 CHAPTER 26 THE VANISHING OF THE PRINCE IT IS ADDUE, ADDUE, REMEMBER ME, SHAKESPEAR As we dipped down below the summit of the mountain, we stepped from under the snow fog, as if it had been a great white-hanging nightcap. The air smelled like early winter, and was vibrant with the melody of cowbells. On snow-covered eminences near and far, dark sentinel arches watched us, weeping slow tears from every naked spine. So high had they climbed! So acclimatized to the mountains did these soldier-trees seem, that I named them for myself the Chasseur's alpin of the forest. We shall have fine weather to-morrow, said Joseph, as we left the snow and came to what he called the Terre Grasse, which was greasy and slippery underfoot. See, monsieur, a worm! He comes up out of his hole, and the earth clings to him as he walks abroad. If he were clean, that would be a sign of another bad day to follow. At least we are going down to summer again, I replied. Also to the young monsieur, and to innocentina, but perhaps you are glad of a rest from her sharp tongue. Joseph shrugged his shoulders. I am used to it now, monsieur, said he, and I turned away my face to hide a smile. I knew that he missed the girl, and I was still more keenly aware that I missed a comrade. My fleeting impressions were hardly worth catching and taming, without him to help cage them, without his vivid mind to help color the thoughts, which mine only sketched in black and white. It was easier to leave the canvas blank. We had decided last night that it would not be wise to attempt the journey by way of the Daunt in Nevolet, as it was on a higher level than the summit of Malravar, and we should risk being again extinguished under a night-cap of snow. We descended, therefore, by the simpler and shorter route, but it was full of interest for the strangeness of the landscape and the buildings which we reached on lower planes. The houses were no longer characteristically French, but a bastard Swiss. The heavy overhanging roofs were thatched, and of enormous thickness. The walls of grey stone, with roughly carved skeleton balconies. The peasants no longer smiled at us in good-natured curiosity, but regarded us dourly, though they were gravely civil if we had questions to ask. Although I gave Joseph no instructions, and he made no suggestions, by common consent we hastened on as if a prize were to be bestowed for our good speed at the end of the journey, on other days we had sauntered, allowing the animals to snatch delicious or dur from the bushes as they passed. But today Finois was in the depths of bloom. There was no grey surree, no spectacled fanny-anny, to cheer him on the way. And if he reached out a wistful mouth towards a branch, he was hurried past it. How would we feel, I asked myself, if, with the inner man clamoring, we were driven remorselessly along a road decked on either side with exquisitely pointed tables, set out with all our favourite dishes, to be had for nothing, never once allowed to stop for a crumb of pâté de foie gras, or a bit of chicken in aspect, yet asking myself this I had no mercy on Finois. We stopped for lunch at a queer auberge in an abortive village appropriately named Le Desire, where the high road for Chambarie began, an outer room roughly flagged with stone, was kitchen, nursery and family living-room in one. It swarmed with children, and was presided over by two of Macbeth's witches, who were not separated from their cauldrons. I took them to be rival mothers-in-law, and they could have taught innocentina some choice-new expressions, valuable to test upon donkeys or other heretics. But they sent me a steaming bowl of excellent coffee, when I half expected poison, fried me a couple of eggs with crisp brown lace round the edges, and took for my benefit, from one of the shelves that lined the nursery wall, the newest of a hundred loaves of hard black bread. I ventured to ask a downtrodden daughter-in-law of the ladies of the cauldrons, whether a very young gentleman, and an older but still all-young woman, with two donkeys had stopped at the auberge some hours earlier. The spiritless one shook her head, but no. The only other customers of the house thus far had been the postman, and two soldiers. The party might have passed. She and her parents were too busy to take note of what went on outside. A faint chill of desolation touched me. It would have been cheering to have news of the boy and his cavalcade en route. By three o'clock Chambourie was well in sight, lying far below us as we wound down from mountain heights, and looking from our point of view, in position something like an inferior Aosta. It basked in a great sun-swept plain, and way to the left, a lateral valley, dimly blue, opened towards Modan and the Monsigny. Descending we found a resemblance carried on by a few ancient chateaux and fortified farmhouses. And as we had now come upon a part of the road which Joseph knew, he pointed out to me in the far distance. The little villa, Les Charmettes, where Rousseau and Madame de Warren's kept house together. Again and again I thought we were on the point of arriving in the town, and had visions of exchanging adventures with the boy at the Hotel de France. But always the place seemed to recede before our eyes, elusive as a mirage, alighting again five or six miles away, and this it did, not once, but several times, with singular skill and accuracy. At last, however, after a tedious tramp along a monotonously level road, upon which we had plunged suddenly, we came into an old town, all gray, with the soft gray of stork's wings. The place had a mild dignity of its own, as befitted the ancient capital of Sevoix, and might have lived, if necessary, on the romantic reputation of its ancient chateau, standing up high and majestic above a populous modern street. There was an air of almost courtly refinement that reminded me of the wide sedate avenues of Versailles, and no doubt this effect was largely due to the fine statues and decorative groupings of the arcaded streets. One monument was so imposing and so unique that I forgot for a moment my anxiety to find the boy and hear his news. The huge pile held me captive, staring up at a miniature Nelson column, supported on the backs of four colossal elephants sculptured in gray granite of true elephant color. These benevolent mammoths, not content with the duty of bearing a tower of stone, with a more than life-sized general balancing on top of it, generously spent their spare time in pouring volumes of water from wrinkled trunks into a huge basin. Joseph knew that the balancing general, Dibwan, had used a vast fortune made in the service of an Indian prince to shower benefits on his native town as his elephants showered water, and that it was in gratitude to him that Chambhari had raised a monument, but I was disappointed to learn that the elephants had no prototypes in real life. It would have satisfied my imagination to hear that the soldier of fortune had returned from the Orient to his birthplace with the four original elephants following him like dogs, having refused to be left behind. But nothing is quite perfect in history, and one usually feels that one could have arranged the incidents more dramatically oneself. Indeed some historians seem to have found the temptation irresistible. Joseph promised other choice bits of interest in and near Mountain Ringed Chambhari, but I had small appetite for sight-seeing without the boy, and after my brief reverence to the elephants I hurried the mulleteer and mule to the hotel. At the door we were met by a porter, far too polite a person to betray the surprise which my companions Joseph and Finwa invariably excited in civilization. He helped to unfasten the pack, and as it disappeared into the vestibule I was about to bid Joseph au revoir, but his face gave me pause. Like the key to a cipher it told me all the secret workings of his mind. You might wait here before putting up Finwa, I said, until I inquire inside whether the young monsieur and innocentina have arrived safely. No doubt they have, as we did not catch them up on the road, and it would have been difficult to mistake the way, still. Wala, monsieur, exclaimed Joseph, his deep eyes brightening at something to be seen over my shoulder. I turned, and there was meek gray surree leading the way for innocentina and fanny, who were trailing slowly towards us down the street. I was delighted to see them, not until now had I realized how beautiful was innocentina, how engaging the two little plush-coated donkeys. I loved all three. A-B-N innocentina, I gaily cried. How are you? How is your young monsieur? He was well when I saw him last, returned innocentina. He must be very far away by this time. Very far away? I echoed her words blankly. Yes, monsieur, here is a letter which she told me to deliver to you without fail. I was not to leave Chambarie until I had put it into your hand myself. I was on my way to your hotel to see if you had arrived. Now that I have seen you, here a starry flash at Joseph, I can begin my journey. Where if I may ask? Towards my home, monsieur had better read his letter. I had taken the sealed envelope mechanically, without looking at it. Now I fixed my eyes upon the address, which was written in a firm, original, and interesting hand, that impressed me as familiar, though I could not think where I had seen it. Certainly so far as I could remember, in all my journeyings with him, I had never happened to see the boy's handwriting, yet innocentina said this letter was from him. Apparently it occurred to me that I could do something more enlightening than stare at the envelope. I could open it. I did so, breaking a seal with the same monogram I had noticed on the gold fittings in the celebrated bag. Apparently the entwined letters were M-R-L. Forgive me, dear man, were the first words I read, and they rang like a knell in my heart. Without going further I knew what was coming. I was to hear that I had lost the boy. Dear man, the prince vanishes. Not because he wishes it, but because he must. He can't explain. But though you may not understand now, believe this, he has been happier in these wanderings since you and he were friends than he ever was before. You have been more than good to the troublesome brat who has upset all your arrangements and calculations so often. Perhaps you may never see the boy any more. Yet who knows what may happen at Monte Carlo. Anyhow, whatever comes in the future he will never forget, never cease to care for you, and of one thing besides he is sure, never again will he like any other man as much as the one man who deserves to begin with a capital. Goodbye, dear man, and all good things be with you, wherever you may go, is the prayer of boy. Perhaps never to see the boy again, why, I must be dreaming this. I should wake up soon, and everything would be as it had been. I had the sensation of having swallowed something very large and very cold, which would not melt. Reading the letter over for the second time made it no better. But rather worse, the boy had become almost as important in my scheme of life as my lungs or my legs, and I did not quite see at the moment how it would be