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The Princess Passes

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Title: The Princess Passes

Author: C. N. Williamson
        A. M. Williamson


        
Release date: January 20, 2005 [eBook #14740]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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THE PRINCESS PASSES

A Romance of a Motor-Car

by

C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON

Authors of _The Lightning Conductor_

Illustrated

New York
Henry Holt and Company

1905







[Illustration: "FOOD FOR THE GODS, AND ONLY A BOY TO EAT IT."]




TO

THE DEAR PRINCESS

WHO, EACH YEAR, MAKES THE RIVIERA SUNNIER FOR HER PRESENCE




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I. WOMAN DISPOSES

    II. MERCÉDÈS TO THE RESCUE

   III. MY LESSON

    IV. POTS, KETTLES, AND OTHER THINGS

     V. IN SEARCH OF A MULE

    VI. THE WINGS OF THE WIND

   VII. AT LAST!

  VIII. THE MAKING OF A MYSTERY

    IX. THE BRAT

     X. THE SCRAPING OF ACQUAINTANCE

    XI. A SHADOW OF NIGHT

   XII. THE PRINCESS

  XIII. AFTERNOON CALLS

   XIV. THE PATH OF THE MOON

    XV. ENTER THE CONTESSA

   XVI. A MAN FROM THE DARK

  XVII. THE LITTLE GAME OF FLIRTATION

 XVIII. RANK TYRANNY

   XIX. THE LITTLE RIFT WITHIN THE LUTE

    XX. THE GREAT PAOLO

   XXI. THE CHALLENGE

  XXII. AN AMERICAN CUSTOM

 XXIII. THERE IS NO SUCH GIRL

  XXIV. THE REVENGE OF THE MOUNTAIN

   XXV. THE AMERICANS

  XXVI. THE VANISHING OF THE PRINCE

 XXVII. THE STRANGE MUSHROOM

XXVIII. THE WORLD WITHOUT THE BOY

  XXIX. THE FAIRY PRINCE'S RING

   XXX. THE DAY OF SUSPENSE

  XXXI. THE BOY'S SISTER




ILLUSTRATIONS

"FOOD FOR THE GODS, AND ONLY A BOY TO EAT IT" (Frontispiece)

"WE REALLY WANT YOU, SAID MOLLY"

"SOMETIMES JACK DROVE, WITH MOLLY BESIDE HIM"

"THE BLUE FLAME OF THE CHAFING-DISH"

"I WAS SUDDENLY CLAPPED UPON THE SHOULDER"

"TREADING THE ROAD BUILT BY NAPOLÉON"

"THERE WAS A PANG WHEN I TURNED MY BACK"

"THAT IS THE DÉJEUNER OF NAPOLÉON"

"DOWN, TURK!" "BE QUIET, JUPITER!"

"ON THE GROUND CROUCHED THE BOY"

"'DO YOU KNOW,' SAID I, 'YOU ARE A VERY QUEER BOY'"

"LOOKING OUT OF THE WINDOW I SAW HIM IN CONVERSATION"

"SITTING WITH MY BACK TO THE HORSES"

"HERE WE WERE AT ANNECY"

"VOILÀ MONSIEUR!"

"THE ROCK OF MONACO"






CHAPTER I

Woman Disposes

    "Away, away, from men and towns,
     To the wild wood and the downs,
       To the silent wilderness."
              --PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.


"To your happiness," I said, lifting my glass, and looking the girl in
the eyes. She had the grace to blush, which was the least that she
could do, for a moment ago she had jilted me.

The way of it was this.

I had met her and her mother the winter before at Davos, where I had
been sent after South Africa, and a spell of playing fast and loose
with my health--a possession usually treated as we treat the poor,
whom we expect to have always with us. Helen Blantock had been the
success of her season in London, had paid for her triumphs with a
breakdown, and we had stopped at the same hotel.

The girl's reputation as a beauty had marched before her, blowing
trumpets. She was the prettiest girl in Davos, as she had been the
prettiest in London; and I shared with other normal, self-respecting
men the amiable weakness of wishing to monopolise the woman most
wanted by others. During the process I fell in love, and Helen was
kind.

Lady Blantock, a matron of comfortable rotundity of figure and a
placid way of folding plump, white hands, had, however, a
contradictorily cold and watchful eye, which I had feared at first;
but it had softened for me, and I accepted the omen. In the spring,
when my London tyrant had pronounced me "sound as a bell," I had
proposed to Helen. The girl said neither yes nor no, but she had eyes
and a smile which needed no translation, so I kissed her (it was in a
conservatory at a dance) and was happy--for a fortnight.

Then came this bidding to dinner. Lady Blantock wrote the invitation,
of course, but it was natural to suppose that she did it to please her
daughter. It happened to be my birthday, and I fancied that Helen had
kept the date in mind. Besides, the selection of the guests had
apparently been made with an eye to my pleasure.

There was Jack Winston, who had lately married an American heiress,
not because she was an heiress, but because she was adorable; there
was the heiress herself, _née_ Molly Randolph, whom I had known
through Winston's letters before I saw her lovely, laughing face;
there was Sir Horace Jerveyson, the richest grocer in the world, whom
I suspected Lady Blantock of actually regarding as a human being, and
a suitable successor to the late Sir James. Besides these, there was
only myself, Montagu Lane; and I believed that the dinner had been
arranged with a view to my claims as leading man in the love drama of
which Helen Blantock was leading lady, the other characters in the
scene merely being "on" as our "support." If this idea argued conceit,
I was punished.

It was with the _entrée_ that the blow fell, and I had a curious,
impersonal sort of feeling that on every night to come, should I live
for a hundred years, each future _entrée_ of each future dinner
would recall the sensation of this moment. Something inside me, that
was myself yet not myself, chuckled at the thought, and made a note to
avoid _entrées_.

We had been asking each others' plans for August. Molly and Jack had
said that they were going to Switzerland to try the new Mercédès,
which had been given as a wedding present to the girl by a school
friend of that name, and of many dollars.

Then, solely to be civil, not because I wanted to know, I asked Sir
Horace Jerveyson what he meant to do. Hardly did I even expect to hear
his answer, for I was looking at Helen, and she was in great beauty.
But the man's words jumped to my ears.

"Miss Blantock and I are going to Scotland," answered the grocer, in
his fat voice, which might have been oiled with his own bacon. I
stared incredulously. "Together," he informatively added.

Lady Blantock laughed nervously. "I suppose we might as well let this
pass for an announcement?" she twittered. "Nell and Sir Horace have
been engaged a whole day. It will be in the _Morning Post_ to-morrow.
Really, it has been so sudden that I feel quite dazed."

It was at this point that I drank to the girl's happiness, looking
straight into her eyes.

I have a dim impression that the grocer, who no doubt mistook her
blush for maiden pride of conquest, essayed to make a speech, and was
tactfully suppressed by the future mother-in-law. I am sure, though,
that it was Helen who presently asked, in pink-and-white confusion,
if I, too, were bound for Scotland. "But, of course you are," she
added.

"No," I said. "I've been planning to take a walking tour as soon as
this tiresome season is over. I shall run across to France and wander
for a while. Eventually, I shall end up at Monte Carlo. A friend whom
I rather want to meet, will arrive there, at her villa, in October."

I knew that Jack Winston would understand, for he had not been the
only one last winter who had written letters. But Jack was of no
importance to me at the instant. I was talking at Helen, and she, too,
would understand. I hoped that, in understanding, she would suffer a
pang, a small, insignificant, poor relation of the pang inflicted upon
me.

It is a thing unexplained by science why the miserable hours of our
lives should he fifty times the length of happy hours, though stupid
clocks, seeing nothing beyond their own hands, record both with the
same measurement. If we had sat at this prettily decorated dinner
table in the Carlton restaurant (I had thought it pretty at first, so
I give it the benefit of the doubt) through the night into the next
day, while other people ate breakfast and even luncheon, the moments
could not have dragged more heavily. But when it appeared that we must
have reached a ripe old age--those of us who had been young with the
evening--Lady Blantock thought we might have coffee in the "palm
court." We had it, and by rising at last, sweet Molly Winston saved me
from doing the musicians a mischief. "Lord Lane, you promised to let
us drop you, in the car," she said to me. "Oh, I don't mean to 'drop
you' literally. Our auto has no naughty ways. I hope we are not
carrying you off too soon."

[Illustration: "WE REALLY WANT YOU, SAID MOLLY".]

Too soon! I could have kissed her. "Angel," I murmured, when we were
out of the hotel, for in reality there had been no engagement. "Thank
you--and good-bye." I wrung her hand, and she gave a funny little
squeak, for I had forgotten her rings.

"What! Aren't you coming?" asked Jack.

"We really want you," said Molly. "Please let us take you home with
us--to supper."

"We've just finished dinner," I objected weakly.

"That makes no difference. Eating is only an incident of supper. It's
a meal which consists of conversation. Look, here's the car. Isn't she
a beauty? Can you resist her? Such a dear darling of a girl gave her
to me, a girl you would love. Can you resist Mercédès?"

"I could resist anything if I could resist you. But seriously, though
you're very good, I think I'll walk to the Albany, and--and go to
bed."

"What nonsense! As if you would. You're quite a clever actor, Lord
Lane, and might deceive a man, but--I'm a woman. Jack and I want to
talk to you about--about that walking tour."

It would have been ungracious to refuse, since she had set her heart
upon a rescue. The chauffeur who had brought round the motor
surrendered his place to Molly, whom Jack had taught to drive the new
car, and I was given the seat of honour beside her. By this time the
streets were comparatively clear of traffic, and we shot away as if we
had been propelled from a catapult, Molly contriving to combine a
rippling flow of words with intricate tricks of steering, in an
extraordinary fashion which I would defy any male expert to imitate
without committing suicide and murder.

I was a determined enemy of motor cars, as Jack knew, and thus far
had avoided treachery to my favourite animal by never setting foot in
one. But to-night I was past nice distinctions, and besides, I rather
hoped that Molly and her Mercédès would kill me. My nerves were too
numb to tell my brain of any remarkable sensations in the new
experience, but I remember feeling cheated out of what I had been led
to expect, when without any tragic event Molly stopped the car before
their house in Park Lane--another and bigger wedding present.

It was a brand-new toy bestowed by millionaire Chauncey Randolph on
his one fair daughter. Jack and Molly Winston had been married in New
York in June (when I would have been best man had it not been for
Helen), had spent their honeymoon somewhere in the bride's native
country, and had come "home" to England only a little more than a
fortnight ago. Jack's father, Lord Brighthelmston, had furnished the
house as his gift to the bride, and as he is a famous connoisseur and
collector, his taste, combined with Lady Brighthelmston's management,
had resulted in perfection. Already I had been taken from cellar to
attic and shown everything, so that to-night there was no need to
admire.

We went into the dining-room; why, I do not know, unless that sitting
round a table in the company of friends opens the heart and loosens
the tongue. I have reason to believe that on the table there were
things to eat, and especially to drink, but we gave them the cut
direct, though I recall vaguely the fizz of soda shooting from the
syphon, and afterwards holding a glass in my hand.

"Do you mind my saying what I think of Lady Blantock and her
daughter?" inquired Molly, with the meek sweetness of a coaxing
child. "Perhaps I oughtn't, but it would be a relief to my feelings."

"I wonder if it would to mine?" I remarked impersonally, addressing
the ancient tapestry on an opposite wall.

"Let's try, and see," persisted Molly. "Calculating Cats! There, it's
out. I wouldn't have eaten their old dinner, except to please you.
I've known them only thirteen days, but I could have said the same
thing when I'd known them thirteen minutes. Indeed, I'm not sure I
didn't say it to Jack. Did I, or did I not. Lightning Conductor?"

"You did," replied the person addressed, answering with a smile to the
name which he had earned in playing the part of Molly Randolph's
chauffeur, in the making of their love story.

"Women always know things about each other--the sort of things the
others don't want them to know," Molly went on; "but there's no use in
our warning men who think they are in love with Calculating Cats,
because they would be certain we were jealous. Of course I shouldn't
say this to you, Lord Lane, if you hadn't taken me into your
confidence a little--that night of my first London ball."

"It was the night I proposed to Nell," I said, half to myself.

"Sir Horace Jerveyson was at the ball, too."

"Talking to Lady Blantock."

"And looking at Miss Blantock. I noticed, and--I put things together."

"Who would ever have thought of putting those two together?"

"I did. I said to myself and afterwards to Jack--may I tell you what I
said?"

"Please do. If it hurts, it will be a counter-irritant."

"Well, Jack had told me such heaps about you, you know, and he'd
hinted that, while we were having our great romance on a motor car,
you were having one on toboggans and skates at Davos, so I was
interested. Then I saw her at the ball, and we were introduced. She
was pretty, but--a prize white Persian kitten is pretty; also it has
little claws. She liked you, of course, because you're young and
good-looking. Besides, her father was knighted only because he
discovered a new microbe or something, while you're a 'hearl,' as my
new maid says."

"A penniless 'hearl,'" I laughed.

"You must have plenty of pennies, for you seem to have everything a
man can want; but that is different from what a woman can want. I'm
sure Helen Blantock and her mother had an understanding. I can hear
Lady Blantock saying, 'Nell, dear, you may give Lord Lane
encouragement up to a certain point, for it would be nice to be a
countess; but don't let him propose yet. Who knows what may happen?'
Then what did happen was Sir Horace Jerveyson, who has more pounds
than you have pennies. Helen would console herself with the thought
that the wife of a knight is as much 'Lady So-and-So' as a countess. I
hate that grocerman, and as for Helen, you ought to thank heaven
fasting for your escape."

"Perhaps I shall some day, but that day is not yet," I answered.
"However, there is still Monte Carlo."

"Shall you drown your sorrows in roulette?" asked Molly, looking
horrified.

"Who knows?"

"Don't let her misjudge you," cut in Jack. "Have you forgotten what I
told you about the Italian Countess, Molly?"

"Oh, the Countess with whom Lord Lane used to flirt at Davos before he
met Miss Blantock? Now I see. You said that you were going to Monte
Carlo, on purpose to make Helen Blantock jealous."

"I'm afraid some spiteful idea of the sort was in my mind," I
admitted. "But the Countess is fascinating, and if she would be kind,
Monte Carlo might effect a cure of the heart, as Davos did of the
lungs."

"I believe you're capable of marrying for pique. Oh, if I could prove
to you that you aren't, and never have been, in love with Helen!"

"It would be difficult."

"I'll engage to do it, if you'll take my prescription."

"What is that?"

"Cheerful society and amusement. In other words, Jack's and my
society, and a tour on our motor car."

"What, make a discord in the music of your duet?"

"Dear old boy, we want you," said Jack.

I was grateful. "I can't tell how much I thank you," I answered. "But
I'm in no mood for companionship. The fact is, I'm stunned for the
moment, but I fancy that presently I shall find out I'm rather hard
hit."

"No, you won't, unless you mope," broke in Molly. "On the contrary,
you'll feel it less every day."

"Time will show," said I. "Anyhow, I must dree my own weird--whatever
that means. I don't know, and never heard of anyone who did, but it
sounds appropriate. I should like to do a walking tour alone in the
desert, if it were not for the annoying necessity to eat and drink. I
want to get away from all the people I ever knew or heard of--with the
exceptions named."

"One would think you were the only person disappointed in love!"
exclaimed Molly. "Why, I have a friend who has really suffered. Dear
little Mercédès----"

Mrs. Winston stopped suddenly, drawing in her breath. She looked
startled, as if she had been on the point of betraying a state secret;
then her eyes brightened; she began abstractedly to trace a leaf on
the damask tablecloth. "I have thought of just the thing for you," she
said, apparently apropos of nothing. "Why don't you buy or hire a mule
to carry your luggage, and walk from Switzerland down into Italy, not
over the high roads, but do a pass or two, and for the rest, keep to
the footpaths among the mountains, which would suit your mood?"

"The mule isn't a bad scheme," I replied. "A dirty man is an
independent animal, but a clean man, or one whose aim is to be clean,
is more or less helpless. If he has a weakness for a sponge bag, a
clean shirt or two, and evening things to change into after a long
tramp, he must go hampered by a caravan of beasts."

"One beast would do," said Molly practically, "unless you count the
muleteer, and that depends upon his disposition."

"I suppose muleteers have dispositions," I reflected aloud.

"Mules have. I've met them in America. But if you think my idea a
bright one, reward it by going with Jack and me as far as Lucerne.
There you can pick up your mule and your mule-man."

"'A picker-up of unconsidered trifles,'" I quoted dreamily. "Well, if
you and Jack are willing to tool me out on your motor car as far as
Lucerne, I should be an ungrateful brute to refuse. But the difficulty
is, I want to turn a sulky back on my kind at once, while you two----"

"We're starting on the first," said Jack.

"What! No Cowes?"

"We wouldn't give a day on the car for a cycle of Cowes."

And so the plan of my consolation tour was settled, in the supreme
court beyond which there is no appeal. But man can do no more than
propose; and woman--even American woman--cannot invariably "dispose"
to the extent of remaking the whole world of mules and men according
to her whim.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER II

Mercédès to the Rescue

     "What is more intellectually exhilarating to the mind, and even
     to the senses, than . . . looking down the vista of some great
     road . . . and to wonder through what strange places, by what
     towns and castles, by what rivers and streams, by what mountains
     and valleys it will take him ere he reaches his destination?"--_The
     Spectator_.


That Locker should have come in at the moment when I was trying on my
new automobile get-up was more than a pin-prick to my already ruffled
sensibilities--it was a knife-thrust.

"What on earth are you laughing at, man?" I demanded, whipping off the
goggles that made me look like a senile owl, and facing him angrily,
as he had a sudden need to cover his mouth with a decorous palm.

"I beg pardon, me lord," he said. "It was coming on you sudden in them
things. I never thought to see you, me lord, in hotomobeel
clothes--you who always was so down on the 'orrid machines."

"Well, help me out of them," I answered, feeling the justice of
Locker's implied rebuke. I twisted my wrists free of the elastic
wind-cuffs, and shed the unpleasantly heavy coat that Winston had
insisted I should buy.

"And you such a friend of the 'orse too, me lord," added Locker, aware
that he had me at a disadvantage.

I winced, and felt the need of self-justification. "You're right," I
said. "I never thought I should come to it. But all men fall sooner or
later, and I have held out longer than most. Don't be afraid, though,
that I am going to have a machine of my own: I haven't quite sunk to
that; if everybody else I know has. I'm only going across France on
Mr. Winston's car. He has a new one--the latest make. He tells me that
when he 'lets her out' she does seventy an hour."

"Wot--miles, me lord?" Locker almost dropped the coat of which he had
disencumbered me.

"Kilometres. It's the speed of a good quick train."

