The Path of the Moon

This was to be our last night at Aosta, perhaps our last night together, for the Boy's plans kept his name company in some secret "hidie hole" of his mind. As, for the third time, we dined on the loggia, before the rising of the moon, we drifted into talk of intimate things. It was I who began it. I harked back to the broken conversation which had first made us friends, and to his chance sketch of Helen Blantock and her type. In that connection, I ventured to bring up the subject of his sister.

"What you said about her disillusionment interested me very much," I told him. "You see, I've just come through an experience something like it myself, do you mind talking about her?"

"Not in this place—and this mood—and to you," he answered. "But first—what disillusioned you?"

"Disappointment in someone I cared for,—and believed in."

"It was the same with—my sister."

"Poor Princess."

"Yes, poor Princess. Was it—a man friend who disappointed you?"

"A woman. The old story. As a matter of fact, she threw me over because another fellow had a lot more money than I."

"Horrid creature."

"Oh, just an ordinary, conventional, well brought up girl. Now you see I have as much right to a grudge against women, as your sister the Princess has against men."

"But I don't believe the girl could have been as cruel to you, as this man I'm thinking of was to—her. They'd known each other for years, since childhood. He used to call her his 'little sweetheart' when she was ten and he was fifteen. How was she to dream that even when he was a boy, he didn't really like her better than other little girls, that already he was making calculations about her money? She thought he was different from the others, that he cared for herself. They were engaged, the bridesmaids asked, the trousseau ready, the invitations out for the wedding, and then—one night she overheard a conversation between him and a cousin of his, who was to be one of her bridesmaids. Only a few words—but they told everything. It was the other girl he loved, and had always loved. But he was poor, and so—well, you can guess the rest. My sister broke off her engagement the next day, though the man went on his knees to her, and vowed he had been mad. Then she left home at once, and soon she was taken very ill."

"She loved that worthless scoundrel so much?"

"I don't know. I don't think she knows. It was the destruction of an ideal which was terrible. She had clung to it. She had said to herself: 'Many men may be false, and mercenary, and unscrupulous, but this one is true.' Suddenly, he had ceased to exist for her. She stood alone in the world—in the dark."

"Except for you."

"Except for me, and a few friends,—one girl especially, who was heavenly to her. But the dearest girl friend can't make up for the loss of trust in a lover."

"That's true. By Jove, I thought I had been roughly used, but it's nothing to this. I feel as if I knew your sister, somehow. I wonder, since you and she are such pals, that you can bear to leave her."

"She wanted to be alone. She said she didn't feel at home in life any more, and it made her restless to be with anyone who knew her trouble, anyone who pitied her. I was ill too,—from sympathy, I suppose, and—she thought a tramp like this would do me good. So it has. Being close to nature, especially among mountains, as I've been for weeks now, makes one's troubles and even one's sister's troubles seem small."

"You are young to feel that."

"My soul isn't as young as my body. Maybe that's why nature is so much to me. I am more alive when I'm away from big towns. Sunrises and sunsets are more important than the rising and falling of money markets. They—and the wind in the trees. What things they say to you! You can't explain; you can only feel. And when you have felt, when you have heard colour, and seen sounds, you are never quite the same, quite as sad, again,—I mean if you have been sad."

"I've said all that—precisely that—to myself lately," I exclaimed, forgetting that I was a man talking to a child. The strange little person whom I had apostrophised as "Brat" seemed not only an equal, but a superior. I found myself intensely interested in him, and all that concerned him. "Odd, that you, too, should have thought that thing about colour and sound! This evening-blue, for instance. Do you hear the music of it?"

"Yes. I'm not sure it isn't that which has made me answer your questions. But now let's talk of something else—or better still, let's not talk at all, for a while."

We were silent, and I wondered if the Boy's thoughts ran with mine, or if he had closed and locked the secret door in his brain, and listened dreamily to the sweet evening voices of this Valley of Musical Bells.

Suddenly, into the many sounds of the silence, broke a loud and jarring note; the trampling of men's feet and horses' hoofs; loud laughter and the jingling of accoutrements. We looked over the balustrade to see a battalion of soldiers marching at ease, on their way back from some mountain manœuvres, and as we gazed down, they stared up, a young fellow shouting to the Boy that he had better join them.

"It's like life calling one back," said the strange child. "I suppose one must always go on, somewhere else. And we—we must go on, though it is sweet here."

"It was what I was thinking of just now," I answered. "Are we to part company?"