any more possible to get on without one than the other. Behold, I was stricken down by my own familiar friend. Yet no wrath against him burned within me. There was only that cold lump of disappointment, which seemed to be increasing to the size of a small iceberg, even lacking explanations or attempt at them. I knew that he had told the truth without flattery. He had wanted to stay, yet he had gone, and he said that perhaps I might never see him again. If I could have had my choice last night, whether to have the boy lopped off my life or to lose a hand, the probabilities are that I would have sacrificed the hand. But I had been offered no choice. I recalled our parting, and found new meaning in the words he had spoken at his door. There was no doubt about it. Even then he had decided to break away from me. I realized this, and at the same instant, rebelled against the decision. I determined not to accept it. He had vanished because of the two Americans. Exactly why I could not even guess. But I was certain that the reason was not to his discredit. To theirs perhaps, but not to his. Nevertheless they were somehow to blame for my loss, and if the young men had appeared at this moment I should have been impelled to do them a mischief. The principal thing was, however, not to let them cheat me irrevocably of my comrade. I would not depend solely upon that hint about Monte Carlo. I would find out where he had gone, and I would follow. Let him be angry if he would. His anger, though a hot flame while it burned, never endured long. Did Mr. leave here by rail, I inquired of Innocentina. She shrugged her shoulders. That I cannot tell. Do you mean you can't, or won't? I know nothing, Mr., except that I have been paid well, and told that I may go home as soon as I like, and by what route I like, having delivered the letter to Monsieur. My young master gave me enough to return with the donkeys, to mone-tone all the way from Chambere by rail if I chose. But I prefer to walk down, and keep the extra money for my dote. It will make me a good one. I am not sure that, before disentangling a huge bottle-fly from Fanny's long lashes, she did not glance under her own at Joseph when giving this information. Look here, Innocentina, I said beguilingly. Tell me which way and how your young monsieur has gone, and I will double that dough of yours. Not if you would quadruple it, monsieur. I promised my master to say nothing. Couldn't you get absolution for breaking a promise? No, monsieur. I am not that kind of Catholic. It is only heretics who break their promises and take money for it, like Judas Iscariot. Joseph did not charge this red rag, but looked so utterly depressed that Innocentina's eyes relented. Very well, I said. You deserve praise for your loyalty. I ought not to have tried to corrupt it, but you know I shall find out in the town or at the railway station. Innocentina smiled. I do not think so, monsieur. We shall see, I retorted. Joseph, where is the railway station? Joseph pointed, accompanying his gesture with directions. Then he offered to be my guide, but I refused his services and left him with Innocentina, having bidden him call at my room in the hotel for instructions later. But the prophecy of Innocentina, the cirrus, was fulfilled. I could learn nothing of the boy, or his movements at the gar of Chambéry. Several trains had gone out, bound for several destinations in different directions, during the past three hours, and no one answering the description I gave of the boy had been seen to leave. Later but no wiser, I returned to the hotel de France, and asked of a youth of seventeen, with large blue eyes, chestnut hair which curled, a complexion tanned brown, a Panama hat and a suit of navy blue-sourced knickerbockers, had lunched there. The answer was no. Such a young gentleman had not come to the hotel, nor had he been noticed in the town, either with or without a young woman and a couple of donkeys. I had no more than finished my questionings and gone up to my room when Joseph arrived, a wistful, expectant Joseph, with a deep light of excitement burning in his eyes. Any news, I asked? No, monsieur, except that in an hour Innocentina starts to walk to Lays-Echel, with her on. She is energetic. The girl knows not what is the fatigue, besides, each day less on the road, means so many more francs added to the dough. Innocentina seems very keen upon increasing that dough. Has she any one in view to share it with her? She has not confided that to me, monsieur. I suppose he would have to be a good Catholic. Of that I am not so sure. I do not think she would object to a good Protestant, if he would allow the children to be brought up in her faith. The lady is brave. She takes time by the forelock. It is the wise way, monsieur. Well, whoever he may be, I am sure you do not envy the future, sorry, dough or no dough, your opinion of Innocentina. Ah, it is changed, monsieur, completely changed, I confess. Then after all, it is Innocentina who has converted you. Joseph bent his head to hide a flush. Perhaps, monsieur, if you put it in that way, yet it was not of myself, nor of Innocentina I came to talk, but of the plans of monsieur. Because I have no plans, I answered dejectedly. Will monsieur wish to proceed to-morrow morning as usual? Proceed where? I gloomily capped his question with another. On the way south, towards the Riviera, is it not? If we made an early start, it might be possible to go by the route of La Grande Chartreuse and reach the monastery late in the afternoon. If monsieur wished to sleep there, travelers are accommodated at the sister-house, which has been turned into an hotelerie since the expulsion of the order. I reflected a moment before replying. On the face of it, it appeared like weakness to change my plans simply because I had been deserted by a comrade whose very existence had been unknown to me when first I made them. But on the other hand, I had grown so used to his companionship now that the thought of continuing my journey without him was distasteful. With a little pal, no day had ever seemed too long, no misadventure, but had had its spice. Lacking the little pal, the vista of day after day, spent in covering the country at the rate of three miles an hour, loomed before me monotonous as the treadmill. My gorge rose against it. I could not go on as I had begun. Why punish myself by a diet of salt when the saver had gone? Joseph, I said at last, the disappearance of the young monsieur has been a blow to me, I admit. It has destroyed my appetite for sight-seeing, for the moment at all events. I can't rearrange my plans instantly, but this I have determined. I'll end my walking tour here. What to do afterwards, I will make up my mind in good time. But meanwhile I won't keep you dancing attendance upon me. You will be anxious to get back home. Monsieur, I have no home. There was despair in Joseph's tone, and suddenly the keen point of truth pierced the armor of my selfishness. For Joseph, facing exile, from innocent Tina, and keeping his countenance politely, while I densely disgorced of blows, being a mulleteer farmed out by a master, he was at mercy of fate. And temporarily I represented fate. He could not journey on southwards whether his heart was wandering, unless I bade him go. This fine fellow, this old soldier, was as much at my orders as if I had been a king. If you aren't in a hurry to get back to Martin E. Joseph, said I, changing my tone, I'll tell you what you can do for me. You may take some of my luggage down to the Riviera. I'm expecting a portman toad to arrive here by rail tonight, or to-morrow morning, with plenty of clothing in it. But there are those holdalls which Finnois has carried for so long. I can't travel about with them in railway carriages. At that I draw the line. Yet if I sent them by ground vites, their contents would be injured or stolen. Take them down to Monte Carlo for me. I shall go there sooner or later, to meet some friends of mine who are motoring, and I shall stop at the Royal. Joseph's face would have put radium to shame, with the light it generated. Mr. is not joking. He is in earnest. The poor fellow stammered. Most certainly, and when we meet on the Riviera, we will talk over a scheme for your future of which I've been thinking. If you would like to buy Finnois of your patron, and two or three other animals only less admirable than he, setting up in business for yourself, I think I know a man who might advance you the money. Oh, monsieur! Had there been a little more of the French, or a little less of the Swiss, in honest Joseph's blood, I think that he would have fallen on his knees and rained kisses on my mud-stained boots. The Swiss tipped the balance luckily for us both, and kept him erect. But there was a suspicious glitter in his deep eyes, and a sudden pinkness of his respectable brown nose, which gave to his oh, monsieur, more meaning than a volume of protestations. His hand came out impulsively, then flew back humbly to his side, but I put out mine and grasped it. Monsieur, I would die for you, he said. I would prefer, I returned, that you should live, for innocentina. CHAPTER XXVII When Joseph had gone with his pockets and his heart, both full to the bursting, I felt much like the captain of a small fishing vessel, wrecked in strange seas, who has seen his comrades depart on rafts, while he stayed on board his sinking ship, alone with three biscuits and a jill of water. There was also a certain resemblance between me and a well-meaning plant, which has been pulled up by its roots just as it had begun to grow nicely, and then stuck into the earth again, upside down, to do the best it can. I was not quite sure yet which was up or down, and which way I had better grow, if at all. There was, however, an attraction in a southerly direction. Letters were to be forwarded to me at Grenoble, and there would probably be one from Jack or Molly Winston, saying when and where they might be expected to come upon the scene with Mercedes. Finding me stranded, they would doubtless take pity upon my forlornness and offer me a lift in their car down to the Riviera, and to the Riviera I still felt strongly impelled to go, though I had no longer the Contessa or an excuse. She had been engaged in my little drama, or the part of leading juvenile, with the privilege of understudying the heroine, but she had not shown an aptitude for either role, and having stepped down to that of first walking lady, she had minced off my stage altogether. Now the cast was filled up without her, though strangely filled, since after the first act there had been no leading lady at all. Nevertheless, having arranged a scene at Monte Carlo, I could not persuade myself to give it up, though it would not be played in any event at the Contessa's villa. The boy had vanished, and the sole word he had left was that I had better not count upon seeing him again, but the more I thought of it, the less necessity I saw for taking him at that word. He perhaps flattered himself that he had picked up all clues and carried them off with him in the wonderful bag, but he had purposefully hinted that something might happen at Monte Carlo, and I hoped