It was strange; but until the night of that hateful dinner at the
Carlton, I had never been in a motor car. Half my friends had them, or
meant to have them; but in a kind of lofty obstinacy I had refused to
be a "tooled down" to Brighton or elsewhere. Fancying myself
considerably as a whip, and being an enthusiastic lover of horses, I
had taken up an attitude of hostility to their mechanical rivals, and
chuckled with malice whenever I saw in the papers that any
acquaintance had been hauled up for going beyond the "legal limit."

But on the night of the Carlton dinner, when Molly Winston whirled me
from Pall Mall to Park Lane, that part of me which was not frozen by
the grocer (the part the psychologists call the "unconscious secondary
self") told me that I was having another startling experience apart
from being jilted.

Winston is my oldest friend, and when his letters were mere pæans in
praise of automobilism, I looked upon his fad with compassionate
indulgence. Then we met in London after his marriage, and between the
confidences which we had exchanged, he managed to sandwich in
something about motor cars. But I ruthlessly swept aside the
interpolation as unworthy of notice. When he suggested a drive in the
new car, I called up all my tact to evade the invitation. If the
active part of me had not been stunned on the night when Helen threw
me over, I believe I should have kept bright the jewel of consistency.
But the kindness of Molly in circumstances the opposite of kind, had
undone me. Here I was, pledged to get myself up like a figure of Fun,
and sit glued for days to the seat of a noisy, jolting, ill-smelling
machine which I hated, feeling (and looking), in my goggles and hairy
coat, like a circus monkey or a circus dragon.

Nevertheless, I could confess the motor car to my man with comparative
calmness. That I should fall was no doubt a disappointment to him. As
a conscientious snob and a cherisher of conservative ideals, he could
mention it to other valets without a blush. The mules however, towards
which the motor was to lead, was a different thing; and while poor
Locker excavated me from the motor coat, my mind was busily devising
means to keep the horrid secret of the mule hidden from him forever.

There was but one way to do this.

"I suppose, me lord, I'm to travel with the 'eavy luggage, and take
rooms at the end of the journey," he suggested.

The crucial moment had come. If a man can support existence without
the girl he loves, thought I, surely it must be possible for him to
live without a valet. "No, Locker," I said firmly. "I am to be Mr. and
Mrs. Winston's guest, and we--er--shall have no fixed destination. I
shall be obliged to leave you behind."

"Very good, me lord," returned Locker in a meek voice. "Very good, me
lord; _has_ you will. I do 'ope you won't suffer from dust, with no
one to keep you in proper repair, as you might say. But no doubt it
will be only for a short time."

Knowing that days, weeks, and even months might pass while I consorted
with motors and mules, far from valets and civilisation, I was
nevertheless toward enough to hint that Locker must be prepared for a
wire at any time. I had often derived a quaint pleasure from the
consciousness that he despised my bookish habits and certain
unconventionalities not suited to a 'hearl'; but one must draw the
line somewhere, and I drew it at the mule. I would give a good deal
rather than Locker should suspect me of the mule.

It was arranged that we should leave from Jack's house in Park Lane,
and as we wanted to reach Southampton early, our start was to be at
nine o'clock. "In France," Jack had said to me, "we could reel off the
distance almost as quickly as the train; but in our blessed land, with
its twenty miles an hour speed limit, its narrow winding roads,
chiefly used in country places as children's playgrounds, and its
police traps, motoring isn't the undiluted joy it ought to be. The
thing to prepare for is the unexpected."

At half-past eight at Jack's door, I bade an almost affectionate
farewell to the last cabhorse with which for many wild weeks I should
have business dealings. The untrammelled life before me seemed to be
signalised by the lonely suit case which was the one article of
luggage I was allowed to carry on the motor. A portmanteau was to
follow me vaguely about the Continent, and I had visions of a pack to
supersede the suit case, when my means of transport should be a mule.
Sufficient for the motor was the luggage thereof, however, and when my
neat leather case was deposited in Jack's hall, I was rewarded with
Molly's approving comment that it would "make a lovely footstool."

We had breakfast together, as though nothing dreadful were about to
happen, and I heartened myself up with strong coffee. By the time we
had finished, and Molly had changed herself from a radiant girl into a
cream-coloured mushroom, with a thick, straight, pale-brown stem, the
Thing was at the door--Molly's idol, the new goddess, with its votive
priest pouring incense out of a long-nosed oil can and waving a
polishing rag for some other mystic rite.

This servant of the car answered to the name of Gotteland, and having
learned from Jack that he had started life as a jockey in Hungary, I
thought evil of him for abandoning the horse for the machine. He
evidently belonged to that mysterious race of beings called suddenly
into existence by a vast new industry; mysterious, because how or why
a man drifts or jumps into the occupation of chauffeur is never
explained to those who see only the finished article. Jack praised him
as a model of chauffeury accomplishments, among which were a knowledge
of seventeen languages more or less, to say nothing of dialects, and a
temper warranted to stand a burst tyre, a disordered silencer, an
uncertain ignition, and (incidentally) a broken heart--all occurring
at the same time. Despite these alleged perfections, I distrusted the
cosmopolitan apostate on principle, and was about to turn upon his
leather-clad form a disapproving gaze, when I dimly realised that it
would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Instead, I smiled
hypocritically as we "took a look" at the car before lending it our
lives.

"I hope the brute isn't vicious; doesn't blow up or explode, or shed
its safety valve, or anything," I remarked with a facetiousness which
in the circumstances did me credit.

Gotteland answered with the pitying air of the professional for the
amateur. "The _one_ thing an automobile can't do, sir, is to blow up."

I was glad to hear this, in spite of the strong coffee lately
swallowed, but on the other hand there were doubtless a great many
other equally disagreeable things which it could do. Of course, if it
were satisfied with merely killing me, neatly and thoroughly, I still
felt that I should not mind; indeed, would be rather grateful than
otherwise. But there were objections, even for a jilted lover, to
being smeared along the ground, and picked up, perhaps, without a
nose, or the proper complement of legs, or vertebræ.

"Anyhow, the beast has a certain meretricious beauty," I admitted.
"Those red cushions and all that bright metal work give an effect of
luxury."

Gotteland revenged his idol with another smile. "Amateurs _do_ notice
such things, sir," said he. "Professionals don't care much about the
body; it's the motor that interests them." He lifted a sort of lattice
which muzzled the dragon's mouth, disclosing some bulbous cylinders
and a tangle of pipes and wires. "It's the _dernier cri_. That engine
will work as long as there's a drop of essence in the carburetter,
and will carry you at forty miles an hour, without feeling a hill
which would set many cars groaning and puffing. It will do the work of
twenty horses, and more----"

"Yet I shouldn't be _really_ surprised if one horse had to tow it some
day," I murmured more to myself than to him, but Molly heard me,
through her mushroom.

"You'll soon apologise to Mercédès for your doubts of her, for motors
are their own missionaries," she said, her eyes laughing through a
triangular talc window. "You will have learned to love her before you
know what has happened, just as you would the real Mercédès, if you
could see her."

Curious, I thought, that Molly, knowing my state of mind, should be
constantly weaving into our conversation some allusion to the namesake
and giver of her car. I had never in my life been less interested in
the subject of extraneous girls, and with all Molly's tact, it seemed
strange that she should not recognise this. However, she did not
appear to expect an answer, and we were soon settled in the car,
Molly, as I have said, looking like a graceful fungus growth, Jack and
I like haggard goblins.

Molly was to drive, and Jack insisted that I should sit in one of the
two absurdly comfortable armchair arrangements in front. The chauffeur
was presently to curl like a tendril round a little crimson toadstool
at our feet, and Jack took the tonneau in lonely state. This was, no
doubt, an act of fine self-abnegation on his part, nevertheless I
could have envied him his safe retirement, from my place of honour,
with no noble horses in front to save Molly and me from swift
destruction.

Physically, we were very snug, however. The luggage was fitted into
spaces especially made for it; long baskets on the mudguards at the
side were stowed with maps and guide-books for the tour, and (as Molly
remarked in the language of her childhood) a "few nice little 'eaties'
to make us independent on the way."

There was also a sort of glorified tea basket, containing, Molly said,
a chafing-dish, without which no self-respecting American woman ever
travelled, and by whose aid wonderful dishes could be turned out at
five minutes' notice in a shipwreck, on a desert island, or while a
tyre was being mended.

As I mentally finished my last will and testament, Gotteland gave a
short twist to the dragon's tail, which happened to be in front.
Instantly a heart began to throb, throb. The chauffeur sprang to his
toadstool. Molly moved a lever which said "R-r-r-tch," pressed one of
her small but determined American feet on something, and the car gave
a kind of a smooth, gliding leap forward, as if sent spinning from an
unseen giant's hand.

Though it was but just after nine, the early omnibus had gathered its
tribute of toiling or shopping worms, and was too prevalent in Park
Lane for my peace of mind. There were also enormous drays, which
looked, as our frail bark passed under their bows, like huge Atlantic
liners. The hansoms were fierce black sharks skimming viciously round
us, and there were other monsters whose forms I had no time to
analyse: but into the midst of this seething ocean Molly pitilessly
hurled us. How we slipped into spaces half our own width and came out
scatheless, Providence alone knew, but it seemed that kindly Fate must
soon tire of sparing us, we tempted it so often.

"Here's a smash!" I said to myself grimly, at the corner of Hamilton
Place, and it flashed through my brain, with a mixture of
self-contempt and pity, that my last thought before the end would be
one of sordid satisfaction because a fortnight ago I had reluctantly
paid an accident assurance premium.

My fingers yearned with magnetic attraction toward the arms of the
seat, but with all that was manly in me I resisted. I wreathed my face
with a smile which, though stiff as a plaster mask, was a useful
screen; and as South African tan is warranted not to wear off during a
lifetime, I could feel as pale as I pleased without visible disgrace.

"How do you like it?" asked Molly.

"Glorious," I breezily returned.

"Ah, I _thought_ you would enjoy it, when--as they say of babies--you
'began to take notice.' The other night, of course, you were a little
absent-minded. Besides, it was dark, and the streets were dull and
empty. A motor _is_ just as nice as a horse, isn't it? Do say so, if
only to please me."

Now I knew why the victims of the Inquisition told any lie which
happened to come handy. I said that it was marvellous how soon the
thing got hold of one; and Molly's mushroom reared itself proudly.
"That is because you are so brave," said the poor, deceived girl. "Of
course it's having been a soldier, and all that. People who've been in
battle wouldn't think anything of a first motor experience ("Oh,
wouldn't they?" I inwardly chortled). But, do you know, Lord Lane,
I've actually seen men who were quite brave in other ways, feel a
little _queer_ the first time they drove in an automobile through
traffic, or even in quiet country roads? I don't suppose you can
understand it."

"I couldn't," I replied valiantly, "were not imagination the first
ingredient of sympathy. But--er--don't you think that omnibus in front
is rather large--near, I mean? You mustn't exert yourself to talk, you
know, for my sake, if you need to give your whole attention to
driving."

"I like to talk. It's no exertion at all," said Molly, and I fancy I
responded with some base flattery, though by this time that smile of
mine was so hard you could have knocked it off with a hammer.

"The first day I went through traffic," she continued, "my toes had
the funniest sensation, as if they were turning up in my shoes. One
seemed to come so awfully _near_ everything, without any horses in
front."

At this very moment my own toes happened to feel as if they were
pasted back on my insteps; yet I laughed heartily at the suggestion,
and to my critical ear there was only a slight hollowness in the ring,
although before us now loomed a huge railway van. It was loaded with
iron bars, their rusty ends hanging far out and sagging towards the
roadway, enough to frighten the gentlest automobile. Ours seemed far
from gentle, and besides, we could not possibly stop in time to avoid
impalement on the iron spikes. Molly and I, if not Jack and the
chauffeur, must surely die a peculiarly unpleasant and unnecessary
death, in the morning of our lives, just as other more fortunate
people were starting out, safe and happy in exquisitely beautiful
omnibuses, to begin their day's pleasure. And Molly believed, because
I had been in a few battles, with nothing worse than a bee-like
buzzing of some innocent bullets in my ears, that I should be callous
in a motor car.

However, the bravest soldiers are those who feel fear, and fight
despite it. I maintain that I deserved a Victoria Cross for the grim
smile which did not leave my lips as I braced myself for the
death-dealing blow. But, as in a dream one finds without surprise that
the precipice, over which one is hanging by an eyebrow, obligingly
transforms itself into a bank of violets, so did the dragon which had
been whirling us to destruction magically change into a swan-like
creature skimming just out of harm's way.

I now reflected, with a vague sense of self-disgust, that, instead of
being glad to leave the world which had denied me Helen, I had felt
distinctly annoyed at the necessity, had not given a thought to my
lost love, and had been thankful for the mere gift of life without
her.

"I'm so glad you don't think I'm reckless," said Molly, as quietly as
though we had not passed through a crisis; and indeed to this day I do
not believe she would admit that we had.

"I'm really very careful; Jack says I am. He takes tremendous risks
sometimes, or at least it seems so when you're not driving. You'll see
the difference when _he's_ in front."

I refrained from comment, but I had never valued Jack's friendship
less, and I was in the act of concocting a telegram from Locker which
might recall me to London, when from the speed of the Scotch express
we slowed down to a pace which would have been mean even for a donkey.
We continued this rate of progression for a peaceful but all too brief
interval; then in the line of traffic opened a narrow canal which I
hoped might escape Molly's eye. But there was no such luck. She saw;
we leaped into it, raced down it, and before I could have said
"knife," or any other equally irrelevant word of one syllable, we had
left everything else behind.

I expected to be (to put it mildly) as uncomfortable as I had been
before my short respite, yet strange to say, this was not the case. I
did not know what was the matter with me, but suddenly I seemed to be
enjoying myself. The tension of muscles relaxed, as if a string which
had held them tight--like the limbs of a Jumping Jack--had been let
go. I leaned back against the crimson cushions of my seat with a new
and singular sense of well-being. Once, as a volunteer in South
Africa, I had felt the same when, after having a splinter of bone
taken out, under chloroform, I had waked up to be told it was all
over. This wasn't over, but somehow, I didn't want it to be.

We took Putney Bridge at a gulp, and swallowed the long hill to
Wimbledon Common in the fashion of a hungry anaconda; but before we
arrived at this stage a thing happened which unexpectedly raised my
opinion of motor cars. It was in the Fullham Road that we glided close
behind a hansom bowling along at a rattling pace. Traffic on our right
prevented us from passing, and Molly had just remarked how vexing it
was to be kept back by a mere hansom, when plunk! down went the little
nag on his nose. It was one of those tumbles in which the horse
collapses in a limp heap without any sliding, though he had been going
fast downhill, and of course the hansom stopped dead. The whole scene
was as quick as the flashing of a biograph. The driver struggled to
keep his seat, clawing at the shiny roof of the cab; his fare, in a
silk hat and pathetic frock coat, shot from the vehicle like a flying
Mercury, and this time it seemed that nothing could keep us from
telescoping the vehicle thus suddenly arrested a few feet ahead.

But I reckoned without Molly. Her little gloved hand, and the
high-heeled American toys she had for feet, moved like lightning.
Without any violent wrench, the car stopped apparently in less than
its own length, and as, even thus, we were too close upon the cab,
Molly threw a quick glance behind, then bade Mercédès glide gently
backward.

With the fall of the horse, Jack rose in the tonneau, with the
instinct of protection over Molly. But he said not a word till she had
guided the car to safety, when he gave her a little congratulatory pat
on the shoulder. "Good girl; that was perfect. Couldn't have been
better," he murmured. We waited until we had seen that neither man nor
horse was badly hurt, and then sped on again, with a certain respect
for the motor rankling in my reluctant heart. Comparing its behaviour
with that of an automobile, Hansom's ironically named "Patent Safety"
had not a wheel to stand upon.

When we were clear of Kingston, and winging lightly along the familiar
Portsmouth Road, with its dark pines and purple gleams of heather, I
began to feel an exhilaration scarcely short of treacherous to my
principles. We were now putting on speed, and running as fast as most
trains on the South-Western, yet the sensation was far removed from
any I had experienced in travelling by rail, even on famous lines,
which give glorious views if one does not mind cinders in the eye or
the chance of having one's head knocked off like a ripe apple. I
seemed to be floating in a great opaline sea of pure, fresh air; for
such dust as we raised was beaten down from the tonneau by the screen,
and it did not trouble us. Our speed appeared to turn the country into
a panorama flying by for our amusement; and yet, fast as we went, to
my surprise I was able to appreciate every feature, every incident of
the road. Each separate beauty of the way was threaded like a bead on
a rosary.

Here was Sandown Park, which I had regarded as the goal of a
respectable drive from town, with horses; but we were taking it, so to
speak, in our first stride. Esher was no sooner left behind than
quaint old sleepy Cobham came to view; between there and Ripley was
but a gliding step over a road which slipped like velvet under our
wheels. Then a fringe of trees netted across a blue, distant sea of
billowing hills, and a few minutes later we were sailing under
Guildford's suspended clock.

It was somewhere near the hour of one when Molly brought the car
gently to a standstill by the roadside, and announced that she would
not go a yard further without lunch. The chauffeur successfully took
up the part of butler at a moment's notice, busying himself with the
baskets, spreading a picnic cloth under a shady tree, and putting a
bottle of Graves to cool in a neighbouring brook. Meanwhile Molly was
doing mysterious things with her chafing-dish and several little china
jars. By the time Jack and I had with awkward alacrity bestowed
plates, glasses, knives, and forks on the most hummocky portions of
the cloth, white and rosy flakes of lobster _à la_ Newburg were
simmering appetisingly in a creamy froth.

I was deeply interested in this cult of the chafing-dish, which could,
in an incredibly short time, serve up by the wayside a little feast
fit for a king--who had not got dyspepsia.

"Can't you imagine the programme if we had gone to an inn?" asked
Jack, proud of his bride's handiwork. "We should have walked into a
dingy dining-room, with brown wallpaper and four steel engravings of
bloodthirsty scenes from the Old Testament. A sleepy head waiter would
have looked at me with a polite but puzzled expression, as if at a
loss to know why on earth we had come. I should have enquired
deprecatingly: 'What can you give us for lunch?' What would he have
replied?"

"There's only one possible answer to that conundrum, and it doesn't
take any guessing," said I. "The reply would have been: 'Cold 'am or
beef, sir; chops, if you choose to wait.' Those words are probably now
being spoken to some hundreds of sad travellers less fortunate than
our favoured and sylvan selves."

"If you would like to have a chafing-dish in your family," remarked
Jack, "you'll have to marry an American girl."

"I'm no Duke," said I.

"Earls aren't to be despised, if there are no Dukes handy," said
Molly. "Besides, it's getting a little obvious to marry a Duke."

"Which is the reason you took up with a chauffeur," retorted Jack.

