, and evidently at home in the place. Trion was on their list as well as ours, and now, if they liked, they could cross it off, and begin with the next place. The Contessa thought the boy looked tired, and urged him to drive again, but though his manner was still flirtatious, he found an excuse to keep to his feet. He was not really tired, not a bit. How could one be tired in so much beauty? The poor horses were fagged, though, for the carriage was heavy. He would not add to its weight. You are getting rather white about the gills, I said to him, when the driving-party had once more left us behind. Why didn't you take up your flirtation where you left it off, like a serial story, to be continued in your next? Your weight is nothing. It wasn't that, really, replied the boy. What then? Do you remember why I wanted to come over the Tete Boire? To have the sensation of Mont Blanc suddenly bursting upon you. Well, I—to tell the truth—I had a whim, just a whim, and nothing more, to be with you and not with the Contessa, when the time for that sensation should come. My heart warmed, but perhaps I was flattering myself unduly. You were afraid that her fascinations might overpower those of Mont Blanc, I suppose, whereas I am a mere stock or stone. That's one way of putting it, replied he calmly. But when the sensation did come, he caught my arm, with a quick drawn breath, and no word following. Our worship of other mountains had been a serving of false gods. There was the one white truth, dwarfing all else into insignificance—not a mere mountain, but a world of snow sailing moon-like in full sky. It was indeed as if the moon, gleaming white and bathed in radiance, had come to pay earth a visit. Surely it would not stay. Surely it was a secret that she had come, and we had found it out, just when this great dark rock door, through which we looked, led by accident, to show the sight. But if it were a secret, there was no fear that we would ever tell it, for it soared beyond words. The first glimpse gave this impression, afterwards we could not have recalled it if we had tried. We grew used to the white majesty which faced us by and by. As alas, one does grow used to beauty, while one has it within reach of the eye. But just as the boy had begun to confess himself tired, and to lag in his walk, resting an arm on my shoulder, a new wonder came, like a draft of tonic wine. Sunset, with King Midas' touch, transformed the whole mountain to gold, so that it burned like a lamp to light the world against a violet sky. In the foreground was a low rampart of green mountain, down which poured a huge glacier, like an arrested cataract. It glimmered with a faint radiance, greenish blue, and pale as the gleam of a glow worm. The violet sky deepened to amethyst purple, and the snow on the waving line of mountains turned from gold to pink, as if there had been a sudden rain of rose-sleeves. For a long time lasted the changing play of jeweled lights, but then the magic color was swallowed at a gulp by the descending night. Far away and far down in the deep valley, the lights of Chamonix and its satellite villages sparkled like a troop of fallen stars. They lay in a bright heap, clustered together, and innocentina, coming up with us at this moment, said that they were like raisins, sunk together at the bottom of a pudding. The late rain had set all the little torrents talking, and we were silent, listening to their gossip of the mountain's secrets. CHAPTER XVIII RANK TIRANY VOWARD PAST THE TIRANCE STROKE SHAKESPEAR We seemed to have formed a habit, the boy and I, of steering always for a hotel m'en blanc, if there were one in a town, so that now we had come to look upon a hostelry with such a name as a sort of second home, a daughter of a mother-house. There were still two other reasons why we should select the m'en blanc in Chamonix, the first because the Contessa was going there, and had asked us to do likewise, the second because at Martinie we had seen an advertisement of the hotel, which stated that it was situated in a vast park of ex-chamois. Our imagination pictured an ancient chateau altered for modern uses shut away from the outer world in a mysterious forest of dark pines, where wild chamois sported gracefully at will, leaping across chasms from one overhanging rock to another. It was long past twilight when our little procession of four human beings and three beasts sub-burden straggled through a lighted gateway which we had been told to enter for the hotel m'en blanc. With one blow our ancient castle was shattered. At a hundred meters distant from the street rose an enormous modern hotel, blazing with light at every window, where was the vast park with its crowding pines and its ravines for the wild chamois. It must be somewhere, since the advertisement certified its existence, and so must the chamois. Perhaps the forest lay behind the hotel, but the boy was too tired to care, and to us both, baths, food, and rest, were for the moment worth more than parks or chamois. The hotel struck a high note of civilization, and I had seen nothing so fine since London or Paris. The boy and I dined late and sumptuously, tet-a-tet, for the hot sun and the long drive had sent Gaeta to bed, chastened with a headache, and weary as he was, the little pal had pluck enough left to suggest an appointment for early next morning. I shall want to know how m'en blanc looks from my window, so I won't waste my time in bed, said he. Besides, I'm rather keen