The Princess Passes Part 17

"If I ever had any, I've forgotten them," said I. "Look here, Little Pal, shall we join forces as far as--as far as----"

"The turnstile," he finished my broken sentence.

"Where is the turnstile?"

"At the place--whatever it may be--where we get tired of each other.

Isn't that what you meant?"

"According to my present views, that place might be at the other end of the world. You must remember it was never I who tried to get away from you. At the Cantine de Proz, I----"

"Don't let's remember to that time. Then, I didn't know that you were--You. That makes all the difference. You looked as if you might be nice, but I've learned not to trust first impressions, especially of men--grown-up men. There are such lots of people one drifts across, who are not _real_ people at all, but just sh.e.l.ls, with little rattling nuts of dull, imitation ideas inside, taken from newspapers, or borrowed from their friends. Fancy what it would be to see glorious places with such a companion! It would drive me mad. I determined not to make aquaintances on this trip; but you--why, I feel now as if it would be almost insulting you to call you 'an acquaintance.' We are--oh, I'll take your word! We're 'pals,' and Something big that's over all meant us to be pals. I don't mind telling you, Man, that I should miss you, if we parted now."

"We won't part," I said quickly. "We'll jog along together. Have a cigarette? I'm going to smoke a pipe, because I feel contented."

Between puffs of that pipe (an instrument which I strongly but vainly recommended to the Boy) I told him of my night drive over the St.

Gothard. As it was his whim to consider names of no importance, I did not mention that of Jack and Molly Winston, but spoke of them merely as "my friends."

"Could we do the St. Bernard at night?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes, we could, if we saved ourselves by driving up from here to St.

Rhemy, after dejeuner, otherwise it would mean being on foot all day and all night too. We could send Joseph, Innocentina, and the animals on very early to-morrow morning, to the Hospice, where they might rest till evening. The good monks would give us a meal of some sort about six, and at seven we could leave the Hospice. There would be an interval of starry darkness, and then we should have the full moon."

"Splendid to see the Pa.s.s by moonlight, after knowing it by day, and sunset, and dawn! It would be like finding out wonderful new qualities in your friends, which you'd never guessed they had."

Thus the Boy; and a few moments later the details of our journey were arranged. Joseph and Innocentina were interrupted in the midst of ardent attempts to convert one another, to be told what was in store for them. They did not appear averse to the arrangement, for a slight pout of the young woman's hardly counted; there was no doubt that a journey _a deux_ would offer infinite opportunities for religious disputation.

As for the Little Pal and me, we carried out the first part of our programme to the letter. Two barrel-shaped nags instead of one took us to St. Rhemy, the little mountain village whose men are exempt from conscription, and called, poetically yet literally, "Soldiers of the Snow." Further up the jewelled way, our little victoria could not venture, and we trod the steep path side by side, the Boy stepping out bravely, the top of his panama on a level with my ear.

Some magnetic cord of communication between his brain and mine telegraphed back and forth, without personal intervention on either part, my keen enjoyment of the scene, and his. We did not talk much, but each knew what the other was feeling. Most people disappoint you by their lack of capacity to enjoy nature, in moments which are superlative to you--moments which alone would repay you for the whole trouble of living through blank years. But this boy's spirit responded to beauty, up to an extreme point which was highly satisfactory. I saw it in the exaltation on his little sunburned face.

Joseph and Innocentina were ostentatiously delighted to greet us at the Hospice. They and the animals had had their evening meal, and were ready to start when we wished. We went to the refectory and dined in company with many persons of many nationalities, who had just arrived from the Swiss and Italian valleys. Some of them manipulated their food strangely, as I had noticed here before; and Boy confided to me his opinion that it was a pity human beings were still obliged to eat with their mouths, like the lower animals. "It's a disgrace to one's face, which ought to be exclusively for better things. It's really too primitive, this penny-in-the-slot sort of arrangement. There ought to be a tiny trap-door in one's chest somewhere, so that one could just slip food in un.o.btrusively, at a meal, and go on talking and laughing as if nothing had happened."

We were not long in dining, but by the time we came out again into the biting cold, late afternoon had changed to early evening.

It was sunset. The great mountain shapes of glittering, red gold were clear as the profiles of G.o.ddesses, against a sky of rose. One--the grandest G.o.ddess of all--wore on her proud head a crown of snow which sparkled with diamond coruscations, rainbow-tinted in the pink light.

Below her golden forehead hovered a thin cloud-veil, of pale lilac; and we had gone a long way down the mountain before the ineffable colour burned to ashes-of-rose. Then darkness caught and engulfed us, in the Valley of Death. The rushing of the river in its ravine was like the voice of night, not a separate sound at all, for hearing it was to hear the silence.

By-and-bye we grew conscious of a faint, gradual revealing of the mountain-tops, which for a time had been black, jagged pieces cut out from the spangled fabric of a starry sky. A ripple of pearly light wavered over them, like the reflection of the unseen river mirrored for the Lady of Shalott.

It was a strange, living light, beating with a visible pulse, and it slowly grew until its white radiance had extinguished the individual lamps of the stars. Waterfalls flashed out of darkness, like white, laughing nymphs flinging off black masks and dominoes; silver goblets and diamond necklaces were flung into the river bed, and vanished forever with a mystic gleam.

