The Princess Passes Part 32

"A good many people think so. That's why I'm so sure she wouldn't be the sort of girl you'd care for--you, a man who admires the English rose type or--a Contessa."

"The Contessa was your affair. For me, a woman of her type could never be dangerous. Whereas, a girl like your sister----"

"Still harping on my sister!"

"I often think of her as 'The Princess.' It's a pretty name. I fancy it suits her. Once or twice, since we've been chums, you have had letters, I know. I hope you've better news of her?"

"She's cured in body and mind. It is--rather a queer coincidence, perhaps, for like you, she has found out, so she tells me--that she wasn't really in love with--the man. She was only in love with love."

"I'm heartily glad. If she's as true and brave a little soul, as glorious a pal as you are, she will one day make some fellow the happiest man alive."

The Boy did not answer. Perhaps he was overwhelmed with the indirect praise suddenly heaped upon him; perhaps he thought that I spoke too freely of the Princess his sister. I was not sure, myself, that I had not gone beyond good taste; but calling up the picture of a girl, resembling in character the Little Pal, had stirred me to sudden enthusiasm. Fancy a girl looking at one with such eyes! a girl capable of being such a companion. It would not bear thinking of. There could be no such girl.

I was glad that, at this moment, we arrived at the Grand Port, and the garden restaurant, where my regrets for the light that never was on land or sea--or in a girl's eyes--were temporarily drowned in _cafe au lait_.

The talk was no more of the unseen Princess, but of Paolo. At last I condescended to enter into a detailed account of the night's happenings, where the aeronaut was concerned, and the Boy threw up his chin, showing his little white teeth in a burst of laughter at my manoeuvre. "But that _isn't_ an American duel," he objected, still rippling with mirth. "You commit suicide, you know. The man who draws the short bit of paper agrees to go quietly off and kill himself decently somewhere, before the end of a stipulated time."

"I'm aware of that, but I gambled on Paolo's ignorance of the custom,"

said I. "I flattered myself that I'd totted up his character like a sum on a slate, and I acted on the estimate I formed. If I had kept entirely to facts, without giving the rein to my imagination, you might now be doomed to travel at this time next year to Buda-Pesth, and there drown yourself in the largest possible vat of beer. Had Paolo been unlucky in the matter of getting the short bit of paper, a little thing like that wouldn't have bothered him much. He would simply have gone off for a long trip in his newest air-s.h.i.+p, and conveniently forgotten such an obscure engagement. It was the thought of standing up defenceless, to be artistically potted at by you, that turned his heart to water."

"I believe you're right, and anyway, you are very clever," said the Boy. "What does one do for a man who has saved one's life?"

"If you were only a girl, now--a Princess in a fairy story--you would bestow upon me your hand," I replied gaily. "As it is--I can't at the moment think of a punishment to fit the crime."

"Though I can't be a Princess, I might play the Prince, and give you a ring," he said, pulling at the queer seal ring he always wore.

"But it wouldn't fit the crime--I mean the finger."

"Mere mortals never argue when the fairy Prince makes them a present.

Do take the ring. I should like you to have it to--remember me by."

"To remember you by? But such chums as we have got to be don't give memory much pull; they arrange to see each other often."

"Fairy Princes vanish sometimes, you know."

"If I take your ring, will you appear if I rub it?"

The Boy was smiling, but his eyes looked grave. "If when the Fairy Prince has vanished--that is, if he _should_--you want to see him really badly, try rubbing the ring. It might work. But you'll probably lose the ring before that--and the memory."

I answered by hooking the ring, which was far too small for the least of my fingers, into the spring-loop which held my watch on its chain.

"My watch and I are one," I said. "Only burglary or death can separate me from the ring now; and if I'm smashed next time Jack Winston lets me drive his motor car, there will probably be a romantic little paragraph in the papers--perhaps even a pathetic verse--about the ring on the dead man's watch-chain, which will give you every satisfaction."

"The boat's whistling," said the Boy. "We'd better run, if we want to see the Abbey of Hautecombe before lunch."

We did run, and caught the boat in that uncertain and exciting manner which brings into play a physical appurtenance unrecognised by science, _i.e._, the skin of the teeth. Under the awning which shaded the deck, we took the only two seats not occupied by an abnormally large German family,--abnormally large individually as well as collectively,--and settled ourselves for half an hour's enjoyment of a charming water-panorama.

"What a heavenly place Aix is!" exclaimed the Boy fervently. "I'm so glad I came."

"I thought yesterday that you were disappointed in the place."

"Oh, yesterday was yesterday. To-day's to-day. How glorious everything is, in the world. I do love living. And I like everybody so much. What nice, good creatures one's fellow beings are. My heart warms to them.

I don't believe anybody's really horrid, through and through. I should like to pat somebody on the shoulder."

"Queer thing; I feel exactly the same way this morning," said I.

"Shall we throw ourselves on one another's bosom, and kiss each other on both cheeks, German fas.h.i.+on, to show our good will towards all mankind? I'm sure our travelling companions would warmly sympathize with our _schwarmerei_."

"No-o, perhaps we'd better not risk setting them the example, for fear they should follow it."

"Then let's shake hands."

He put out his little slim brown paw, and I seized it with such heartiness that he visibly winced, but not a squeak did the pain draw from him; and the large Germans, looking on gravely, no doubt thought that, according to some queer English rite, we had registered an important vow.

Really the world was a nice place that day, though I might not have noticed it so much if the Boy and I had been still at loggerheads.

Yesterday, as we entered Aix, I had said to myself that the mountains surrounding the town had descended to depths of dumpy ugliness unworthy the name and dignity of mountains. I had formulated the idea that there should be world landscape-gardeners appointed, to work on a grand scale, and alter hills or mountains which Nature had neglected or bungled. But to-day, as we steamed down the long, narrow Lac de Bourget, sitting shoulder to shoulder, the light breeze fluttering b.u.t.terfly-wings against our faces, I could not see that there was anything for the most fastidious taste to alter, anywhere.

