The Princess Passes

The World without the Boy

Though I had given Molly eyes and ears during her long catechism, I had been vaguely aware, nevertheless, that on leaving the Hôtel de France we had crossed a bridge over the almost dry and pebbly bed of the insignificant Leysse; that we had passed the stately elephants, and a robust marble lady typifying France in the act of receiving on her breast a slender Savoie; that we had caught a last glimpse of the château, and were spinning along a well-kept road, cheek by jowl with the railway to Lyons.

From a high mountain on our left, the silver Cascade de Coux fell vertically, like a white horse's tail; and I smiled to see, as we flashed by, a little house which honoured a valiant foe against whom I had fought, with the name of the Café de Boers.

Up and up mounted our road, cresting green billows of rolling mountain land. We were running towards the boundary of Savoie, into Dauphiné, a country which I had never seen. The Boy and I had talked of entering it together and visiting its Seven Marvels, the very possession of which made it seem in our eyes alluringly mediæval. Had he been my companion still, we would have been travelling some hidden side-path, where doubtless Joseph and Innocentina, chaperoned by les animaux, were happily straying at this moment. I could almost hear the donkey-girl's mechanically constant, warning cry, "Fanny-anny, Fanny-anny! Souris-ouris!" like a low undertone of accompaniment to the thrum of the motor.

The fancied sound smote me with homesickness, and to coax my mind from the disappointment which still rankled, I asked Jack when he would let me try my hand at driving.

"Not here," said he with a smile, which was instantly explained by an abrupt plunge from the top of a long hill down into a cutting between lichen-scaled rocks, tracing with our "pneus" as we went a series of giddy zig-zags. We had hardly twisted one way when lo! the time had come to twist in the opposite direction, and nowhere had we a radius of more than twenty yards in which to perform our tricks.

"I couldn't have done that as well as you did it, I confess," said I, with becoming modesty.

"It's easy enough when you've got the knack," replied the "Lightning Conductor."

"So, no doubt, is reeling, writhing, and fainting in coils. Motoring down these serpentine hills is like hurling yourself into space, and trusting to Providence."

"So is all of life," said Jack. "A timid man might say the same of getting out of bed in the morning."

"Even I can do the trick," cut in Molly, who was taking a temporary interest in our affairs again. "At least, I can this year, now that chickens are better than they used to be."

"They are looking nice and fat this summer" I judicially remarked.

"I don't mean that," explained Molly. "But they are more sensible. Last year, before Jack and I were married, chickens were so bad that I used to dream of nothing else in my sleep. I had chicken nightmares. The absurd creatures never would realise when they were well off, but even in the midst of laying a most important egg on one side of the road, our automobile had only to come whizzing along to convince them that salvation depended on getting across to the other. This year they seem to have formed a sort of Chicken Club, a league of defence against motors, and to have started a propaganda."

My imagination tricked me, or this theory of Molly's evoked a faint sound of stifled mirth in the heart of the mysterious mushroom. In haste I turned away, lest I should be suspected of regarding it, and Jack began to pump my memory mercilessly for what it might retain of his driving lessons. Luckily, I had forgotten nothing, and I was able to demonstrate my knowledge by pointing to the various parts of the machine with each glib reference I made.

By-and-bye, we came to a place where a grotto was "much recommended"; but swallows, southward bound, do not stop in their flight for grottos. We darted by, thundered through the humming darkness of Napoleon's tunnel, and flashed out into a startling landscape, as sensational as the country of the "Delectable Mountains" in "Pilgrim's Progress." The cup-like valley was ringed in by mountains of astonishing shapes; it was nature posing for a picture by John Martin. In the fields were dotted characteristic Dauphiné houses, little elfin things with overhanging roofs like caps tied under their chins.

Soon, we raced into the main street of tiny Les Echelles, whence, in the good old days, fair Princess Beatrice of Savoie went away to wed with the famed Raymond of Provence. We whisked through the village, and down the valley to St. Laurens du Pont, and the entrance to that great rift between mountains which leads to the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse.

As we plunged into the narrow jaws of the superb ravine, a wave of regret for the Boy swept over me. He and I had talked of this day—the day we should see the deserted monastery hidden among its mountains; now it had come, and we were parted.

The society of Jack and Molly and the motor car could make up for many things, but it could not stifle longings for the Little Pal. Besides, magnificent as was Mercédès (the Dragon, not the Mushroom) I felt that Finois and Fanny-anny would have been more in keeping with the place. I was too dispirited to care whether or no my eyes were filled with dust; therefore I had not goggled myself, and I think that Jack must have gathered something of my thoughts from my long face.

"How would you like to get out and walk here, like pilgrims of old?" he asked. "It will be too much for the girls, but Gotteland will drive them up slowly, not to be too far in advance. American girls, you'll find, if you ever make a study of one or more of them, can do everything in the world except—walk. There they have to bow to English girls."

"That's because we've got smaller feet," retorted Molly. "Where an English girl can walk ten miles we can do only five, but it's quite enough. And we have such imaginations that we can sit in this automobile and fancy ourselves princesses on ambling palfreys."

It was close to the deserted distillery of the famous liqueur that we parted company, the car, piled with our discarded great-coats, forging ahead up the historic path. The little tramway that used to carry the cases of liqueur to the station at Fourvoirie was nearly obliterated by new-grown grass; the vast buildings stood empty. Never again would the mellow Chartreuse verte and Chartreuse jaune he fragrantly distilled behind the high grey walls, for the makers were banished and scattered far abroad.