the something might mean that, after all, the boy would materialize with his sister at the Hotel de Paris on the night after our arrival. In any case, if the princess were going to Monte Carlo, there would the fairy prince be also, and I did not see why I should not be there too, whether Molly and Jack tooled me down in their motor or not. Fifteen minutes after Joseph had gone from my life to mingle his lot with innocentinas, I had my own plans definitely mapped out. I would stop in Chambarie overnight, to wait for the Port Banteau with which I had kept up a speaking acquaintance in the larger centers of civilization during the tour, and next day I would go on to Grenoble by train, there to pick up letters. The luggage duly arrived in the evening, so that there was no bar to the carrying out of my design, and accordingly after my coffee on the following morning I conscientiously went out to see more of the town before taking the eleven o'clock train. It was only ten, and as my arrangements were all made, I had time for strolling, too much to suit my mood. The murmur of an automobile preparing to take flight attracted me from a distance, for it seemed that the voice had the cadence of a car I knew. I hastened my steps, turned a corner, and there in front of the Hotel de France rival stood a fine motor, panting, quivering in eagerness to dart away. It was a Mercedes, and if it were not Mollie Winston's wedding present Mercedes, it was that Mercedes twin. But there was a strange mushroom in it. I would have known Mollie's mushroom among a thousand. It was small, round, compact, and of a dark cream color. This mushroom was flatter, wider, more expansive, with an exceedingly slender stem, and in tint it was of a pale silvery gray. It grew up straight and slim in the tonneau of the car, all alone, unaccompanied by any similar growths, or any guardian goblins, and several servants of the Hotel were grouped about, waiting to see it off. I waited, too, sniffing adventure with the scent of petrol, and interested in the resemblance to that good dragon with which I had been friends. But I was about to turn away at last when a form which had evidently been squatting behind the car on the other side rose to its feet. It was that of Gotland, and had he been a long lost uncle from Australia, with his pockets crammed with wills in my favor, I could not have been more delighted to see him. As I rushed forward to claim him as my own, Mollie and Jack came out of the Hotel. Monty, Jack cried with a sincerity of joy which warmed my heart. As for his wife, she cried not at all, but merely gasped. That luck for me, I exclaimed, shaking both Mollie's hands so hard that it was fortunate, as she remarked afterwards, that she had on only her rainy day rings. I did hope to hear of you at Grenoble, but scarcely dared think of actually meeting you, even there. In two minutes more I should have been on the way to catch my train. Here's your train, old man, said Jack, indicating the throbbing automobile. My one true love, Mercedes, I remarked, looking fondly at the car. Sh! whispered Mollie, with an odd little sound which was like a giggle strangled at birth. She's there. Who? I started bewildered. Mercedes! I know, the darling, I long to have my hands on her again. Oh, Lord Lane, do be careful. You don't understand. I mean the real Mercedes, the girl who gave me the car. She's sitting there. She'll hear you. It's all right, said Jack. The motor's making such a row she wouldn't catch the words. She joined us hit, lately, explained Mollie hurriedly. I remember now. You used to talk rather a lot about her and want us to meet. Well, you have your wish now, dearie. Jack chimed in. You can introduce them with your own fair hand. Wait, wait, Mollie whispered piteously, as Jack would have taken a step forward and pulled me with him, a peculiarly daredevil look in his handsome eyes. For goodness' sake, Jack. Your voice restrained him, and again we were in conclave. You see, Lord Lane, it's rather awkward. We want you to go with us, immensely, but... You're awfully good, I hastily cut in. But I quite see, and I couldn't think of. Oh, please, that isn't what I meant. Now will you and Jack both be quite quiet, like angels, and let me talk for a while, till I make everything clear to everybody, about everybody else? Don't grin. I know I'm not beginning well, but the beginning's the difficult part. We wrote to you, Lord Lane, to Grenoble, saying we would be arriving about as soon as you got the letter. We didn't know whether we could tear you away from your mule or not, but anyhow we should have seen each other and got each other's news. And this friend of mine joined us unexpectedly. At least we thought we might meet her, but we weren't at all sure she would want to travel with us. However here she is, and she's a perfect dear, and next to Jack and Dad, I love her better than anybody else in the world. Besides, she gave me the car, and you know I told you how ill she had been, and how she was travelling for her health. All together we have to consider her before anyone, and I want to know, Lord Lane, if you'll think me a regular little beast, if I speak to her first, before we arrange anything. I opened my lips to answer with a complimentary protest, but before I could frame a word, she had rushed to the two Mercedes, her mushroom hanging limp in her hand, and had entered into a low-voiced conversation with the human namesake. Look here, Jack. I wouldn't put you out for the world, I said. As for tearing myself from the mule, that surgical operation has already been performed, and I was going on to Monte Carlo. That's our goal, cut in, Jack. Molly maligned the place of old days. Now I want her to do it justice. You and I will show her Monte at its best. Yes, but I'll go down by rail, and meet you there. You'll do nothing of the kind. Molly's friend is one of the most charming girls alive. But she has passed through a great trouble, followed by a severe illness. She came to us in some distress of mind, and we are bound, as Molly says, to consider her, as she may not think herself equal to intercourse with strangers. However, all that's necessary is to explain you to her, as I am now explaining her to you, and the thing settles itself. There can be no question of your not going on with us. You and Mercedes won't interfere with each other in the least. Because you see, now that you've turned up, the thing is to get down quietly and enjoy ourselves at the journey's end. We'll make a rush of it. In any case, Molly would have sat in the tonneau with her friend, and the only difference you will make in our arrangements is that I shall have you as a companion in front instead of Gotland. At this moment our fair emissary returned from the enemy's camp. Mercedes says that not for anything would she cheat us out of your company, announced Molly. Only she hopes you won't think her rude and horrid if she doesn't talk. There's her message. But I really think, Lord Lane, that the best thing is to take no notice of the poor child. She is very nervous and upset still. But I hope in a few days she will be herself again. I won't even introduce you to her. She and I will sit in the tonneau as quiet as two kittens, while you and Jack in front can talk over all your adventures since you met, and forget our existence. We shan't be so very long on the way, shall we, Jack? I began another but, which was scornfully disregarded by both Jack and Molly. I might as well consent now as later, they said, since they would simply refuse to leave Chambarie without me, and the longer I took to see reason, the more essence would the motor be wasting. Thus adjured, I allowed myself to be hustled off to my hotel by Jack, who insisted on accompanying me lest I should turn traitor on the way. In ten minutes Gotland would drive the car to the door of the France, and I was expected to be ready by that time. My packing had been done before I went out, by the united efforts of a valet de Chamb and myself. But now all had to be undone again. My motoring coat, unused for weeks, and aged in appearance by as many years, dragged up from the lowest stratum with my Gotland goggles, and a few small things dashed into a weird traveling bag, which a confused porter rushed out to buy at a neighboring shop. While I settled the hotel-bill, Jack arranged to have my portmanteau expressed to Grenoble, and by a scramble our tasks were finished when the voice of the car called us to the door. The whole incident had happened so quickly that I had no time to realize the change in my circumstances when, sole like a falling star, the motor shot through the pillared town with me on board. There had been a time when I shrank from the name of the car's giver, believing that Molly thrust it too obviously into notice, when that dear girl Mercedes had threatened to enter our conversations, I had often kept her out by force. But now it seemed that I, not she, was the intruder, and in a far more material way. This was perhaps political justice, but I did not grudge it, since it was evident that Molly no longer cherished the intention of dangling her friend the heiress before me like a brilliant fly over the nose of an impecunious trout. On the contrary, she warned me off the premises. We were to hurry down to Monte Carlo as quickly as possible, that the situation might not be overstrained. Mercedes in the tonneau, I in the front seat, were to live and let live during the rapid journey, and this was well. I dimly remembered that in the first days of our journey in search of a mule, Molly had vaunted her friend's beauty, but the silver gray mushroom prevented me from verifying or disproving this statement. The small triangular talc window was grayly opaque, or else there was a gray veil underneath. My one glance had not told me which, and I neither dared nor desired to steal another. I supplied the blanks in our somewhat broken correspondence, by skimming over the details of their doings, how they had spent most of their time since our parting in Switzerland, how they had arrived at Aix-les-Bannes, the very morning we left from en revard, and how they had motored to Chambere yesterday afternoon. Think of my being in the same town with you for more than twelve hours and not knowing it, I exclaimed. To borrow an expression of Mrs. Winston's, I was jolly low in my mind last night, and the very thought that you too were close by would have been cheering. I had not dared address myself to Molly in the other camp, but evidently all communication between the lines was not to be broken off. The wind must have carried my words to her ear, for she bent forward, leaning her arm on the back of our seat. Did you say that you were miserable last night? She inquired with flattering eagerness. Yes, awfully miserable. Poor Lord Lane, I haven't understood yet exactly why you suddenly gave up your walking tour, and got the idea of going by rail. I thought from your letters you were having such a good time that we could hardly bribe you to desert your party and come with us, even at Grenoble. My party deserted me, and that was the end of my good time, I replied, charmed by Molly's conception of the