As the lake at Annecy had been incredibly blue, this lake was incredibly green. No weekly penny paper in England, even in its fattest holiday number, would have room enough to compute the vast number of emeralds which must have been melted to give that vivid tint to the sparkling water. It was as easy to see the inhabitants of the lake having their luncheon at the bottom, on tables exquisitely decorated with coloured pebbles, as it is to look in through the plate-gla.s.s window of a restaurant. As our course changed, the mountains girdling the lake and filling in the perspective, grouped themselves in graceful att.i.tudes, like professional beauties sitting for their photographs. There were chateaux dotted here and there on the hillside, and I no longer peopled them with myself and Helen Blantock. I realised that if one had a palace on the Lake of Como or Bourget, or any other romantic sheet of water, one could be happy as an elderly bachelor, if one's days were occasionally enlivened by visits from congenial friends, such as the Winstons and the Boy. No wonder that Lamartine was happy at Chatillon, writing his Meditations!

I felt that a long residence on the sh.o.r.es of the Lac de Bourget would inspire me to some modest meditations of my own, and I could even have taken down a few memoranda for them, had I not feared that the Boy would laugh to see my notebook come out.

I remembered Hautecombe, with its ancient Abbey, deep cream-coloured, like old ivory or the marbles of the Vatican, glimmering among dark trees, and mirrored in the lake so clearly that, gazing long at the reflection, one felt as if standing on one's head. I pointed it out to the Boy from a distance, on its jutting promontory, with the pride of the well-informed guide, and talked of the place with a superficial appearance of erudition. But after all, when he came to pin me down with questions, my bubble-reputation burst. Not a date could I pump up from the drained depths of my recollection, and in the end I had to accept ignominiously from the Boy such crumbs as he had collected from a guide-book larder. What was it to us, I contended, that the monastery was said to have been built in 1125? What did it matter that it had originally been the home of Cistercians? Why clog one's mind with such details, since it was enough for all purposes of romance to know that the old building had weathered many wars and many centuries, and that a special clause had protected the monks when Savoie was ceded by Italy to France? The great charm of the place for me, apart from its natural beauty, lay in the thought that it was the last home of dead kings, the vanished Princes of Savoie; I did not want to know the facts of its restoration at different dates, and would indeed shut my eyes upon all such traces if I could.

Though the Abbey and its double in the lake had remained a picture in my mind, through the years since I had seen them, I was struck anew with the peaceful loveliness of the place as we approached the little landing-stage. The Kings of Savoie had chosen well in choosing to sleep their last sleep at Hautecombe.

The Boy and I slowly ascended the deeply shadowed road which led up the hill to the Abbey, but leisurely as we walked, we soon outpaced the Germans. For this we were not sorry, since it gave us the silent grey church to ourselves--and the sleeping Kings. We bestowed money for his charities upon the white-robed monk who would have shown us the tombs and the chapels, conscientiously gabbling history the while; and then, with compliments, we freed him from the duty. His hard facts would have been like dogs yapping at our heels, and, as the Boy said, we would not have been able to hear ourselves think.

We whispered as if fearing to wake the sleepers, as we wandered from one bed of marble in its dim niche, to another. Never, perhaps, did so many crowned heads lie under the same roof as at peaceful Hautecombe, sleeping longer, more soundly far, than the Princess in her enchanted Palace in the Wood. For centuries the convent bells have rung, calling the monks to prayer; and sometimes the walls have trembled with the thunder of cannon: yet the sleepers have not stirred. There they have lain, those stately, royal figures, with hands folded placidly on placid bosoms, resting well after stress and storm.

It was difficult to keep in mind that the real kings and queens had mouldered into dust under the stone where reposed their counterfeit presentments. Again and again we had to send away the impression that we were looking at the actual bodies, transformed by the slow process of centuries into marble, together with their guardian lions, their favourite hounds, and their curly lambs.

The endless slumber of these royal men and women of Savoie seemed magical, mysterious. We felt that, if we but had the secret of the talisman, we could wake them; that they would slowly rise on elbow, and gaze at us, stony-eyed, and reproachful for shattering their dreams.

The murmurous silence of the church whispered broken s.n.a.t.c.hes of their life stories--not that part which we could read in history, or see graven in Latin on their tombs, but that part of which they might choose to dream. Had those knightly men in carven armour loved the marble ladies lying in stately right of possession by their sides, or had their fancy wandered to others whose dust lay now in some far, obscure corner of earth?

If my homage could have compensated in any small degree for kingly unfaith, a drop of balm would have fallen upon the marble heart of each royal lady to whom such injustice had perchance been done; for I loved them all for their n.o.ble dignity, and the sweet femininity which remained to them even under the mask of stone. Their names alone warmed the blood with the wine of romance: the Princess Yolande; the d.u.c.h.ess Beatrix; the Lady Melusine. Surely, with such names and such profiles, they had been worth a man's living or dying for; and if life had not been so vivid for me that day, I should have wished myself back in the far past, in heavy, uncomfortable armour, fighting their battles.

"'Where are all the dear, dead women?'" asked the Boy. "'What's become of all the gold that used to hang, and brush their shoulders?' Maybe part of the answer to Browning's question lies in those tombs."

"They were Princesses, like your sister," said I. "I've been fancying them with her eyes."

"What do you know about her eyes?" he asked quickly.

"I imagine them like yours."

"Let's get out into the suns.h.i.+ne again," said the Boy. "I'm afraid it's time to leave the Princesses, and go back to the Contessa."

[Ill.u.s.tration]