"You call yourself a 'penniless hearl,'" went on Molly, "and I
suppose, of course, you are 'belted.' All earls are, in poetry and
serials, which must be convenient when you're _really_ very poor,
because if you're hungry, you can always take a reef in your belt,
while mere plain men have no such resource. Have you got yours on
now?"

"It's in pawn," said I. "It's no joke about being penniless. Jack
will tell you I'm obliged to let my dear old house in Oxfordshire, and
the only luxuries I can afford are a few horses and a few books. I
prefer them to necessities--since I can't have both."

I thought that Molly might laugh, but instead she looked abnormally
grave. "Jack told me," she said, "how, when you and he came over to
America, six or seven years ago, to shoot big game, you avoided girls,
for fear people might suppose your alleged bear hunt was really an
heiress hunt. I forgive Jack, because that was in the dark ages,
before he knew there was a Me. But why should a girl be shunned by
nice men solely because she's an heiress? Can't she be as pretty and
lovable in herself as a poor girl?"

"She can," I replied, emphasising my words with a look in Molly's
face. "No doubt she often is. But I do wish some American girls who
marry men from our side of the water wouldn't let the papers advertise
their weddings as 'functions' (sounds like obscure workings of
physical organs), attended by the families of their exclusive
acquaintance, worth, when lumped together, a billion of dollars or
so."

"I know. It's as if they were prize pigs at a fair, and were of no
importance except for their dollars," sighed Molly. "And then, the
detectives to watch the presents! It's disgusting. But some of our
newspapers are like Mr. Hyde. Poor Dr. Jekyll can't do anything with
him; and anyhow, you needn't think we're all like that. I have a
friend who is one of the greatest heiresses in America, but she hates
her money. It has made her very unhappy, though she's only twenty-one
years old. If you could see Mercédès, with her lovely, strange sad
face, and big, wistful eyes----"

"I can think of Mercédès only with a shiny grey body, upholstered
crimson; and for eyes, huge acetylene lamps," I was rude enough to
break in; for I fancied that I saw what Mistress Molly would fain be
up to, and my heart was not of the rubber-ball description, to be
caught in the rebound. If Molly cherished a secret intention of
springing her peerless friend Mercédès upon me, during this tour which
she had organised, it seemed better for everyone concerned that the
hope should be nipped in the bud. It was with unwonted meekness that
she yielded to being suppressed, and I suffered immediate pangs of
remorse. To atone, I did my best to be agreeable. All the way to
Southampton I praised automobiles in general and hers in particular;
admitted that in half a day I had become half a convert; and soon I
had the pleasure of believing that the divine Molly had forgotten my
sin.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: "SOMETIMES JACK DROVE, WITH MOLLY BESIDE HIM".]




CHAPTER III

My Lesson

    "The broad road that stretches."
                    --R.L. STEVENSON.


Forty-eight hours later we drove out of Havre, bound for Paris and
Lucerne, where I was to "pick up" that mule, and become a lone
wanderer on the face of the earth. Gotteland had seen to the shipping
of the car from Southampton, while we spent a day on the crowded sands
of Trouville, where I was so lucky as to meet no one I knew.

It was only now, Winston said, that I should realise to the full the
joys of motoring, impossible to taste under present conditions in
England. Our way was to lie along the Seine to Paris, and Jack
recalled to us Napoleon's saying that "Paris, Rouen, and Havre form
only one city, of which the Seine is the highway."

Last year, these two had seen the country of the Loire together, under
curious and romantic conditions, and now Molly was to be shown another
great river in France. We changed places in the car, like players in
the old game of "stage coach." Sometimes Molly had the reins, and I
the seat of honour by her side. Sometimes Jack drove, with Molly
beside him, I in the tonneau; then I knew that they were perfectly
happy, though Gotteland and I could hear every word they said, and
their talk was generally of what we passed by the way, occasionally
interspersed by a "Do you remember?"

Now, if there is an insufferable companion under the sun, it is the
average "well-informed person" who continually dins into your ears
things you were born knowing. This I resent, for I flatter myself that
I was born knowing a good many exceptionally interesting and exciting
things which can't be learned by studying history, geography, or even
_Tit-Bits_. Jack Winston, however, though he has actually taken the
trouble to house in his memory an enormous number of facts,--"those
brute beasts of the language,"--has so tamed and idealised the
creatures as to make them not only tolerable but attractive. I can
even hear him tell things which I myself don't know or have forgotten,
without instantly wishing to throw a jug of water at his good-looking
head; indeed, I egg him on and have been tempted to jot down an item
of information on my shirt cuff, with a view of fixing it in my mind,
and eventually getting it off as my own.

Whenever Molly or I admired any object, natural or artificial, it
seemed that Jack knew all about it. She showed a flattering interest
in everything he said, and, fired by her compliments, he suddenly
exclaimed: "Look here, Molly, suppose we don't hurry on, the way we've
been planning to do? Last year we had that wonderful chain of feudal
châteaux in Touraine, to show us what kingly and noble life was in dim
old days. Now, all along the Seine and near it, we shall have some
splendid churches instead of castles. We can hold a revel, almost an
orgie, of magnificent ecclesiastical architecture if we like to spend
the time. I've got Ferguson's book and Parker's, anyhow, and why
shouldn't we run off the beaten track----"

"No, dearest," said his wife gently, but firmly, and I could have
hugged her. My bump of reverence for the Gothic in all its
developments is creditably large, but in my present "lowness of mind,"
as Molly would say, a long procession of cold, majestic cathedrals
would have reduced me to a limp pulp. "No," Molly went on, "I can't
help thinking that the churches would be a sort of anticlimax after
our beloved, warm-blooded châteaux. It would be like being taken to
see your great-grandmother's grave when you'd been promised a matinée.
You know we engaged to get Lord Lane into his lonely fastnesses as
soon as possible----"

"I don't believe Monty's in any hurry for them," said Jack,
crestfallen. "You ask him if----"

"He'd be too polite to be truthful. No, I'm sure that edelweiss will
do him more good than rose windows, and mountain air than incense."

As she thus prescribed for my symptoms, she gazed through her talc
window with marked particularity into her "Lightning Conductor's"
un-goggled face. It wore a puzzled expression at first, which suddenly
brightened into comprehension. "Do they repent having brought me
along, and want to get rid of me?" I asked myself. I could scarcely
believe this. They were too kind and cordial; still, something in that
look exchanged between them hinted at a secret which concerned me, and
my curiosity was pricked. Nevertheless, I was grateful to Molly,
whatever her motive might be for hurrying on to Paris. Fond as I was
of the two, their happy love, constantly though inadvertently
displayed before my eyes, was not a panacea for the wound which they
were trying to cure, and I still longed for high Alpine solitudes.

I had let myself drift into a gloomy thought-land, when it occurred to
Jack that I had better learn to drive. No doubt the clear fellow
fancied that I "wanted rousing" and certainly I got it. Luckily, as a
small boy, I had taken an interest in mechanics, to the extent of
various experiments actively disapproved of by my family, and the old
fire was easily relit. I listened to his harangue in mere civility at
first, then with a certain eagerness. Molly sat in the tonneau, Jack
driving, full-petrol ahead, and I beside him. We talked motor talk,
and he forgot the churches, except when they seemed actually to come
out of their way to get in ours. I listened, and at the same time
gathered impressions of roads--long, strange, curiously individual
roads.

Someone has written of the "long, long Indian day." I should like to
write of the long, long roads of France. They had never before had any
place in my thoughts. Paris and the Riviera had been France for me
till now. I had never been intimate, never even got on terms of real
friendship with any country save my own; and I had sometimes been
narrow enough to take a kind of pride in this. The sweet English
country had yielded up her secrets to me; I knew her spring whimsies,
her soft summer moods, her autumn dreams, her wintry tempers, and I
had vaunted my faithfulness and love. But here was France in prime of
summer, giving me of her best. My heart warmed to her loveliness, and
I sniffed the perfume of her breath, mysteriously characteristic as
the chosen perfume of some loved woman's laces. It was glorious to
spin on, on, between the rows of sentinel poplars, bound for the
horizon, yet never reaching it, and regarding crowded haunts of men
more as interruptions than as halting places.

Harfleur was a mere mirage to me, a vision of a gently decaying town
left stranded by the stream of civilisation, flowing past to busy
Havre. Some lines from "Henry the Fifth" made elusive music in my
brain, mixed with a discussion of carburetters, explosion chambers,
and sparking-plugs. At Lillebonne, Winston deigned to break short his
string of motor technicalities and point out the position of the Roman
theatre, almost the sole treasure of the sort possessed by Northern
Europe. I stared through my goggles at the castle where the Conqueror
unfolded to the assembled barons his scheme for invading England; and
I begged for a slackening of speed at ancient Caudebec, which, with
its quay and terrace overhanging the Seine, and its primly pruned
elms, had such an air of happy peace that I wished to stamp it firmly
in my memory. Such mental photographs are convenient when one courts
sleep at night, and has grown weary of counting uncountable sheep
jumping over a stile.

Beyond Caudebec we sailed along a road running high on the shoulder of
the hill, with wide views over the serpentine writhings of the Seine.
Here, Jack urged a turning aside for St. Wandeville or, at least, for
the abbey of Jumièges, poetic with memories of Agnes Sorel, whose
heart lies in the keeping of the monks, though her body sleeps at
Loches. But Molly would countenance no loitering. _Her_ body, she
said, should sleep at Paris that night.

We held straight on, therefore, keeping to a road at the foot of white
cliffs, sometimes near the river, sometimes leaving it. Quickly enough
to please even this unaccountably impatient Molly, we had measured
off the fifty miles separating Havre from Rouen, and slowed down for
the venerable streets of the Norman capital.

"I suppose even you will want to give half an hour to the cathedral
which I love best in France?" Jack inquired, looking back at Molly as
he turned from the quay up the Rue Grand Port, and stopped in the
mellow shade of an incomparable pile which towered above us.

Molly's mushroom, however, was agitated in dissent. She has an
American chin, and an American chin spells determination. We could not
see it, but we knew that it meant business. "You and I will spend
hours in the cathedral another time," she said. "But now--" She did
not finish her sentence, nevertheless a look of comprehension again
lighted up Jack's face, which for the moment was innocent of goggles.

"Molly's so keen on the Maid," said he, "that she can't forgive Rouen
for not really being the scene of the trial and burning. But never
mind, since she wills it, we'll shake the dust off our Michelins, and
when we're outside, you will have got far enough in your motoring
lesson, I think, to try driving."

What the last hour had not taught me (thanks to him) in theory of
coils and accumulators, electromagnets and other things, was scarcely
worth learning. I seemed to have looked through glass walls into the
cylinders, at the fussy little pistons working under control of the
"governor,"--a tyrant, I felt sure. I had already formed a mature
opinion on the question of mechanically operated inlet valves (which
sounded disagreeably surgical), and was able to judge what their
advantage ought to be over those of the old type worked by the suction
of the piston. I could imagine that more than half the fun of owning a
motor car would lie in understanding the thing inside and out; and I
said so.

"It's a little like controlling the elements," Jack answered. "Think
of the difference in this machine, when it's asleep--cold and quiet,
an engine mounted on a frame, a tank of water, a reservoir of cheap
spirit, a pump, a radiator, a magnet, some geared wheels fitting
together, a lever or two. My man twists a handle. On the instant the
machine leaps into frenzied life. The carburetter sprays its vapour
into the explosion chamber, the magnet flashes its sparks to ignite
it, the cooling water bathes the hot walls of the cylinders--a thing
of nerves, and ganglions, and tireless muscles is panting eagerly at
your service. You move this lever, you press your foot lightly on this
pedal; the engine transfers its power to the wheels; you move. The
carriage with you and your friends is borne at railway speed across
continents. You can hurl yourself at sixty miles an hour along the
great highroads, you can crawl like a worm through the traffic of
cities."

By the time Jack had finished this harangue we had climbed the hill
out of Rouen and were on the fine but _accidenté_ highroad that leads
past Boos and Pont St. Pierre. Soon we would reach Les Andelys and
Château Gaillard. Still Jack was not quite ready to let me put my
newly acquired knowledge into practice. There was a hill of some
consequence before Mantes, which we had to reach by way of La Roche
Guyon and Limay. After that there would be only what the route book
calls "_fortes ondulations_"; and under the stronghold of Lion Heart
himself (an appropriate spot, forsooth!), I was to try my hand at
dragon-driving.

Winston brought the car to a standstill at the foot of the mouldering
ruins of Richard's "Saucy Castle," and as we looked up at the towering
battlements, the huge flanking towers, and the ponderous citadel, the
dark mass on its lofty rock set in the sunny landscape like a
bloodstone in a gold ring, seemed to be an epitome in stone of life in
the Middle Ages.

I uttered every idea that came into my mind concerning the ruin, and
squeezed my brain for more, till my head felt like a drained orange;
not that I enjoyed hearing myself talk, or thought that Jack and Molly
would do so, but because they could not well interrupt the flow of my
eloquence to remind me of the reason for our stop.

At last, however, silence fell upon us. It was a shock to me when
Molly broke it. "Oh, Lord Lane, have you forgotten that this is where
you're to begin driving? The road is nice and broad here."

I put on a brave air, as does one at the dentist's. "I hope that
you're not afraid I shall run you into a ditch?" I asked, laughing. "I
don't believe, after all, it can be any worse than steering a toboggan
down a good run, or driving a four-in-hand with one's eyes shut, as I
did once for a wager on a road I knew as I knew my own hat."

"Perhaps it isn't exactly _worse_," said Molly, "still--I think you'll
find it _different_."

I did.

Meanwhile, however, Winston was cheering me on. "You'll find steering
the simplest thing in the world, really," he assured me. "There's no
car so sensitive as this. The faster you go, the easier it is----"

"But, perhaps he'd better not try to prove _that_, just at first!"
cried Molly, with an affected little gasp.

"No, no; certainly he won't, my child. He won't go beyond a walk until
he's sure of himself and the car. You needn't be frightened. I know my
man, or I shouldn't trust him with you and your Mercédès. Now, then,
Monty, are you ready?"

I had never before sufficiently realised the solemnity of that word
"now." It sounded in my ears like a knell, but I swallowed hard, and
echoed it. To do myself justice, though, I don't think I was afraid. I
was only in a funk that I should do something stupid, and be disgraced
forever in the eyes of Molly Winston. However, I reflected, it
couldn't be so very bad. Molly herself, and even Jack, had to learn.
Winston had explained to me several times the purpose of all the
different levers, and, at least, I shouldn't touch the brake handle
when I wanted to change the speed.

"No need to grip the wheel so tightly," said Jack, and I became aware
that I had been clinging to it as if it were a forlorn hope. "A light
touch is best, you know; it's rather like steering a boat. A very
slight movement does it, and in half an hour it has got to be
automatic. Of course, always start on the lowest, that is, the first
speed, and with the throttle nearly shut."

Mine was in much the same condition, but I managed to mutter something
as I moved the lever, and touched the clutch-pedal with a caress timid
as a falling snowflake. Almost apologetically, I slid the lever into
position, and let in the clutch. Somehow, I had not expected it to
answer so soon; but, as if it disliked being patted by a stranger, the
dragon took the bit between its teeth and bolted. I hung on and did
things more by instinct than by skill, for the beast was hideously
lithe and strong, a thousand times stronger and wilder than I had
dreamed.

Every faculty of body and brain was concentrated on first keeping the
monster out of the ditch on the off side, then the ditch on the near.
My eyes expanded until they must have filled my goggles. We waltzed,
we wavered, we shied, until we outdid the Seine in the windings of its
channel.

I fully expected that Winston would pluck me like a noxious weed from
the driver's seat where I had taken root, and snatch the helm himself;
but strange to relate, I remained unmolested. Jack confined his
interference to an occasional "Whoa," or "Steady, old boy"; while in
the tonneau so profound a silence reigned that, if I had had time to
think of anything, I should have supposed Molly to be swooning.

"Why don't you curse me, and put me out of my misery?" I gasped, when
I had by a miracle avoided a tree as large as a house, which I had
seen deliberately step out of its proper place to get in my way.

"'Curse you,' my dear fellow? You're doing splendidly," said Jack.
"You deserve praise, not blows. I did a lot worse when I began."

Thus encouraged, I gained confidence in myself and the machine. Almost
at once, I was conscious of improvement in mastering the touch of the
wheel. Soon, I was imitating a straight line with fair success,
subject to a few graceful deviations. I realised that, after all, we
were not going very fast, though my sensation at starting had been
that of hanging on to a streak of greased lightning.

I began to sigh for more worlds to conquer, and when Jack reminded me
that we were on the first speed, I pronounced myself equal to an
experiment with the second. He made me practice taking one hand from
the wheel, looking about me a little, and trying to keep the car
straight by feeling rather than sight. When I had accomplished these
feats, and had not brought the car to grief (even though we passed
several vehicles, and I was drawn by a demoniac influence to swerve
towards each one as if it had been the loadstone to my magnet, or the
candle to my moth), Jack finally consented to grant my request. He
told me clearly what to do, and I did it, or some inward servant of
myself did, whenever the master was within an ace of losing his head.
I pressed down the clutch-pedal, pulled the lever affectionately
towards me, and very gradually opened the throttle, so as not to
startle it. In spite of my caution, however, I thought for an instant
we were really going to get on the other side of the horizon, which
had been avoiding us for so long. We shot ahead alarmingly, but to my
intense relief, as well as surprise, I found that Jack had not
exaggerated. It was easier to steer on the second speed than on the
first. I had merely to tickle the wheel with my finger, to send us
gliding, swanlike, this way or that. To be sure, I did well-nigh run
over a chicken, but I would be prepared to argue with it till it was
black in the face (or resort to litigation, if necessary) that the
proper place for its blood would be on its own silly head, not mine.

Elated by my triumphs, I scarcely listened further to Jack's
directions; how, if I thought there was danger, all I had to do was
to unclutch, and put on the brake, whereupon the car would stop as if
by magic, as it had for Molly in the Fulham Road; how I must not
forget that the foot brakes had a way of obeying fiercely, and must
not be applied with violence; how I must remember to pull the brake
lever by my hand, towards me if I wanted to stop; how it acted on
expanding rings on the inside faces of drums, which were on the back
wheels (I pitied those poor, concealed faces, for the description was
neuralgic, somehow), and I could lock them at almost any speed.

"I want to get on the third, and then I'll try the fourth, thank you,"
I interpolated impatiently. "More-more! Faster, faster! Whew, this
knocks spots out of the Ice Run!"

"Let him have his way, Jack," cried Molly, speaking for the first
time. "Hurrah, the motor microbe is in his blood, and never, never
will he get it out again."

"Full speed ahead, then!" said Jack.