role of a quiet kitten whose existence was to be forgotten, as if any man could ever forget hers. What, your nice Joseph and his finnois? She inquired. When I speak of my party, I refer particularly to the boy I wrote you about, I returned, far from averse to being drawn out on the subject of my troubles, though I had resolved, were I not intimately questioned, to let them prey upon my damask cheek. Oh, yes, that wonderful American boy! Did he keep right on being wonderful all the time, or did he turn out disappointing in the end? Disappointing, I echoed. No, rather the other way round. He was always surprising me with new qualities. I never saw anyone like him. Ah, perhaps that's because you never knew other American boys. I dare say if I'd met him, I shouldn't have found him so remarkable. Yes, you would, I protested. There could be no two opinions about it. Is he good-looking? Extraordinarily, such eyes as his are wasted on a boy, or would be on any other boy. If he'd been a girl, he would have been one for a man to fall head over ears in love with. Your enthusiastic, hasn't he got any sisters? He has one, who is supposed to be like him. I was promised, or partly promised, to meet her in Monte Carlo at the end of our journey, where the boy expected her to join him. Oh, has he been called away by her? I don't think so. I fancied that might have been why he left you. I don't know what his reason was, but I have faith enough in the little chap to be sure it was a good one. Or you didn't bore each other? If you had ever seen that boy, you'd know that the word bore would perish in his presence like a microbe in hot water. As for me, I don't believe I bored him. He did say once that we would part when we came to the turnstile, meaning the point of mutual boredom. But I can't believe the turnstile was in his sight. I think that his resolution to go was sudden and unexpected. He must have been an interesting boy, and you ought to be grateful to fate for sending him your way, because apparently he gave you no time for brooding on the past. The past? Oh, by Jove, I couldn't think what you meant for a second. You have a right to say I told you so, Mrs. Winston. There was nothing in all that, you know, except a little wounded vanity. And you know, you are really the fate I have to thank for finding it out so soon. What do you mean? exclaimed Molly, almost as if she were frightened. I did nothing at all. I... You took me away with you and Jack. The rest followed. Oh, that! I didn't understand. Well as we shall get you down to Monte Carlo soon, you will meet your boy again. I wish I could be sure. I thought you said it was an engagement. Only conditional. Besides, had we walked, we should have been weeks on the way. I wonder you don't laugh in my face, Mrs. Winston, but you'd understand if you could have met the boy. I suppose Jack was your best friend, complained Molly. So he is, but this is different. I'm going to look for the boy at Monte Carlo, but I'm hoping is, that after all he may keep the half-engagement he made to meet me there. When? On the night after my arrival, for a dinner at the Hotel de Paris, to be given in honor of him and his sister. You think he will? It's worth going on the chance. You are the right kind of friend, said Molly, and you deserve to be rewarded, doesn't he, Jack? Yes, Jack flung over his shoulder as he drove, and I shall swear a vendetta against everybody concerned if he isn't. This did not strike me as a particularly brilliant remark, but Molly seemed to find it witty, for she laughed merrily, with a certain impish ring in her glee, reminiscent of the little pal in some moods. Evidently she had exhausted her long list of questions, for laughing still she twisted her slim body half round in the tonneau, turning a shoulder upon us. I took this as a signal that Mercedes was now to have her share of attention, and tactfully bestowed mine on Jack. Chapter 28 The World Without the Boy A somewhat headlong carriage, R. L. Stevenson. Though I had given Molly eyes and ears during her long catechism, I had been vaguely aware, nevertheless, that on leaving the Hotel de France we had crossed a bridge over the almost dry and pebbly bed of the insignificant lace, that we had passed the stately elephants and a robust marble lady typifying France in the act of receiving on her breast a slender sauvage, that we had caught a last glimpse of the chateau, and were spinning along a well-kept road, cheek by jowl with the railway to Lyon. From a high mountain on our left, the silver cascade de coup fell vertically like a white horse's tail, and I smiled to see as we flashed by a little house which honored a valiant foe, against whom I had fought, with the name of the Café de Boer. Up and up mounted our road, cresting green bellows of rolling mountain-land, we were running towards the boundary of Savoie, into Dauphiné, a country which I had never seen. The boy and I had talked of entering it together and visiting its seven marvels, the very possession of which made it seem in our eyes alluringly medieval. Had he been my companion still we would have been travelling some hidden side-path, where doubtless Joseph and Innocentina, chaperoned by Lézanymo, were happily straying at this moment. I could almost hear the donkey-girls mechanically constant warning-cry, fanny-anny, fanny-anny, suri-ori, like the low undertone of accompaniment to the thrum of the motor. The fancied sound smote me with homesickness, and to coax my mind from the disappointment which still rankled. I asked Jack when he would let me try my hand at driving. Not here said he with a smile, which was instantly explained by an abrupt plunge from the top of a long hill, down into a cutting, between lichen-scaled rocks, tracing with our new, as we went, a series of giddy zig-zags. We had hardly twisted one way, when low, the time had come to twist in the opposite direction, and nowhere had we a radius of more than twenty yards in which to perform our tricks. I couldn't have done that as well as you did it, I confess, said I, with becoming modesty. It's easy enough when you've got the knack, replied the lightning conductor. So no doubt is reeling, writhing, and fainting in coils. Motoring down these serpentine hills is like hurling yourself into space and trusting to Providence. So is all of life, said Jack, a timid man might say the same of getting out of bed in the morning. Even I can do the trick, cut in Molly, who was taking a temporary interest in our affairs again. At least I can this year, now that chickens are better than they used to be. They are looking nice and fat this summer, I'd judicially remarked. I don't mean that, explained Molly. But they are more sensible. Last year, before Jack and I were married, chickens were so bad that I used to dream of nothing else in my sleep. I had chicken nightmares. The absurd creatures never would realize when they were well off. But even in the midst of laying a most important egg on one side of the road, our automobile had only to come whizzing along to convince them that salvation depended on getting across to the other. This year they seemed to have formed a sort of chicken club, a league of defense against motors, and to have started a propaganda. My imagination tricked me, or this theory of Molly's evoked a faint sound of stifled mirth in the heart of the mysterious mushroom. In haste I turned away lest I should be suspected of regarding it, and Jack began to pump my memory mercilessly for what it might retain of his driving lessons. Luckily I had forgotten nothing, and I was able to demonstrate my knowledge by pointing to the various parts of the machine with each glib reference I made. By and by we came to a place where a grotto was much recommended, but swallows southward bound do not stop in their flight for grottos. We darted by, thundered through the humming darkness of Napoleon's tunnel, and flashed out into a startling landscape as sensational as the country of the delectable mountains in Pilgrim's progress. The cup-like valley was ringed in by mountains of astonishing shapes. It was nature posing for a picture by John Martin. In the fields were dotted characteristic Dauphinate houses, little elfin things with overhanging roofs like caps tied under their chins. Soon we raced into the main street of tiny Lézéchelle. Wents in the good old days, fair Princess Beatrice of Sevoix went away to wed with the famed Raymond of Provence. We whisked through the village and down the valley to Saint Laurent Dupont and the entrance to that great rift between mountains which leads to the monastery of the Grand Chartreuse. As we plunged into the narrow jaws of the superb ravine, a wave of regret for the boy swept over me. He and I had talked of this day, the day we should see the deserted monastery hidden among its mountains. Now it had come, and we were parted. The society of Jack and Molly and the motor-car could make up for many things, but it could not stifle longings for the little pal. Besides magnificent as was Mercedes, the dragon, not the mushroom, I felt that finnois and fanny Annie would have been more in keeping with the place. I was too dispirited to care whether or no my eyes were filled with dust. Therefore I had not goggled myself, and I think that Jack must have gathered something of my thoughts from my long face. How would you like to get out and walk here, like pilgrims of old, he asked? It will be too much for the girls, but Gotland will drive them up slowly, not to be too far in advance. American girls, you'll find, if you ever make a study of one or more of them, can do everything in the world except walk. There they have to bow to English girls. That's because we've got smaller feet, retorted Molly, where an English girl can walk ten miles, we can do only five, but it's quite enough, and we have such imaginations that we can sit in this automobile and fancy ourselves princesses on ambling Palfrey's. It was close to the deserted distillery of the famous liqueur that we parted company. The car piled with our discarded great-coats, forging ahead up the historic path. The little tramway that used to carry the cases of liqueur to the station at Fort Guari was nearly obliterated by new-grown grass. The vast buildings stood empty, never again with the mellow Chartres-Bert and Chartres-Jean be frequently distilled behind the high gray walls, for the makers were banished and scattered far abroad. We lingered for a moment at the narrow entrance to Les Désards, where the rushing river queer foams through the throttled gorge, giving barely room for the road scored along the face of the cliff. It was like a doorway to the lost domain of the monks, and Jack and I agreed that St. Bruno was a man of genius to find such a retreat. A retreat it was literally, St. Bernard had taken his followers to a place where, suffering great hardships, they could best devote their lives to suckering others. But St. Bruno's theory had evidently been that holy men can do more good to their kind by prayer in peaceful sanctuaries than by offering more material aid. Here at the doorway of St. Bruno's long corridor, the ravine, the old forge, the single arched bridge, flung