The Boy laughed—an odd little laugh. "Why, that depends," said he abruptly, "on where you are going. I've planned to walk back over the St. Bernard to Martigny, and so by way of the Tête Noire to Chamounix. That name—Chamounix—has always been to my ears, as Stevenson says, 'like the horns of elf-land, or crimson lake.' I want to come face to face with Mont Blanc, of which I've only seen a far-off mirage, long ago when I was a little chap, at Geneva. What are your plans?"

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

"The turnstile," he finished my broken sentence.

"Where is the turnstile?"

"At the place—whatever it may be—where we get tired of each other. Isn't that what you meant?"

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

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

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

Between puffs of that pipe (an instrument which I strongly but vainly recommended to the Boy) I told him of my night drive over the St. Gothard. As it was his whim to consider names of no importance, I did not mention that of Jack and Molly Winston, but spoke of them merely as "my friends."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was sunset. The great mountain shapes of glittering, red gold were clear as the profiles of goddesses, against a sky of rose. One—the grandest goddess of all—wore on her proud head a crown of snow which sparkled with diamond coruscations, rainbow-tinted in the pink light. Below her golden forehead hovered a thin cloud-veil, of pale lilac; and we had gone a long way down the mountain before the ineffable colour burned to ashes-of-rose. Then darkness caught and engulfed us, in the Valley of Death. The rushing of the river in its ravine was like the voice of night, not a separate sound at all, for hearing it was to hear the silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I demanded the wherefore of this reception; I demanded rooms and food and reparation. What, was I the monsieur who had telegraphed from the Hospice? But madame had answered that she had not a room in the house. The carriage of a large party of very high nobility had broken down late in the afternoon, and they were remaining for the night, until the damage could be repaired. What to do? But there was nothing, unless les messieurs would sleep, one on the sofa, the other on the floor, in the room of the "déjeûner."

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

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

"Go on where?" I enquired grimly.

"I don't know. Anywhere."

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

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

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

"Not enough."

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

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

I was annoyed with the child. I felt that he fully deserved to be taken at his word, and deserted on the Pass, but I had not the heart to punish him. If anything should happen to the poor Babe in the Wood, I should never forgive myself; and besides, it would have been hopeless to seek sleep, with visions of disaster to this strange Little Pal of mine painting my brain red.

"Of course I won't do anything of the kind," I said crossly. "If one party goes on, both will go on." I then snappishly ordered food of some sort, any sort—except chocolate,—and having, after a blank interval, obtained enough bread, cheese, and ham for at least ten persons, I divided the rations with Joseph and Innocentina, who had now come up.

We had a short halt for rest and refreshment, taken simultaneously, and presently set out again, with a vague idea of plodding on as far as Orsières. The Boy refused so obstinately to ride his donkey (I believe because I must go on foot), that Innocentina, thwarted, did frightful execution among her favourite saints. Joseph reproved her; she retorted by calling him a black heretic, and vowing that she had a right to talk as she pleased to her own saints; it was not his affair. Thus it was that our chastened cavalcade left the "Déjeûner."

After this, our journey was punctuated by frequent pauses. The donkeys were tired; everybody was cross; the calm indifference of the glorious night was as irritating as must have been the "icily regular, splendidly null" perfection of Maud herself.

Only the Boy kept up any pretence of spirits, and I knew well that his counterfeited buoyancy was merely to distract attention from guilt. If it had not been for him, we should all have been tucked away in some corner or other of the "Déjeûner." No doubt he would have dropped, had he not feared an "I told you so."

We were still some miles on the wrong side of Orsières, when Innocentina came running up from behind, exclaiming that a dreadful thing, an appalling thing, had happened. No, no, not an accident to Joseph Marcoz. A trouble far worse than that. Nothing to the mulet ou les ânes. Ah, but how could she break the news? It was that in some way—some mad, magical way only to be accounted for by the intervention of evil spirits, probably attracted by the heretic presence of Joseph—the rücksack containing the fitted bag had disappeared. If she were to be killed for it, she—Innocentina—could not tell how this great calamity had occurred.

I thought that after such an alarming preface, the Boy would laugh when the mountain had brought forth its mouse, but he did no such thing. His little face looked anxious and forlorn in the white moonlight. And all for a mere bag, which was an absurd article of luggage, at best, for an excursion such as his!

"I can't lose it," he said. "There are things in it which I wouldn't have anyone's—which I couldn't replace."

"Your sister the Princess will buy you another," I tried to console him.

"This is her bag. She would feel dreadfully if it were gone. Besides, my diary-notes for the book I want to write are in it. I would give a thousand dollars to get it again—or more. I shall have to go back."