I took him at his word. I could have shouted for joy. Mercédès was
mine, and I was Mercédès'.




CHAPTER IV

Pots, Kettles, and Other Things

    "Seared is, of course, my heart--but unsubdued
     Is, and shall be, my appetite for food."
                                   --C.S. CALVERLEY.

           *       *       *       *       *

    "A little buttery, and therein
       A little bin,
     Which keeps my little loaf of bread
       Unchipt, unflead;
     Some little sticks of thorn or brier
       Make me a fire."
                           --ROBERT HERRICK.


If any man had told me before I started, that in two days I should
find it a genuine sacrifice to stop driving a motor car, I should have
looked upon him as a polite lunatic. It was only because Jack could
drive faster than he dared to let me, and because I was ashamed to
tell Molly that after all I was not in a desperate hurry to reach
Paris or anywhere else, that I finally tore myself from the driver's
seat of the Mercédès. Afterwards, though I had not reached the stage
when confession is good for the soul, I sat wondering what there was
expensive and at the same time disagreeable which I could give up for
the sake of possessing a motor of my own. In various phases of my
mental and spiritual development, I had framed different conceptions
of a future state beyond this life. Never, even in my earliest years,
had I sincerely wished to be an angel with an undeserved crown
weighing down my forehead, and a harp, which I should be totally
incompetent to play, within my hand; but now it struck me that there
might be a worse sort of Nirvana than driving a 10,000 horsepower car
along a broad, straight road free from dogs, chickens, or any other
animals (except, perhaps, rich, knighted grocers), and reaching all
round Saturn's ring.

Dogs had been the one "little speck in garnered fruit" for me when
driving, for I love dogs and would not willingly injure so much as the
end hair of the most moth-eaten mongrel's tail; therefore my brain
searched a remedy against their onslaught, as I sat mute, inglorious,
in the tonneau, after my late triumphs.

We flashed on, passing the kilometre stones in quick succession. At
pretty little Mantes we crossed the Seine, and presently came into the
France I knew in my old, conventional way; for we passed St. Germain,
and so on to Paris by Le Pecq, Reuil, the long descent to the Pont de
Suresnes (which seemed to hold laughable memories for Jack and Molly),
through the Bois down the Champs Elysées, and to our hotel in the
Place Vendôme, where Jack announced that we had had a run of 130
miles. Winston and I flattered ourselves that Paris had few secrets
from us (though I don't doubt that five minutes' wrestling with
Baedeker might have made us feel small), and we had no wish to linger
at this season. But, if we were deaf to the sirens who sing in the Rue
de la Paix, Molly was not. She had discovered that there were some
"little things she wanted, which she really thought she had better
buy." I fancy that the little things were shoes; anyhow, it was to be
Jack's blissful privilege to help her choose them, and he was of
opinion (probably founded on experience) that it would take nearly
all day. I decided to call on a man at the Embassy, ask him out to
lunch, and do him very well. I had not seen him for years, and he had
bored me to extinction the last time we met; but it had come to my
ears that he had been in love with Helen Blantock, and proposed to
her, so I felt that there would be a certain charm in his society.
Later, there was a "little thing" which I, too, wished to buy (though
I did not intend to seek it in the Rue de la Paix), and then I was to
meet Molly and Jack about tea time at our hotel, in time to arrange
for dining out somewhere.

After all, the man was more boring than ever, as he had got himself
engaged to another girl, and insisted upon talking of her, instead of
Helen. My one pleasure in the day, therefore, lay in purchasing the
article of which I had fixed my mind after driving yesterday. This was
a water pistol, warranted to keep dogs at bay, in motoring. I had some
difficulty in obtaining it, and when I did, it was expensive, but I
was rewarded by the thought of the pleasure my acquisition would
afford my friends. The wild dashes of dogs in front of the wheels gave
Molly such frequent starts of anguish, that I wondered Jack had not
thought of this simple preventive, and I congratulated myself on
having remembered an advertisement of the weapon which I had seen in
some magazine. It was, I thought, rather clever of me to remember,
since in those days motors had been no affair of mine; but then, the
illustration had been striking, in every sense of the word. It had
represented a lovely girl, with hair unbound, saving from destruction
the automobile in which she sat with several companions, by shooting a
fierce blast of water into the face of a huge beast well-nigh as
terrible as Cerberus. I determined to surprise Jack and Molly, when
the right time should come; accordingly, the moment I reached our
hotel, I filled the pistol with water, and placed it, thus loaded, in
the pocket of my motoring coat ready for emergencies. Hardly had I
made this preparation for the future when I discovered on the table a
note addressed to me in Winston's handwriting.

"Dear Monty," I read, "Molly and I have a bet on. She has bet me a
dinner that you will drive her car out to Madrid, and meet us at
half-past seven, so that we can have the dinner by daylight. I have
bet her the same dinner that you won't. Which of us must pay?--Yours,
Jack."

I whistled. What, drive the car through the traffic of Paris? It must
be a joke. Of course it was a joke, but----

When I had dressed for dinner, I strolled over to the garage not far
away where the creature lurked. Anyhow, I would have a look at her,
and see what orders Gotteland had received. Yes, of course it was a
joke. Or else my poor friends had gone mad. Still, there was a kind of
madness with method in it. Diabolical wretches, with their bets, and
their dinners! Did they dream I would try to do it, and smash the car?
"Nothing like driving a motor through traffic, to give one
self-confidence afterwards," Jack had said yesterday, after praising
me for refraining from killing a small boy in a village street. "Once
a man has been thrown on his own resources, and has got through the
ordeal all right, it is as good as a certificate," he had added.

Gotteland was in the shrine of his goddess, talking to other
cosmopolitan-looking persons in leather. There was a nice smell of
petrol in the place. I snuffed at it as a war-horse scents the battle,
and promptly decided that the joke should become deadly earnest, no
matter what the consequence to the cart the chauffeur, or myself.

"Everything is ready, my lord," said one of the sacrifices about to be
offered up. He had now discovered that there was a sort of
starting-handle to my name, and seemed as fond of using it as he was
of the equivalent on his beloved motor.

"Did Mr. Winston--er--say anything about my driving?" I humbly
inquired.

"Well, my lord, his orders were that it should be as you pleased. But
perhaps I had better mention that driving is careless in Paris, with
cabs and automobiles all over the road, to say nothing of the trams;
and then there's the keeping to the right instead of the left. If you
should happen to get a little confused, my lord, not being accustomed
to drive in France----"

"I wish I had a _mille_ note for every time I've driven a four-in-hand
through this blessed town," said I. "I'm not afraid if you're not."

"Oh, my lord, I've been in so many accidents, one or two more can't
matter," he replied, as Hercules might have replied if asked whether
he were equal to a Thirteenth Labour in odd moments. "When I was
jockey in Count Tokai's racing stables, a horse went mad and kicked me
nearly to death. Then I was a racer in old bicycling days, and had
several bad spills. This scar on my face I got in a smash with one of
the first Benz cars made. My master thought it a fine thing at that
time to go ten miles an hour, and before he'd driven much, my lord,
he was determined to take the car through the streets of Düsseldorf
himself. There was a wagon coming one way----"

"Thank you," I cut in, "I'll bear the rest of that story another time.
I'm not sure it would exhilarate me much at the moment. We'll be off
now, and I'll do my best not to adorn you with a second scar."

Without another word, Gotteland started the motor. The critical eyes
of the assembled chauffeurs pierced to my marrow, but I squared my
shoulders, prayed my presence of mind to behave itself and not get
stage fright; then--_noblesse oblige!_--we swept in a creditable curve
to the door of the garage, and out in fine style. Gotteland also tried
to look unconcerned. I think I must have seen this with my ears, as
both eyes were fully occupied in searching a way through the surging
current of street traffic, but I did see it. I was pleased to find
that I was the better actor of the two, for Gotteland's attitude
revealed a strained alertness. He was like a woman sitting beside a
driver of skittish horses, saying to herself: "No, I _won't_ scream or
seize the reins till I must!"

A sneaking impulse pricked me to take the easiest way, by the Rue de
Rivoli, and across the Place de la Concorde, but I shook myself free
of it, and with high resolve turned the car towards the Boulevards,
determined that, if Molly won her bet, it should be well won. A sailor
steering a quivering smack towards harbour in a North Sea hurricane;
an Indian guiding a bark canoe through the leaping rapids of a swollen
river: to both of these I likened myself as the dragon threaded in and
out among the adverse streams of traffic. The great crossing by the
Opéra was a whirling maelstrom; a policeman with a white staff,
scowled when he should have pitied; I felt alone in chaos before the
creation of the world. As for Noah and his ark, not an experience
could he have had that I might not have capped it before I reached the
Bois.

If I have a guardian spirit, I am sure that to numberless other good
qualities he adds the skill of an accomplished motorist; for if he did
not get the car to Madrid, without a single scratch upon her brilliant
body, I do not know who did. I have no distinct memories, after the
first, yet when we arrived at our destination, Gotteland generously
complimented, and as I did not care to go into psychological
explanations, I accepted his eulogium. It was Jack, not Molly, who
paid for the dinner at Madrid, and it was a good one.

Next morning early we started on our way again. Jack driving, and I
watching his prowess. I was now as anxious to meet dogs belligerently
inclined towards motors, as I had been to avoid them, but it was not
until we were well past Fontainebleau that the chance for which I
yearned, arrived. Suddenly we came upon a yard of Dachshund wandering
lizard-like across the road, accompanied by a pert Spitz. The waddler
prudently retired, but the Spitz, with all the disproportionate
courage of a knight of old attacking a fire-breathing dragon, lanced
himself in front of the car. After all, what are dragons but strange,
new things which we know nothing about and therefore detest? This
brave little knight detested us, and with magnificent self-confidence
essayed to punish us for troubling his existence.

My hand flew to my pocket, but paused, even as it grasped the water
pistol. The dog was small, the weapon large. A fierce jet of water
propelled from its muzzle might blow the breath from that tiny body,
which my sole wish was to warn from under the wheels of Juggernaut.
However, he was persistent, and was in real danger, since to avoid an
approaching cart, Jack was forced to steer perilously near the yapping
beast.

I snatched the weapon, pulled the trigger, and--a mild, mellifluous
trickle which would have disgraced a toilet vaporiser sprayed forth.
Jack, Molly, and the peasants in the approaching cart burst into
shouts of laughter. The Spitz, undismayed by the gentle shower, which
had spattered his nose with a drop or two, leaped at the weapon, and,
irritated, I flung it at his head. It fell innocuously in the road and
our last sight of the Spitz was when, rejoined by his lizard friend,
he industriously gnawed at the pistol, mistaking it for a bone, while
the Dachs gratefully lapped up the water I had provided. My surprise
was a popular success, but not the kind of success which I had
planned. Jack said that he could have "told me so" if I had asked him,
and I vowed in future to let dogs delight to bark and bite without
interference from me.

The one inept remark which Shelley seems ever to have made was that
"there is nothing to see in France." My opinion, as we spun along the
road which would lead us to Lucerne and my waiting mule, was that
there was almost too much to see, too much charm, too much beauty for
the peace of mind of an imaginative traveller; there were so many
valleys which one longed to explore, in which one felt one could be
content without going farther, so many blue glimpses of mysterious
mountains, veiled by the haze of dreamland, that one suffered a
constant succession of acute pangs in thinking that one would
probably never see them again, that one would need at least nine long
lives if one were to spend, say, even a month in each place.

Molly advised me not to be a spendthrift of my emotions, at this stage
of the journey, lest I should be a worn-out wreck before the grandest
part came, but the idea of husbanding enthusiasm did not commend
itself to me. Why not enjoy this moment, instead of waiting until the
moment after next? It was too much like saving up one's good clothes
for "best," a lower-middle-class habit which I have detested since the
days when I howled for my smartest Lord Fauntleroy frills in the
morning.

There were sweet villages where they made cheese, and where I could
have been happy making it with Helen Blantock; there were châteaux
with turret rooms where my book shelves would have fitted excellently;
but always we fled on, on, until at last, after two bewildering,
cinematographic days, we drove into the streets of that dignified and
delightful city, Bern.

It had not been necessary for us to pass through Bern; it was, in
fact, a few yards more or less out of the most direct path. We chose
this route simply and solely with the view of paying a visit to the
Bears. Molly had never met them; I had neglected them since childhood;
Jack looked forward to the pleasure of introducing them to his wife.

It was on our way to call upon the Bears, that destiny seduced me to
turn my head at a certain moment, and look into a shop window.
Suddenly the flame of my desire for the walking solo with a mule
accompaniment (somewhat diminished lately, I confess) leaped up anew.
There were things in that window which made a man long to be a
hermit.

"Mrs. Winston." I cried (Molly was driving), "for goodness' sake stop."

In an instant the car slowed down. "What is the matter?" she implored.
"Are you ill? Have we run over anything?"

"No, but look there," I said eagerly. "What an outfit for a camping
tour! My mouth waters only at sight of it."

"Greedy fellow," commented Jack from the tonneau. "Drive on, Molly.
Get him past the shop. He doesn't really want any of those things, and
wouldn't use them if he had them. The sooner he forgets the better."

"Never shall I forget that Instantaneous Breakfast for an Alpiniste,"
I fiercely protested, "and I will have it at any cost. I know there's
no other shop on the Continent like this, and I shall buy an outfit
for myself and mule, here, if I have to come back from Lucerne by
train for it."

"Hang your mule!" exclaimed Jack. "I was hoping you'd forgotten all
about him by this time, and had made up your mind to go on with us
indefinitely."

I saw reproach blaze through the talc triangle in Molly's mushroom.
(Yet I thought she liked me, and had not, thus far, found "three a
crowd.")

"Lord Lane isn't a _chameleon_, Jack," said she, "that he should
change his mind every few minutes. _Of course_ he's going to have his
mule trip. And as for this shop, all those dear little pots and
kettles and things in the window are too cute for words. He _shall_
have them."

Was I to be a bone of contention between husband and wife?

"Please, both of you come in and help me choose," I meekly pleaded, in
haste to restore the peace which I had broken.

We got out, and a small crowd collected round the car, Gotteland
standing by with his chin raised and the exact expression of the frog
footman in "Alice in Wonderland." One would have said that he saw,
afar off, the graves of his ancestors, on the summit of some lonely
mountain.

It was what Molly would have called a "lovely" shop, and it did
business under the strange device: "Magasin Suisse d'Equipment
Sportif." The name alone was worth the money one would spend.
Everything to cover the outer, and nourish the inner sportsman, was to
be had. I felt that I could scarcely be lonely or sad if I possessed a
stock of these friendly articles. Jack's ribald advice to buy a
pelerine, and a green-loden Gemsjäger hat with a feather, stirred me
neither to smiles nor anger, for Molly and I were already deep in
exploration.

The first thing I bought was a mule-pack. Being a merciful man, I
chose one of medium size, for already I could fancy myself becoming
fond of the animal which was to be my companion in many wild and
solitary places, and I did not wish to overburden him. I then, aided
and abetted by Molly, began to choose the pack's contents.

An "_Appareil de cuisson alpin, Idéal_" went without saying, like the
air one breathes. It composed itself, according to the voluble
attendant who displayed it, of six parts, each part far better than
the others. There was a _gamelle_, with a "_crochet pour l'enlever_"
and a _couvercle_, which, not to show itself proud, would lend its
services also as an _assiette_ or a _poêle à frire_. There was the
burner of alcohol; there was "_le couvercle de celui-ci_," which
served equally to measure the spirit, and there was a charming
_appareil brise vent_ which had the air of defying tornadoes. When I
had secured this treasure, Molly drew my attention to a series of
aluminium boxes made to fit eggs and sandwiches. I bought these also,
and, pleased with the clean white metal, invested in plates, goblets,
and water bottles of the same. Next came a _couvert pliant_,
containing knife, fork, and spoon; and, lest I should be guilty of
selfishness, I ordered a duplicate for the man who would look after
the mule. Best of all, however, were the tinned soups, meats,
vegetables, puddings, and cocoas, which you simply set on the fire in
their bright little cans, and heated till they sent forth a steamy
fragrance. Then you ate or drank them, and were happy as a king.

Molly and I selected a number of these, and completed the list with a
sleeping bag and a _tente de touriste_, which she persuaded me would
be indispensable when lost in the mountains, as I was sure to be,
often.

When my goods and chattels came to be collected, we were shocked to
find that the mule-pack would not contain them. The question remained,
then, whether I should sacrifice these new possessions, already dear,
or whether I should doom my mule to carry a greater burden. The
attendant intimated that Swiss mules preferred heavy loads, and had
they the vocal gifts of Balaam's ass, would demand them. Swayed by my
desires and his arguments, I changed my pack for a larger one. After
more than an hour in the shop, we tore ourselves away, leaving word
that the things should be sent by post to Lucerne. We then repaired to
the Bear Pit, by way of the Clock, and having supplied ourselves with
plenty of carrots, had no cause to complain of our reception.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER V

In Search of a Mule

    "Yes, we await it, but it still delays, and then we suffer."
                                            --MATTHEW ARNOLD.

    "When I arose and saw the dawn, I sighed for thee . . .
                    Come, long-sought!"
                                  --PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.


Jack no longer attempted to dissuade me from my walking tour. Whether
Molly had talked to him, or whether he had, unprompted, seen the error
of his ways, I cannot tell, but the fact remains that, during the rest
of our run to Lucerne, he showed a lively interest in the forthcoming
trip.

"I suppose," said he, when we had caught our first sight of Pilatus
(seen, as one might say, on his back premises), "I suppose that
anywhere in Switzerland, there ought to be no trouble about finding a
good pack-mule. Somehow one thinks of Switzerland and mules together,
just as one does of bacon and eggs, or nuts and raisins, and yet, I
can't recall ever having come across any mules in Lucerne, can you,
Monty?"

"No," I admitted, "but there were probably so many that one didn't
notice them--like flies, you know."

"Of course, the air of Switzerland is dark with mules and donkeys,"
said Molly, who always seemed quick to resent any obstacles thrown
between me and my mule. "One sees them in picture books. All that
Lord Lane will have to say is, 'Let there be mules,' and there will be
mules--strings of them. He will only have to pick and choose. The
thing will be to get a good one, and a nice, handsome, troubadour-sort
of man who can cook, and jodel, and sew, and put up tents, and keep
off murderers in mountain passes at night. It may take a day or two to
find exactly what is wanted."

"The best person in Switzerland to give Monty all the information he
needs," said Jack, evidently not wholly convinced, "is Herr Widmer,
who has an hotel high above Lucerne, on the Sonnenberg. He has another
in Mentone, and I've heard him tell how he has often come up from the
Riviera to Switzerland on horseback. He would be able to advise Monty
exactly how to go."