We lingered for a moment at the narrow entrance to Le Désert, where the rushing river Guiers foams through the throttled gorge, giving barely room for the road scored along the lace of the cliff. It was like a doorway to the lost domain of the monks, and Jack and I agreed that St. Bruno was a man of genius to find such a retreat. A retreat it was literally. St. Bernard had taken his followers to a place where, suffering great hardships, they could best devote their lives to succouring others; but St. Bruno's theory had evidently been that holy men can do more good to their kind by prayer in peaceful sanctuaries than by offering more material aid.

Here,—at the doorway of St. Bruno's long corridor,—the ravine, the old forge, the single-arched bridge flung high across the deep bed of the roaring torrent, had all grouped themselves as if after a consultation upon artistic effect. Once, there had been an actual gate, built alike for defence and for limitation, but there were no traces of it left for the eye of the amateur.

We passed into the defile, and the motor car was out of sight long ago. Higher and higher the brown road climbed. The mountains towered close and tall. Great pillared palaces of rock loomed against the sky like castles in the air, incalculably far above the green heads and sloping shoulders of the nearer mountain slopes.

I had thought that green was never so green as in the Valley of Aosta, but here in St. Bruno's corridor there was a new richness of emerald in the green carpet and wall hangings, such as I had not yet known. It was green stamped with living gold, in delicate fleur-de-lis patterns where the sun wove bright threads; and high above was the ceiling of lapis lazuli, in pure unclouded blue.

We heard no sound save the voices of unseen woodcutters crying to each other from mountain slope to mountain slope, the resonant ring of their axes, striking out wild, echoing notes with a fleeting clang of steel on pine, and now and again the sudden thunder-crash of a falling tree, like the roar of a distant avalanche.

By-and-bye we came to the aërial bridge which spans the Guiers Mort, slender and graceful as the arch of a rainbow, and as we gazed down at the far, white water hurling itself in sheets of foam past the detaining rocks, the sharp toot of a horn broke discordantly into the deep-toned music. A motor car sprang round an abrupt curve and flashed by, but not so quickly that I did not recognise among the six occupants the two young Americans of Mont Revard. They passed me as unseeingly as they did the scenery: for they were talking as fast to two pretty girls opposite them in the tonneau, as if the girls had not been talking equally fast to them at the same time. I bore the pair a grudge, and the sight of them brought back the consciousness of my injury.

St. Bruno, fortunate in many ways, was a lucky saint to have so beautiful a bridge named after him. And as we climbed the brown road—moist with tears wept by the mountains for the banished monks—it seemed to us that the scenery was always leading up to him, as a preface leads up to the first chapter of a book. We went through tunnels as a thread goes through the eye of a needle; we wound round intricate turns of the road; we came upon pinnacle rocks; and then, at last, when we least expected the climax of our journey, we dropped into a great green basin, rimmed with soaring crags. In the midst stood an enormous building, a vast conglomeration of pointed, dove-grey roofs and dun-coloured walls, a city of slate and stone spread over acres of ground and seeming a part of the impressive yet strangely peaceful wilderness.

Looking at the vast structure, I was ready to believe that St. Bruno had waved his staff in the shadow of a rough-hewn mountain, saying: "Let there be a monastery," and suddenly, there was a monastery; but our motor, quivering with nervous energy before a door in the high wall, snatched me back to practicalities.

Molly, leaning quietly back in the tonneau beside the Perpetual Mushroom, saw us coming from afar off, and waved a hand of absurd American smallness. By the time we were within speaking distance, she was out of the car and coming toward us.

"We were so hungry, that we lunched while we waited," she explained, "so now you and Jack can go to the hôtellerie and have something quickly. We'll walk in the woods until you come back, and then, as Mercédès doesn't seem to mind, we'll all go into the monastery together."

It was not until the door of the Grande Chartreuse had opened to receive us, and closed again behind our backs, shutting us into a large empty quadrangle, that the Spirit of the place took us by the hand.

Over the steep grey roofs (pointed like monkish hands with finger-tips joined in prayer) we gazed up at mountain peaks, grey and green, and pointing also to a heaven which seemed strangely near.

The spell of the vast, the stupendous silence fell upon us. Somehow, Molly drifted from me to Jack as we walked noiselessly on, led by a silent guide, as if she craved the warm comfort of a loved presence, and for a few brief moments the veiled Mercédès paced step for step beside me. But we did not speak to each other.

What a tragic, tremendous silence it was! Yes, I wanted the Boy. I should have been glad of the touch of his little shoulder. Thinking of him thus, by some accident the sleeve of Mercédès's coat brushed against mine. Still, not a word from either of us. I did not even say, "I beg your pardon," for that would have been to obtrude my voice upon the thousand voices of the Silence; dead voices, living voices; voices of passionate protest, voices of heartbreaking homesickness, of aching grief and longing, never to be assuaged. Poor monks—poor banished men who had loved their home, and belonged to it, as the clasping tendrils of old, old ivy belong to the oak.

How dared we come here into this place from which they had been driven, we aliens? I had not known it would grip me so by the throat. How full the emptiness was!—as full to my mind as the air is of motes when a bar of sunshine reveals them.