to see the chamois, aren't you? The only one I've ever met was stuffed, and rather moth-eaten, he was in a dime museum in New York. I was up at half-past six next day, and at my window, where m'en blanc in early sunshine smote me in the face with its nearness, a sudden longing took me, as the longing for a great white lamp takes a moth to fly at it, or, in other words, to get myself to the top. I had never done any Swiss ascents, though I knew almost every peak and pinnacle of rock in Cumberland and Wales, and it seemed to me that I should be a moth to miss the chance of such a climb as this. By the time I had dressed, the thing was decided. I would see about guides, and try to arrange at once for the ascent. The thought had joy in it, and I ran downstairs whistling the alpine maid. The boy and I had settled overnight that we would drink our morning coffee and eat our rolls together at a quarter to eight, long before the Contessa or her friends had opened their eyes. But the appointed time was not yet come, and I had it in mind to make enquiries concerning my excursion, when I almost stumbled against the boy, coming in at the front door. I've been out in the park, said he, when we had exchanged by way of greeting a Hello Boy and Hello Man. Meet any chamois? Yes. Honour bright, an inspection of the park from my window led me to fear that they must be an engaging myth. There's a fine big garden, with a lot of trees in it, but as for rocks or chamois. There are both. Come out and I'll show you. I went, walking beside the boy along one well-kept path after another, until suddenly the bubble delusion broke. In a cage stood or sat, in various attitudes of bored dejection, five melancholy little animals with horns, and singularly large, prominent eyes. Their aspect beg pardon for their degradation, as they turned their backs with weak scorn upon a toy rock in the centre of their prison. We have reason to believe that we are well connected, they seem to bleed, because there is an ancient legend in our household that we are chamois, but you must not judge the family by us. I believe, said the boy pitifully, they've degenerated so far now that if one gave them Mont Blanc to bound upon, they wouldn't know what to do with it. I would, however, said I, full of my project. But I'm thinking of trying. What do you mean, asked the boy, looking rather startled. Let's have breakfast out of doors on a little table under the trees, and I'll tell you. Here's one in the shade, and away from the, er, a certain chamois-ness in the air. I pulled up chairs and raised my hand to a hovering waiter. What I mean to say is, I went on, that I'm going to make the ascent as soon as I can arrange it. You won't mind waiting for me a couple of days, will you? Or, of course, you can travel with the Contessa, if you like. No doubt she would be delighted to have you. You're going up Mont Blanc? I am, my kid. No. Why not? Because you might be killed. Good heavens, one would think I was Icarus, gluing a pair of wax-wings onto my shoulder-blades for a flight into Aether. Not exactly a novice at the game, you know, though I haven't done any snow-climbing. Why, you little donkey, you look pale. What's the matter with you? Do you know what happened this morning, or rather last night? The boy replied to my question with another. Did any of the hotel people tell you? No. Don't be mysterious before breakfast. It isn't good for the digestion. Don't joke. I wasn't going to say anything about it till afterwards in case you hadn't heard. But now I will. The fam Deschamps told me. The news has just come that a young guide has died of exhaustion on the mountain between the observatory and the Grand Moulay. Two others who were with him had to leave him lying dead after dragging the body down a long way. At this inappropriate moment our coffee, rolls, and honey were set before us, and the waiter, being an accomplished linguist, like most of his singularly gifted and enterprising kind, had heard and understood the last sentence. Bursting with gruesome information, he could not resist lightning himself of the burden, or our benefit and his own. You can see the dead man lying on the snow, far up on the mountain, said he eagerly. If you go into the town and look through one of the telescopes, I have seen him already. He is like a small, dark packet on the white ground, wrapped in his coat. My appetite for breakfast suddenly dwindled. But not so my appetite for the climb. I was very sorry that a man had died on the mountain, but I could not bring him to life again by remaining on low levels, and so I remarked when the boy asked me if I were still in the same mind concerning the ascent. I shall see about a guide directly after breakfast, said I, and when you hear a cannon fired in the town, announcing the arrival of a party at the top of Mont Blanc, you will know it is an echo of my shout of Excelsior. No, I won't know it, returned the boy obstinately, for one thing the cannon might be fired for someone else, and besides, I won't be here. Oh, you'll go on with the Contessa? But I shouldn't be surprised if she were good-natured enough to wait at Chamonix to congratulate me when I come down. No doubt she thinks enough of you to do that. But what I mean is this. If you go up Mont Blanc, I'm going too. Nonsense! You'll do nothing of the kind. You are a very plucky chap, but you're not a Hercules yet, whatever you may develop into ten years from now. No miners are permitted to