"Why, Monsieur, it was this way. There was not much sleep for me last night, if you will pardon my liberty in mentioning such matters, because of the little animal which bites and jumps away. I know not what you call him in your language, though I think he is known in all lands. Besides, the beasts were noisy in the stable underneath the room where I lay with the men. About half-past four the others got up, but I lay still, as it was well with my animals, and there was no hurry. But a little more than an hour later, they called me from below, laughing, and saying there was a lady to see me. I had not undressed, Monsieur, for many reasons, and now I was glad, for I knew who it must be, though not why she should be there, and so early too.
I could not bear that she should be alone with these rough fellows, and in two minutes I had tumbled down the ladder.
"I had not been mistaken, Monsieur. It was Innocentina. She said her master had sent her down to fetch the _anes_, as he was obliged by certain circ.u.mstances to start on in advance of my master. I did not ask her any questions, but I helped her get ready the donkeys, and I would have walked up with her to the hotel, had she permitted it. If I did so, she said, the cattle men would talk; so I stayed behind."
"Well, I suppose we shall overtake them," I replied, hiding surprise, as I did not care to let Joseph see that I had been left in the dark concerning this strange change of programme. My mind groped for an explanation of the mystery, and then suddenly seized upon one. The Boy, who had evidently met his two compatriots in other days and another land, disliked and wished to shun them. He had feared that they might be our companions down to Chambery, and had taken drastic measures to avoid their society. Rather than get me up early, for his convenience, after a day of some hardship and fatigue, the plucky little chap had gone off without us. Possibly I should find that he had left a note for me, with some waiter or _femme de chambre_. If not, our route down to Chambery and the hotel at which we were to stay there, had already been decided upon. He would have said to himself that there could be no mistake, and that he might trust me to find him at our destination.
The Americans were not at breakfast, but later, as Joseph, Finois, and I were starting, I saw them standing at a distance in the corridor.
The porter, who had brought down the miserable hold-alls, and was waiting for his tip, murmured that "_ces messieurs_" were not going to make the walking expedition to Chambery; the landlord had advised them that the weather was too bad, and they had decided to return by the noon train to Aix-les-Bains.
I felt that I owed the young men a grudge for the Boy"s defection; and as there had been no note or message from him, I was not in a forgiving mood. Without a second glance towards the pair, I walked away with Joseph--alone with him for the first time in many a day.
CHAPTER XXVI
The Vanishing of the Prince
"Now to my word: It is, _Adieu, adieu! remember me_."
--SHAKESPEARE.
As we dipped down below the summit of the mountain, we stepped from under the snow-fog, as if it had been a great white, hanging nightcap.
The air smelled like early winter, and was vibrant with the melody of cowbells. On snow-covered eminences near and far, dark, sentinel larches watched us, weeping slow tears from every naked spine. So high had they climbed, so acclimatised to the mountains did these soldier-trees seem, that I named them for myself the Cha.s.seurs Alpins of the forest.
"We shall have fine weather to-morrow," said Joseph, as we left the snow and came to what he called the "_terre gra.s.se_," which was greasy and slippery under foot. "See, Monsieur, a worm; he comes up out of his hole, and the earth clings to him as he walks abroad. If he were clean, that would be a sign of another bad day to follow."
"At least we are going down to summer again," I replied; "also to the young Monsieur; and to Innocentina. But perhaps you are glad of a rest from her sharp tongue."
Joseph shrugged his shoulders. "I am used to it now, Monsieur," said he; and I turned away my face to hide a smile. I knew that he missed the girl, and I was still more keenly aware that I missed a comrade.
My fleeting impressions were hardly worth catching and taming, without him to help cage them; without his vivid mind to help colour the thoughts, which mine only sketched in black and white, it was easier to leave the canvas blank.
We had decided last night that it would not be wise to attempt the journey by way of the Dent du Nivolets, as it was on a higher level than the summit of Mont Revard, and we should risk being again extinguished under a nightcap of snow. We descended, therefore, by the simpler and shorter route, but it was full of interest for the strangeness of the landscape, and the buildings which we reached on lower planes.
The houses were no longer characteristically French, but a b.a.s.t.a.r.d Swiss. The heavy, overhanging roofs were thatched, and of enormous thickness; the walls of grey stone, with roughly carved, skeleton balconies. The peasants no longer smiled at us in good-natured curiosity, but regarded us dourly, though they were gravely civil if we had questions to ask.
