The Princess Passes Part 36

Though he had asked "what the men at the other end of the room were like," he showed no desire to verify for himself the description I had given. He kept his back religiously turned towards his countrymen, and did not throw a single glance their way as we left the salon with the landlord, though I saw that the two young Americans were interested in him.

We returned to the door at the end of the long corridor, where we had entered the hotel ten or fifteen minutes earlier, and found Joseph, Innocentina, and the animals still sheltering against the house wall.

The porter had already retailed the bad news, and the faithful muleteer had of his own accord volunteered to play the part which the Boy and I had a.s.signed him. Though he was tired, cold, and hungry, and had the prospect of a gloomy walk, with a night of discomfort to follow, he was far from being depressed; and I thought I knew what supported him in his hour of trial.

We saw him off, followed by a piteous trail of a.s.shood, and then, shivering once more, we re-entered the dim corridor. Innocentina, much subdued, was with us now, carrying the famous bag in its snow-powdered _rucksack_, while a porter went before with the rest of the luggage, taken from the tired backs of our beasts. We had reached the foot of the stairs, when we came so suddenly face to face with the two Americans that it almost seemed we had stumbled upon an ambush.

They stared very hard at the Boy, who did not give them a glance, though I was conscious of a stiffening of his muscles. He turned his head a little on one side, so that the shadow of the panama eclipsed his face from their point of view; but I could see that he had first grown scarlet, then white.

"By Jove, but it can't be possible!" I heard one of the men say as we pa.s.sed and began to ascend the stairs. The answer I did not hear; but Innocentina, who was close behind me, glared with unchristian malevolence at the young men, as if instinct whispered that they were concerning themselves unnecessarily about her master's business.

The Boy ran upstairs as lightly as if he had never known fatigue. The porter showed him his room; his luggage was taken in, and then he came out to me in the pa.s.sage.

"You told Joseph that he needn't come up very early to-morrow, didn't you?" he enquired.

"Yes, as we're pretty well f.a.gged, and Chambery isn't an all-day's journey, I thought we might take our time in the morning. That suits you, doesn't it?" (It was really of him that I had been thinking, but I did not say so.)

"Oh, yes," he answered absentmindedly, as if already his brain were busy with something else. "What time did you fix for starting? I didn't hear?"

"I said to Joseph that it would do if he were on hand at half-past ten. You can rest till nine o'clock."

"Thank you. And now, good night. You've been very kind to-day. Maybe I didn't seem grateful, but I was, all the same; very, very grateful."

"Nonsense!" said I. "If you're too tired to go down, shan't I have my dinner with you? We could have a table drawn up before the fire, and it would be quite jolly."

He shook his head, a great weariness in his eyes. "I'm too done up for society, even yours. I'd rather you went down. You will, won't you?"

"Certainly, if you won't have me. Rest well. I shall see that they send you up something decent."

"It doesn't matter. I'm not as hungry as I was, somehow. Good night, Man."

"Good night, Boy."

"Shake hands, will you?"

He pressed mine with all his little force, and shook it again and again, looking up in my face. Then he bade me "Good night" once more, abruptly, and retreated into his room.

I went to my quarters at the other end of the pa.s.sage, and was glad of the fire which had begun to roar fiercely in a small round stove, like a gnome with a pipe growing out of his head. I had a sponge, changed, and descended to the salon, only to learn that the eating arrangements were carried on in another building, at some distance from the hotel.

Feeling like a belated insect of summer overtaken by winter cold, I darted down the path indicated, to the restaurant, where I found the Americans, already seated at just such a long table as I had pictured, and still in their knickerbockers. There was, in the big room, a sprinkling of little tables under the closed windows, but they were not laid for a meal; and a chair being pulled out for me by a waiter, exactly opposite my two fellow-guests, I took it and sat down.

My first thought was to order something for the Little Pal, and to secure a promise that it should reach him hot, and soon. I then devoted myself to my own dinner, which would have been more enjoyable had I had the Boy's companionship. I had worked slowly through soup and fish, and arrived at the inevitable veal, when I was addressed by one of the Americans--him of the cleft chin and light curly hair, whose voice I had heard first in the salon.

"You came up by the mule path, didn't you?"