ascend Mont Blanc. That's nonsense, if you like. I shall go if you do. I won't take you. I don't ask you to. I shan't start until after you've gone, so you see you'll have no power to prevent me. You are simply talking rot, my dear boy. Good heavens! You'd die of mountain sickness or exhaustion before you were half way up. Perhaps. I know very little about my ability as a climber, for I've never made any big ascents, though I've scrambled about in the mountains a little at home. It would be madness for you to attempt such a thing. Why don't you know it taxes the endurance of a strong man? You've only lately recovered from an illness. You told me so yourself. I shan't allow you to. You're not my keeper, you know. But we are friends, pals. I asked you as a great favour to be sensible, and I asked you as a great favour not to go up Mont Blanc. Things happen. I have a feeling that something might happen to you. I should be wretched while you were gone. I couldn't sit still under the suspense, feeling as I do, so I would follow your example. There'd be no danger for me. There might be death for you. Well, then, you can save my life, if you like, by not going. If you don't go, I won't. Of all the brutal tyrants who have ever tyrannized over mankind, I heard you say once that you would like to have been a professional tyrant. Why shouldn't I qualify for the part? You are cruel to put me in such a position. You are cruel to make me do it, for your own selfish amusement. By Joe, you talk like an exacting woman. The blood rushed to his face so hotly that it forced water into the brilliant eyes of wild, chicory blue. If I were a woman, I don't think I would be an exacting one. I should only want people I liked to do things because they cared about me, otherwise favours would be of no value. They're pals, as you say. Great pals. But if you don't care enough— Oh, hang it all, kid. I'll give the thing up, I broke in crossly. I'll pot her about with you and the Contessa in Chalmonie, and take some nice, pretty, proper walks. But all the same, you're a little brute. Do you hate me? Not precisely, but if I stop down here, Satan will certainly find mischief for my idle hands to do. I shall try to take your Contessa away from you, perhaps. Oh, will you? Then I shall try to keep her, and we shall see which is the better man. He rose from the table with a little swagger, ruffling it gaily in his triumph over me, and so young, so small he seemed, to be boasting of his manhood and his prowess in the warfare of love, that I burst out laughing. Come on, I said, let's go and have a look round Chalmonie, since there's no better sport to be had. So we strolled out of the vast park of Exchamois, into the streets of the gay and charming little town, lying like a bright crystal at the foot of Mont Blanc. Round each of several big telescopes, under striped canvas umbrellas, was collected a crowd. We could guess at what they were looking. Shall we stop and see that pittiest dark packet lying lonely on the snow, I asked, pausing, but the boy hurried on. No, no, he said. I should feel as if I had been spying on the dead through a keyhole. I want to buy something at the shops. And I want to see the statue of Oris de Sasseur, the first man who ever got to the top of Mont Blanc, said I, with reproachful meaning in my tone. The shops were almost as attractive as those of Lucerne, and gave an air of modernity and civilization to the little place, which would have been out of the picture, had it not contrived to suggest the pecancy of contrast. The boy spent a hundred francs for a silver chamois, poised upon the apex of a perilous peak of uncut amethysts, mounted on ebony, and I was witty at the expense of his purchase, likening it to the white elephant of instantaneous breakfasts A.C., which I had long ago cast behind me. You will be throwing your chamois away in a day or two I prophesied, or sending it back to our landlord to add to his collection of animals. You will see that I shan't throw it away, the boy returned, and insisted upon carrying a parcel in his hand, instead of having it sent from the shop to the hotel. When we had learned something of the town, we sauntered homeward, and seated in the vast park, with a novel and a red silk parasol, we found Gaeta. Where have you been so early, she asked? You find a burnt offering for your shrine, said the boy, and tearing off the white wrappings. He gave her the silver chamois. CHAPTER 19 The little rift within the lute There comes a mist and a weeping rain, and nothing is ever the same again. Alas! George MacDonald. We devoted three days to some exquisite excursions, which more than half consoled me for sacrificing Mont Blanc to make a tyrant's holiday, and then decided to push on to Ex-Léban, stopping on the way for a glimpse of Annecy. The Contessa had planned to go from Chamonix to Ex by rail with her friends, but she had either fallen in love with our mode of traveling, or pretended it. A hint to the boy, and Fanny Annie was placed at her disposal for a ride from Chamonix to Annecy, a lady's saddle being easily picked up in a town of shops which missed no opportunities. As for the Baron and Baronessa, it was plain to see the drift of their minds, so angry were they at the change of programme that it would have been a satisfaction to quarrel with Gaeta and leave her in a huff, but their devotion to Paolo, which was almost pathetic, forbade them this form of self-indulgence. They curbed their annoyance