It was the Palace of Sleep, lost in the mountain forests, but here there was no hope coming with the springing footsteps of a blithe young prince. The sleepers in this palace could not be waked by a wish, or a magic kiss, for they were ghosts, ghosts everywhere—in the great kitchen, with all its huge polished utensils ready for the meal which would never be cooked, and its neat plain dishes on shelved trays, waiting to be carried to the grilles of the solitaires; in the Brothers' refectory where the egg-cups were ranged on long, narrow tables, for the meal never to be eaten, where the chair of the Reader was waiting to receive him; in the Fathers' refectory next door; in the dusky corridors, their ends lost in shadow, where only the sad echoes and the running water of the unseen spring were awake; in the chapels; in the cemetery with its old carved stones and humbler wooden crosses; and most of all in the wonderful cells (which were not cells, but mansions), and in their high-walled gardens, the most private of all imaginable spots on earth.

Wandering on and on, alone now, I felt myself the saddest man in a twilight world. Why, I could not have put into words. Had the brotherhood still peopled the monastery, I should have yearned to join them, partly because I was sad, and partly because the so-called cells were the most charming dwelling-places I had seen. Each comprised a two-storied house in miniature, and each had its garden, shut irrevocably away from sight or sound of any other. Into one of these solitary abodes I went alone, and closed the door upon myself and the ghosts. In fancy I was one of the order, in retreat for a week, my only means of communication with the outer world of the monastery (save for midnight prayers in the dim chapel) a little grille. There was my workshop, where I carved wood; there the narrow staircase leading steeply up to my wainscoted bedroom, my study, and my oratory, with windows looking down into the leafy square of garden, planted by my own hands. Standing at one of those windows, I knew the anguish of parting and loss which had torn the heart of the last occupant, before he walked out of the monastery between double lines of Chasseurs Alpins.

The Fairy Prince's Ring

Down, down a winding and beautiful road we plunged, on leaving the Grande Chartreuse, while the afternoon sunlight was still golden. The monastery sank out of our sight as we went, as the moon sinks into the sea, and was gone for us as if it were on the other side of the world. Ah, but a sweet, warm world, and I was glad after all that I was not a monk in carved oak cells and walled gardens, but a free young man who could vibrate between the South Pole and the Albany.

Molly said that the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse was like a body without a soul; and in another breath she was asking Jack, quite seriously, whether she could buy one of the cells from the French Government, all complete, to "express" as a present to her father in New York.

We flew, our motor humming like a bee, through exquisite forests clothing the sides of a narrow ravine, where hidden streams made music. Then in a twinkling we slipped out from the secret recesses of scented woods, into a village almost too beautiful to accept as reality, in a practical mood. There it lay, like a little heap of pearls tossed down from the lap of one mountain at the feet of another—and we were at St. Pierre de Chartreuse.

The tiny gem of beauty had caught the glory of Switzerland, and the soft, fairy charm of Dauphiné. Its guardian mountain was a miniature Matterhorn of indescribable grace and airy stateliness; its lesser attendants formed a group of peaks, grey and green and rose. As if enough gifts had not yet been bestowed upon the little place at its christening, a playground of forest land, rolling up over grassy slopes, had been given, with a neighbouring river, swift and clear, to sing it a lullaby.

I had the impulse to clap my hands at St. Pierre de Chartreuse, as at some "setting" excellently designed and carried out by the most celebrated of scene painters. It was a place in which to stop a month, finding a new walk for each new day; but one does not discover walks in a motor car. One sweeps over the country, sounding notes of triumph. We glanced at St. Pierre de Chartreuse and sped on towards Grenoble, through a landscape markedly different from that of Savoie.

In Savoie everything is done lavishly, on a large scale. The eye roams over spaces of noble amplitude, expressing strength in repose.

Dauphiné is livelier and daintier; more lovable, too. Fairies or brownies (since no mortals do it) keep the whole country like a vast private park. In crossing from Savoie into Dauphiné one seemed to hear the allegro movement after listening to the andante.

With each twist of our road the prospect changed. The mountains grew, soared more abruptly, and the youthful-looking landscape smiled at their strange shapes. As for the Cham Chaude, which had been the Matterhorn at St. Pierre de Chartreuse, it now disguised itself for some new part at every turn. Such lightning changes must have been fatiguing, even for so extraordinarily versatile and clever a mountain, for within fifteen minutes after playing it was the Matterhorn, it was a giant, tonsured monk; a Greek soldier in a helmet; a Dutch cheese; a hen, and a camel.

When Dragon Mercédès had rushed us up the great Col, and whirled round a corner, suddenly a battalion of magnificent white warrior-mountains sprang at us from an ambush of invisibility. Then, no sooner had they struck awe to our hearts with their warlike majesty, than, repentant, they turned into lovely white ladies, bidding us welcome to the rich, ripe figs and purple grapes which they held in their generous laps. I thought of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary with her fair face, her candid sky-blue eyes, her high, noble bearing, and her white dress caught up, heaped with the roses into which her loaves had been transformed. The tallest, purest white mountain of all I chose for sweet Elizabeth, and that was none other than far Mont Blanc, floating magically in pure blue ether, like a gleaming pearl.

Flying down the perfect road towards the plain where two rivers met, loved, and wedded, the valley which was the white mountain's lap blended vague, soft greens and blues and purples, hinting of grapes and figs clustering under leaves. Here and there a vine had been nipped by early frosts and flung its crimson wreaths, like diadems of rubies, in a red arch across distant billows of mountain snows.

Autumn was in the air, and though the grass and most of the trees kept all their richness of summer greenery, a faint, pungent fragrance of dying leaves and the smoke of bonfires came to one's nostrils with the breeze. Mingled with the exciting scent of petrol, it was delicious.

At the confluence of the newly married Drac and Isère rose the domes and towers of stately old Grenoble, hoary with history; and never a town had a nobler setting. Swooping down in half-circles, as if our car had been a great bird of prey, we saw the valley veiled with a silver haze, which wrapped the city in mystery, while through this gleaming gauze the two rivers threaded like strings of turquoise beads.