I answered civilly in the affirmative, aware that all my "points" were being noted by both men.

"Must have been a stiff journey in this weather."

"We came into the mist and snow just below the Col."

"Your friend is done up, isn't he?"

"Oh, he's a very plucky young chap," I replied, careful for the Boy's reputation as a pilgrim; "but he's a bit f.a.gged, and will be better off dining in his own room."

"I expect he'll be all right to-morrow. Are you going to try and get to Chambery, or will you return to Aix by train?"

"We shall push on, unless we're snowed in," I said.

"That's our plan, too. I dare say we shall be starting about the same time, and if so, if you don't mind, we might join forces."

"Now, what is this chap's game?" I asked myself. "He isn't drawing me out for nothing; and as these two are together they have no need of companionship. There's some special reason why they want to join us."

Taking this for granted, the one reason which occurred to me as probable, was a previous acquaintance with the Boy, which they wished to keep up, and he did not wish to acknowledge. I determined that he should not be thus entrapped, through me.

"That would be very pleasant, no doubt," I replied; "but you had better not wait for us. Our time of starting is uncertain."

Though I spoke with perfect civility, it must have been clear to them that I preferred not to have my party enlarged by strangers, and I rather regretted the necessity for this ungraciousness, as the men were gentlemen, and I usually got on excellently with Americans.

"Oh, very well," returned the handsomer of the two, looking slightly offended. "We shall meet on the way down, perhaps. By-the-by, if I'm not mistaken, your young friend is a compatriot of ours. He's American, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"I believe I've met him in New York, though it was so dark I couldn't be sure. Do you object to telling me his name?"

"I'm afraid I do object," I answered, stiffly this time. "You must satisfy yourself as to his ident.i.ty, if it interests you, when you see each other to-morrow."

Of all that remained of dinner, I can only say the words which Hamlet spoke in dying; for indeed, "the rest was silence."

Directly the meal was over, I hurried back to the hotel, like a rabbit to its warren; smoked a pipe before a roaring fire in my bedroom, and wondered if the Little Pal were wandering "down the uncompanioned way"

of dreamland. As for me, I never got as far as that land. I fell over a precipice without a bottom, before my head had found a nest in the soft pillow, and knew nothing more until suddenly I started awake with the impression that someone had called.

"What is it, Boy? Do you want me?" I heard myself asking sharply, as my eyes opened.

It seemed that I had not been asleep for ten minutes, but to my surprise an exquisite, rosy light filled the room. Well-nigh before I knew whether I were sleeping or waking, I was out of bed and at the window.

It was the light of sunrise, shining over a billowy white world, for the fog had been rent asunder, and through its torn, woolly folds, I caught an unforgettable glimpse of glory. The sky was a rippling lake of red-gold fire, whose reflection turned a hundred snow-clad mountain-crests to blazing helmets for t.i.tans. Above the majestic ranks rose their leader, towering head and shoulders over all. "Mont Blanc!" I had just time to say to myself in awed admiration, when the snow-fog was knit together again, only a jagged line of fading gold showing the st.i.tches.

n.o.body had called me; I knew that, now, yet I had an uneasy impression that someone wanted me somewhere, and that something was wrong. It was stupid to let this worry me, I told myself, however; and having lingered a few moments at the window studying the lovely pattern of frost-work lace on the gla.s.s, and the fringe of priceless pearls on branch of bush, and stunted tree, I went back to bed. There, I pulled my watch out from under my pillow, and looked at it. "Only six o'clock," I yawned. "Three good hours more of sleep. I wonder if the Boy----" Then I tumbled over another pleasant precipice.

When I waked again, it was almost nine, and nerving myself to the inevitable, I rang for a cold bath. The morning was bitterly chill, but the tingling water soon sent the blood racing through my veins, and by ten o'clock I was knocking at the Boy's door. No answer came, and thinking that he must already be down, I was on my way across the white, frozen gra.s.s to the restaurant, when I met the muleteer coming up with Finois.

"Hallo, Joseph!" I exclaimed in surprise. "Where are f.a.n.n.y and Souris?"

"Innocentina has taken them, Monsieur," he answered.

"What--they have started?"

"But yes, Monsieur, and very early."

"Tell me what happened," I prompted him.