with the bit of common sense, though it gulled their mouths, and consented to drive to Annecy in a carriage provided by Gaeta for their accommodation. They even constrained themselves to be civil to the boy and me, though their heavy politeness had the electrical quality of a lull before a storm. How that storm would break I could not foresee, but that it would presently burst over our heads, I was sure. There was no longer a question that boy was hot favourite in the race for Gaeta's smiles. There might have been betting on me for place, but it would have been foolish to put money on my chances as winner. The young wretch scarcely gave me a chance for a word with the Contessa, for if I walked on the left he walked on the right of her as she rode. His little brown hand on the new saddle, which had taken the place of the old one, sent on to Annecy by Grand Vitesse, I would have surrendered, being too lazy for a struggle, had I not been somewhat peaked by the boy's behaviour. He had affected not to care for Gaeta at first, and had even feigned annoyance at the temporary addition to our party, while in reality he could have had little genuine wish for my society, or he would not now betray such eagerness in the game he was playing. The vague sense of wrong I suffered gave me a wish for reprisal of some sort, and the only one convenient at the moment was to prevent the offender from having a clear course. I found a certain mean pleasure in stirring the boy to jealousy by reviving when I could some half-dead ember of Gaeta's former interest in me, and his face showed sometimes that my aciduity displeased him. This was encouragement to persevere, and I praised the Contessa to him when we happened to be alone together. You have a short memory, it seems, said he. You told me not so long ago that you'd been in love with a girl who jolted you. Have you forgotten her already? I winced under this thrust, but hoped that the boy did not see it. His stab reminded me that I had found very little time lately to regret Miss Blantok, now Lady Jarvison, and Molly Winston's words recurred to me, if I could only prove to you that you aren't and never have been in love with Helen. I had retorted that to accomplish this would be difficult, and she had confidently replied that she would engage to do it, if I would take her prescription. I had taken her prescription, and, indubitably, the wound had become callous, though I was not prepared to admit that it had healed. However if I had ceased actively to mourn the grocer's triumph, it was not Gaeta who had wrought the magic change. What had caused it I was myself at a loss to understand, but I did not wish to argue the matter with the boy. He was welcome to think what he chose. Hearts are caught in the rebound sometimes. If for once a proverb can be right, said I evasively, though a few weeks ago, when Molly had been constantly alluding to her friend Mercedes, I had told myself that no one could achieve such a feat with mine. To this suggestion the boy made no response, saved to tighten his lips, resolving I suppose that if hearts were flying about like shuttlecocks, his battledore should be ready to catch the contesses. Our road from Chamonix to Anise, led us past gorges and over high precipices, and among noble mountains, but my mind was no longer in a condition to receive or retain strong impressions of natural beauty. I was irritable and out of myself, vainly wishing back the days when the boy and I, undisturbed by feminine society, had traveled tranquilly side by side, giving each other thought for thought. Nothing can be as it has been better, so call it, only not the same, Browning said, and so I feared it would be after this with me. We were all to stay at Anise for a night and a day, the contessa having announced that she and her friends would stop too. Then Gaeta and the others were to go on to Exleban by rail, and the boy and I were to follow on foot, attended by our satellites. Later we were to spend a few days at the contessa's villa and get upon our way again, journeying south, but it did not seem to me that my little pal and I would ever be as we had been before, even though we walked from Exleban all the way down to the Riviera, shoulder to shoulder. I had the will to be the same, but he was different now, and though we left Gaeta in the flesh at her villa, entertaining guests, Gaeta in the spirit would still flip between us as we went. The boy would be thinking of her, I should know that he was thinking of her, and there would be an end of our confidences. The way, though kaleidoscopic with changing beauties, seemed long to annacy. By the time that we arrived, after two days going, the contessa had eyes or dimples or laughter or no one but the boy. Sometimes he was seized with sudden moods of rebellion against his new slavery, and was almost rude to her, saying things which she would not have forgiven readily from another. But the child woman appeared to find a keen delight in forgiving him. Seeing the preference bestowed upon the young American, Paolo's brother and sister were inclined to make common cause with me. In the garden of the old-fashioned hotel at annacy, where we all took up our headquarters, they came and encamped beside me at a table near which I sat alone, smoking after our first dinner in the place. A moment later Gaeta passed with the boy, pacing slowly under the interlacing branches of the trees. I believe that youth to be a fortune-hunter, exclaimed