"How the Boy would have loved this!" I found myself exclaiming over my shoulder to Molly. "He used often to talk of the great charm of descending from heights upon places, especially new-old places, which one has never seen before."

"Used he?" echoed Molly. "Why, that is rather odd. It is exactly what Mercédès has just been saying."

The Perpetual Mushroom moved impatiently. I fancied by the movement of her shoulder that she resented having her thoughts passed on to me. I hastened to turn away, sorry that I had reminded her inadvertently of my cumbersome existence; but I could not help wondering what she had been thinking of in the monastery when we had walked for full five moments side by side.

There was no disappointment when we had plunged into the silver haze, torn it apart, and entered the town over a dignified bridge. All around us spread the city old and new; above, on the hills, were numerous châteaux, a strange fort, and the queerest of ancient convents, like the cork castles I had seen in shop windows and coveted as a child. In the town there were statues, many statues—statues everywhere and in honour of everybody. Bayard was there, dying; and there was a delightfully human old fellow (humorous even in marble) who cleverly "lay low" till his worst enemy had finished an elaborately fortified castle, then promptly took it. Not a spacious modern street that had not at least one magnificent old palace, a façade of joyous Renaissance invention, or at least a crumbling mediæval doorway of divine beauty; and nothing of romance was lost because Grenoble makes gloves for all the world.

We sailed out of the town along the straight five-mile road to the Pont de Claix, and now it was ho! for the Basses Alpes, over a road which might have been engineered for an emperor's motoring; past the quaint twin bridges spanning the stream side by side, which our guide-book taught us to recognise as one of the Seven Wonders (with capitals) of Dauphiné. Then came a valley, almost theatrical in its romantic grace. One would not have believed in it for a moment if one had seen it first in a sketch. Even the railway, on which we soon looked down, was inspired to gymnastic feats, leaping across chasms on giddy viaducts, and twisting back upon itself in corkscrew tunnels. There were thrilling retrospective views away to the giant Alps we were leaving behind, but soon, nearer mountains crowded them out of sight. The country grew wild, with a strange grimness, like the face of a blind Fate; cultivation ceased in despair of success; and alike on the bare uplands and in the deep-scored valleys there were few signs of human life. Then, suddenly, in such a setting, we came upon the grandest of the Seven Marvels, the most wonderful lone rock in Europe, Mont Aiguille, more like an obelisk of incalculable immensity than a mountain. Once, it had been considered unscalable, and might have remained virgin until this century of hardy climbers, had not Charles the Eighth had a fancy to hear (not to see!) what was on top. Up went a few of his bravest satellites, hoisting themselves on to the aërial plateau by means of ropes and ladders, and bringing down wondrous tales of impossible chamois, savage, brilliant-coloured birds, and singular vegetation, which stories promptly went into all the geographies of the day and were believed until a more practical explorer named Jean Liotard climbed up, to please himself, in 1834.

We lost sight of this second Dauphiné Marvel (the last one we were to see) just before running up the steep hill which led down again into the dark jaws of another mountain pass. It was the Col de la Croix Haute; and once past this gateway of the Alps the landscape changed slowly and indefinably, here and there suggesting that we were drawing nearer to the south. Though we were still encompassed on every side by mountains, they had lost their Alpine splendour of bearing; they stooped, or poked their chins.

The country was now all brown and green; and, surfeited with beauty, it seemed to me that here was nothing great. We sped through Aspres; through Serres, on its rocky promontory; and on through Laragne, whose ancient inn with the sign of a spider gave a name to the town. Pointed brown-green mountains were crowned with pointed green-brown ruins, hoary after much history-making; and at the pointed mountains' brown-green feet those avant-courriers of the South, almond trees, had sat down to rest on their way home.

Still we flew on; but at Sisteron Jack slowed down the motor. Here was something too curious for even spoiled sightseers to pass in a hurry.

The town struggled hardily up one side of a gorge, deep and steep, where the Durance has forced its patient way through a huge barrier of rock whose tilted strata correspond curiously on both sides of the stream. Driving down to the low bridge across the river, we gazed up at the town piled high above our heads, culminating in a fortress which, cut in a dark square out of the sky's turquoise, looked old as the beginning of the world.

Sisteron was brown, too, but not at all green; and beyond, for a time, the country was still in a grim brown study, though it ought to have remembered that it was now laughing Provence. It gave us crumbling châteaux, high-perched ancient rock villages without stint, and even a house (in the strangely named village of Malijai) where Napoleon had lain, early in the Hundred Days; but not a smile or a wild flower. Then, in a flash, its mood changed. The savage land had been tamed by some whispered word of Mother Nature, and grew youthfully pretty under our eyes. The poplars, in their autumn cloaks of gold, fringed the road with flame, and scattered largesse of red copper filings in our path; the dark mountains drew up over their bare shoulders scarfs of crimson, and the sun flung a million diamonds into the wide bed of the Durance.

Night was falling as we drove into the lazy-looking Provençal town of Digne, where all was green and sleepy, at peace with itself and the world at large. Even the beautiful Doric château d'eau was green with moss, and the water of its fountain laughed in sleep; the famous basilica showed grey through green lichen; its wonderful rose window had a green frame of ivy, and the strange, sculptured beasts guarding the door had saddles of green velvet mould.