"Let's stop at his place on the Sonnenberg, then," said Molly, who
never took more than sixty seconds to make the most momentous
decisions, less important ones getting themselves arranged while
slow-minded English people drew breath.

Certainly, as we drove through the streets of Lucerne, we saw neither
mules nor donkeys, but Molly accounted for this by saying that no
doubt they were all at dinner. In any case, with the blue lake
a-glitter with silver sequins dropped from the gowns of those
sparkling White Ladies, the mountains; the shops gay and bright in the
sunshine, on one side the way, shadows lying cool and soft under the
long line of green trees on the other, who could take thought of
absent mules? Let them dine or die; it mattered not. Lucerne was
beautiful, the day divine.

When we were lunching on the balcony of the Winstons' private
sitting-room at the Sonnenberg, with mountains billowing round and
below us, I saw that there was something on Molly's mind for she was
_distraite_. Suddenly she said, "Before you talk to Herr Widmer about
your mule, don't you think that you had better decide absolutely upon
your route?"

"But, darling," objected Jack, "that is largely what he wants advice
about."

"He can't do better than take mine, then," said Molly. "Lord Lane,
_promise_ me you'll take mine and _no_ one's else."

"Of course I'll promise," I answered recklessly, for her eyes were
irresistible, and any man would have been enraptured that so exquisite
a creature should interest herself in his fate. "It doesn't much
matter to me where I go, so long as I can moon about in the mountains,
and eventually, before I'm old and grey, bring up on the Riviera."

"Well, then," said Molly, "since you are so accommodating, I not only
advise but _order_ you to go over the Great St. Bernard Pass, down to
Aosta."

"Might a humble mortal ask, 'Why Aosta?'" I ventured.

"Because it's beautiful, and beneficent, and a great many other things
which begin with B."

"You've never seen it, though," said Jack.

"But I've always wanted to see it, and as you and I have another
programme to carry out at present, it would be nice if Lord Lane would
go, and tell us all about it. He's promised me to keep a sort of
diary, for our benefit later."

"I saw the Duchess of Aosta married at Kingston-on-Thames," I
reflected aloud. "She was a very pretty girl. What am I to do after
I've made my pilgrimage to her country--about which, by the way, I
know practically nothing except that there's a poster in railway
stations which represents it as having bright pink mountains and a
purply-yellow sky?"

"Oh, after Aosta, I've no instructions," replied Molly, as if she
washed her hands of me and of my affairs. "For the rest, let Fate
decide." As she spoke, she looked mystic, sibylline, and I could
almost fancy that before her dreamy eyes arose a vision of my future
as if floating in a magic crystal. For an instant I was inclined to
beg that she would prophesy, but the mood passed. All that I asked or
expected to get from the future was a mule, a man, some mountains, and
forgetfulness.

It was decided, then, that the only questions to be put to Herr Widmer
should concern the mule. I had a vague dream of presently standing on
the balcony, while various muleteers and their well-groomed animals
passed in review under my eyes, but the landlord's first words struck
at my hopes and left them maimed.

"There are no mules to be had in Lucerne," he said.

"In the country near by, then?"

"Nor in the country near by. The nearest place where you could get one
would be in the Valais--best at Brig."

"But I don't want to go to Brig," I said forlornly. "If I went to
Brig, that would mean that I should have to do a lot of walking
afterwards, to reach the parts I wish to reach, through the hot Rhone
Valley, where I should be eaten up by gnats and other disagreeable
wild beasts. I know the Rhone Valley between Brig and Martigny
already, by railway travelling, and that is more than enough."

"The Rhone Valley is a misunderstood valley. Even between Martigny
and Brig, it is far more beautiful than anyone who has seen it only
from the railway can possibly judge," pleaded Herr Widmer. "It well
repays a riding or walking tour."

But my soul girded against the Rhone Valley, and I would not be driven
into it by persuasion. "I'd rather put up with a donkey to carry my
luggage," said I, with visions of discarding half my Instantaneous
Breakfasts, "than begin my walk in the Rhone Valley. Surely, Lucerne
can be counted on to yield me up at least a donkey?"

"You must go into Italy to find an _âne_," replied the landlord,
inexorable as Destiny.

I suddenly understood how a woman feels when she stamps her foot and
bursts into tears. (There are advantages in being a woman.) To be
thwarted for the sake of a mere, wretched animal, which I had always
looked upon with indifference as the least of beasts! It was too much.
My features hardened. Inwardly, I swore a great oath that, if I went
to the world's end to obtain it, I would have a pack-mule, or, if
worse came to worst, a pack-donkey.

At this bitter moment I chanced to meet Molly's eyes and read in them
a sympathy well-nigh extravagant. But I knew why it had been called
out. If there is one thing which causes unbearable anguish to a true
American girl it is to find herself wanting something "right away"
which she cannot have. But luckily for her country's peace, her
lovers' happiness, this occurs seldom.

"What is the nearest place in Italy where Lord Lane could get a
donkey?" she asked.

"It is possible that he might be able to buy or hire one at Airolo,"
said our landlord. "At one time they had them there, for the railway
works, and mules also. But now I do not----"

"We can go there and see," said Molly.

"Airolo's on the other side of the St. Gothard, and automobiles aren't
allowed on the Swiss passes," remarked Jack.

This, to me, sounded final, so far as Airolo was concerned, but not so
with the Honourable Mrs. Winston!

"What do they do to you if you _do_ go?" she asked, turning slightly
pale.

"They fined an American gentleman who crossed the Simplon in his
automobile last year, five thousand francs," answered Herr Widmer.

"Oh!" said she. "So an American did go over one of the passes? Well,
thank you _so_ much; we must decide what to do, and talk it over with
you again later. Meanwhile, we're very happy, for it's lovely here."

Hardly had the door of the sitting-room closed on our host, when
Molly, with the air of having a gun-powder plot to unfold, beckoned us
both to come near. "I'll tell you what we'll do," said she, in a
half-whisper, when surrounded by her body-guard of two. "First, we'll
ask _everybody_ in Lucerne whether there are any mules or donkeys on
the spot, just in case Herr Widmer might be mistaken; if there aren't
any, let's go over the St. Gothard _in the middle of the night_."

"Good heavens, what a desperate character I've married!" exclaimed
Jack.

"Not at all. Don't you see, at night there would be nobody on their
silly old Pass that they make such a fuss about. Even in daylight
diligences don't go over the St. Gothard in our times, and at night
there'd be _nothing_, so we couldn't expose man or beast to danger.
We'd rush the _douanes_, or whatever they call them on passes, and if
we _were_ caught, what are five thousand francs?"

"I wouldn't dream of letting you do such a thing for me," I broke in
hurriedly. "If Airolo or the neighbourhood turns out to be the happy
hunting ground of the sedate mule or pensive _âne_, I will simply take
train----"

"You will take the train, if you take it, over Jack's and my dead
bodies," remarked Molly coldly.

"It would be rather sport to rush the Pass at night," said Jack.

"Oh, you darling!" cried Molly, "I've never loved you so much."

This naturally settled it.

We walked down to the town by an exquisite path leading through dark,
mysterious pine forests; where the slim, straight trunks of the tall
trees seemed tightly stretched, like the strings of a great harp, and
where melancholy, elusive music was played always by the wind spirits.
In Lucerne we did not, as Molly had suggested, ask everybody to stand
and deliver information, but we compromised by visiting tourists'
bureaux. At these places the verdict was an echo of our landlord's,
and I saw that Molly and Jack were glad. Having scented powder, they
would have been disappointed if the midnight battle need not be
fought.

Molly had never seen Lucerne, which was too beautiful for a fleeting
glance. It was arranged that, after driving me over the Pass, for weal
or woe, they should return. They would leave most of their luggage at
the Sonnenberg, and come back to spend some days, before continuing
their tour as originally mapped out.

We slept that night in peace (it is wonderful how well you do sleep,
even with a "mind diseased," after hours of racing through pure, fresh
air on a motor car); and next day we began stealthy preparations for
our adventure.




CHAPTER VI

The Wings of the Wind

    "Oh, still solitude, only matched in the skies;
       Perilous in steep places,
       Soft in the level races,
     Where sweeping in phantom silence the cloudland
         flies."
                                        --R. BRIDGES.


The wind howled a menace to Mercédès, as she glided down the winding
road towards the comfortable, domestic-looking suburbs of Lucerne.
Banks of cloud raced each other across the sky, and, crossing the
bridge over the Reuss, we saw that the waters of the Lake, turquoise
yesterday, were to-day a sullen indigo. The big steamers rolled at
their moorings; white-crested waves were leaping against the quays,
and thick mists clung like rolls of wool to the lower slopes of
Pilatus.

Molly's spirits rose as the mercury in the barometer fell. "Would you
care for people if they were always good-tempered, or weather if it
were always fair?" she asked me (we were sitting together in the
tonneau, Jack driving). "I revel in storms, and if we have one
to-night, when we are on the Pass, one of the dearest wishes of my
life will be gratified. 'A storm on the St. Gothard!' Haven't the
words a thunder-roll? Sunlight and mountain passes don't belong
together. I like to think of great Alpine roads as the fastnesses of
giants, who threaten death to puny man when he ventures into their
power."

It had been arranged that we should "potter" (as Winston called it)
round the arms of the star-fish lake, until we reached Flüelen; that
from there we should steal as far as we dared up the Reussthal while
daylight lasted, dine at some village inn, and then, instead of
returning to the lowlands of Lucerne, make a dash across the mighty
barrier that shut us away from Italy. Under a lowering sky, and
buffeted by short, sharp gusts of wind, which seemed the heralds of
fiercer blasts, we swung along the reedy shores of the narrowing lake,
the broken sides of the Rigi standing finely up on our right hand.
Winston was satirical about the poor Rigi and its railway, calling it
the Primrose Hill and the Devil's Dyke of Switzerland, the paradise of
trippers, a mountain whose sides are hidden under cataracts of
beer-bottles; but from our point of view, the vulgarities of the
maligned mountain were mellowed by distance, and I neither could nor
would look upon it as contemptible.

Leaving the Lake of the Forest Cantons, we spun along the margin of
the tamer sheet of Zug, to pass, beyond Arth, into the great
wilderness caused by the fearful landslide of a century ago, when a
mighty mass of rock and earth split off from the main bulk of the
Rossberg and thundered down into the valley. The slow processes of
nature had done much to cover up decently all traces of the Titan's
rage, but the huge, bare scar on the side of the Rossberg still told
its tale of tragedy. By the peaceful Lowerzer See the road undulated
pleasantly, and at Schwyz (the hub of Swiss history) we had tea, the
torn and imposing pyramids of the two Myten bravely rearing their
heads above the mists that encumbered the valleys.

There was no need to hurry, for we had the night before us, so we
passed slowly, halting often, along the marvellous Axenstrasse, while
Jack distilled into Molly's willing ears legends from the old heroic
days of Switzerland, before it became the happy haven of
hotel-keepers. From the car we could note the characteristics of the
Cantons which had entered into the famous bond; pastoral and leafy
Unterwalden, with green fields and orchards; Schwyz, also green and
fertile; but Uri (the cold, highland partner in this great alliance),
a country of towering mountains and savage rocks. Molly wanted to get
a boat, and row across to the Rütli to stand on that spot where, in
1307, Walter Fürst, Arnold of Melchthal, and Werner Stauffacher took
the famous oath, and very reluctantly she gave up the wish when Jack
pointed to the rising waves, painting in lurid colours the sudden and
dangerous storms that sweep the Lake of Uri. When he went on, however,
to insinuate doubts as to the historic accuracy of these old stories,
and to hint that even William Tell might himself he an incorporeal
legend, Molly clapped a little hand over his mouth, crying out that
even if he had tried to destroy the Maid of Orleans he must spare
William Tell. Further on, she made us confide the car to Gotteland on
the Axenstrasse, while we descended the path to Tell's chapel and did
reverence to the hero's memory. On such a day as this must it have
been that Tell leaped ashore from the boat, leaving Gessler to look
after himself; for the blasts were shrieking down the lake, and the
waves dashed their foam over the ledge where stands the chapel.

Jack stopped several times in the rock galleries of the Axenstrasse
before we reached Flüelen; consequently it was evening when we
slipped into little Altdorf, where Molly insisted on making a curtsey
to the statue of Tell and his agreeable little boy. Winston predicted
that we should probably not be challenged until we got to Göschenen,
as up to that point the road does not take on a true Alpine character.
The storm (which seemed rising to a point of fury) was in our favour,
too, for no one would choose to be out on such a night, save mad
English automobilists and wilful American girls.

Dusk was beginning to shadow the Reussthal, as we ran past the railway
station at Erstfeld, and began at length the ascent of the St. Gothard
Road. The great railway (of which we had caught glimpses as we came
along the lake) was now our companion, while on the other hand roared
the tumbling Reuss. So hoarse and insistent was the voice of the
stream that Molly suggested it should be "had up for brawling." It did
us the service, however, of drowning the noise of our motor, at all
times a discreetly silent machine; and as Jack had given orders that
the big Bleriots should not be lighted (two good oil lamps showing us
the way), we had high hopes that we might fly by unnoticed, on the
wings of the storm. In Amsteg no one seemed to look upon us with
surprise, and here the road turned, to worm itself into the heart of
the mountains, while the railway, often disappearing into tunnels, ran
far above our heads.

By the time we had reached Gurtnellen night had fallen black and
close, and Molly issued an edict that we should dine in the open air,
instead of seeking the doubtful comforts of a village inn, where, too,
we might suffer from the solicitude of some officious policeman. The
car accordingly was run under the lee of a great rock, the
ever-inspired Gotteland extemporised a shelter with the waterproof
rugs, and the blue flame of the chafing-dish presently cheered us with
its glow. The wind bellowed along the precipices, the Reuss shouted in
its rocky bed, and once an express from Italy to the north passed high
above us, streaming its lights through the darkness like sparks from a
boy's squib. Yet those plutocratic travellers up in the _wagons lits_
were not having anything like the "good time" we enjoyed, warm in our
motor coats, sitting snug behind our rock, a lamp from the car
illuminating our little party and shining on Molly's piquant profile
as she brewed savoury messes in her magic cauldron. This was testing
thoroughly the resources of the automobile, which was playing the part
of travelling kitchen and larder as well as travelling chariot, and
could no doubt be made, with a little ingenuity, to play the parts
also of travelling bed and tent. Yet, as I said all this aloud to
Jack, my mind leaped forward to other nights which I should soon be
spending alone tinder the stars, and I thought tenderly of my
aluminium stove and tent, my sleeping-sack, and the other camping
tools I had bought in Bern.

From where we lay hid behind our rock to Airolo was only some
thirty-two miles, and the car ate up distance with so voracious an
appetite, that it was clear we should arrive in the little Italian
town in the dead waste and middle of the night. To travel a forbidden
road on an automobile, and then to knock up a snoring innkeeper at one
in the morning, to ask him where we could find a donkey, seemed to be
straining unduly the sense of humour; so after consultation we decided
that we should leave Airolo to its slumbers and speed down the Pass
into Italy until we ran to earth the object of our quest.

[Illustration: "THE BLUE FLAME OF THE CHAFING-DISH".]

Molly had produced excellent coffee; the smoke of our cigarettes
mingled its perfume with the night air. Our position had in it
something unique, for while we were "in the heart of one of nature's
most savage retreats" (as said a guide-book of my boyhood), we were at
the same time enjoying the refinements of civilisation, and I
suggested to Winston that our bivouac would form a fit subject for a
picture labelled, in the manner of some Dutch masters, "Automobilists
Reposing."

By the time Gotteland had packed up everything, and we were seated
once more in the car, it was nearly eleven o'clock at night. Coming
out from the shelter of our rock, so fierce a blast of wind smote us
that Molly would, I think, have been carried off her feet had I not
given her a steadying arm. We had to cram our caps on our heads, or
the wind would have torn them from us, and the voice of the motor was
swallowed up in the shrieking of the tempest. Molly was evidently
destined to have her wish.

The car ran swiftly up the road to Wasen, and some twinkling lights
and a huge crimson eye at the entrance to the great tunnel told us
that we had done the ten miles to Göschenen. No one stirred in the
streets of the village, and, gliding cat-like past the station, Jack
put the car at the beginning of the real ascent of the famous St.
Gothard Road. The higher we went, the more wildly roared the storm.
There was something appalling in the fierce volleyings of the wind
along the stark and broken faces of the precipice: it was like the
rattle of thunder. In the sombre defile of the Schöllenen the air
rushed as through a funnel. We could see nothing save the thread-like
road illuminated by our steadfast lanterns--the sole beacon of safety
in this welter. We had a ghostly impression of winding through a
narrow gorge, the river roaring in its depths; then, dashing through
an avalanche gallery (where the lights played strange tricks with the
vaulted roof), we came out upon the Devil's Bridge. The spray from the
Reuss, which here drops a full hundred feet into the abyss, lashed our
faces as with whips; the storm leaped at us out of the blackness like
a wolf; the car quivered, and for an instant it seemed that we should
be hurled against the parapet of the bridge. But we passed unharmed,
and a quarter of a mile further on Winston stopped in the welcome
shelter of the Urner Loch, a tunnelled passage in the rock.

We gasped out broken expressions of a fearful joy; then, seeing that
Molly was well, and that the wind-wolf's teeth had torn nothing from
the car, Jack went full speed ahead again, steering along the open
Urseren Valley, where we had fleeting glimpses of green fields instead
of granite rocks. Thus we came to Andermatt, where not the eye of a
mouse seemed open to mark our quick and stealthy passage. We were now
on that great mountain highroad that slants in a straight line across
almost all Switzerland from Coire to Martigny; but we kept on it only
for a little while, to steal through Hospenthal--as dead asleep as the
other villages (for Labour had not yet begun to waken in its hard
bed), and take the southern road that leads to Italy.

Thus far, audacity had been laurelled by success. It was near one in
the morning, and we were spinning fast up a valley which showed
bleakly in the flying lights of our car. Soon Jack called to us that
we had crossed the border line of the Canton Ticino, and presently
through the blackness twinkled the little lakes which mark the summit
of the Pass. We were nearly seven thousand feet above the sea, and
suddenly, as we crossed the ridge and began to sail down the dismal
Val Tremolo towards Airolo, the great wind that had made majestic
music all day and night ceased to blow. We ran into a zone of
motionless, ice-cold air, and what seemed an unnatural silence, only
the hum of the motor breaking the frozen stillness of these high
Alpine solitudes.