high across the deep bed of the roaring torrent, had all grouped themselves as if after a consultation upon artistic effect. Since there had been an actual gate, built alike for defense and for limitation, but there were no traces of it left for the eye of the amateur. We passed into the defile, and the motor-car was out of sight long ago, higher and higher the brown road climbed, the mountains towered close and tall, great pillared palaces of rock loomed against the sky like castles in the air, incalculably far above the green heads and sloping shoulders of the nearer mountain slopes. I had thought that green was never so green as in the valley of Aosta, but here in St. Bruno's corridor there was a new richness of emerald in the green carpet and wall hangings, such as I had not yet known. It was green stamped with living gold in delicate fleur-de-lis patterns where the sun wove bright threads, and high above was the ceiling of lapis lazuli in pure unclouded blue. We heard no sound save the voices of unseen woodcutters crying to each other from mountain slope to mountain slope, a resonant ring of their axes striking out wild echoing notes with a fleeting clang of steel on pine, and now and again the sudden thunder crash of a falling tree, like the roar of a distant avalanche. By and by we came to the aerial bridge, which spans the Guiramore, slender and graceful as the arch of a rainbow, and as we gazed down at the far white water, hurling itself in sheets of foam past the detaining rocks, the sharp toot of a horn broke discordantly into the deep-toned music. A motor-car sprang round an abrupt curve and flashed by, but not so quickly that I did not recognize, among the six occupants, the two young Americans of Malravar. They passed me as unseeingly as they did the scenery, for they were talking as fast to two pretty girls opposite them in the tonneau, as if the girls had not been talking equally fast to them at the same time. I bore the pair a grudge, and the sight of them brought back the consciousness of my injury. Saint Bruno, fortunate in many ways, was a lucky saint to have so beautiful a bridge named after him. And as we climbed the brown road, moist with tears wept by the mountains for the banished monks, it seemed to us that the scenery was always leading up to him, as a preface leads up to the first chapter of a book. We went through tunnels as a thread goes through the eye of a needle. We wound round intricate turns of the road. We came upon pinnacle rocks. And then at last, when we least expected the climax of our journey, we dropped into a great green basin, rimmed with soaring crags. In the midst stood an enormous building, a vast conglomeration of pointed dove-grey roofs and dun-colored walls, a city of slate and stone spread over acres of ground, and seeming a part of the impressive yet strangely peaceful wilderness. Looking at the vast structure, I was ready to believe that Saint Bruno had waved his staff in the shadow of a rough-hewn mountain, saying, Let there be a monastery. And suddenly there was a monastery. But our motor, quivering with nervous energy, before a door in the high wall, snatched me back to practicalities. Mollie, leaning quietly back in the tunnel, beside the perpetual mushroom, saw us coming from afar off, and waved a hand of absurd American smallness. By the time we were within speaking distance, she was out of the car and coming toward us. We were so hungry that we lunched while we waited, she explained. So now you and Jack can go to the hotelerie and have something quickly. We'll walk in the woods until you come back. And then, as Mercedes doesn't seem to mind, we'll all go into the monastery together. It was not until the door of the Grand Chartreuse had opened to receive us, and closed again behind our backs, shutting us into a large empty quadrangle that the spirit of the place took us by the hand. Through the steep gray roofs, pointed like monkish hands, with fingertips joined in prayer, we gazed up at mountain peaks, gray and green, and pointing also to a heaven which seemed strangely near. The spell of the vast, the stupendous silence fell upon us. Somehow Mollie drifted from me to Jack, as we walked noiselessly on, led by a silent guide, as if she craved the warm comfort of a loved presence. And for a few brief moments the veiled Mercedes paced step for step beside me, but we did not speak to each other. What a tragic, tremendous silence it was. Yes, I wanted the boy. I should have been glad of the touch of his little shoulder, thinking of him thus, by some accident, the sleeve of Mercedes coat brushed against mine. Still, not a word from either of us. I did not even say, I beg your pardon, for that would have been to obtrude my voice upon the thousand voices of the silence, dead voices, living voices, voices of passionate protest, voices of heartbreaking homesickness, of aching grief and longing, never to be assuaged. Poor monks, poor banished men who had loved their home, and belonged to it, as the clasping tendrils of old, old ivy, belonged to the oak. How dared we come here into this place from which they had been driven, we aliens. I had not known it would grip me so by the throat, how full the emptiness was, as full to my mind as the air is of moats when a bar of sunshine reveals them. It was the palace of sleep lost in the mountain forests, but here there was no hope coming with the springing footsteps of a blithe young prince. The sleepers in this palace could not be waked by a wish, or a magic kiss, for they were ghosts, ghosts everywhere, in the great kitchen, with all its huge polished utensils ready for the meal which would never be cooked, and its neat plain dishes on shelved trays, waiting to be carried to the grill of the solitaire. In the brother's refectory, where the egg cups were ranged on long narrow tables, for the meal never to be eaten, where the chair of the reader was waiting to receive him, in the father's refectory next door, in the dusky corridors, their ends lost in shadow, where only the sad echoes and the running water of the unseen spring were awake, in the chapels, in the cemetery with its old carved stones and humbler wooden crosses, and most of all in the wonderful cells which were not cells but mansions, and in their high walled gardens, the most private of all imaginable spots on earth. Wandering on and on, alone now, I felt myself the saddest man in a twilight world. Why, I could not have put into words, had the brotherhood still peopled the monastery. I should have yearned to join them, partly because I was sad, and partly because the so called cells were the most charming dwelling places I had seen. Each comprised a two storied house in miniature, and each had its garden shut irrevocably away from sight or sound of any other. Into one of these solitary abodes I went alone, and closed the door upon myself and the ghosts. In fancy I was one of the order, in retreat for a week, my only means of communication with the outer world of the monastery, save for midnight prayers in the dim chapel, a little greea. There was my workshop, where I carved wood. There the narrow staircase leading steeply up to my wainscotted bedroom, my study and my oratory, with windows looking down into the leafy square of garden, planted by my own hands. Standing at one of those windows I knew the anguish of parting and loss, which had torn the heart of the last occupant, before he walked out of the monastery, between double lines of Chasseur al Pan. CHAPTER XXIX RUB THE RING AND THE GENIUS WILL APPEAR, ARABIAN KNIGHTS DOWN, DOWN, A WINDING AND BEAUTIFUL ROAD WE PLUNGED, ON LEAVING THE GRAND CHARGE ROOSE, WHILE THE AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT WAS STILL GOLDEN, THE MONESTERY SANK OUT OF OUR SIGHT AS WE WENT, AS THE MOON SINKS INTO THE SEA, AND WAS GONE FOR US AS IF IT WERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD. Ah, but a sweet warm world, and I was glad after all, that I was not a monk, in carved oak cells and walled gardens, but a free young man who could vibrate between the South Pole and the Albany. Mollie said that the monastery of the Grand Chartreuse was like a body without a soul, and in another breath she was asking Jack quite seriously whether she could buy one of the cells from the French government, all complete, to express as a present to her father in New York. We flew, our motor humming like a bee, through exquisite forests clothing the sides of a narrow ravine where hidden streams made music. Then in a twinkling we slipped out from the secret recesses of scented woods into a village almost too beautiful to accept as reality in a practical mood. There it lay, like a little heap of pearls tossed down from the lap of one mountain at the feet of another, and we were at Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse. The tiny jam of beauty had caught the glory of Switzerland, and the soft-fairy charm of Dauphiné, its guardian mountain was a miniature matterhorn of indescribable grace and airy stateliness. Its lesser attendance formed a group of peaks, gray and green, and rose, as if enough gifts had not yet been bestowed upon the little place at its christening, a playground of forestland rolling up over grassy slopes had been given, with a neighboring river swift and clear to sing it a lullaby. I had the impulse to clap my hands at Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse, as at some setting excellently designed and carried out by the most celebrated of scene-painters. It was a place in which to stop a month, finding a new walk for each new day. But one does not discover walks in a motor-car. One sweeps over the country, sounding notes of triumph. We glanced at Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse, and sped on towards Grenoble, through a landscape markedly different from that of Savoie. In Savoie everything is done lavishly, on a large scale. The eye roams over spaces of noble amplitude, expressing strength in repose. Dauphiné is livelier and daintier, more lovable, too. Fairies or brownies, since no mortals do it, keep the whole country like a vast private park. In crossing from Savoie into Dauphiné, one seemed to hear the Allegro movement after listening to the Andante. With each twist of our road the prospect changed. The mountains grew, soared more abruptly, and the youthful-looking landscape smiled at their strange shapes. As were the chums showed, which had been the Matterhorn at Saint-Pierre de Chartreuse, it now disguised itself for some new part at every turn. Such lightning changes must have been fatiguing, even for so extraordinarily versatile and clever a mountain, for within fifteen minutes after playing it was the Matterhorn, it was a giant tauntsuit monk, a Greek soldier in a helmet, a Dutch cheese, a hen, and a camel. When Dragon Mercedes had rushed us up the great coal, and whirled round a corner, suddenly a battalion of magnificent white warrior mountains sprang at us from an ambush of invisibility. Then no sooner had they struck awe to our hearts with their warlike majesty, than repentant they turned into lovely white ladies, bidding us welcome to the rich ripe figs and purple grapes