We slept at Digne, and made an early morning start, the car plunging us almost from the first into scenery which only Gustave Doré could have imagined. Gnome villages and elfin castles clung to slim pinnacles of rock which seemed to swing, like blown branches, against the sky. Wild grey mountains bristled with rocky spines, and trails of scarlet foliage poured like streams of blood down their rough sides, completing the resemblance to fierce, wounded boars.

Our road was a road of steep gradients, leading us through gorges of a grandeur which would have been called appalling when the world was a little younger, and more in awe of savage Nature. If a midge could be provided with a proportionately tiny motor car, and sent coasting at full tilt down a greased corkscrew, from the handle to the sharp end of the screw, the effect would have been somewhat that of our Mercédès leaping down the steep defiles. We were vaguely conscious now and then that a river far below us clamoured for our bones; on one side we had a precipice, on the other a sheer face of towering cliff.

Gorges, glorious gorges! a plethora of gorges. No sooner were we out of one, and drawing breath in a valley of golden sunshine and silver river, but we were back in another majestic cañon. Finest of all, perhaps, was the dark Clou de Rouaine; yet when we sprang out into daylight to throw ourselves into the village of Les Scaffarels, wonders did not cease. Now we were in the true hinterland of the gay, blue-and-gold Riviera, following the course of the Var, down to Nice, not many miles away. Wide and pebbly in its bed by the bright pleasure town, here it led us through a succession of more gorges, thundered us through rock tunnels, swept us over bridges, and at last tumbled us into sight of a marvel which must throw the whole seven of Dauphiné out of focus. It was the town of Entrevaux, and to my shame I had never heard of it. Where the narrow valley opens into a broad one, and the green, swift flowing river sweeps in a sickle-curve round the base of a high rock, Entrevaux shoots far up into the sky. The river bathes its dark walls, protected by devices dear to the hearts of mediæval Vaubans. Pepper-castor sentry-boxes jut out over the water; a great drawbridge with portcullis, triple gateway, and neat contrivances for pouring oil and molten lead upon besiegers, alone gives access to the town; while behind the old crowded houses a fortified stairway in the rock leads dizzily up to a stronghold clamped upon a towering peak—a peak like a black, giant wine-bottle, slender-necked, with the fort castle for the cork.

"If the Boy could see this with me!" I thought. And then, because this place was like a fairy place, I remembered the fairy prince's ring. Never had I followed his instructions; but I rubbed it now, and wished that the genie of the ring would give me back the Little Pal at Monte Carlo.

After Entrevaux, picturesque Puget-Theniers was an anticlimax; though other fairy towns peered down from high crags and sheer hillsides where they hung by wires caught in spider webs—and though we passed through other gorges of grim beauty, my thoughts had flown ahead of our swift car. I was glad when at last we came into sight of a fair white city lying on the blue curve of a bay and ringed with green hills, glad that our journey was all but ended; for the fair city was Nice.

The Day of Suspense

From Nice to Monte Carlo over the Upper Corniche, was for us a spin of less than two hours; and after that most beautiful drive in the world, we slowed down before the green-shaded loggia of the Royal, early in the afternoon. The hotel was only just open for the season, and it was possible to have a choice of rooms. Jack selected a glass-fronted suite, with a view more beautiful than any other in the extraordinary little principality:

which were, respectively, the harbour, and the rock of Monaco (as old as Hercules), with its ancient towers dark against a sky of pearl.

I was given a peep into Molly's salon, which appeared to be a sort of crystal palace, with its two window-walls curtained by trailing roses; and Jack kept me for a moment at the door.

"I suppose we shall meet for dinner about eight, won't we, no matter what we may all choose to do meanwhile?" said he.

"Well—er—no," I mumbled, feeling a little foolish. "I have—er—a sort of engagement for to-night. I think I mentioned it before."

"What, to meet that missing Boy of yours?" asked Jack, in a chaffing tone, so tactlessly loud that it must have been distinctly audible to the ladies in the adjoining room, the door of which was open. "Isn't that rather a mad idea? You were vaguely engaged to meet your pal, I believe you said, on the night after your arrival, at the Hôtel de Paris, for dinner. But considering the fact that, if you'd walked down as you then intended, instead of motoring, you would have been a fortnight on the way, isn't it fantastic to expect that he'll turn up?"

"Not quite as fantastic as you think," I retorted, remembering the terms of the Boy's letter, which had not been confided to Jack, in their exactness. "Anyhow, I'm going on the off chance."

"You apparently credit the youth with clairvoyance, my dear chap. Supposing he has come down here, how could he know that you'd arrived?"

"I wired him from Digne, telegraphing to the Poste Restante at Monte Carlo, where he would certainly think of enquiring, if he took much interest in my movements. In that message I made it very clear that I should expect him to stick to our bargain, and I have an impression that he will."

"He may. But, look here, my dear fellow,"—Jack now had the decency to lower his voice,—"have you no red blood in your veins? Mercédès—the real Mercédès—nearly restored to health and spirits by her run with us through splendid air and scenery, is to unveil her charms this evening at dinner. You have irreverently nicknamed her the Perpetual Mushroom. To-night, you will see—but you don't deserve to be told what you will see, if you haven't the curiosity to find out at the first opportunity for yourself."

"Second opportunities, like second thoughts, are better than first," said I. "I shall he delighted to take the second opportunity of meeting Miss Mercédès—by the way, what is her other name? You always seemed to take it for granted that I knew; but if it was ever mentioned in the summer, I've forgotten."

"You should be ashamed to admit that you could deliberately and stoically forget a charming young lady's name, and you don't deserve to have your memory jogged. You shall be told the heiress's name when you meet her, and not before."