The road plunged to lower levels in interminable windings, the car
swooping in a series of bird-like flights, exhilarating to the nerves,
thrilling to the imagination; for in the blackness that held us we
could but guess at abysses which dropped away almost from under the
tyres of our wheels. Sometimes we dashed over foaming rivers, and soon
we sped through Airolo, where yet no one moved. Now the loud-voiced
Ticino was our companion, and we swept down through an open valley to
Faido, where we met the first human being we had seen since we left
Gurtnellen. It was a very old man, with a red cap, like a stocking,
pulled close upon his head. He had a rake on his shoulder, and we were
close on him before he knew; for the car was coasting, and ran with
hardly any noise save the whir of the chains. For a flashing instant
that old face shone out of the circle of our lights, concave with
astonishment; then we lost it forever.

"No fear that _he_ will telephone to have us stopped lower down," said
Molly. "He thinks we are supernatural, and will go home and tell his
grandchildren that he has seen witches tearing home after a revel up
among the glaciers."

Faster still the car flew down the road. The air that streamed past us
held the faint, elusive perfume of Italy, which softly hints the
presence of the walnut, the chestnut, and the grape. Through village
after village we swept at speed, our lamps shining now on mulberry and
fig trees, and on vines trained over trellises held up by splintered
granite slabs. Next we came suddenly upon an Italian-looking town with
bad _pavé_ and dimly lighted streets, where three or four workmen,
early astir, stared at us in bewilderment. It was Bellinzona; but
passing through, we came out presently on the margin of an immense
sheet of water, and it was only in Locarno on the edge of Lago
Maggiore, when dawn was paling the eastern sky, that Jack at last drew
rein.

No one was tired; no one wanted to rest. On the contrary, our rapid
flight over the Alps had intoxicated us with the sense of speed; and
we were all excitedly for going on until we should reach the frontier.
As pink dawn blossomed in the sky, like a heavenly orchard, and the
mountain tops were beaten into copper, we glided along the edge of the
lake, past picturesque villages and _campanili_, and cypress trees. At
the Italian frontier there were the usual tedious formalities of
payment and sealing the car with a leaden seal; but when all this was
done by sleepy officials, surly at our early passage, though little
recking of our crimes, we sailed on again, Molly driving now, through
a landscape magically clear in the young morning light.

Suddenly we all started in joyous astonishment, and Molly brought the
car to a stop. Each had seen the same thing, each had been struck with
the same thought. Here, at last, we had found what we had come so far
to seek; what Switzerland denied us, Italy offered. Standing alone in
a field by the roadside was a small, dark grey donkey, tethered to a
stone; and no other living being was in sight. The creature was not
eating; it was only thinking; and it looked at us with an eye that
seemed to speak of loneliness and the desire for human fellowship.
"The very thing for you!" cried Molly; and the long-sought-for
treasure, finding itself observed, flicked one of its heavy ears.

Gotteland and I dismounted and went nearer. As we approached, the
donkey nickered; and as its family is famed for reticence, such proof
of friendliness made me yearn to possess the deserted little beast.
But its legs were very thin, its hoofs exceedingly small, and the
thought of loading so frail a structure with the great packs that held
my camping kit seemed a barbarity. Meanwhile Gotteland, who knows
something of everything, had carefully examined the tiny animal, and
just as I was growing sentimental over its perfections, he broke the
charm by pronouncing it to be incredibly old, and unfit for work. He
also drew my attention to a disagreeable sore upon its shoulder. It
was sad; but indisputably the man was right; in any case there was no
one with whom a bargain could have been arranged, and with poignant
regret I was forced to leave my treasure-trove to its solitary
thoughts. After this we did not stop again until Molly steered the car
to the door of a beautiful hotel in Pallanza, where the shirt-sleeved
concierge hurried into his gold-laced coat, to receive in fitting
style the unusually early guests.

My first care, after coffee and a bath, was to examine the landlord
of the hotel on momentous question of mules and donkeys. At Lucerne, I
told him, they had assured me that the animals "flourished" in Canton
Ticino and the neighbourhood of the Italian Lakes. But I met with no
encouragement. Mules and donkeys were rarely seen in these parts, the
host declared. True, a few peasants employed them in the fields; but
those were poor things, unfit for an excursion such as Monsieur
purposed. At Piedimulera, perhaps, Monsieur would find what he wanted;
yes, at Piedimulera, or if not, at Domodossola; or--his face
brightened--in the Valais, preferably at Brig. Yes, he was certain
that mules and asses in abundance could be found at Brig in the Rhone
Valley. Brig! My heart sank. It was the old story. Counterfeiting
patience, I explained that I had an antipathy to the Rhone Valley, and
had actually crossed the Alps to find animals in Italy rather than be
driven to seek them in Brig.

Crushed by a hopeless, answering gesture, I made my report to Molly
and Jack. "It will end," I said, "in my traversing the world, and
eventually arriving in Japan, still searching the _rara avis_. By that
time I shall have become a harmless lunatic, and people will treat my
babblings with indulgent forbearance, when I go from house to house
begging to be supplied with a pack-mule or a pack-donkey."

At _déjeuner_, in a garden which was a successful imitation of Eden,
the situation did not, however, look so dark. The perfume of flowers,
distilled by the hot sun, was of Araby the Blest; the Borromean
Islands spread their enchantments before us, across a glittering blue
expanse of lake, and the world was after all endurable, though empty
of mules. Besides, Molly was a sweet consoler. She dwelt on the
hopeful suggestion in the name Piedimulera. It could not be wholly
deceiving, she argued. Why name a place Foot-of-a-Mule, if there were
no mules there?

"If there aren't," I exclaimed, "I swear to you that I will, by fair
means or foul, dispose of at Piedimulera all the things with which I
fondly thought to deck the animal my fancy had painted. Everything I
bought at Bern shall go, if I have to dig a grave by night in which to
bury them. This is a vow, and though my heart be wrung, I'll keep it."

Molly listened to this outburst as gravely as if I had been
threatening to sacrifice a son, did not some incredible good fortune
supply a ram caught by his horns in the bushes.

For Piedimulera we left in the afternoon, somewhat buoyed up by the
omen of the name. The way led back towards the Alps, up a broad and
beautiful valley strewn with evidences of the works for the Simplon
railway: embankments, bridges, quarries, and occasional groups of
workmen hauling rhythmically on the many ropes of a pile-driver.
Presently we swerved from the main road, and crossed the valley bed,
obedient to the map, which was our only guide to Piedimulera. We
passed one or two romantically placed, ancient villages, each of which
I hoped might be our goal; but, as usual in life, the town for which
we were bound did not appear as alluring as other towns, where we had
no need to stop.

"I feel there will be not so much as the ghost of a long-perished
Roman mule in this hamlet," I said despondently, hoping that Molly
would contradict me. But she, too, looked anxious, now that the great
moment had come, for we were driving into a town, at the mouth of a
deep gorge already dusky with purpling shadows, and there was no doubt
that it was Piedimulera.

The gloom of the twilight settled upon our spirits, dissimulate as we
might, as the car swept into the cobble-paved courtyard of an
_albergo_, a venerable grandfather of a hostelry, old, grim, and
forbidding. Out came a large, fair man to welcome us, with calculation
in his cold grey eye. He looked to me like a spider in his web,
greeting some inviting flies. We broke the ice by asking for coffee,
and when we were told that we must have it without milk, as there were
no cows within a radius of many miles, I would have staked all my
possessions (especially those acquired at Bern) that there would be no
such comparatively useless animals as mules or donkeys.

Instinct is seldom wrong. If ever there was nothing in a name, there
was nothing in that of Piedimulera, which had evidently been applied
in sheer mockery, or because, untold generations ago, the foot of that
rare creature, a mule, had been preserved here in a museum. When the
landlord found that we did not intend to stop overnight, unless mules
were at once forthcoming, he visibly lost interest in us, as inedible
insects. He shrugged his shoulders at the bare idea that Piedimulera
might shelter such creatures as we were mad enough to desire, and
assured us that there was not the least use in trying Domodossola. We
had much better spend the night with him, and to-morrow morning go on
as best we might to Brig. No? Then he washed his hands of us.

I did not give my treasures to this person: rather would I have burnt
all, than picture him battening on my Instantaneous Breakfasts. Molly
would have had me keep them, at least until we knew what fate awaited
us at Domodossola. The moment I had irrevocably parted with my outfit,
bought in happier days, I should find a mule, and how annoyed would I
be, she prophesied. But I was adamant. Had I not made a vow? Besides,
if I were to find a mule or donkey the moment I had got rid of his
paraphernalia, that alone was an inducement to throw the cargo
overboard.

On our way to Domodossola, I saw a pretty dark-eyed young woman, with
a cherubic baby in her arms, standing in the doorway of a tumble-down
cottage. Evidently she was waiting to greet her husband when he should
come home, weary with his long day's work. Quickly I made a decision
and with the same abruptness I had used in urging Molly to draw before
the too attractive shop in Bern, I begged her now to stop. My white
elephants were stowed away in separate bundles in the tonneau, where,
ever since Lucerne, they had been the cause of cramps and "pins and
needles" to the feet of any member of the party who sat there. I
ruthlessly collected the lot, and, well-nigh swamped by the load, I
carried them to the cottage door, where I laid all at the feet of the
young mother. She suddenly became an incarnate point of admiration,
and could scarcely believe that I was sane, or that she was not
dreaming when I explained my wish to make her a present. If I had
stayed an hour, I could not have dissipated her bewilderment, so I
left the things to speak for themselves--if she did not take them for
infernal machines and throw them into the river.

It was evening when we arrived at Domodossola, and I felt nothing
save cold resignation when told emphatically by the concierge of our
chosen hotel that my quest was hopeless.

"You will have to go to Brig," he said; and though he was an
intelligent and worthy man, I could have smitten him to earth.

"You must abandon me to my fate," I told Jack and Molly. "_Il est trop
fort._ If I'm to walk the face of the earth, I want a pack-mule and a
man; and, 'somehow, somewhere, somewhen,' I mean to have them. But
you've more than done your duty by me. You can get back to Lucerne
from here comfortably, without daring any more mountain passes and
fines for law-breaking. Since to Brig I must go, I'll make a virtue of
necessity, and walk over the Simplon, to see the tunnel and railway
works."

"Walk, if you will," said Molly; "but if I know my Lightning Conductor
and myself, we'll see you through to the end, be it bitter or sweet."

"Echo answers," added Jack. "If you want to see things clearly, you
must have daylight, and if we wish to escape the arm of the law, we
must fly by night, which means that we can't join forces till the
journey's end."

"You needn't think we're sacrificing ourselves, for we should love
it," Molly capped him. "We're having the jam of adventure spread thick
on our bread now."

"Well, then, everything's settled," said Jack, "except the start."

Molly thought a day in Domodossola too much. It was decided, therefore,
that they should rest till eleven, and that the motor should be ready
at midnight. They could reach Brig between two and three, and being a
posting town, the hotel people were sure to be up. I was to start
early in the morning, and meet my friends at Brig, after walking over
the Pass.

I saw them off, and then plunged fathoms deep into sleep, dreaming of
a land flowing with mules and donkeys. At five, I was up, and was
surprised to find that the despised Domodossola was a beautiful and
interesting old town, with curiously Spanish effects in its shadowy
streets, lined with ancient, arcaded houses. I thought to save time
and fatigue by taking a carriage to the frontier village of Iselle at
the foot of the Pass, and was glad I had done so, for the road was
rough and covered inches deep with a deposit of peculiar, grey dust.
But things mended when we climbed a hill, turned out of the main
valley, and followed the course of the river Diveria into a lateral
gorge of the mountains, the real porchway or entrance of the Simplon
Pass.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER VII

At Last!

    "A Jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire,
     A dare, a bliss, and a desire."
    --BLISS CARMAN.

    "Here a great personal deed has room."
    --WALT WHITMAN.


The further I penetrated into the mountains, the more like a vast
engineering workshop did the long Alpine valley become. Yet, curiously
enough, instead of destroying romance, this gave a certain majestic
romance of its own; the romance of man's struggle to conquer the
stupendous forces of Nature with his science. It was as if Vulcan's
stithy had been dropped down into a profound ravine of the Alps, and
the drone of machinery mingled with the music of the fleeting river--a
strange diapason.

On the right of the highroad, the flat mountain face opened a black,
egg-shaped mouth at me. I got out of the carriage to approach it, and
while I stood peering down the dark throat, as if I were a Lilliputian
doctor examining the tongue of Giant Gulliver, I was suddenly clapped
upon the shoulder. It flashed into my mind that perhaps it was
forbidden to stare at the tunnel-in-making; and turning to defend
myself from a lash of red tape, with the adage that "a cat may look at
a king," I saw a man I had known years ago smiling at me.

[Illustration: "I WAS SUDDENLY CLAPPED UPON THE SHOULDER".]

I have a worldly-minded cousin who says that she is always nice to
girls, because "you never know whom they may marry." It might be
equally diplomatic to be nice to foreigners who are at Oxford with
you, because you don't know that they may not become famous engineers,
able to show you interesting things when you visit their country.
Giovanni Bolzano had been at Balliol with me, studying English, and
now it turned out that he was second engineer to the works for the new
tunnel. I recalled with poignant regret that Jack Winston and I had
once made hay of his room; but evidently he bore no malice, for after
saying that he was not surprised to see me, as everybody came this way
sooner or later, he offered to show me his tunnel, of which this was
the Italian mouth. It had another at Brig, twelve miles away, and
boasted the longest throat in the world, but as it was marvellously
ventilated, it would never choke in its own smoke, and Bolzano was
very proud of the engineering achievement. Having discharged my
carriage, I went with him into a workshop, heard the humming of
dynamos, and the buzzing of tremendous turbines, actuated by the fall
of the river Diveria, and gazed with the fascination of a mouse for a
cat at a huge and diabolical fan, driving air into the tunnel. This
fearful beast had a house to itself, with a passage down which you
could venture like Theseus entering the labyrinth of the Minotaur; but
such was the volume of breath which it drew into its mighty lungs that
you must use all your strength not to be sucked in and hurled against
the shafting; all your self-control not to be confused by its loud,
unceasing roar.

Hardly had we come out from this weird place, which would have given
Edgar Allan Poe an inspiration for a creepy tale, when Bolzano showed
me a relief gang of men getting ready to enter the tunnel, in a train
consisting of wooden boxes drawn by a miniature locomotive. This was
my chance. I was hurried off to his quarters, helped into rough,
miner's clothing, with great boots up to my knees, and given a miner's
lamp. Then, joining the eight hundred Italians,--a battalion of the
soldiers of Labour,--we got into a box, and set off to relieve eight
hundred other such soldiers who for eight hours had toiled in the
schisty heart of the mountain.

I felt as if suddenly, between sleeping and waking, I had plunged deep
into the dusk of dreamland. We rumbled through a lofty egg-shaped
vault, lined with masonry, lighted waveringly, with strange play of
shadow, by our many lamps. This phase of the dream seemed to last a
long time; and then the train of boxes slowed down, for we had reached
the danger-point, a part of the tunnel where the hidden Genii of the
Mountain had planned a trap to upset all geological expectations.
Having allowed the engineers to penetrate thus far, they had suddenly
flooded the tunnel with cataracts of water from fissures in the rock,
and had laughed wild, echoing laughter because they had contrived to
delay the work for a year, and cause the spending of much extra money.

The dream showed me now a long iron cage, shoring up the crumbling
walls of the excavation; and through this cage we crept like a
procession of wary mice, suddenly putting on speed at the end, till we
reached the tunnel-head, and found another train preparing to go out.

Here the dream flung me into a teeming Inferno of darkness and lost
spirits who (spent with eight hours' monotonous toil in this Circle)
had dropped asleep, sitting half-naked in the line of boxes which
would bear them away to a spell of rest. They had fallen into pathetic
attitudes of collapse, some lying back with their mouths open, some
resting their heads on folded arms, some drooping on comrades'
shoulders.

As our train-load of Activity came to a stand, this other train-load
of Exhaustion rumbled slowly away, the smoky lamps glinting on
polished, olive-coloured flesh, on hairy arms, and swarthy faces shut
to consciousness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A mere mirage."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration]




CHAPTER VIII

The Making of a Mystery

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And your mule?" I asked.

"Finois, Monsieur."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: No Title]




CHAPTER IX

The Brat

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The name "Great St. Bernard" had conjured up hopes of rugged
grandeur, which did not seem destined to be fulfilled, and at last I
confided my disappointment to Joseph. "If Monsieur will wait an all
little hour, perhaps he will yet be surprised," he answered, breaking
into French. "We have a long way to go, before we come to the best."

We walked briskly, lunched at the dull village of Orsières; and
delaying as short a time as possible, pushed on--indeed, we pushed on
much farther than Joseph had expected, when he suggested our sleeping
at Bourg St. Pierre. "We might go higher," said he, "before dark, but
it would be late before we could reach the Hospice, and there is no
place where we could rest for the night after St. Pierre, unless
Monsieur would care to stop at the Cantine de Proz."

"What is the Cantine de Proz?" I asked, trudging along the stony
road, with my eyes held by a huge snow mountain which had suddenly
loomed above the green shoulders of lesser hills, like a great white
barrier across the world.

"The Cantine de Proz is but a house, nothing more, Monsieur, in the
loneliest and wildest part of the Pass--how lonely, and how wild, you
cannot guess yet by what you have seen. The people who keep the house
are good folk, and they live there all the year round, even in winter,
when the snow is at the second-story windows, and they must cut narrow
paths, with tall white walls, before they can feed their cattle. These
people sell you a cup of coffee, or a glass of beer, or of liqueur,
and they have a spare room, which is very clean. If any traveller
wishes to spend a night, they will make him as comfortable as they
can. One English gentleman came, and liked the place so well, that he
stayed for months, and wrote a book, I have been told. But it is
desolate. Perhaps Monsieur would think it too _triste_ even for a
night. At St. Pierre there is at least a little life. And the hotel
'Au Déjeuner de Napoléon,' I think it will amuse Monsieur."

"That is an odd name for a hotel," said I.

"You see, Monsieur, it was made famous because of the _déjeuner_ which
Napoléon took there on his march with his army of 30,000 across the
Pass in the month of May, 1800, and that is the reason of the name.
The madame who has the house now, is a grand-daughter of the innkeeper
of that day; and she will show you the room where Napoléon
breakfasted, with all the furniture just as it was then, and on the
wall the portraits of her grand-parents, who waited on the great man."

"At all events, we will rest and have something to eat there," I said.
"Then, if it be not too late, we might push on further. I like the
idea of the lonely Cantine de Proz."

My opinion of the Pass was changing for the better, before we reached
the straggling town of stony pavements, which could not have a more
appropriate patron than St. Pierre. True, our road was always narrow,
and poorly kept for a great mountain highway; so far, none of the
magnificent engineering which impressed one on the Simplon. But here
and there dazzling white peaks glistened like frozen tidal waves
against the blue, and the Dranse had a particular charm of its own.
Joseph said little when I patronised the Pass with a few grudging
words of commendation. He had the secretive smile of a man who hides
something up his sleeve.