which they held in their generous laps. I thought of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, with her fair face, her candid sky-blue eyes, her high noble bearing, and her white dress caught up, heaped with the roses into which her loaves had been transformed, the tallest, purest white mountain of all I chose for sweet Elizabeth, and that was none other than far Mont Blanc, floating magically in pure blue ether, like a gleaming pearl. Going down the perfect road towards the plain, where two rivers met, loved, and wedded, the valley which was the white mountain's lap, blended vague, soft greens and blues and purples, hinting of grapes and figs clustering under leaves, here and there a vine had been nipped by early frosts, and flung its crimson wreaths, like diatoms of rubies, in a red arch across distant bellows of mountain snows. Autumn was in the air, and though the grass and most of the trees kept all their richness of summer greenery, a faint, pungent fragrance of dying leaves, and the smoke of bonfires came to one's nostrils with the breeze, mingled with the exciting scent of petrol, it was delicious. At the confluence of the newly married drake and his heir rose the domes and towers of stately old Grenoble, quarry with history, and never a town had a nobler setting. Swooping down in half-circles, as if our car had been a great bird of prey, we saw the valley veiled with a silver haze which wrapped the city in mystery, while through this gleaming gauze the two rivers threaded like strings of turquoise beads. How the boy would have loved this, I found myself exclaiming over my shoulder to Molly. He used often to talk of the great charm of descending from heights upon places, especially new old places, which one has never seen before. Use-tee, echoed Molly? Why, that is rather odd. It is exactly what Mercedes has just been saying. The perpetual mushroom moved impatiently. I fancied by the movement of her shoulder that she resented having her thoughts passed on to me. I hastened to turn away. Sorry that I had reminded her inadvertently of my cumbersome existence, but I could not help wondering what she had been thinking of in the monastery when we had walked for full five moments side by side. There was no disappointment when we had plunged into the silver haze, torn it apart, and entered the town over a dignified bridge. All around us spread the city old and new. Above, on the hills were numerous chateaux, a strange fort, and the queerest of ancient convents, like the cork castles I had seen in shop windows and coveted it as a child. In the town there were statues, many statues, statues everywhere and in honor of everybody. Bayard was there, dying, and there was a delightfully human old fellow, humorous even in marble, who cleverly lay low till his worst enemy had finished an elaborately fortified castle, then promptly took it. Not a spacious modern street that had not at least one magnificent old palace, a façade of joyous Renaissance invention, or at least a crumbling medieval doorway of divine beauty, and nothing of romance was lost because Grenoble makes gloves for all the world. We sailed out of the town along the straight five-mile road to the Pont de Clé, and now it was hove for the boss-alp over a road which might have been engineered for an emperor's motoring, past the quaint twin bridges spanning the stream side by side, which our guidebook taught us to recognize as one of the seven wonders with capitals of Dauphiné. Then came a valley, almost theatrical in its romantic grace, one would not have believed in it for a moment if one had not seen it first in a sketch. Even the railway, on which we soon looked down, was inspired to gymnastic feats, leaping across chasms on giddy viaducts, and twisting back upon itself in corkscrew tunnels. There were thrilling retrospective views away to the giant alps we were leaving behind, but soon, nearer mountains crowded them out of sight. The country grew wild, with the strange grimness, like the face of a blind fate, cultivation ceased in despair of success, and alike, on the bare uplands and in the deep-scored valleys, there were few signs of human life. Then suddenly, in such a setting, we came upon the grandest of the seven marvels, the most wonderful lone rock in Europe, Mont de Guis, more like an obelisk of incalculable immensity than a mountain, once it had been considered unscalable, and might have remained virgin until this century of hardy climbers, had not Charles the Eighth had a fancy to hear, not to see, what was on top. Up went a few of his bravest satellites, hoisting themselves on to the aerial plateau by means of ropes and ladders, and bringing down wondrous tales of impossible chamois, savage, brilliant-colored birds, and singular vegetation, which stories promptly went into all the geographies of the day, and were believed, until a more practical explorer, named Jean Liatar, climbed up to please himself in 1834. We lost sight of this second Dauphiné marvel, the last one we were to see, just before running up the steep hill which led down again into the dark jaws of another mountain pass. It was the Co de la Quoise Haute, and once past this gateway of the Alps, the landscape changed slowly and indefinably, here and there suggesting that we were drawing nearer to the south. Though we were still encompassed on every side by mountains, they had lost their alpine splendor of bearing, they stooped or poked their chins. The country was now all brown and green, and surfeited with beauty it seemed to me that here was nothing great. We sped through Asprey, through Saré, on its rocky promontory, and on through Laurent, whose ancient inn with the sign of a spider gave a name to the town. Pointed brown-green mountains were crowned with pointed green-brown ruins, hoary after much history-making, and at the pointed mountain's brown-green feet, those avant-courier of the south, almond trees, had sat down to rest on their way home. Still we flew on, but at Cisteron, Jack slowed down the motor. Here was something too curious for even spoiled sightseers to pass in a hurry. The town struggled heartily up one side of a gorge, deep and steep, where the dirants has forced its patient way through a huge barrier of rock whose tilted strata correspond curiously on both sides of the stream. Driving down to the low bridge across the river, we gazed up at the town piled high above our heads, culminating in a fortress which, cut in a dark square out of the sky's turquoise, looked old as the beginning of the world. Cisteron was brown too, but not at all green, and beyond for a time. The country was still in a grim brown study, though it ought to have remembered that it was now laughing Provence. It gave us crumbling chateau, high-perched ancient rock villages without stint, and even a house in the strangely named village of Maligé, where Napoleon had lain early in the hundred days, but not a smile or a wildflower. Then in a flash its mood changed. The savage land had been tamed by some whispered word of mother nature, and grew youthfully pretty under our eyes. The poplars, in their autumn cloaks of gold, fringed the road with flame, and scattered largesse of red copper filings in our path. The dark mountains drew up over their bare shoulders scarves of crimson, and the sun flung a million diamonds into the wide bed of the dirance. Night was falling as we drove into the lazy-looking Provence town of Dine, where all was green and sleepy, at peace with itself and the world at large. Even the beautiful Doric Chateau d'Eau was green with moss, and the water of its fountain laughed in sleep. The famous Basilica showed gray through green lichen. Its wonderful rose window had a green frame of ivy, and the strange sculptured beasts guarding the door had saddles of green velvet mold. We slept at Dine, and made an early morning start, the car plunging us almost from the first, into scenery which only Gustave d'ore could have imagined. Nome villages and elfin castles clung to slim pinnacles of rock, which seemed to swing like blown branches against the sky. Wild gray mountains bristled with rocky spines, and trails of scarlet foliage poured like streams of blood down their rough sides, completing the resemblance to fierce wounded boars. Our road was a road of steep gradients leading us through gorges of a grandeur which would have been called appalling when the world was a little younger and more in awe of savage nature. If a midge could be provided with a proportionately tiny motor-car and sent coasting at full tilt down a greased corkscrew from the handle to the sharp end of the screw, the effect would have been somewhat that of our Mercedes leaping down the steep defiles. We were vaguely conscious now and then that a river far below us clambered for our bones. On one side we had a precipice, on the other a sheer face of towering cliff. Gorges, glorious gorges, a plethora of gorges, no sooner were we out of one and drawing breath in a valley of golden sunshine and silver river, but we were back in another majestic canyon. Finest of all, perhaps, was the dark Clue de Rouen. Yet when we sprang out into daylight to throw ourselves into the village of Les Scafarelles, wonders did not cease. Now we were in the true hinterland of the gay blue and gold Riviera, following the course of the Vare, down to Nice not many miles away. Wide and pebbly in its bed, by the bright pleasure-town, here it led us through a succession of more gorges, thundered us through rock tunnels, swept us over bridges, and at last tumbled us into sites of a marvel which must throw the whole seven of both an A out of focus. It was the town of Entrevaux, and to my shame I had never heard of it, where the narrow valley opens into a broad one, and the green swift-flowing river sweeps in a sickle-curve round the base of a high rock. Entrevaux shoots far up into the sky. The river bathes its dark walls, protected by devices dear to the hearts of Medieval Bovan. Peppercaster sentry-boxes jut out over the water, a great drawbridge with pork-cullis, triple-gateway, and near-contrivances for pouring oil and molten lead upon besiegers, alone gives access to the town, while behind the old crowded houses a fortified stairway in the rock leads dizzily up to a stronghold clamped upon a towering peak, a peak like a black giant wine-bottle, slender necked with the fort-castle for the cork. If the boy could see this with me, I thought, and then, because this place was like a fairy-place, I remembered the fairy prince's ring. Never had I followed his instructions, but I rubbed it now, and wished that the genie of the ring would give me back the little pal at Monte Carlo. After Entrevaux, picturesque Pouget-Tenille was an anticlimax, though other fairy towns peered down from high crags and sheer hillsides, where they hung by wires caught in spider webs, and though we passed through other gorges of grim beauty, my thoughts had flown ahead of our swift car. I was glad when at last we came into sight of a fair white city, lying on the blue curve of a bay, and ringed with green hills, glad that our journey was all but ended. For the fair city was niece. CHAPTER XXXIV From niece