"I must possess my soul in patience until to-morrow, then," I replied, "for to me one pal in the bush is worth twenty heiresses in the hand, and I am now going out to scour the said bush."

"Which means the Casino, no doubt."

"I shall stroll in, when I've got rid of the dust. The Rooms are the place to come across people."

"All right, gang your ain gait, my son, and I suppose I must wish you luck. Daresay we shall see each other before bedtime."

A few hours later, I was walking down through the gardens, on my way to the Casino. The young grass, sown last month, had already become green velvet, and the flowers were as fresh as if they had been created an hour ago. The air smelled of La France roses and orange blossoms, though I saw neither. Some pretty Austrian girls were walking about in muslin frocks and gauzy hats, though by this time, in England, women were putting on their fur boas in deference to autumn; and a few days ago I had been lost in a snowstorm on a middle-sized mountain of Savoie.

As I drew near to the big white Casino, strains of music came to me from the terrace, and thinking that the Boy might be there listening to the band, I went through the tunnel and came out on the beautiful flower-decked plateau overhanging the sea. Out of season though it was, a great many people were sitting there, drinking tea or coffee, and listening to "La Paloma."

The windows of the Casino were open, protected by awnings; birds were taking their last flight, before going to bed in some orange or lemon tree. The place was more charming than in the high season; but the face I looked for was not to be seen, and I deserted the Terrace for the Rooms.

I had not been to "Monte" since the Boer war; and when I had gone through the formalities at the Bureau, and entered the first salle, it struck me strangely to find everything exactly as I had left it years ago.

The same heavy stillness, emphasised by the continuous chink, chink of gold and silver, and broken only by the announcement of events at different tables: "Onze, noir, impair et manque";—"Rien ne va plus";—"Zèro!"

The same onze; the same rien n'va plus; the same zèro heralded in the same secretly joyous, outwardly apologetic tone, by the croupiers fortunate enough to produce it. The same croupiers too;—(or do croupiers develop a family likeness of face, of voice, of coat, as the years go chinking zeroly on?). The same players, or their doppelgängers; the same pictured nymphs smiling on the ornate walls. But there was no Boy, no Boy's sister; and suddenly it occurred to me that I was foolish to expect him. He was too childlike in appearance to have obtained a ticket of admission to the gambling rooms.

Since it was useless to look for him here, and no other place seemed promising at this hour, there was nothing to do but pass the moments until time to change for dinner. Accordingly I watched the tables. Once, like most men of my age, I had been bitten by the roulette fever and had wrestled with "systems" in their thousands, not so much for the mere "gamble," as for the joy of striving to beat the wily Pascal at his own invention.

In those old days the wheel had been like a populous town for me, inhabited by quaint little people, each living in his own snug house; the Little People of Roulette. Not a number on the board but his face was familiar to me; I would have known him if I had met him in the street. There was sly, thin, dark little Dix, always sneaking up on tiptoe when you did not want him, and popping out behind your back. Business-like, successful, bustling Onze; tactless but honest Douze; treacherous yet fascinating Treize; blundering Seize; graceful, brunette Dix-Sept; and the faithful, friendly Vingtneuf; feminine Rouge; brusque, virile Noir; mean little, underbred Manque, and senile Passe; priggish Pair with his skittish young wife; the Dozens, nouveaux-riches, thinking themselves a cut above the humbler Simple Chances in Roulette Society; the upright, unbending Columns; the raffish Chevaux; the excitable Transversales, and the brilliant Carrés; charming on first acquaintance, but fickle as friends; the twin, blind dwarfs, the Coups des Deux; these and many more, down to the wretched, worried Intermittances, ever in a violent hurry to catch a train but never catching it. I could see them all, still; but I saw them pass with calmness now, for I wanted to find the Boy.

The Boy's Sister

The palace clock over in Monaco was striking eight as I reached the steps of the Hôtel de Paris. Eight had been the hour appointed. Now, here were both the Hour and the Man: but where was the Boy?

I walked into the gay restaurant, with its window-wall, and the long rank of candle-lit tables ready for dinner. Twenty people, perhaps, were dining; but there was no slim figure in short black jacket, Eton collar, and loose silk tie; no curly chestnut head; no blue-star eyes. Cordially disliking everybody present, I marched down the length of the room, and took a corner table, which was laid for four. On the sparkling snow of the damask cloth burned a bonfire of scarlet geraniums, and two red-shaded wax candles, of the kind which the Boy used to call "candles with nostrils," made wavering rose-lights on the white expanse.

I sat down, and an attentive waiter appeared at my elbow, having apparently shot up from the floor like a pantomime demon.

"Monsieur desires dinner for one?" he deferentially enquired.

"I am expecting one or perhaps two friends," I replied. "I will wait for them half an hour. If they do not come by the end of that time, I will dine alone."

"Will Monsieur please to regard the menu?"

"Yes, thanks."

He put it in my hand with an appetizing bow, which would have been almost as good as an hors d'œuvre had my mood been appreciative of delicacies. But it was not; neither could I fix my mind upon the ordering of a dinner. My eyes would keep jumping to the glass door at the far end of the room. "I want the best dinner the house can serve," I said, meanly shifting responsibility. "Not too long a dinner, but—oh well, you may tell the chef I depend upon his choice."

"I quite understand, Monsieur. A dinner to please a lady, is it not?"

"Yes. Something to please a lady." Was there not the Boy's sister to be catered for in case she should come? In thinking of him I must not forget her. But then, how improbable it was that my poor dinner would be tasted by either!

"And for wine, Monsieur?"