the thin, dark baron. You're wrong there, said I. He's very rich. At all events it is ridiculous this flirtation, exclaimed the plump baronessa. He is a mere child. Gaeta is making a fool of herself. You are her friend. You should see this and put a stop to the affair in some way. As to that, many women married men younger than themselves, I replied, willing to tease the lady, though I could have laughed aloud at their idea of marriage for the boy. Still I went on more consolingly. I hardly think it will come to anything serious between them. Ah, if you say that, you little know Gaeta, protested Gaeta's friend. It is infatuated. Infatuated with this youth of seventeen or eighteen, whom she insists to justify her foolishness, is a year older than he can possibly be. Something must be done, and soon, or she is capable of proposing to him if he pretend to hang back. Something will be done, my dear. Do not be unnecessarily excited, said the baron. I fear we have not the full sympathy of Lord Lane. If you mean will I do anything to keep the two apart? I confess you haven't, I answered. Lucintessa de Ravilo is her own mistress, and I should say if she wanted the moon it would be bad for anyone who tried to keep her from getting it. We shall see, murmured the baron, as the boy had murmured a few days ago, and behind this hint also I felt that there lurched some definite plan. I had been to Exleban years before, but it had not then occurred to me to visit Anna C., so nearby. It was the boy who had suggested coming, and we had planned excursions up the lake, looking out on our guidebook maps various spots of historic or picturesque interest, which we should see en route, especially man-fond the birthplace of Saint Bernard. Now here we were at Anna C., and in all the world there could not be a town more charming. By the placid blue lake, whose water, I am convinced, would still be the color of melted turquoise's if you corked it up in a bottle, you could wander along shadowed paths, strewn with the gold coin of sunshine, through a park of dels as bosky green as the fair forest of Arden. In the quaint old-fashioned streets of the town you were tempted to pause at every other step for one more snapshot. You longed to linger on the bridge and to call up a passing panorama of historic pageants. All these things the boy and I would have done, and enjoyed peacefully, had we been alone, but Gaeta elected to find Anna C., dull. There was nothing to do but take walks, or sit by the lake, or drive for hours to the Beaurevage, or go out for an afternoon's trip in one of the little steamers. Beautiful? Oh yes, but quiet places made one want to scream, or stand on one's head, when one had been in them a day or two. It would be much more amusing at X. There were the casinos, and the fit de nuis, with lots of colored lanterns in the gardens, and fireworks and music, and then the bakara. That was amusing if you liked, for half an hour, and when you were bored, there was always something else. She must really get to X, and see that the villa Santa Lucia was in order. We would promise, promise, promise to follow at once. We would find our rooms at her villa ready, with flowers in them for a welcome, and we must not be too long on the way. Gaeta left in the evening, the boy and I seeing her off at the train, and twelve hours later we started for Châtelard, Joseph taking us away from the high roads, which would have been perfect for Mali's Mercedes, along certain romantic bypasses which he knew from former journeys. And no longer made itself between us. We had to make it. And in the manufacturing process I mentioned my friends who were motoring. They may turn up before long now, I said, judging from the plans they wrote of in a letter I had from them at Aosta. It's just possible that they will pass through X. You would like them. I have run away from my own friends, and, gone rather far to do it, said the boy. Yet I seemed destined to meet other peoples. It was with very different intentions that I set out on this journey of mine. Journeys end in lovers' meetings, I quoted carelessly. Perhaps yours will end so. I thought I had done with lovers, said the boy, with one of his odd smiles. You're not old enough to begin with them yet. I was thinking of my sister. Her experience was a lesson in love I'm not likely to forget soon. Yet sometimes I'm not sure I learned the lesson in the right way. But we won't talk of that. Tell me about your friends. I'm becoming enured to social duties now. You don't seem to find them too onerous. As for my friends, they're an old chum of mine, Jack Winston, and his bride of a few months. The most exquisite specimen of an American girl I ever met. Perhaps you may have heard of her. She's the daughter of Chauncey Randolph, one of your millionaires. Look out! Was that a stone you stumbled over? Yes, I gave my ankle a twist. It's all right now. I daresay my sister knows your friend. I must ask Molly Winston when I write or see her. But you've never told me your sister's name except that she's called Princess. If I say Miss Lawrence—there are so many Lawrence's. Did you ever mention in your letters to your friends that you were travelling with anyone? I haven't written to them since I knew your name. But before that I told them there was a boy whom I had met by accident and chummed up with, just before Aosta. I think I'd rather spread myself on a description of our meeting. You didn't do that. How horrid of you! Oh, I