to Monte Carlo over the upper Corniche was, for us, a spin of less than two hours, and after that most beautiful drive in the world, we slowed down before the green shaded logia of the royal early in the afternoon. The hotel was only just open for the season, and it was possible to have a choice of rooms. Jack selected a glass-fronted suite, with a view more beautiful than any other in the extraordinary little principality. Jack casements opening on the foam of perilous seas in fairyland for Lorne, which were respectively the harbour and the rock of Monaco, as old as Hercules with its ancient towers dark against a sky of pearl. I was given a peep into Mali's salon, which appeared to be a sort of crystal palace, with its two window walls curtained by trailing roses, and Jack kept me for a moment at the door. I suppose we shall meet for dinner about eight, won't we? No matter what we may all choose to do meanwhile, said he. Well, er, no, I mumbled, feeling a little foolish. I have, er, a sort of engagement for tonight. I think I mentioned it before. What, to meet that missing boy of yours? Jack in a chaffing tone, so tactlessly loud, that it must have been distinctly audible to the ladies in the adjoining room, the door of which was open. Isn't that rather a mad idea? You were vaguely engaged to meet your pal, I believe, you said, on the night after your arrival at the Hotel de Paris for dinner. But considering the fact that, if you'd walked down as you then intended, instead of motoring, you would have been a fortnight on the way. Isn't it fantastic to expect that he'll turn up? Not quite as fantastic as you think, I retorted, remembering the terms of the boy's letter, which had not been confided to Jack in their exactness. Anyhow, I'm going on the off chance. You apparently credit the youth with clairvoyance, my dear chap. Nothing he has come down here. How could he know that you'd arrived? I wired him from Dean, telegraphing to the post-restaunt at Monte Carlo, where he would certainly think of inquiring if he took much interest in my movements. In that message I made it very clear that I should expect him to stick to our bargain, and I have an impression that he will. He may, but look here, my dear fellow. Jack now had the decency to lower his voice. Have you no red blood in your veins? Mercedes, the real Mercedes, nearly restored to health and spirits by her run with us through splendid air and scenery, is to unveil her charms this evening at dinner. You have irreverently nicknamed her the perpetual mushroom. Tonight you will see, but you don't deserve to be told what you will see, if you haven't the curiosity to find out at the first opportunity for yourself. Second opportunities, like second thoughts, are better than first, said I. I shall be delighted to take the second opportunity of meeting Miss Mercedes. By the way, what is her other name? You always seemed to take it for granted that I knew, but if it was ever mentioned in the summer, I've forgotten. You should be ashamed to admit that you could deliberately and stoically forget a charming young lady's name, and you don't deserve to have your memory jogged. You shall be told the heiress's name when you meet her, and not before. I must possess my soul in patience until tomorrow, then I replied. For to me one pal in the bush is worth twenty heiresses in the hand, and I am now going out to scour the said bush. Which means the casino, no doubt. I shall stroll in when I've got rid of the dust. The rooms are the place to come across people. All right, gang your iron gate, my son, and I suppose I must wish you luck. Dare say we shall see each other before bedtime. A few hours later I was walking down through the gardens on my way to the casino. The young grass sown last month had already become green velvet, and the flowers were as fresh as if they had been created an hour ago. The air smelled of La France roses and orange blossoms, though I saw neither. Some pretty Austrian girls were walking about in Muslim frocks and gauzy hats, though by this time in England women were putting on their furboas in deference to autumn, and a few days ago I had been lost in a snowstorm on a middle-sized mountain of Sevoix. As I drew near to the big white casino, strains of music came to me from the terrace, and thinking that the boy might be there listening to the band, I went through the tunnel and came out on the beautiful flower-decked plateau overhanging the sea. Out of season, though it was, a great many people were sitting there, drinking tea or coffee and listening to La Paloma. The windows of the casino were open, protected by awnings. Birds were taking their last flight before going to bed in some orange or lemon tree. The place was more charming than in the high season, but the face I looked for was not to be seen, and I deserted the terrace for the rooms. I had not been to Monty since the Boer War, and when I had gone through the formalities at the bureau and entered the first Salle, it struck me strangely to find everything exactly as I had left it years ago. The same heavy stillness emphasized by the continuous chink chink of gold and silver, and broken only by the announcement of events at different tables. Ones noir and paremont, rien ne va plus, zéro. The same ones, the same rien ne va plus, the same zéro, heralded in the same secretly joyous, outwardly apologetic tone by the croupiers fortunate enough to produce it. The same croupiers, too. Or do croupiers develop a family likeness of face, of voice, of coat, as the years go chinking zéroly on. The same players, or their doppelgangers, the same pictured nymphs smiling on the ornate walls, but there was no boy, no boy's sister, and suddenly it occurred to me that I was foolish to expect him. He was too childlike in appearance to have obtained a ticket of admission to the gambling rooms. Since it was useless to look for him here, and no other place seemed promising at this hour, there was nothing to do but pass the moments until time to change for dinner. Accordingly I watched the tables, once, like most men of my age, I had been bitten by the roulette fever, and had wrestled with systems in their thousands, not so much for the mere gamble as for the joy of striving to beat the wily Pascal at his own invention. In those old days the wheel had been like a populous town for me, inhabited by quaint little people, each living in his own snug house, the little people of roulette. Not a number on the board, but his space was familiar to me. I would have known him if I had met him in the street. There was sly, thin, dark little D, always sneaking up on tiptoe when you did not want him, and popping out behind your back. Business like successful bustling owns, tactless but honest doos, treacherous yet fascinating trays, blundering says, graceful brunette dixette, and the faithful friendly van neuf, feminine rouge, brusque vero noire, mean little underbred monk, and senile posse, priggish par, with his skittish young wife, the Duzan, nouveau riche, thinking themselves a cut above the humbler simple chances in roulette society. The upright unbending columns, the raffish chavo, the excitable transversal, and the brilliant carré, charming on first acquaintance, but fickle as friends, the twin blind dwarfs, the coup de deux. These and many more, down to the wretched, worried intermittences, ever in a violent hurry to catch a train, but never catching it. I could see them all still, but I saw them pass with calmness now, for I wanted to find the boy. CHAPTER 31 THE BOY'S SISTER A little thing would make me tell how much I lack of a man. The palace clock over in Monaco was striking eight as I reached the steps of the Hotel de Paris. Eight had been the hour appointed. Now here were both the hour and the man, but where was the boy? I walked into the gay restaurant, with its window wall, and a long rank of candlelit tables ready for dinner. Twenty people perhaps were dining, but there was no slim figure, in short black jacket, eaten collar, and loose silk tie, no curly chestnut head, no blue star eyes. Courageously disliking everybody present, I marched down the length of the room, and took a corner table, which was laid for four. On the sparkling snow of the damask cloth, earned a bonfire of scarlet geraniums, and two red shaded wax candles, of the kind which the boy used to call Candles with Nostrils, made wavering rose lights on the white expanse. I sat down, and an attentive waiter appeared at my elbow, having apparently shot up from the floor, like a pantomime demon. Monsieur desires dinner for one, he deferentially inquired. I am expecting one, or perhaps two friends, I replied. I will wait for them half an hour. If they do not come by the end of that time, I will dine alone. Will Monsieur please to regard the menu? Yes, thanks. He put it in my hands with an appetizing bow, which would have been almost as good as an hors d'oeuvre, had my mood been appreciative of delicacies, but it was not. Neither could I fix my mind upon the ordering of a dinner. My eyes would keep jumping to the glass door at the far end of the room. I want the best dinner the house can serve, I said, meanly shifting responsibility. Not too long a dinner, but, oh well, you may tell the chef I depend upon his choice. I quite understand, Monsieur, a dinner to please a lady, is it not? Yes, something to please a lady. Was there not the boy's sister to be catered for in case she should come? In thinking of him I must not forget her, but then how improbable it was that my poor dinner would be tasted by either. And for wine, Monsieur? I ordered at random the brand of champagne which had seemed like nectar to the boy and me that evening in far away Aosta, when a compact of our friendship was first made. But yes, certainly it was to be had, and it should, in an all little moment, be on the ice. The waiter glided away to make that little moment less, and I was left to measure it and its brothers, one after another they passed. What a pity the moment family is such a large one. I stared at the glass door. Other men's friends came in by it, but not mine. I glared at the window close to which I sat, the peculiarly theatrical effect of daylight melting into night, as seen at Monte Carlo and nowhere else, added to the sensation of suspense, I felt, as when the curtain is about to rise on the crowning act of an exciting play. The scene out there in the plaza was exactly like a setting for the stage, the great white casino, with the constant va in the end to and from the open doorway. The bubbly domes of the fantastically moorish cafe across the way, the velvet grass, unnaturally green in the electric light, the flower beds in the garden, a mosaic floor of colored jewels, the air blue as a gauze veil, with diamonds shining through its meshes, and overall a serene arch of hyacinth sky, pulsing with smoldering ashes of rose, just above the purple line of mountaintops. A carriage drove quickly past the window, and stopped, far on at the main door of the hotel. More people for dinner, but not the boy. I indistinctly saw a tall man and two ladies in long evening cloaks step out, then I turned my eyes elsewhere. Over on