Although I gave Joseph no instructions, and he made no suggestions, by common consent we hastened on as if a prize were to be bestowed for our good speed, at the end of the journey. On other days we had sauntered, allowing the animals to s.n.a.t.c.h delicious _hors d"oeuvres_ from the bushes as they pa.s.sed, but to-day Finois was in the depths of gloom. There was no grey Souris, no spectacled f.a.n.n.y-anny to cheer him on the way, and if he reached out a wistful mouth towards a branch, he was hurried past it. How would we feel, I asked myself, if, with the inner man clamouring, we were driven remorselessly along a road decked on either side with exquisitely appointed tables, set out with all our favourite dishes, to be had for nothing--never once allowed to stop for a crumb of _pate de foie gras_, or a bit of chicken in aspic?
Yet asking myself this, I had no mercy on Finois.
We stopped for lunch at a queer auberge, in an abortive village appropriately named Les Deserts, where the highroad for Chambery began. An outer room roughly flagged with stone, was kitchen, nursery, and family living-room in one. It swarmed with children, and was presided over by two of Macbeth"s witches, who were not separated from their cauldrons. I took them to be rival mothers-in-law, and they could have taught Innocentina some choice new expressions valuable to test upon donkeys or other heretics; but they sent me a steaming bowl of excellent coffee, when I half expected poison; fried me a couple of eggs with crisp brown lace round the edges, and took for my benefit, from one of the shelves that lined the nursery wall, the newest of a hundred loaves of hard black bread.
I ventured to ask a down-trodden daughter-in-law of the Ladies of the Cauldrons, whether a very young gentleman, and an older but still all-young woman, with two donkeys, had stopped at the auberge some hours earlier.
The spiritless one shook her head. But no. The only other customers of the house thus far had been the postman and two soldiers. The party might have pa.s.sed. She and her parents were too busy to take note of what went on outside. A faint chill of desolation touched me. It would have been cheering to have news of the Boy and his cavalcade _en route_.
By three o"clock Chambery was well in sight, lying far below us as we wound down from mountain heights, and looking, from our point of view, in position something like an inferior Aosta. It basked in a great sun-swept plain, and away to the left a lateral valley, dimly blue, opened towards Modane and the Mont Cenis. Descending, we found the resemblance carried on by a few ancient chateaux and fortified farmhouses, and as we had now come upon a part of the road which Joseph knew, he pointed out to me, in the far distance, the little villa, Les Charmettes, where Rousseau and Madame de Warens kept house together. Again and again I thought we were on the point of arriving in the town, and had visions of exchanging adventures with the Boy at the Hotel de France; but always the place seemed to recede before our eyes, elusive as a mirage, alighting again five or six miles away; and this it did, not once, but several times, with singular skill and accuracy.
At last, however, after a tedious tramp along a monotonously level road, upon which we had plunged suddenly, we came into an old town, all grey, with the soft grey of storks" wings. The place had a mild dignity of its own--as befitted the ancient capital of Savoie--and might have lived, if necessary, on the romantic reputation of its ancient chateau, standing up high and majestic above a populous modern street. There was an air of almost courtly refinement that reminded me of the wide, sedate avenues of Versailles; and no doubt this effect was largely due to the fine statues and decorative grouping of the arcaded streets. One monument was so imposing and so unique, that I forgot for a moment my anxiety to find the Boy and hear his news. The huge pile held me captive, staring up at a miniature Nelson column, supported on the backs of four colossal elephants sculptured in grey granite of true elephant-colour. These benevolent mammoths, not content with the duty of bearing a tower of stone with a more than life-sized general balancing on top of it, generously spent their spare time in pouring volumes of water from wrinkled trunks into a huge basin. Joseph knew that the balancing general, De Boigne, had used a vast fortune made in the service of an Indian prince, to shower benefits on his native town, as his elephants showered water, and that it was in grat.i.tude to him that Chambery had raised the monument; but I was disappointed to learn that the elephants had no prototypes in real life. It would have satisfied my imagination to hear that the soldier of fortune had returned from the Orient to his birthplace, with the four original elephants following him like dogs, having refused to be left behind. But nothing is quite perfect in history, and one usually feels that one could have arranged the incidents more dramatically one"s self; indeed, some historians seem to have found the temptation irresistible.
Joseph promised other choice bits of interest in and near mountain-ringed Chambery; but I had small appet.i.te for sightseeing without the Boy, and after my brief reverence to the elephants, I hurried the muleteer and mule to the hotel.