put it right afterwards, I assure you, in another letter. I told them that in spite of the bad beginning we'd become no end of pals that we travelled together, stopped at the same hotels, and—what's the matter? Nothing. My ankle does hurt a little after all. While you go on in your friend's motor-car, if you meet them, he looked up at me very earnestly as he spoke. At one time I thought of doing so if we ran across each other. But now that I've got you—who knows how long we may have each other. Either one of us may change his plans. Suddenly you mustn't count on me, Lord Lane. Look here, I said crossly. Do speak out. Don't hint things. Do you mean me to understand that you wish to stop at X indefinitely and play out your little comedy of flirtation to its close? I don't know what I intend to do. Now less than ever answered the boy in a very low voice, the shadow of his long lashes on his cheeks. I was too much hurt to question him further, and we pursued our way in silence, along the lakeside, and then up the billowy lower slopes of the Semnos. We had showers of rain in the sunshine, and the long, thin spears of crystal glittered like spun glass, until dim clouds spread over the bright patches of blue, and the world grew mistily gray-green. We had planned long ago before the spell of the Contessa fell upon us, to make the journey we were taking now, by way of the Semnos, the so-called Regi of this Alpine Savoy, which is neither Holy French nor Holy Italian. But we had abandoned the idea since, in a fine frenzy to keep our promise of rejoining her with all speed, lest she perish alone in the icy disapproval of her friends. When the mists closed round us, we ceased to regret the decision. If we had regretted it, or instead of seeing Savoy spread out beneath us, with its snow-mountains and fertile valleys, lit with azure lakes, as many as the graces, we should have been wrapped in cloud-blankets. After a walk of thirty-two kilometers, we came to Châtelard, and having known little or nothing of the town, we were surprised to find that most other people knew of it as a great center, or excursions. It was almost as unbelievable as that the places where we lived could possibly go on existing in exactly the same way during our absence. There are actually three hotels, all said to be good, I remarked, quoting from my guide-book, to which shall we go. The boy hesitated, choose which you like, for yourself, he replied, with a slight appearance of embarrassment, as for me I will make up my mind later. I could take this in but one way, as a snub, evidently he had selected this fashion of intimating to me the change that Gaeta's intrusion had worked in our relations. I bit back a sharp word or two, which I might have regretted by and by, and answered not at all. In consequence of this little passage, however, the boy went to one hotel, and I to another, where I put Joseph up also. A sense of loneliness was upon me, therefore my conscience stirred uneasily, and I reproached myself in that of late I had neglected the affairs of my mulleteer. At one time he and I had conversed at length on such subjects as mules, women, perdition, and the like, but for many days now our intercourse had consisted mostly of a, good morning, Joseph, good morning, monsieur. Tonight I sent for him, and inquired whether he had anything to wish for. Ah, monsieur, there is but one thing for which I ask at present, he said. Anything I can manage, Joseph? I fear not, monsieur. It is the assurance that the poor young soul I am trying to lead out of darkness may reach the light before we have to part. Innocentinas? The same, monsieur. You think her conversion within sight? Just round the corner, if I may so express it. Yet I hear that she tells her employer she is devoting all her energies towards saving you from internal fire. It was her excuse for letting the bag drop off Suri's back without noticing it, and for allowing Fanny's saddle to chafe. Ah, monsieur, women are ready with excuses. Do you think I would permit any preoccupation of mine to interfere with the well-being of Finnois? Even saving a pretty woman's soul? No, Joseph, to do you justice I don't. But I warn you, you may not have much more time before you to finish your good work. Innocentinas' employer and I may part company before long, though I smiled, I spoke heavily. Joseph's melancholy dark face flushed, and the light died out of his eyes. Thank you, monsieur. I will do my best to be quick, said he, as if it had been a question of saddling Finnois, instead of rescuing a young lady from the clutches of the Scarlet Woman. Whatever progress he had really been making within a Sentina's soul, it was clear that she had been getting in some deadly work upon his honest heart. End of chapter 19 Chapter 20 of The Princess Passes This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain. The Princess Passes by C. N. and A. M. Williamson. Chapter 20 The Great Paolo. Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one-sided the pleasure of it is, R. L. Stevenson. After I went to bed that night I fought long and bitterly of the little pal's defection. Mentally I addressed him as a young gazelle, who had gladdened me with his soft dark eye, only to withdraw the light of that orb when it was most needed. As he apparently wished me to understand that, now he was on with Gaeta, he would feign be off with me. I would take him not only at his word, but before it. I would make an excuse to avoid stopping at the Contessa's villa, but would let him revel there alone in his glory, if one did not count the Denevalese. This morning we met by appointment at eight o'clock, and tried to behave as if nothing had happened. But I realized that I would have been a dead failure as an actor. I was grumpy and glum, and the coaxing childlike ways which the boy used for my beguiling were in vain. I did not say anything about my change of plans for eggs, but I brooded darkly upon them throughout the day, my mood eating away all pleasure in the charming scenery. Through which we passed, as a black worm eats into the heart of a cherry. We had about twenty-nine kilometers to go, and by the time that the shadows were growing long and blue, we were approaching Ex-Leban. Nature had gone back to the simple apparel of her youth here. She was idyllic and charming, but we were not to ask of her any more sensational splendors by way of costume, for she had not brought them with her in her dressbasket. There were near-green hills and far-blue mountains, and certain rocky eminences in the middle distance, but nothing of grandeur. Popplars marched along with us on either side, crimly on guard, and puritanical, though all the while their myriad little fingers seemed to twinkle over the keyboard of an invisible piano, playing a rapid waltz. Then we came at last into Ex-Leban, where I had spent a merry month, during a long, in Oxford days, I had not been back since. Already the height of the season was over, for it was September now, but the gay little watering-place seemed crowded still, and in our knicker-bockers, with our pack-mule and donkeys, and their attendance. We must have added a fantastic note to the dance-music, which the very breezes play among tree-branches at light-hearted eggs. Pretty, isn't it? I remarked indifferently, as we passed through some of the most fashionable streets. Yes, very pretty, said the boy. But what is there that one misses? There's something. I'm not sure what. Is it that the place looks huddled together? You can't see its face for its features. There are people like that. You are introduced to them. You think them charming. Yet when you've been away for a little while, you couldn't for your life recall the shape of their nose or mouth or eyes. I feel it is going to be so with ex for me. The villa which the Contessa had taken, for a few weeks before her annual flitting for Monte Carlo, was on the way to Marlio, and we had been told exactly how to find it. Still silent as to my ultimate intentions, I trapped along with the boy beside me, Joseph and Innocentina bringing up the rear. We would know the villa from the description we had been given, and having passed out of the town we presently saw it. A little done-colored house, standing up slender and graceful among trees, like a charming gray rabbit, on the watch by its hidden warren in the woods. I'm tired, aren't you? asked the boy. I shall be glad to rest. Now was my time. I shan't be able to rest quite yet, said I, with a careless air. I shall see you in, say how to do to the Contessa, and then I must be off to the hotel, where I used to stop. I remember it as delightful. Why? exclaimed the boy blankly. But I thought, I thought we were going to stay with the Contessa. You are, but I'm not, I explained calmly. My friends the Winston's may very likely turn up at the same hotel. This was true on the principle that anything, no matter how unexpected, may happen, and if they should, I'd want to be on the spot to give them a welcome. I wouldn't miss them for the world. The Contessa will be disappointed, said the boy, slowly. Oh, no, I don't think so. And if she is a little, you will easily console her. If I had dreamed that you wouldn't, the boy began his sentence hastily, then cut it as quickly short. I opened the gate. We passed in together, Joseph remaining outside according to my directions, keeping Fanny Annie as well as Benoit, while innocentina followed the boy with the packed donkey. A turn in the path brought us suddenly upon a lawn, surrounded with shrubbery, which at first had hidden it from our view, there under a huge crimson umbrella, rising flower-like by its long slender stem from the smooth-shaven grass, set four persons in basket-chairs round a small tea-table, gaita in green as pale as undine's draperies, sprang up with a glad little cry to greet us. The baron in Baronesa smiled bleak, society smiles, and a handsome fair young man frankly glared. Evidently this was the great Paolo, master of the air, and ships that sail therein, and as evidently he had heard of us. Now I knew what the baron had meant when he said to his wife, Something shall happen, my dear. He had telegraphed a danger signal to Paolo, and Paolo had lost not a moment in responding. This looked as if Paolo meant business in deadly earnest, where the contestant was concerned. For how many dinners and medals must he not have missed in Paris? How many important persons in the air world must he not have offended by breaking his engagements in the hope of making one here? He was fair with a Latin fairness, this famous young man. There was nothing Saxon or Anglo-Saxon about him. No one could possibly bestow him in a guess upon any other country than his native Italy. He was thirty-one or two perhaps, long-limbed and wolfishly spare, like his elder brother, whom he resembled thus only. He had an eagle nose, prominent red lips, sulky and sensuous, a fine although narrow forehead, under