It was five o'clock when we arrived at Bourg St. Pierre, and having
climbed a dark and hilly street, closely shut in with houses which age
had not made beautiful, Joseph pointed out a neat, white inn, standing
at the left of the road.

"That is the 'Déjeuner de Napoléon,'" said he, "and near by are some
Roman remains which will interest Monsieur if----"

"By Jove, two donkeys!" I broke in, heedless of antiquities, in my
surprise at seeing two of those animals which experience had taught me
to look upon as more rare than Joseph's "seldom plant." "Two donkeys
in front of the inn. Where on earth can they have sprung from? I would
have given a good deal for that sight a few days ago, but now"--and I
glanced at the dignified Finois--"I can regard them simply with
curiosity."

"I have been over this Pass more than twenty times," said Joseph (who
was a native of Chamounix, I had learned), "yet rarely have I met with
_ânes_. And see, Monsieur, the woman who is with them. She is not of
the country, nor of that part of Italy which we enter below the Pass,
at Aosta. It is a strange costume. I do not know from what valley it
comes."

"Well," said I, as we drew near to the group in the road outside the
hotel, "if that girl, or at any rate her hat, did not come from the
Riviera somewhere, I will eat my panama."

Involuntarily I hastened my steps, and Joseph politely followed suit,
dragging after him Finois, who seemed to be walking in his sleep. I
felt it almost as a personal injury from the hand of Fate, that after
my unavailing search for donkeys in a land where I had thought to be
forced to beat them off with sticks, I should find other persons
provided with not one but two of the creatures.

[Illustration: "THAT IS THE DÉJEUNER OF NAPOLÉON".]

They were charming little beasts, one mouse-colour, one dark-brown
with large, grey-rimmed spectacles, and both animals were of the
texture of uncut velvet. The former carried an excellent pack, which
put mine to shame; the latter bore a boy's saddle, and the two were
being fed with great bread crusts by a bewitching young woman of about
twenty-six or -eight, wearing one of the toad-stool hats affected by
the donkey-women of Mentone. She looked up at our approach, and having
surveyed the pack and proportions of Finois with cold scorn, her
interest in our procession incontestably focused upon Joseph. She
tossed her head a little on one side, shot at the muleteer an
arrow-gleam, half defiant, half coquettish, from a pair of big grey
eyes fringed heavily with jet. She moistened full red lips, while a
faint colour lit her cheeks, under the deep stain of tan and a
tiger-lily powdering of freckles. Then, having seen the weary Joseph
visibly rejuvenate in the brief sunshine of her glance, she turned
away, and gave her whole attention to the donkeys.

"Hungry, Joseph?" I asked.

He had to bethink himself before he could answer. Then he replied that
he had food in his pocket, bread and cheese, and that Finois carried
his own dinner. They would be ready to go on, if I chose, or to
remain, if that were my pleasure. "It is too early for a final stop,
at a place where there can no amusement for the evening," said I. "We
had better go on. If you intend to stay outside with Finois, I'll send
you a bottle of beer, and you can, if you will, drink my health."

With this I went in, feeling sure that the time of my absence would
not pass heavily for Joseph.

This was the hour at which, in England, we would sip a cup of tea as
an excuse for talk with a pretty woman in her drawing-room; but having
tramped steadily for some hours in mountain air, I was in a mood to
understand the tastes of that class who like an egg or a kipper for "a
relish to their tea." I looked for the landlady with the illustrious
ancestors, and could not find her; but voices on the floor above led
me to the stairway. I mounted, passed a doorway, and found myself in a
room which instinct told me had been the scene of the historic
_déjeuner_.

It was a low-ceilinged room with wainscoted walls, and at first glance
one received an impression of the past. There was a soft lustre of
much-polished mahogany, and a glitter of old silver candelabra; I
thought that I detected a faint fragrance of lavender lurking in the
clean curtains, or perhaps it might have come from the square of
ancient damask covering the table, on which a meal was spread.

That meal consisted of chicken; a salad of pale green lettuce and
coraline tomatoes; a slim-necked bottle of white wine; a custard with
a foaming crest of beaten egg and sugar; and a dish of purple figs.
Food for the gods, and with only a boy to eat it--but a remarkable
boy. I gazed, and did not know what to make of him. He also gazed at
me, but his look lacked the curiosity with which I honoured him. It
expressed frank and (in the circumstances) impudent disapproval.
Having bestowed it, he nonchalantly continued his conversation with
the plump and capped landlady, who was evidently enraptured with him,
while I was left to stand unnoticed on the threshold.

Purely from the point of view of the picturesque, there was some
excuse for madame's preoccupation. The boy would have delighted an
artist, no doubt, though our first interchange of glances gave me a
strong desire to smack him.

His panama--a miniature copy of mine--hung over the back of his
old-fashioned chair--the one, no doubt, in which Napoleon had sat to
eat the _déjeuner_. Soft rings of dark, chestnut hair, richly bright
as Japanese bronze, had been flattened across his forehead by the now
discarded hat. This hair, worn too long for any self-respecting,
twentieth-century boy, curled round his small head and behind the slim
throat, which was like a stem for the flower of his strange little
face. "Strange" was the first adjective which came into my mind; yet,
if he had been a girl instead of a boy, he would have been beautiful.
The delicately pencilled brows were exquisite, and out of the small
brown face looked a pair of large, brilliant eyes of an extraordinary
blue--the blue of the wild chicory. When the boy glanced up or down,
there was great play of dark lashes, long, and amazingly thick. This
would have been charming on a girl, but seemed somehow affected in a
boy, though one could hardly have accused the little snipe of making
his own eyelashes. He wore a very loose-trousered knickerbocker suit
of navy-blue; a white silk shirt or blouse, loose also, with a
turned-down Byronic collar and a careless black bow underneath. He had
extremely small hands, tanned brown, and on the least finger of one
was a seal ring. My impression of this youthful tourist was that in
age he might be anywhere between thirteen and seventeen, and I was
sure that he would be the better for a good thrashing.

"Some rich, silly mother's darling," I said to myself. "Little
milksop, travelling with a muff of a tutor, I suppose. Why doesn't the
ass teach him good manners?"

This lesson seemed particularly necessary, because the youth persisted
in holding the attention of the landlady, who, with a comfortable back
to me, laughed at some sally of the boy's. When I had stood for a
moment or two, waiting for a pause which did not come, although the
brat saw me and knew well what I wanted, I spoke coldly: "Pardon,
madame, I desire something to eat," I said in French.

The landlady turned, surprised at the voice behind her.

"But certainly, Monsieur. Though I regret that you have come at an
unfortunate time. We have not a great variety to offer you."

"Something of this sort will suit me very well," I replied, feeling
hungrily that chicken, salad, custard, and figs were the things which
of all others I would choose.

"It is most regrettable, Monsieur, but this young gentleman has our
only chicken, unless you could wait for another to be killed, plucked,
and made ready for the table."

I shuddered at the suggestion, and did not hide my repulsion. "I must
put up with an omelette, then, I suppose I can have that?"

"At any other time Monsieur could have had two, if he pleased, but
to-day all our eggs have gone into this custard. The young gentleman
ordered his repast by telegraph, and we did our best. As for the
figs, he brought them himself; but if Monsieur would have a cutlet of
the _veau_, or----"

"Give me a bottle of wine, and some bread and cheese. I do not like
the _veau_," I said, with the testiness of a hungry man disappointed.
As I spoke, my eyes were on the boy, who ate his breast of chicken
daintily. Pretty as he was, I should have liked to kick him.

"Little brat," I apostrophised him once more, in my mind. "If he were
not a pig, he would ask me to accept half his meal. Not that I would
take it. I'd be shot first, so he'd be quite safe; but he might have
the decency to offer."

Worse was to come, however. I had not yet plumbed the black depths of
the Brat's selfishness.

"Certainly, Monsieur; we have very good cheese," madame assured me
soothingly. "If Monsieur would be pleased to step downstairs."

"I should prefer to remain here," I replied. "This is the room, is it
not, where Napoleon had his _déjeuner_?"

"The same, Monsieur, in every particular. But unfortunately, it is for
the moment the private sitting-room of this young gentleman, who has
made me an extra price to keep it for himself."

The poor old lady suffered manifest distress in breaking this news to
me, and even in my evil mood I could not add intentionally to her
pain. As for it cause, however, he sat absolutely unmoved. I think,
indeed, from the blue light in his great eyes (which was absolutely
impish), that the situation whetted his appetite. I did not deign
another glance at the little wretch, as I went out, discomfited, but I
felt that he was grinning at my back.

In a room below, I had a very creditable meal, which I should have
enjoyed more, had my nerves not been jarred to viciousness. In the
midst, I heard footsteps running downstairs, and presently outside the
door of the _salle-à-manger_ the boy's voice--sweet still with
childish cadences, as a boy's is before the change to manhood first
breaks, then deepens it.

"If he comes in here, I shall be inclined to throw a rind of cheese at
his head," I thought; but he did not beard me in my den. The voice
passed away, and presently I heard another, unmistakably that of a
woman, giving vent to strange profanities in softest Provençal French.
The speaker was apostrophising some person or animal, who was,
according to her, the most insupportable of Heaven's creatures; and at
last, with calls upon martyred saints, and cries of "Fanny-anny,
Fanny-anny," there mingled a scuffling and trotting which soon died
away in the distance, leaving stillness.

Soon after, having finished my meal, and paid my bill, I went out to
Joseph. I found him alone with Finois. The donkeys and their fair
guardian had gone.

"Well," said I, as we got upon our way, "I trust you had an agreeable
spell of rest? The lady in the Riviera hat looked promising. If her
conversation matched her appearance, you were in luck, and well repaid
for taking your refreshment out of doors."

"Monsieur," began Joseph, "have you in English a way of expressing in
one word what a man feels when he is both shocked and astonished?"

"Flabbergasted might do, at a pinch," I replied, after deliberation.

"Ah, the good word, 'flabbergasta'! It says much. It is that I am
flabbergasta by the young woman of the _ânes_. I was taken, I admit
it, Monsieur, by her face, as was but natural. And then I wished to
find out, for the satisfaction of Monsieur and myself, how so strange
a cavalcade came to arrive upon the St. Bernard Pass.

"I made myself polite. I spoke with praise of the _ânes_, and though
my advances were coldly received at first, at the very moment I would
in discouragement have ceased my efforts, the young woman changed her
front, and seemed willing to talk. She would not answer my questions,
except to say that she was of Mentone, and that she had escorted the
young gentleman who now employs her on several excursions, a year ago,
when he was on the Riviera. That he had sent for her and the two
_ânes_ to join him by rail, though the expense was great, and that
they were travelling for the young gentleman's amusement, and his
health, as he had had an illness which has left him still thin, and a
little weak. From what place he had come, or to what place they were
bound, she would not say. Her own name she told me, when I had asked
twice over, but the young gentleman's name she would not give, nor
would she even say the country of his birth. It was when I brought up
this subject that the--the----"

"The flabbergasting began?"

"Precisely, Monsieur. She abused me for my curiosity, and, oh,
Monsieur, the words she used! The profanities! And at the same time
her face as mild as a pigeon's! She taunted me with being a
Protestant, as if it were a black crime which bred others. Her name,
if you would believe it, is Innocentina Palumbo--_Innocentina!_ But
her tongue! Monsieur, I listened as if I had been turned to stone.
And it was at this time that the young gentleman, of whom she had told
me, came out of the inn. He wished to walk, but Innocentina said that
he was already too tired, and before he knew what was happening, she
had him in the saddle on his _âne_. So they went off, and where they
will pass the night, their saints alone know, for it is all but
certain that they will never get such animals as those even as far as
the Cantine de Proz."

"They were going in our direction, then?" I said. "We shall pass them
on the way presently."

"I do not doubt it, Monsieur, though they had half an hour's start."

"Were the boy and the donkey-woman alone? No tutor with them?"

"Tutor, Monsieur? The poor young gentleman has a tutor and a duenna in
Innocentina. I wish him joy of her."

"I wish her joy of him," said I, remembering my wrongs. But soon I
forgot them and all other troubles past and present, in surrendering
my spirit to the glory of the scene. Joseph had his triumph, for the
surprise he had kept up his sleeve was out at last. St. Bernard had me
at his feet, and held me there. The wild and gloomy splendour of the
Pass struck at my heart, and fired my imagination. Even the Simplon
had nothing like this to give. The Simplon at its finest sang a pæan
to civilisation; it glorified the science of engineering, and told you
that it was a triumph of modernity. But this strange, unkempt Pass,
with its inadequate road,--now overhanging a sheer precipice, now
dipping down steeply towards the wild bed of its sombre river,--this
Great St. Bernard, seemed a secret way back into other centuries,
savage and remote. I felt shame that I had patronised it earlier, with
condescending admiration of some prettinesses. No wonder that Joseph
had smiled and held his peace, knowing what was to come. There was the
old road, the Roman road, along which Napoleon had led his staggering
thousands. There were his forts, scarcely yet crumbled into ruin. I
saw the army, a straggling procession of haggard ghosts, following
always, and falling as they followed, enacting again for me the
passing scene of death and anguish. I was one of the men. I struggled
on, because Napoleon needed all his soldiers. Then weakness crushed
me, like a weight of iron. A mist before my eyes shut out the opposite
precipice with its sparse pines, and flashing waterfalls, the mountain
heights beyond, and the merciless blue sky. This was death. Who cared?
The echo of thirty thousand feet was in my ears as they passed on,
leaving me to die by the roadside, as I had left others before.

I started, and waked from my dream. It was a joyful shock to see
Joseph beside me, in the homely clothes which had replaced his "Sunday
best"; to see Finois and his pack full of my friendly belongings. But
I clung to the comfortable present for a few moments only. The spell
of dead centuries had me in its grip. Farther and farther back into
the land of dead days, I journeyed with St. Bernard, and helped him
found the monastery which the eyes of my flesh had not yet seen. The
eyes of my spirit saw the place, the nerves of my spirit felt the
chill of its remoteness. And even when I waked again, I could not be
sure that I was Montagu Lane, an idle young man of the twentieth
century, who had come for the gratification of a whim to this
fastness where greater men had ventured in peril and self-sacrifice.

Imagination is the one possession having which no man can be poor, or
mean, or insignificant. He can walk with kings, and he can see the
high places of the world with seeing eyes, a gift which no money can
give; and yet he will have to suffer as those without imagination
never can suffer or picture others suffering.

I told myself this, somewhat grandiloquently, and with
self-gratulation, as I rubbed shoulders with certain of the world's
heroes who had passed along this way; and there was physical relief
after a strain, when the precipitous valley widened into billowy
pastures lying green at the rugged feet of mountains. Can any sound be
more soothing than the tinkle of cow-bells in a mountain pass, as
twilight falls softly, like the wings of a brooding bird? It is to the
ear what a cool draught of spring water is to thirsty lips. There are
verses of poetry in it, only to be reset and rearranged, like pearls
fallen from their string; there is a perfume of primroses in it; there
is the colour of early dawn, or of fading sunset, when a young moon is
rising, curved and white as a baby's arm; there is also the same voice
that speaks from the brook or the river running over rocks.

Suddenly we were in the midst of a great herd of cows, which blew out
volumes of clover breath upon us, in mild surprise at our existence.
They rubbed against us, or ambled away, lowing to each other, and I
was surprised to find that, instead of each neck being provided with a
bell, as I had fancied from the multitudinous tinklings, one cow only
was thus ornamented.

"How was the selection made?" I asked Joseph. "Did they choose the
most popular cow, a sort of stable-yard belle, voted by her companions
a fit leader of her set; or was the choice guided by chance?" Joseph
could not tell me, and I suppose that I shall never know.

The big, lumbering forms crowded so closely round us in the twilight
shadows, that now and then, to force a passage, Joseph was obliged to
pull a slowly whisking tail, resembling almost exactly an
old-fashioned bell-rope. Presently we had made our way past the herd,
which was shut from our sight by the curtain of evening, though up on
the mountain-tops it was still golden day.

"There," said Joseph, pointing, "is the Cantine de Proz."

[Illustration]




CHAPTER X

The Scraping of Acquaintance

    "You shall be treated to . . . ironical smiles and mockings."
                                              --WALT WHITMAN.

     "Up the hillside yonder, through the morning."
                                 --ROBERT BROWNING.


I saw, standing desolate in the basin of mountains, an old house of
grey stone, very square, very plain, very resolute and staunch of
physiognomy. The windows were still unlighted, and it looked a gloomy
home for months of winter cold and snow. Suddenly, as we approached,
rather wearily now, a yellow gleam flashed out in an upper window.

"That is the spare room for strangers," said Joseph, and I thought
that there was a note of anxiety in his voice.

"Perhaps someone has arrived before us," I remarked. "I hadn't thought
of that, as you said so few people ever stopped at the Cantine over
night."

"Had you noticed, Monsieur, that after all we never passed the party
with the donkeys?" asked my muleteer.

"I had forgotten them."

"I had not, but it was Monsieur's pleasure to go slowly; to stop for
the views, to look at the ruined torts, and to trace the old road. We
gave them time to get far ahead. I was always watching, but never saw
them. The _ânes_ had more endurance than I thought, and as for that
Innocentina, she is a daughter of Satan; she would know no fatigue."

"It would be like that little brat to gobble up the one spare room of
the Cantine as he did the one chicken of the 'Déjeûner,'" I muttered.
"But we shall see what we shall see."

We went on more rapidly, and soon arrived at the bottom of a steep
flight of stone steps which led up to the door of the Cantine. A man
came forward to greet us--a fine fellow, with the frank and lofty
bearing of one whose life is passed in high altitudes.

"Can we have supper and accommodation for the night at your house?" I
asked.

"Supper, most certainly, and with pleasure," came the courteous
answer, "though we have only plain fare to offer. But the one spare
room we have for our occasional guests, has just been taken by a young
English or American gentleman. The woman who drives the two donkeys
with which they travel, will have a bed in the room of my sister, and
we could find sleeping place of a sort for your muleteer; but I fear
we have no way of making Monsieur comfortable."

I was filled with rage against the wretch who had robbed me of a
decent meal, and would now filch from me a night's rest.

"We have walked a long way," I said, "and are tired. We might have
stopped at St. Pierre, but preferred to come on to you. It is now too
dark to go back, or go on. Surely there are two beds in your spare
room, and as you keep an inn, and pretend to give bed and board to
travellers, you are bound to arrange for my accommodation."

"The young monsieur pays for the two beds in the spare room, in order
to secure the whole for himself alone," replied the landlord. "Not
expecting any other guests, we agreed to this; but the youth is
perhaps a countryman of yours, and rather than you should go further,
or spend a night of discomfort, he will probably consent to let you
share the room."