the brightly lighted balcony of the cafe de Paris opposite, the out-of- season musicians were playing solomio, and the yearning strains of that simple hackneyed Italian love song stirred my veins oddly. The glass door down at the other end of the room opened, and the movement there caught my eyes. A girl came in alone, and stood still as if looking for someone. Her slender white figure, in its long flowing cloak, clearly outlined against a darker background. She was alone, and there was nobody to introduce us, no one to tell me who she was. But the beautiful face was so marvelously like one I knew, that I jumped up instantly. THE BOY'S SISTER She must have come with friends and be looking for him. Then he was here, or would be. I have a vague remembrance of treading on several trains as I went to meet her, intending to introduce myself as her brother had not arrived. The restaurant seemed suddenly to have become a mile long, and she was at the other end of it. So was I at last, holding out my hand to the white girl with a large black hat, and diamond pins winking in the curly chestnut hair which they held in place. She was so astonishingly like him. Now that I had come closer, the resemblance was incredible. The hair, the soft oval of the little face, the eyes, the great star eyes. I forgot everything but that one figure, lily white and swaying like a lily, as it stood. Luckily there was no one near to see or think of us. The diners dined, as if this were an ordinary night, as if there might be other such nights again. Who are you, I said, as if in a dream. A wave of color swept up from the small, firm chin to the rings of chestnut hair. I, why I'm the boy's sister, a low voice stammered, he sent me. I the letter from him. My friends are outside. They will be here soon, but I, I came. You are, I suppose, you are man. And I know you are boy, boy himself. I mean, he never was. For heaven's sake tell me. But no, I don't need to ask. I've got my little pal back again. That's all. Oh, if I'd been sure you would guess, if I had known you would talk to me like this, I should not have dared to come. Yes you would, for you are brave and you owed me this. I'm ashamed to look you in the face. What must you think of me? Think? I'm past thinking. I'm spanking the gods. If I could think at all, it would be of myself that I was a fool not to. And yet, was I a fool? You were a boy then. Even the Contessa. Oh, don't. Where can we sit? I must tell you everything. Explain everything. I can't wait. In a few minutes Molly and Jack will come. Good heavens! Yes, didn't you guess? I'm the perpetual mushroom. Mercedes, Roy, Lawrence. Oh, man! Man! How have I dared everything? And most of all this meeting. To fight that duel would have been easier. I think I would never have ventured after all. I would have stayed a mushroom always and let the boy be buried and forgotten. But Molly wouldn't let me. God bless Molly. I suppose I must have led her to my table, for at this juncture we found ourselves there. Will Monsieur have dinner served? Breathe a voice out of the hazy unrealities that shut us to in alone together. Dinner by and by I heard myself murmuring, as one brushes away a buzzing insect. Yes, dinner by and by, for four. Man! the girl began, and then was silent. Little pal, I answered, and she visibly gathered courage. You know what a great blow I had, and how it made me very ill, she went on. It was Molly Randolph who persuaded me that a complete change, and living in the open air, the open air of other countries where no one knew me or my troubles, would cure my heart and mind too. Oh, what a Molly! What might she not do for this sad, bad, mad old world if she would but set up for a specialist in the mind and heart line? She didn't help me make the plan that I finally carried out. You see, she had to be married and whisked off to England when she had half finished my cure. One night when I was lying awake, the thought came to me of a thing I might do. It fascinated me. It wouldn't let me get away from it. At first it was only a fantastic dream, but it took shape and reality till it was able to plead its own cause and argue its own advantages. A girl is handicapped, she can't have adventures, she must have a chaperone. A boy is free, besides I wanted to get away from men. As a boy I could take Molly's advice and travel and be a regular gypsy if I liked. My hair had been cut short when I was ill. That made me feel as if the thing really was to be. One day I sent out and bought some clothes ready-made and put them on. That settled it, for I was sure no one would ever know me or the truth. One thing suggested another. I thought of traveling with a caravan, then I changed my mind to donkeys, and that led to innocentina. I'd gone out with her up into the mountains, donkey-back, every day from Montone two years ago she had talked to me about Aosta, her mother's people came from there. Always since I had wanted to go. I wrote her. I began to make preparations for a long journey. You got the bag, I exclaimed. Oh, that bag! I should have died if any English-speaking person had found it and read my diary which was to be used partly as notes or a book, if I should ever write it. I would have offered even a bigger reward if you had let me, but I must go on. They will come, Molly and Jack. I went out to Lecerne, where innocentina joined me with the donkeys, but it wasn't till we were away in the wilds that the boy appeared. I didn't mean to visit any very big towns afterwards, for it wasn't civilization I wanted, but you came into the story, and I did lots of things I hadn't meant to do, because of you, man, and I did lots of things I hadn't meant to do, because of you, boy. It was doing different things from what I planned that worked all the mischief. If we hadn't gone to X, we wouldn't have gone up Mal-Rivar, and if we hadn't gone up Mal-Rivar, the Prince wouldn't have had to vanish. If he hadn't, would the Princess have appeared, for me, or would she always have been passing, passing, I not dreaming of her presence, though she was by my side? Who can tell? Each event in life seems to be propped up against all the others, like a tower of children's bricks. Anyway, we did go, and something had sent up to the snowy top of that mountain in Cevoix, the very last man in the world, except one, I would have chosen to meet. It was his brother, the younger brother of the man I had found out. He wasn't sure of me, I could tell, for he had never seen me with my short hair, and I had got so thin, and my face so brown, but he suspected, and he is a gossiping sort of fellow. If he had had a chance to see me by daylight, he would have been sure, and then there would be some wild story flashing all over America. That is why I ran away. But it hurt me to leave you like that, man. It cut off all my arms and legs, and my head, and left me only a trunk, I murmured. I couldn't think what else to do, indeed I could hardly think at all. But I knew Molly and Jack were going to Chambarie to spend a day, and I thought I might catch them there if I hurried. You see, Molly and I wrote to each other sometimes, though I never said a word about you. I didn't dream you knew them, until one day you announced things you'd said to Molly in a letter, which—which, well, things which would need a lot of explanation, too difficult for black and white. By Jove, I exclaimed, now I know where I'd seen your handwriting before. It was in a letter which Molly dropped almost on my head, from a balcony at Martinie, and there was a photograph. Oh, you didn't see it. That's what Molly asked. I satisfied her that I hadn't. Suppose you had, before you met me, but never mind. I did find them at Chambarie. They'd just arrived, and I'd told Molly everything. What did she say? Oh, she just lent me some of her clothes, and said they'd take me with them in the automobile, out of danger's way, until we could decide on a plan. I bought the thing you call a mushroom, in a shop, and we were starting off next morning when you came along. Well—well? Molly and Jack were in a very awkward position, for I had said to Molly that I felt I could never face you again, never, anyhow, as the boy, and that he had gone out of your life irrevocably. There I sat in the motor-car, and there were you in the street. You can't imagine how I felt. It would have been horrid for them, your best friends, to leave you stranded, and I didn't want that either. I couldn't help feeling there'd be tremendous fascination in being so near you, with my face hidden, you not knowing, if only the strain of it needn't last too long, and Molly just cut the guardian knot of the scrape, as she always does. She assured me that being in the same car need commit me to no decision as to what I would do in the end. But you remember how she drew you out, about your feeling for the boy, how you missed him, and how you were going all the way down to Monte Carlo on the bare chance of his being there. Well, she meant me to hear every word, and I did. After that, after that, I couldn't give you up. I don't believe I could, anyway, when I'd straighten things out in my mind. I'd told you that you would never see the boy again, and you never will, but Molly said that was no reason why you shouldn't see the boy's sister. I wrote a note from him to you, for myself to bring to-night, and I thought, I hoped you might perhaps believe. You couldn't have hoped it, I broke in. Say that you came to give me back my little pal, whom you had stolen from me. It may be, I don't know myself. I couldn't foresee what would happen. As I heard you say about motoring down steep hills, I just hurled myself into space and trusted to Providence. Now I understand all that was mysterious in myself, I said. My heart, not being such a fool as my head, was trying continually to telegraph the truth about the little pal to my brain, which couldn't get the message right, as there was far too much electricity flying about in the atmosphere. Now I know why I loved the boy so dearly, because he was you. Because he was that other half, which every man is always unconsciously looking for around the world, and hardly ever finds. Oh, man, do you really care, like that? Do you love me, love, for sure this time? Sure for this time, and for eternity, there never really was, there never will be, any other woman in my life except you, for you are my life, my world. You don't hate me for my masquerade? Hate you, I'll prove to you whether I... Why does your face look suddenly different, man? Why do you stop? Because I've remembered something that I'd forgotten. What? Your horrible money. Don't you think I knew you'd forgotten? Oh, man, the money would be horrible indeed if you should let it come between us. But you won't, will you? We belong to each other. Your following me here proves it beyond doubt. I've known for weeks that I never truly cared for anyone else, for I love you, and can't do without you. Then there's nothing on earth that shall come between us. Money or no money. What does it matter, after all? Will you finish the journey of life with me, my little pal, my love? The star eyes answered, and at that moment Molly and Jack came in.