"No, you won't," I said. "As to that, I shall put my foot down. If anyone goes––"

"Nobody shall go but myself. I won't have it. I––"

"And I won't have you go, if I'm forced to snatch you up and put you in my pocket. When I get you safely to Orsières, I don't mind a bit––"

"No, no, you needn't say it. If we must go on to Orsières, I'll pay someone to come back from there, and search."

"Why shouldn't I be the one? I'm not tired, only rather cross, and for all you know, I may be in urgent need of the reward you mean to offer."

"You must be satisfied with your virtue. I've my own reasons, and—and I suppose I'm my own master?"

"By Jove!" I exclaimed, laughing. "Eton would have done you a lot of good. You would have had some of your girly whims knocked out of you there, my kid."

"I wonder if that would have done me good?"

"It isn't too late to try. You haven't passed the age."

"I dare say travelling about with you will have much the same effect," said the Boy, suddenly become an imp again. "I think I'll just 'sample' that experiment first. But I do want my bag."

"Dash your bag! I'll lend you some night things out of the mule-pack. The lost treasure is sure to turn up again, like all bad pennies, to-morrow."

We reached Orsières and roused the people of the inn with comparative ease. They could give us accommodation, but the man of the house looked dubious when he heard that a runner must at once be found to search for a travelling bag, lost nobody knew where.

"To-morrow morning, when it is light––" he began; but Boy cut him short. "To-morrow morning may be too late. I will give five thousand francs to whoever finds my bag, and brings it back with everything in it undisturbed."

The man opened his eyes wide, and I formed my lips into a silent whistle. I thought the Boy exceedingly foolish to name such a reward, when the bag and its gold fittings could not have been worth more than a hundred pounds, and an offer of three hundred francs would have been ample. What could the strange little person have in his precious bag, which he valued as the immediate jewel of his soul? and why would he not let me be the one to find it, thus keeping his five thousand francs in his pocket! He "had his reasons," forsooth! However, it was not my business.

Enter the Contessa

Here was a case of Mahomet, en route to pay his respects to the Mountain, being met halfway by the object of his pilgrimage; though to liken the Contessa di Ravello to a mountain is perhaps to brutalise a poetic license. She is a fairy of a woman, a pocket Venus. Gaetà is her name, and her sponsors in baptism must have been endowed with prophetic souls, for she is the very spirit of irresponsible, childlike gaiety.

Not that she has a sense of humour. There is all the difference in the world between a sense of humour and a sense of fun, and truth to tell, the Contessa had no more humour than a frolicsome kitten. She had always been in a frolic of some sort, when I had known her in Davos, whither she had gone because she thought it would be "what you call a lark"; and she was in a frolic now, judging by her merry laughter when she saw me.

Her great wine-brown eyes were laughing, her full, cupid-lips were laughing, and more than all, the two deep, round dimples in the olive cheeks were laughing. Even the little rings of black hair on her low forehead seemed to quiver with mirth, as her head moved with quick, bird-like gestures. She was dressed all in grey, and the cut-steel buttons on her dress twinkled as if they too were in the joke.

"Fancy meeting you here, of all places!" she said, in her pretty English, lisping but correct. "It is a good gift from the saints. We have had such stupid adventures, and we have been so bored."

"We" were evidently the handsome, slightly moustached woman of thirty-five, and the thin, darkly dour man of fifty who were with the Contessa in the carriage; and a moment later she had introduced me to the Baron and Baronessa di Nivoli. I echoed the name with some interest. "Have I the pleasure of meeting the inventor of the new air-ship which is so much talked about?" I asked.

"That is my brother Paolo," replied the Baron, unbending slightly.

"He will join us later," added the Baronessa, with a quick look at the pretty and rich little widow which betrayed to me a secret. She then turned a dark, disapproving gaze upon me which told another, and I could have laughed aloud. "They want to nobble my poor little Contessa for brother-aëronaut, and they don't countenance chance meetings with strange young men," I said to myself, greatly amused. "If they can see through the dust, and suspect in me a possible rival for the absent, they have sharp eyes, or keen imaginations, and I may be in for a little fun."

We were at the hotel door, and I was allowed to help the Contessa out, though the elder lady preferred the aid of the concierge. For the moment Gaetà had forgotten the claims of her companions, and remembered only mine. It is a butterfly way of hers to forget easily, and flutter with delight in a new corner of the garden, just because it is new.

