The Princess Passes Part 11

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 mult.i.tudinous 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 pa.s.sage, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER X

The Sc.r.a.ping 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 pa.s.sed 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 _anes_ 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 'Dejeuner,'" 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 pa.s.sed in high alt.i.tudes.

"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 pa.s.sage 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 _rucksack_. 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 pa.s.sage 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 Pa.s.s, 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, a.s.suming 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 pa.s.sed, attempted to console me with the promise of a bed in the _salle-a-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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.