At the door we were met by a porter, far too polite a person to betray the surprise which my companions Joseph and Finois invariably excited in civilisation. He helped to unfasten the pack, and as it disappeared into the vestibule, I was about to bid Joseph _au revoir_. But his face gave me pause. Like the key to a cipher, it told me all the secret workings of his mind.
"You might wait here before putting up Finois," I said, "until I enquire inside whether the young Monsieur and Innocentina have arrived safely. No doubt they have, as we did not catch them up on the road, and it would have been difficult to mistake the way. Still----"
"_Voila_, Monsieur!" exclaimed Joseph, his deep eyes brightening at something to be seen over my shoulder.
I turned, and there was meek, grey Souris leading the way for Innocentina and f.a.n.n.y, who were trailing slowly towards us down the street.
I was delighted to see them. Not until now had I realised how beautiful was Innocentina, how engaging the two little plush-coated donkeys. I loved all three.
"_Eh bien_, Innocentina!" I gaily cried. "How are you? How is your young Monsieur?"
"He was well when I saw him last," returned Innocentina. "He must be very far away by this time."
"Very far away?" I echoed her words blankly. "Yes, Monsieur. Here is a letter, which he told me to deliver to you without fail. I was not to leave Chambery until I had put it into your hand, myself. I was on my way to your hotel, to see if you had arrived. Now that I have seen you"--here a starry flash at Joseph--"I can begin my journey."
"Where, if I may ask?"
"Towards my home. Monsieur had better read his letter."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "VOILa, MONSIEUR!"]
I had taken the sealed envelope mechanically, without looking at it.
Now I fixed my eyes upon the address, which was written in a firm, original, and interesting hand, that impressed me as familiar, though I could not think where I had seen it. Certainly, so far as I could remember, in all my journeyings with him I had never happened to see the Boy"s handwriting. Yet Innocentina said this letter was from him.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I could do something more enlightening than stare at the envelope: I could open it. I did so, breaking a seal with the same monogram I had noticed on the gold fittings in the celebrated bag. Apparently the entwined letters were M.R.L.
"Forgive me, dear Man," were the first words I read, and they rang like a knell in my heart. Without going further I knew what was coming. I was to hear that I had lost the Boy.
"Dear Man, the Prince vanishes, not because he wishes it, but because he must. He can"t explain. But, though you may not understand now, believe this. He has been happier in these wanderings, since you and he were friends, than he ever was before. You have been more than good to the troublesome "Brat" who has upset all your arrangements and calculations so often. Perhaps you may never see the Boy any more.
Yet, who knows what may happen at Monte Carlo? Anyhow, whatever comes in the future, he will never forget, never cease to care for you; and of one thing besides he is sure. Never again will he like any other man as much as the One Man who deserves to begin with a capital.
"Good-bye, dear Man, and all good things be with you, wherever you may go, is the prayer of--Boy."
Perhaps never to see the Boy again! Why, I must be dreaming this. I should wake up soon, and everything would be as it had been. I had the sensation of having swallowed something very large and very cold, which would not melt. Reading the letter over for the second time made it no better, but rather worse. The Boy had become almost as important in my scheme of life as my lungs or my legs, and I did not quite see, at the moment, how it would be any more possible to get on without one than the other.
Behold, I was stricken down by mine own familiar friend; yet no wrath against him burned within me; there was only that cold lump of disappointment, which seemed to be increasing to the size of a small iceberg. Even lacking explanations, or attempt at them, I knew that he had told the truth without flattery. He had wanted to stay, yet he had gone. And he said that perhaps I might never see him again! If I could have had my choice last night, whether to have the Boy lopped off my life, or to lose a hand, the probabilities are that I would have sacrificed the hand. But I had been offered no choice.
I recalled our parting, and found new meaning in the words he had spoken at his door. There was no doubt about it; even then he had decided to break away from me.
I realised this, and at the same instant rebelled against the decision. I determined not to accept it. He had vanished because of the two Americans; exactly why, I could not even guess, but I was certain that the reason was not to his discredit. To theirs, perhaps, but not to his. Nevertheless, they were somehow to blame for my loss, and if the young men had appeared at this moment, I should have been impelled to do them a mischief.
The princ.i.p.al thing was, however, not to let them cheat me irrevocably of my comrade. I would not depend solely upon that hint about Monte Carlo. I would find out where he had gone, and I would follow. Let him be angry if he would. His anger, though a hot flame while it burned, never endured long.
"Did Monsieur leave here by rail?" I enquired of Innocentina.
She shrugged her shoulders. "That I cannot tell."