The Princess Passes Part 9

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 Pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 t.i.tle 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No t.i.tle]

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 pa.s.sed 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 shuttlec.o.c.k, 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 Pa.s.s 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 Orsieres; 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 Pa.s.s--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 gla.s.s 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 Dejeuner de Napoleon,' 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 _dejeuner_ which Napoleon took there on his march with his army of 30,000 across the Pa.s.s 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 Napoleon 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 Pa.s.s 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 Pa.s.s 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 'Dejeuner de Napoleon,'" 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."