"He shall consent, or I will know the reason why," I said to myself
fiercely; but aloud I merely answered that I would be glad of a few
minutes' conversation with the young gentleman.

My host led me to the house door, introduced me to a handsome sister,
who was my hostess, explained to her the situation, with the view of
it we had arrived at, and descended to show Joseph where to shelter
Finois.

My landlady said that she would put the case to the occupant of the
spare room, who was already in his new quarters, preparing for supper,
but I persuaded her that it would be well for me to be on the spot,
and add my arguments to hers. We went upstairs, and in a dark passage
plunged suddenly into a pool of yellow light, gushing from a half-open
door. I hurried forward, step for step with my guide, lest the door
should be shut in my face before I could reach it. Over my hostess'
shoulder, I saw a bare but neat interior; a "coffin" bed, a
white-washed wall, and an uncarpeted floor, Mademoiselle Innocentina
Palumbo sitting upon it, tailor-fashion, engaged in excavating a
large, dark object from a _rücksack_. In front of her stood the Brat,
deeply interested in the operation, his curly head bent, his childish
little hands on his hips.

He was talking and laughing gaily; but at the sound of footsteps in
the passage he glanced up, and, seeing me, stared in haughty
surprise, which tipped the scales towards anger.

"Here is a monsieur who is belated on the Pass, and begs" (this was
hardly the way in which I would have put it) "that he may be allowed
to share your room," explained our landlady.

"_Share my room!_" repeated the Brat, so dumfounded at the simple
statement that he spoke in English. Now I knew that he was a
countryman, not of mine, but of Molly's, and I wished that she were
here to deal with him. "I have never heard anything so--so
ridiculous."

"Really," said I, assuming an air I had found successful with freshers
in good old days of under-grad-dom (Molly called it my "belted hearl"
manner), "really, I fail to see anything ridiculous in the proposal.
This is an inn, which professes to accommodate travellers. I have a
right to insist upon a bed."

To my intense irritation Innocentina giggled. The Brat did not laugh,
but he grew rosy, like a girl. Even his little ears turned pink, under
his absurd mop of chestnut curls. "You have no right to insist upon
mine," retorted he, in the honey-sweet contralto which tried in vain
to make of a pert imp, an angel.

"You cannot sleep in two," said I.

"That is my affair, since I have agreed to pay for them."

"I contend that you cannot pay for both, since one is legally mine, by
the laws protecting travellers," I argued truculently, hoping to
frighten the rude child, though I should have been sore put to it to
prove my point.

"I have always heard that possession is nine points of the law," said
he, impudent and apparently unintimidated. "This is my room, every
hole and corner of it, and if you try to intrude, I shall simply sit
up and yell all night, and throw things, so that you will not get an
instant's sleep. I swear it."

Then I lost my temper. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," I
exclaimed. "I wonder where you were brought up?"

"Where big boys never bully little ones."

"Of all the selfish, impertinent brats!" I could not help muttering.

"If I'm a brat, you're a brute, sir. You have only to glance at the
dictionary to see which is worse."

He looked so impish, defying me, like a miniature Ajax, that with all
the will in the world to box his ears, I burst out laughing.

Checking my mirth as soon as I could, however, I covered its
inappropriateness with a steely frown. "I do not need to glance at the
dictionary to see that you would be a detestable room-mate," said I,
"and on second thoughts I prefer to sleep quietly in the stable rather
than press my claim here." With this, I turned on my heel, not giving
the enemy time for another volley, and stalked downstairs, followed, I
regret to say, by Innocentina's ribald laughter.

Almost immediately I was rejoined by the handsome landlady, who,
profuse in her regrets, though she had understood no word of what had
passed, attempted to console me with the promise of a bed in the
_salle-à-manger_. Meanwhile, if I desired to wash, her brother would
superintend my ablutions.

Over those rites (which were duly performed at a pump, while the
little wretch upstairs wallowed in the luxury of a basin almost as
large as my hat), I draw a veil. By the time that they were finished,
and I was shining with yellow kitchen soap, having been unable to make
use of my own in the circumstances, supper was ready. I walked sulkily
into the room, which later would be transformed into my bedchamber,
and to my annoyance saw the Brat already seated at the table. I had
fancied that his conscience would counsel supping privately in the
room he had usurped, but this imp seemed to have been born without a
sense of shame. Thanks to him, I had not even been able to give myself
a clean collar, as it had not been possible to open the mule-pack and
improvise a dressing-room in the neighbourhood of the pump. But
he--he, the usurper, he, the guilty one--had changed from his
low-necked shirt and blue serge jacket and knickers into a kind of
evening costume, original, I should say, to himself, or copied from
some stage child, or Christmas Annual.

He did not speak to me, nor I to him, though, as I sat down in the
chair placed for me at the opposite end of the table, I caught a
sapphire gleam from the brilliant eyes, which burned so vividly in the
little brown face.

There came an omelette. It was passed to me. Maliciously, I selected
the best bit from the middle. The boy took what was left. Veal
followed, in the form of cutlets, two in number. A glance showed me
that one was mostly composed of bone and gristle. I helped myself to
the other. Revenge was mine at last, though to enjoy it fully I must
have a peep at the enemy, to make sure that he felt and understood his
righteous punishment.

But life is crowded with disappointments. The foe was looking
incredibly small, and young, and meek, a puny thing for a man to
wreak his vengeance on. With long lashes cast down, making a deep
shadow on his thin cheeks, he sat wrestling with his portion, from
which the cleverest manipulation of knife and fork was powerless to
extract an inch of nourishment. As he gave up the struggle at last,
with unmoved countenance, and not even a sigh of complaint, my heart
failed me. I felt that I had snatched bread from the mouth of starving
infanthood. Had not Joseph learned from Innocentina that the boy had
lately recovered from a severe illness? Unspeakable brat that he was,
and small favour that he deserved at my hands, I resolved that he
should have the best of the next dish when it came round.

This good intention, however, went to supply another stone in that
place which seems ever in need of repaving. Cheese succeeded the veal,
a well-meaning but somewhat overpowering cheese, and neither the Brat
nor I encouraged it. It was borne away, intact, and after a short
delay appeared a dish of plums, with another of small and attractive
cakes, evidently imported from a town.

I saw the boy's eye brighten as it fell upon the cakes. He glanced
from them to me, as I was offered my choice, and said hastily: "There
is one cake there which I want very much. I suppose if I tell you
which it is, you will eat it."

"There is also only one which I care for," said I. "I wonder if it's
the same?"

"Probably," said the boy. "If you take it, there isn't another which I
would be found dead with in my mouth, on a desert island. And I
haven't had much dinner."

"_I_ had to wash under the pump," said I. "Still, greatness lies in
magnanimity. You shall choose your cake first; but remember, you
cannot have it, and eat it, too; so make up your mind quickly which is
better."

"I always thought that a stupid saying," remarked the Brat, as he
helped himself to a ginger-nut with pink icing. "I have my cake, and
when I have eaten it, I take another."

"Your experience in life has been fortunate," I replied, contenting
myself with the second-best cake. "But it has not been long. When you
are a man----"

"A man! I would rather die--young than grow up to be one."

"Indeed?" I exclaimed, surprised at this outburst.

"I hate men."

"Ah, perhaps then, your experience has not been as fortunate in men as
in cakes."

"No, it hasn't. It has been just the opposite."

"One would say, 'Thereby hangs a tale.'"

"There does. But it is not for strangers."

"I'm not a lover of after-dinner stories. Here comes the coffee.
Luckily, there's plenty for us both. Will you have a cigarette?"

"No, thanks."

"A cigar, then?"

"I don't smoke."

"Ah, some boys' heads _won't_ stand it. I'm ashamed to say that I
smoked at fourteen. But perhaps you're not yet----"

"I will change my mind and have a cigarette, since you are so
obliging."

"Sure you won't regret it?"

"Quite sure, thank you."

"They're rather strong."

"I'm not afraid."

He took a cigarette from my case, and smoked it daintily. Whether it
were my imagination, or whether a slight pallor did really become
visible under the sun-tan on the velvet-smooth face, I am not certain:
but at all events he rose when nothing was left between his fingers
save an ash clinging to a bit of gold paper, and excused himself with
belated politeness.

Not long after, my bed was made up on the floor, and I slept as I
fancy few kings sleep.

Strange; not then, or ever, did I dream of Helen.

       *       *       *       *       *

The voice of Finois or some near relative of his roused me at dawn. I
remembered where I was, whither bound, and sleep instantly seemed
irrelevant. I scrambled up from my lonely couch, went to the open
window, which was a square of grey-green light, and looked out at the
mountain walls of the valley basin.

The day was not awake yet, but only half conscious that it must awake.
There was the faint thrill of mystery which comes with earliest dawn,
as though it were for you alone of all the world, and no one else
could find his way down its dim labyrinths. But even as I looked,
there came a movement near the house, and I saw the stalwart figure of
the landlord shape itself from the shadows. Other forms were stirring
too, the stolid forms of cows, and those of two sturdy little ponies,
which were being turned into a pasture.

It occurred to me that I could not do better than get through my
toilet, and, if Joseph and Finois were of the same mind, make an early
start. I thought that if I could reach the Hospice before all the
gold of sunrise had boiled over night's brim, I should have a picture
to frame in memory.

At bedtime they had given me a wooden tub such as laundresses use, and
filled it for my morning bath. I had my own soap, and a great, clean,
coarse dish-towel of crash or some such material. Never before was
there a bath like it, with the good smell of pinewood of which the tub
was made, and the tingle of the water from a mountain spring. I
revelled in it, and as I dressed could have sung for pure joy of life,
until I remembered that I was a jilted man, and this tour a voyage of
consolation.

"You are miserable, you know." I informed my reflection in a small,
strange-coloured glass, which allowed me to shave my face in greenish
sections. "It is a kind of madness, this spurious gaiety of yours."

In half an hour I was out of the house, and found Joseph feeding
Finois. They were both prepared to leave at ten minutes' notice, and
when the two human creatures of the party had been refreshed with
crusty bread and steaming coffee, the procession of three set forth.
As for the boy, the donkeys and their guardian, as far as I knew they
were still sleeping the sleep of the unjust.

If the Pass had been glorious in open day, and by falling twilight, it
was doubly wonderful in this mystic dawn-time before the lamp of the
rising sun had lit the valley. The green alps where the cattle pasture
were faintly musical, far and near, with the ringing of unseen bells,
and the air was vibrant with the rush and whisper of waters. As the
shadows melted in the crucible of dawn, and an opaline high trembled
on the dark mountain-tops that towered round us, I saw marvels which
either had not existed last night, or I had been dull clod enough to
miss them.

Fairy wild-flowers such as I had never seen studded the rocks with
jewels of blue and gold, and rose, and little silver stars; and there
were some wonderful, shining things of creamy grey plush, suggesting
glorified thistles.

We walked through the Valley of Death, where many of Napoleon's men
had perished; and the first rays of sunrise touched the tragic rocks
with the gold of hope. Up, up beyond the alps and the sparse
pine-trees we climbed, until we came to the snowline, and passed
beyond the first white ledge, carved in marble by the cold hand of a
departed winter. Down through a gap in the mountains streamed an icy
blast, and I had to remind myself, shivering, that this was August,
not December. The wind tore apart the fabric of lacy cloud which had
been looped in folds across the rock-face, like a veil hiding the worn
features of some aged nun, and showed jagged mountain peaks, towering
against a sky of mother-o'-pearl. Suddenly, after a steep ascent, we
saw before us a tall, lonely mass of grey stone, built upon the rock.
Behind it the sun had risen, and fired to burnished gold the still
lake which mirrored the Hospice and its dark wall of mountains, seamed
with snow.

The impression of high purity, of peace won through privation, and of
nearness to Heaven itself, was so strong upon me, that I seemed to
hear a voice speaking a benediction.




CHAPTER XI

A Shadow of Night

    "This villain, . . . He dares--I know not half he dares--
     But remove him--quick!"
                                       --ROBERT BROWNING.


So early was it still, I feared we had come before the brotherhood
were astir to receive visitors; but as I looked up at the great, grey,
silent building, the noble head of a magnificent St. Bernard dog
appeared in the doorway, at the top of steep stone steps. There could
not have been a more appropriate welcome to this remote dwelling of a
devoted band; and when the dog, after gazing gravely at the newcomers,
vanished into darkness, I knew that he had gone in to tell of our
arrival. I was right, too, for once within, he uttered a deep
bell-note, more sonorous and more musical than lies in the throats of
common dogs, and was answered by a distant baying. One could not say
that these majestic animals "barked." There was as indisputable a
difference between an ordinary bark, and the sound they made, as
between the barrel instrument played in the streets, and a grand
cathedral organ.

Joseph had visited the Hospice many times, and knew the etiquette for
strangers. He bade me go in, and ring the bell at the _grille_, unless
I should meet one of the monks before reaching it. I mounted the
steps, entered the wide doorway which had framed the dog's head, and
found myself in a vast, dusky corridor, resonant with strange
echoings, and mysterious with flitting shadows, which might be ghosts
of the past, or live beings of the present. As my eyes grew accustomed
to the gloom, I saw that there were numerous persons in this great
hall: tall monks in flowing robes of black, beggars come to solicit
alms or breakfast; and dogs, many dogs, who crowded round me, with a
waving of huge tails, and a gleaming of brown jewelled eyes in the
dusk. I did not need to ring the bell of the iron gate beyond which,
according to Joseph, no woman has ever passed. One of the monks came
to me--a tall, spare young man with a grave face, soft in expression,
yet hardened in outline by a rigorous life and exposure to extreme
cold. He gave me welcome in French, with here and there an
interpellation of "Down, Turk," "Be quiet, Jupiter!" Would I like
breakfast, he asked; and then--yes, certainly--to see the chapel, the
_bibliothèque_, the monastery museum, and the Alpine garden? There
would be plenty of time for this, and still to reach Aosta. Another
monk was called, and an introduction effected. I was taken into a
handsomely decorated refectory, where I opened my eyes in some
astonishment at sight of the Imp, drinking coffee from a shallow bowl
nearly as big as his childish head. Innocentina was no doubt at this
moment shocking Joseph by some new depravity, in the _salle-à-manger_
where humbler folk were entertained with the same hospitality as their
(so called) betters.

The Brat set down his bowl, and saw me, as I subsided into a chair on
the opposite side of the long, narrow table. His face flushed, and the
brilliant blue eyes clouded, but he deigned to acknowledge our
acquaintance with a slight bow.

[Illustration: "DOWN, TURK!" "BE QUIET, JUPITER!"]

"I didn't suppose you would have started yet," said I.

"I thought the same thing about you," he retorted. "We got off very
quietly from the Cantine----"

"Ah, you wished to steal a march on me," I broke in, "But really, my
young friend, you need not have feared that I should impose myself
upon you as a travelling companion. My one object in making this
excursion is, if not to enjoy my own society, at any rate to
experiment with it, therefore----"

"I have _two_ objects in making mine," the boy interrupted. "One is to
avoid men; the other is to find materials for writing a book, with no
men in it--only places."

"It will not be owing to me, if you fail in the former," said I. "As
for the latter, naturally it will depend upon yourself. What shall you
call it--'A Chiel takkin' Notes' or 'In Search of the Grail'?"

He blushed vividly. "I haven't decided on the name yet, but it can't
matter to you, as I do not expect you to buy the book when it comes
out; nor need you be afraid that you will figure in the pages. If I
were to call my book 'In Search of--anything,' it would be, 'In Search
of Peace.'"

With this, the strange child rose from the table, and bowing,
departed, leaving me lost in wonder at him. He was but an infant, and
an impertinent infant at that; yet suddenly I had had a glimpse
through the great sea-blue eyes, of a soul, weary after some tragic
experience. At least this was the impression which flashed into my
mind, with the one look I surprised before lashes hid its secret; but
in a moment I was laughing at myself. Ridiculous to have such a
thought in connection with a slip of a boy, seventeen at most! I
lingered over my breakfast, so that the Brat have finished his
sightseeing and got away, before my tour of the Hospice began.

He and I had had the table to ourselves at first, but I sat so long
that others came in, evidently persons who had spent the night at the
monastery. There was a Russian family, of so many daughters that I
wondered their parents had found names for them all; a couple of
German women in plaid blouses so terrible that they set me
speculating. Had the material been chosen by their husbands, with the
view of alienating all masculine admiration, as a Japanese girl, when
married, blackens her teeth? Or had the ladies inflicted the frightful
things upon themselves, by way of penance for some grievous sin? I
should have liked to ask, especially as one of the wearers was very
pretty, with a large, madonna loveliness. But under my dreaming eyes,
she began eating honey with her knife, and I sprang from the table
hastily. As I paused, I heard two stolid Cockneys asking each other
why the--dickens they had come to this "beastly, cold, God-forsaken
hole, with nothing but a lot of ugly mountains to see. There was
better sport in Oxford Street." I should not have considered it murder
if I had killed them where they sat, but I refrained, rather than soil
my hands. And after all, if a primrose on a river's brim, but a yellow
primrose was to them, what did it matter to me?

I visited the _bibliothèque_, which was haunted by a fragrance
intoxicating to booklovers, of dead centuries, leather bindings, and
parchment. I saw the piano given by the King when he was Prince of
Wales; the fine collection of coins and early Roman remains found in
the neighbourhood of the monastery; I dropped a louis into the box of
offerings in the chapel, and then was taken by a mild-eyed,
frail-looking monk to see some of the rooms allotted to guests at the
Hospice. Seeing them, I was inclined to wish that I had pushed on
through the darkness last night, and reached this mountain-top to
sleep. I liked the wainscoted walls, the white, canopied beds, but
most of all, I liked the deep-set windows with their view of the
silent lake, asleep in the bosom of the mountains, and dreaming of the
sky. On most of the walls were votive offerings in the shape of
pictures, sent to the monks by grateful visitors in far-off countries.
One was an engraving which had adorned the nursery in my youth, and
had been a never-failing source of curiosity to me. It was Gustave
Doré's "Christian Martyrs," and I had once been deprived of pudding at
the nursery dinner, because I had remarked (with irreverence wholly
unintentional) that one of the lions seemed ill, and anxious to "climb
up the wall and get away from the nasty martyrs." Thus it is that
children are misunderstood by their elders! and now, as I gazed at the
same picture on the monastery wall, I felt again all the old, impotent
rebellion against injustice and misplaced power.

Later, I wandered through the pathetically interesting Alpine garden,
carefully kept by the monks; and then, sure that by this time the Brat
and his cavalcade must be far on their way, I started, with Joseph and
Finois, to stroll down the Pass towards Aosta.

I had promised Jack and Molly to tell them in my letters, whether it
would be possible for them, with a motor, to go by some of the routes
which I chose. Over the St. Bernard from Martigny to the Hospice they
could not have ventur

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