brown hair, cut en brosse, a shade darker than the small waxed mustache and pointed beard. His brows turned up slightly at the outer corners, and his heavy lidded tobacco-colored eyes were bold, insolent and passionate at the same time. This was the man who wished to marry Butterfly Gaeta, and who had come on the wings of the wind in an airship shod with fire, or in the trend deluxe, to defend his rights against marauders. His look traveling from me to the boy, and from the boy to innocentina, and meek gray surree was so eloquent of contempt passing words that I should have wanted to knock the sprawling flanneled figure out of the basket-chair if I had not wanted still more to yell with laughter. He, the boy and I, were like dogs from rival kennels eyeing each other over, and thinking poorly of the other's points. Paolo Denevali was doubtless saying to himself what a splendid fellow he was, and how well dressed and famous, also how absurd it really would be to fear one of us dusty knickerbockered, thick-booted, Panama-hatted louts. In the Tournament of Love, the donkey, too, with its pack and innocentina with her toadstool hat, must have added for the aeronaut the last touch of shame to our environment. As for us, if I may judge the boy by myself, we were totting up against the Italian, his stiff crest of hair, for all the world like a toothbrush rampant, jewels, the smear of wax on the spikes of his unnecessarily fierce mustache, the ridiculous pin-points of his narrow brown shoes, the flaunting newness of his white flannels, the detestable little tux in his shirt, his pink neck-tie. In fact, each was despising the other for that on which the other prided himself. All this passed in a glance, but the frigid atmosphere grew no warmer for the introduction hastily affected by Gaeta. To be sure the boy bowed, eye-bowed, and Paolo bowed the lowest of the trio, so that we saw the parting in his hair, but three honest snorts of defiance would have been no more unfriendly than our courtesies. Not a doubt that Gaeta felt the electricity in the air with the instinct of a woman, but with the instinct of a born flirt she thrilled with it, her color rose, her warm eyes sparkled, she was perfectly happy, for, from her point of view, were there not here three male beings all secretly ready to fly at one another's throat for love of her, and what can a spoiled beauty want more? She covered the little awkwardness with charming tact for all her childishness, and then the excuses I made for my defection caused a diversion. She was so sorry. It was really too bad. I was going to desert her for other friends. Were not we friends, nice new friends, so much more interesting than old friends, whom you knew inside out, like your frocks or your gloves. But surely I would come often, very often, to the villa, for Dejeuner and Diné, till the other friends arrived, was it not? And I would not try to take the senior boy. This was the name she had built on mind for him, away from her and the dear Baronessa. I reassured her on this last point, promised everything she asked, and then got away as quickly as I could, lest I should disgrace myself by letting escape the wild laughter which I caged with difficulty. It was arranged that we should all meet that evening after dinner, at the villa des fleurs, for one of those fêtes de nuit which Gaeta loved, and then I turned my back upon the group under the red umbrella, without a glance for the boy. I trapped into the town once more, with Joseph close behind, leading his own finnois and innocentinas fanny, and found my way to the hotel, in its large shady garden, where colored lamps were already beginning to glow in the twilight. Soon I had all the resources of civilization at my command, a white and gold-paneled suite, with a bath as big as a boudoir, and hot water enough to make of me a better man, I hoped, than Paolo Denisvali. Later I dined on the wide balcony, with flower fragrance blowing towards me from the mysterious blue dusk of the garden. I ought, I said to myself, to be well contented, for the dinner was excellent, and the surroundings a picture in Aquarelle. Still I had a vague sense of something very wrong, such as a well brought-up motor-car must feel, when it has a screw loose and can't explain to the chauffeur. What was it? The boy's absence? Nonsense. He didn't want me. Rather the contrary. Why should I want him? A few weeks ago I had not known that he existed. I drank a pint of dry champagne, iced almost a freezing point, but instead of hardening my heart against the ex-brat, to my annoyance, the sparkling liquid gradually but surely produced the opposite effect. The fragrance of the flowers, the soft wind among the chestnut trees in the garden, the beauty of the night, all reproached me for my conduct to the young creature I had abandoned. What use was it to remind myself that I had merely taken a leaf out of his book, that I had even played into his hands? As he seemed to desire, the answer would come that he was a boy and I a man. No matter what he had done, I ought not to have left him to flirt with Gata under the jealous eyes of the Italian, who was a whirlwind, and caught a woman off her feet. It was too late now to think of this, for I had refused Gata's invitation to visit at her house, and having done so I could not ask for another, even if I would, probably the boy would know well enough how far to go, and to protect himself from consequences when he had reached the limit.