"If there's a heaven, can there be anything in it better than this, Little Pal?" I asked.

"There can be G.o.d," he said. "I'm a pagan sometimes in the sun, but never on a night like this. Then one _knows_ things one isn't sure of at other times. Why, I suppose there isn't really a world at all! G.o.d is simply thinking of these things, and of us, so we and they seem to be. We are his thoughts; the mountains, and the river, and the wild-flowers are his thoughts. It's just as if an author writes a story. In the story, all the people and the things which concern them are real, but you close the volume and they simply don't exist. Only G.o.d doesn't close the volume, I think, until the next is ready."

"I wonder whether we'll both come into the next story?"

"Who knows? Perhaps you'll wander into one story, and I'll get lost in another."

A certain sadness fell upon me, born partly of our talk, partly of the poignant beauty of the night. We came to the Cantine de Proz, fast asleep in its lonely valley, and so we went on and on, our souls tuned to music and poetry by the song of the stars and the beauty of the night: But slowly a change stole over us. For a long time I was only dimly conscious of it, in a puzzled way, in myself. Why was it that my spirit stood no longer on the heights? Why did the moonlight look cold and metallic? Why had the rushing sound of the river got on my nerves, like the monotonous crying of a fretful child? Why did our frequent silences no longer tingle with a meaning which there was no need to express in words? Why was my brain empty of impressions as a squeezed sponge of water? Why, in fact, though everything was outwardly the same, why was all in reality different?

"Oh, Man, I'm so hungry!" sighed Boy.

"By Jove, that's what's been the matter with me this last half-hour, and I didn't know it!" said I.

"I feel as if I could form a hollow square, all by myself."

"I only wish there were something to form it round."

"But there isn't--except a few chocolate creams I bought in Aosta because I respected their old age, poor things."

"Perhaps even decrepid chocolates are better than nothing. Let's give 'em honourable burial--unless you want them all to yourself, as you did the chicken at the 'Dejeuner,' and the room at the Cantine de Proz."

"Oh, you _must_ have thought I was selfish! But truly, I don't think I am. It wasn't that. Only--I can't explain."

"You needn't," said I. "I was 'kidding'--a most appropriate treatment for a man of your size. What I want is food, not explanations."

The chocolates, which proved to be eighteen in number, were fairly divided, Boy refusing to accept more than his half. We each ate one with distaste, because the celebrated "Right Spot" was not to be pacified by unsuitable sacrifices; but presently it relented and demanded more. Appeased for the moment, the Spot allowed us to proceed, but incredibly soon it began again to clamour. We ate several more chocolates, though our gorge rose against them as a means of refreshment. Still Bourg St. Pierre, where we were sooner or later to sleep, was far away, and for the third time we were driven to chocolate. It was a loathsome business eating the remaining morsels of our supply, and we felt that the very name of the food would in future be abhorrent to us. The night had become unfriendly, the Pa.s.s a _Via Dolorosa_, and the last drop was poured into our cup of misery at Bourg St. Pierre.

We had wired from the Hospice for rooms, and expected to find the little "Dejeuner" cheerfully lighted, the plump landlady amusingly surprised to see the guests who had lately brought dissension into her house returning peaceably together. But the roadside inn was asleep like a comfortable white goose with its head under its wing. Not a gleam in any window, save the bleak glint of moonlight on gla.s.s.

Joseph and Innocentina were behind us with their charges, whose stored crusts of bread they had probably shared. I knocked at the doors No responsive sound from within. I pounded with my walking stick. A thin imp of echo mocked us, and, my worst pa.s.sions roused by this inhospitality falling on top of nine chocolate creams, I almost beat the door down.

Two sleepy eyelid-windows flew up, and a moment later a little servant who had served me the other afternoon, appeared at the door like a frightened rabbit at bay.

I demanded the wherefore of this reception; I demanded rooms and food and reparation. What, was I the monsieur who had telegraphed from the Hospice? But madame had answered that she had not a room in the house.

The carriage of a large party of very high n.o.bility had broken down late in the afternoon, and they were remaining for the night, until the damage could be repaired. What to do? But there was nothing, unless _les messieurs_ would sleep, one on the sofa, the other on the floor, in the room of the "dejeuner."

"I suppose we'll have to put up with that accommodation, then. What do you say, Boy?" I asked.

"I would rather go on," he replied, in a tone of misery tempered by desperate resignation, as if he had been giving orders for his own funeral.

"Go on where?" I enquired grimly.

"I don't know. Anywhere."

"'Anywhere' means in this instance the open road."

"Well--I'm not so _very_ cold, are you? And I'm sure they'll give us a little bread and cheese here."

"I think it would be wiser to stop," said I. "We might see the ghost of Napoleon eating the _dejeuner_. Isn't that an inducement?"

"Not enough."

"I a.s.sure you that I don't snore or howl in my sleep. And you could have the sofa to curl up on."

"Ye-es; but I'd rather go on. You and Joseph can stop. Innocentina and I will be all right."