I ordered at random the brand of champagne which had seemed like nectar to the Boy and me that evening in far away Aosta, when the compact of our friendship was first made. But yes, certainly, it was to be had. And it should in an all little moment be on the ice.

The waiter glided away to make that little moment less, and I was left to measure it and its brothers. One after another they passed. What a pity the moment family is such a large one! I stared at the glass door. Other men's friends came in by it, but not mine. I glared at the window close to which I sat. The peculiarly theatrical effect of daylight melting into night, as seen at Monte Carlo and nowhere else, added to the sensation of suspense I felt, as when the curtain is about to rise on the crowning act of an exciting play.

The scene out there in the Place was exactly like a setting for the stage. The great white Casino, with the constant va et vient to and from the open doorway; the bubbly domes of the fantastically Moorish café across the way; the velvet grass, unnaturally green in the electric light; the flower beds in the garden a mosaic floor of coloured jewels; the air blue as a gauze veil, with diamonds shining through its meshes; and over all a serene arch of hyacinth sky, pulsing with smouldering ashes-of-rose just above the purple line of mountain-tops.

A carriage drove quickly past the window, and stopped, far on at the main door of the hotel. More people for dinner; but not the Boy. I indistinctly saw a tall man and two ladies in long evening cloaks step out; then I turned my eyes elsewhere.

Over on the brightly lighted balcony of the Café de Paris opposite, the "out-of-season" musicians were playing "Sole Mio," and the yearning strains of that simple, hackneyed Italian love song stirred my veins oddly.

The glass door down at the other end of the room opened, and the movement there caught my eyes. A girl came in, alone, and stood still as if looking for someone—her slender white figure, in its long flowing cloak, clearly outlined against a darker background. She was alone, and there was nobody to introduce us, no one to tell me who she was, but the beautiful face as so marvellously like one I knew, that I jumped up instantly. The Boy's sister! She must have come, with friends, and be looking for him. Then, he was here, or would be!

I have a vague remembrance of treading on several trains as I went to meet her, intending to introduce myself, as her brother had not arrived. The restaurant seemed suddenly to have become a mile long, and she was at the other end of it. So was I, at last, holding out my hand to the white girl with a large black hat, and diamond pins winking in the curly chestnut hair which they held in place.

She was so astonishingly like him! Now that I had come closer, the resemblance was incredible. The hair; the soft oval of the little face; the eyes—the great, star-eyes!

I forgot everything but that one figure, lily-white, and swaying like a lily, as it stood. Luckily, there was no one near to see, or think of us. The diners dined, as if this were an ordinary night, as if there might be other such nights again.

"Who are you?" I said as if in a dream.

A wave of colour swept up from the small, firm chin, to the rings of chestnut hair. "I—why, I'm the Boy's sister," a low voice stammered. "He—sent me. I've a letter from him. My friends are outside. They will be here soon, but I—I came. You are—I suppose you are Man––"

"And I know you are Boy, Boy himself. I mean, he never was—for heaven's sake tell me—but no, I don't need to ask. I've got my Little Pal back again, that's all."

"Oh, if I'd been sure you would guess—if I had known you would talk to me like this, I should not have dared to come."

"Yes, you would. For you are brave; and you owed me this."

"I'm ashamed to look you in the face. What must you think of me?"

"Think? I'm past thinking. I'm thanking the gods. If I could think at all it would be of myself, that I was a fool not to—and yet, was I a fool? You were a boy then. Even the Contessa––"

"Oh, don't! Where can we sit? I must tell you everything—explain everything. I can't wait. In a few minutes Molly and Jack will come."

"Good heavens!"

"Yes. Didn't you guess? I'm the Perpetual Mushroom,—Mercédès—Roy—Laurence. Oh, Man, Man, how have I dared everything—and most of all this meeting? To fight that duel would have been easier. I think I would never have ventured after all, I would have stayed a Mushroom always, and let the Boy be buried and forgotten; but Molly wouldn't let me."

"God bless Molly."

I suppose I must have led her to my table, for at this juncture we found ourselves there.

"Will Monsieur have dinner served?" breathed a voice out of the hazy unrealities that shut us two in alone together.

"Dinner by-and-bye," I heard myself murmuring, as one brushes away a buzzing insect. "Yes,—dinner by-and-bye—for four."

"Man," the Girl began; and then was silent.

"Little Pal," I answered, and she visibly gathered courage.

"You know what a great blow I had, and how it made me very ill," she went on. "It was Molly Randolph who persuaded me that a complete change, and living in the open air—the open air of other countries where no one knew me or my troubles—would cure my heart, and mind, too."

(Oh, what a Molly! What might she not do for this sad, bad, mad old world, if she would but set up for a specialist in the mind and heart line!)

"She didn't help me make the plan that—I finally carried out. You see, she had to be married, and whisked off to England, when she had half finished my cure. One night when I was lying awake, the thought came to me—of a thing I might do. It fascinated me. It wouldn't let me get away from it. At first, it was only a fantastic dream; but it took shape, and reality, till it was able to plead its own cause and argue its own advantages. A girl is handicapped. She can't have adventures; she must have a chaperon. A boy is free. Besides—I wanted to get away from men. As a boy, I could take Molly's advice, and travel, and be a regular gipsy if I liked.

"My hair had been cut short when I was ill. That made me feel as if the thing really was to be. One day I sent out and bought some—some clothes, ready made, and put them on. That settled it, for I was sure no one would ever know me, or the truth. One thing suggested another. I thought of travelling with a caravan—then I changed my mind to donkeys, and that led to Innocentina. I'd gone out with her up into the mountains, donkey-back, every day from Mentone two years ago. She had talked to me about Aosta. Her mother's people came from there. Always since, I had wanted to go. I wrote her. I began to make preparations for a long journey."