"You are staying here? How nice!" she exclaimed, without giving me time to answer. "We should have arrived last night, but we had an accident to our carriage—a broken wheel. It was coming down from the Hospice of St. Bernard, which we had been to visit—oh, not to please me, do not think it. It was the Baron, here. In dim ages his people and the saint were cousins, though the idea of a saint having cousins seems actually sacrilegious, doesn't it? I do not love monks, I only respect them, which is so disagreeable. But the Baron took us. Dio mio! I have no warm blood left. It was frozen up there. And then, that our carriage should have broken down at a little place—the wrong end of nowhere—Bourg St. Something! We had to stop all night. Fancy me without my maid, who was to meet me here. I do not know if my dress is not on wrong side before. Later, we all have to go on to Chamounix and then to Aix-les-Bains. I've taken a villa there for a month. You must come and see me."

Thus she chattered on as we entered the hotel, and then, suddenly, her bright eyes fell upon the Boy, who had retired near the stairway. There he stood, with a book in his hand, and an unwonted colour in his brown cheeks, glowing red under the strange blue jewels of his eyes.

"What a divine boy!" the Countess half whispered to me, not taking her gaze from him. "He is exactly like a wonderful painting by some old Master of my own dear country. What eyes! They are better and bigger sapphires than any I own, though I've some famous ones. And how strange they are—looking out of his brown face, from under such black lashes, too. Oh, a picture, certainly. He is not like a modern, every-day boy, at all. He can't be English, of that I'm sure, and yet––"

"He is American," I said, when she paused thoughtfully, the Boy at his distance reading or pretending to read, as he stood. "But you are right. He is very far from being an every-day boy."

"You know him, then?"

"We've been travelling companions for days, and have got to be tremendous pals."

"How old is he?" asked the Contessa, a deep glow of interest and curiosity kindling in her warm brown eyes.

"I don't know. He has talked freely about himself only once or twice, though we've discussed together most other subjects under the sun."

"How deliciously mysterious. Mysterious! yes, that's the word for him. He has mysterious eyes; a mysterious face. There is a shadow upon it. That is part of the fascination, is it not? I am sure he is fascinating."

"Extraordinarily so. I have never met anyone at all like him."

"He might be a boy Tasso. But he has suffered; he is not a child any more, though his face is smooth as mine. He must be eighteen or nineteen?"

"I should give him less, though he has read and thought a tremendous lot for a boy."

"Men are not judges of age, thank heaven. Women are. I will have it that your friend is nineteen. I should be too silly to take an interest in him, were he less, if it were not motherly; and that wouldn't be entertaining. You see, I am already twenty-two."

"You look eighteen," I said; and it was true. Widow as she was, it was not possible to think of the Contessa as a responsible, grown woman.

"I told you that you were no judge of age. I was married at eighteen, a widow at nineteen. Dio mio! but it all seems a long time ago, already! Lord Lane, you must introduce to me your friend the boy."

Here was a dilemma, but I got out of it by telling the truth, which is usually, in the end, the best policy, many wise opinions to the contrary notwithstanding. "You will laugh," I said, "but I don't know his name."

"Not possible."

"True, nevertheless, like most things that seem impossible; nor does he know mine, unless he heard you speak it driving up to the hotel. He was at the door."

"Men are extraordinary! But, introduce him. You can manage somehow. It's not his name I care for. It is those eyes. I shall invite him to come and see me in Aix. Please bring him to me now. The Baron is arranging about our rooms, and there is sure to be a misunderstanding of some sort, as we had engaged for last night and did not come. The Baronessa? Oh, never mind; she had better listen to her husband. She is my friend, and is soon to be my guest, but she has got upon my nerves to-day."

Thus bidden, I could do no less than walk away down the hall to where the Boy stood with his book, leaning against the baluster.

"I've done all I could about the bag," I said. "The people in the post-office seemed hopeful that the big reward would do the trick."

"Thank you. You are very good," he returned. Something in his tone made me look at him closely. There was a change in him, though for my life I could not have told what it was or why it had come; there was ice in his voice, though I had spent nearly two dusty, unwashed hours in his service, while he refreshed himself at leisure.

"I hope it will be all right," I went on, rather heavily. "Look here, that pretty little fairy would like to know you. She's the Contessa di Ravello. Come along and be introduced."

The Boy flung up his head, his blue eyes flashing. "Why am I to be dragged at her chariot wheels?" he demanded.

"Oh, rot, my child. Don't put on airs. Men twice your age would snatch at such a chance."

"I can't tell what I may be capable of when I'm twice my age. It's difficult enough to know myself now. But I know––"

"Come on, do, like the dear Little Old Pal you really are," I cut in. "You don't want to put me in a false position, do you? Besides, I'd like particularly to get your opinion on the Contessa. I may have to ask your advice about something connected with her, later."

This fetched him, though with not too good a grace. "You don't know my name," he said, with a return of impishness, as we walked together towards the Contessa.

"I think that you have the advantage of me in that way, now."

"If you call it an advantage. I had a presentiment you weren't plain mister, so I'm not surprised. You may tell your Countess that my name is Laurence."

"Christian name or 'Pagan' name?"

"Make the Christian name Roy."

In another moment I was introducing Mr. Roy Laurence to the Contessa di Ravello; and as they stood eyeing each other, the fairy Gaetà pulsing with coquetry through all her hot-blooded Italian veins, the Boy aloof and critical, I was struck with the picture that the two figures made.

The Boy had three or four inches more of height than the Contessa, and looked almost tall beside her, though I had thought of him as small. Her round, dimpled face seemed no older than his oval brown one, in this moment of his gravity, and the haughty air of a young prince which he wore now, consciously or unconsciously, had a certain provoking charm for a spoiled beauty used to conquest. The big blue stars which lit his face expressed a resolve not to yield to any blandishment, and this no doubt piqued Gaetà, before whom all the boys and youths at Davos had gone down like grass before the scythe. Helen Blantock came after she had left the place, otherwise she might have had to fight for her rights as queen; but as it was, she had been without rivals and probably had known few dangerous ones elsewhere. Never had I seen her take as much real pains to be charming to a grown man, as she took with this silent boy, during the few moments that her friends spent in wrestling with the landlord. What lamps she lit in the windows of her eyes, suddenly raising their curtains on dazzling glances! What rosy flags she hung out in his honour, on dimpled cheeks; what rich display of pearls and coral her cupid-mouth gave him! but all in vain, so far as any change in his cold young face showed. I had seen it warm for a gleam of light on the wing of a swooping bird, or an effect of cloud-shadow on a mountain, as it would not warm for this galaxy of bewitchments, and his quiet civility was but a sharper pin-prick, I should fancy, to a woman's vanity.

The little scene was not long in playing, however. Soon the Baronessa swept to her friend's side, and bore her away, like a large steam-tug making off against wind and tide with a dainty sailing yacht.

Ignoring the subject of the lady; Boy began questioning me about the business of the bag, thanking me again more cordially for what I had done, when I had answered.

"I must have a bath and change now," said I at last. "At what time shall we dine?"

"We? You will be dining with your new friend."

"She's an old friend, if one counts by time of acquaintance, and charming, as you've seen; still, we're rather tired perhaps, and not up to dinner pitch. I'm not sure but we'd get on better alone together, you and I."

"I've taken a private sitting-room, and I'm going to dine there."

"Will you have me with you?"

"If you like."

"It will be a good opportunity to get your advice."

The Boy did not answer; but when we sat at table, and had talked for a while of indifferent things, he said abruptly: "What were you going to ask me?"

"Your advice as to whether it would be well to fall in love with the little Contessa."

"Has she money?"

"Hang it all, do you think I'm the kind of man to want a woman for her money?"

"I've known you about six days."

"Don't hedge. Can't six days tell you as much as six years—such six days as we've had?"

"Yes. It's true. I would stake a good deal that you're not that kind of man. I don't know why I said it. Something hateful made me. The Contessa is very pretty. Could you—fall in love with her?"

"It would be an interesting experiment to try."

"If you think so, you must already have begun."

"No, not yet. I assure you I have an open mind. But it's an odd coincidence meeting her like this. I was making the fact that she has a house at Monte Carlo an excuse for going down there—sooner or later—as an end to my journey. Now, she is to be in Chamounix, and she intends to invite us both, it seems, to visit her in Aix-les-Bains, where she has taken a villa."

The Boy looked at me suddenly, with a slight start. "She is going to Chamounix?"

"So she says."

"And—she will invite you to visit her at her villa in Aix-les-Bains."

"You, too. You said yesterday you wanted to go to Aix, as you had never been; and we planned an expedition by the mule-path up Mont Revard."

"I know. But—but would you visit the Contessa?"

"We might amuse ourselves. She would be well chaperoned, no doubt by the Baronessa. There's a brother of the Baron's in the background. Probably he'll turn up at Aix. Certainly he will if his relatives have any control over his actions. He's no other, it turns out, than Paolo di Nivoli, the young Italian whose airship invention has been made a fuss about lately. It would be rather a joke to try and cut him out with the Contessa—if one could."

"Oh—cut him out." The Boy seemed thoughtful. "Though you aren't in love with her?"

"Yes."

"I see."

"Will you go if I do—that is, if she really asks us?"

I expected him to flash out a refusal, but he brooded under a deep shadow of eyelashes for a while, looking half cross, half mischievous, and finally said: "I'll think it over."

A Man from the Dark