"You got the bag!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, that bag! I should have died if any English-speaking person had found it, and read my diary, which was to be used—partly—as notes for a book—if I should ever write it. I would have offered even a bigger reward, if you had let me. But I must go on:—they will come—Molly and Jack. I went out to Lucerne, where Innocentina joined me with the donkeys; but it wasn't till we were away in the wilds that—that the Boy appeared. I didn't mean to visit any very big towns afterwards, for it wasn't civilisation I wanted; but—you came into the story, and I did lots of things I hadn't meant to do—because of you, Man."

"And I did lots of things I hadn't meant to do—because of you, Boy."

"It was doing different things from what I planned that worked all the mischief. If we hadn't gone to Aix, we wouldn't have gone up Mont Revard; and if we hadn't gone up Mont Revard, the Prince wouldn't have had to vanish."

"If he hadn't, would the Princess have appeared—for me? Or would she always have been passing—passing—I not dreaming of her presence, though she was by my side?"

"Who can tell? Each event in life seems to be propped up against all the others, like a tower of children's bricks. Anyway, we did go, and Something had sent up to the snowy top of that mountain in Savoie the very last man in the world—except one—I would have chosen to meet. It was—his brother—the younger brother of the man I had found out. He wasn't sure of me, I could tell: for he had never seen me with my hair short; and I had got so thin, and my face so brown; but he suspected, and he is a gossiping sort of fellow. If he had had a chance to see me by daylight, he would have been sure, and then there would be some wild story flashing all over America. That is why I ran away. But it hurt me to leave you like that, Man."

"It cut off all my arms and legs, and my head, and left me only a trunk," I murmured.

"I couldn't think what else to do; indeed, I could hardly think at all. But I knew Molly and Jack were going to Chambéry to spend a day, and I thought I might catch them there, if I hurried. You see, Molly and I wrote to each other sometimes, though I never said a word about you. I didn't dream you'd knew them, until one day you announced things you'd said to Molly in a letter, which—which—well, things which would need a lot of explanation, too difficult for black and white."

"By Jove!" I exclaimed. "Now I know where I'd seen your handwriting before. It was in a letter which Molly dropped almost on my head, from a balcony at Martigny, and there was a photograph––"

"Oh, you didn't see it?"

"That's what Molly asked. I satisfied her that I hadn't."

"Suppose you had—before you met me! But never mind. I did find them at Chambéry. They'd just arrived, and I told Molly everything."

"What did she say?"

"Oh, she just lent me some of her clothes, and said they'd take me with them in the automobile, out of danger's way until we could decide on a plan. I bought the thing you call a 'mushroom' in a shop, and we were starting off next morning when—you came along. Well––"

"Well?"

"Molly and Jack were in a very awkward position: for I had said to Molly that I felt I could never face you again—never, anyhow, as the Boy, and that he had gone out of your life irrevocably. There I sat in the motor car, and there were you in the street. You can't imagine how I felt. It would have been horrid for them—your best friends—to leave you stranded, and—I didn't want that either. I couldn't help feeling there'd be a tremendous fascination in being so near you, with my face hidden, you not knowing, if only the strain of it needn't last too long; and Molly just cut the Gordian knot of the scrape, as she always does. She assured me that being in the same car need commit me to no decision as to what I would do in the end. But—you remember how she drew you out, about your feeling for the Boy, how you missed him, and how you were going all the way down to Monte Carlo on the bare chance of his being there? Well, she meant me to hear every word, and I did. After that—after that—I—couldn't give you up. I don't believe I could, anyway, when I'd straightened things out in my mind. I'd told you that you would never see the Boy again, and you never will; but Molly said that was no reason why you shouldn't see the Boy's sister. I wrote a note from him to you, for myself to bring to-night, and I thought—I hoped—you might perhaps believe––"

"You couldn't have hoped it," I broke in. "Say that you came to give me back my Little Pal, whom you had stolen from me."

"It may be. I don't know, myself. I couldn't foresee what would happen. As I heard you say, about motoring down steep hills, I just hurled myself into space, and trusted to Providence."

"Now I understand all that was mysterious in myself," I said. "My heart, not being such a fool as my head, was trying continually to telegraph the truth about the Little Pal to my brain, which couldn't get the message right, as there was far too much electricity flying about in the atmosphere. Now I know why I loved the Boy so dearly, because he was you; because he was that Other Half which every man is always unconsciously looking for, round the world, and hardly ever finds."

"Oh, Man, do you really care—like that? Do you love me—love 'for sure' this time?"

"Sure for this time, and for Eternity. There never really was, there never will be, any other woman in my life except you: for you are my Life and my World."

"You don't hate me for my masquerade?"

"Hate you! I'll prove to you whether I––"

"Why does your face look suddenly different, Man? Why do you stop?"

"Because—I've remembered something that I'd forgotten."

"What?"

"Your horrible money."

"Don't you think I knew you'd forgotten? Oh, Man, the money would be horrible indeed, if you should let it come between us, but you won't, will you? We belong to each other; your following me here proves it beyond doubt. I've known for weeks that I never truly cared for anyone else, for I love you, and can't do without you."

"Then there's nothing on earth that shall come between us. Money or no money, what does it matter, after all? Will you finish the journey of Life with me, my Little Pal—my Love?"

The star-eyes answered. And at that moment Molly and Jack came in.