The Path of the Moon
"And then they came to the turnstile of night."
--RUDYARD KIPLING.
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 manoeuvres, 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.
[Illustration: "LOOKING OUT OF THE WINDOW I SAW HIM IN
CONVERSATION".]
It must have been after three o'clock by the time I fell asleep in a
queer little room where you had but to sit up in bed and stretch out
your arm to reach anything you wanted. I dreamed of journeying through
the night with the Boy, but I forgot his lost bag: nor when I waked in
full morning light, did I recall its tragic disappearance. I found
that it was nearly eight, and bounded out of bed, performing my toilet
with maimed rites, since baths were not _comme il faut_ at Orsières.
"The kid will be asleep still, I'll bet," I said to myself; but looking
out of the window at that moment, I saw him in conversation with
Joseph, Innocentina, and--apparently--half the inhabitants of the
village.
I hurried down, and learned that the bag--still a lost bag--had set
all Orsières on fire with excitement. The searchers had returned
empty-handed, having gone back as far as the Cantine de Proz; and on
the oath of Innocentina (more than one, alas!), the _rücksack_ and its
contents had been secure on the grey back of Souris when we passed the
Cantine. Desolate as was the Great St. Bernard at night, late as had
been the hour when the bag vanished, evidently someone had found and
gone off with it. Nevertheless, many young persons of both sexes were
eager to try their luck in a second quest.
The Boy, who had been up for hours, had it in mind to wait at Orsières
until his treasure should be found, or hope abandoned; but I suggested
going on at once to Martigny. There, we could have handbills printed,
offering a large reward, and these could be distributed over the
country. The diligence drivers would help in the work, and we could
also advertise in a local paper. To this proposal the Little Pal
consented; and we started off again upon our way, a sadder if not a
wiser party.
It was late afternoon when we straggled into Martigny. Now, our far
away Alpine Rome with its crumbling towers and castles, our remote
heights where a grey monastery was ever mirrored in the blue eye of
the mountain lake, seemed like phases of a dream.
Friends of the Boy's (nameless to me, like all links with his outside
life) had stopped lately at the hotel where Molly, Jack, and I had
stayed; he therefore proposed to go to the same house, and this jumped
with my inclination: for the hotel had a cheerful and home-like
individuality which I liked.
Pitying the Little Pal's distress, though I chaffed him for it, I
undertook the business of getting out the handbills I had suggested,
and arranging for an advertisement in a paper with a local
circulation. I had to visit the post-office, engaging in a long
discussion with the officials who controlled the diligence, and the
business occupied more than an hour. In mercy to Boy, I had not
delayed for any selfish attention to personal comfort, and tramping
back through an inch of white dust to the hotel, I was still as
travel-worn as on our arrival in the town, nearly two hours ago. I had
forbidden the tired child to accompany me, and by this time he would
no doubt be refreshed with a bath and a change of clothing, as,
fortunately, not all his personal belongings had been contained in the
ill-fated bag. He would be impatiently waiting for me at the hotel
door, perhaps; and I quickened my steps, in haste to give him details
of my doings.
Entering the garden, I had to bound onto the grass, to escape being
run over by a pair of horses prancing round the curve, at my back. I
turned with a basilisk glare intended for the coachman, but instead
met the astonished gaze of the very last eyes I could possibly have
expected. My glare melted into a smile, but not one of my best, though
the eyes which called it forth were alluringly beautiful.
"Contessa!" I exclaimed. "Is this you, or your astral body?"
"Lord Lane!" the lovely lady-of-the-eyes responded. "But no, it is not
possible!"
Just as I was about to protest that it was not only possible, but
certain, I caught sight of the Boy, in the doorway. As, at the
Contessa's word, the carriage came to a sudden halt, she reaching out
to me two little grey suede hands, the slim figure at the door drew
back a step, as if involuntarily; but there was no getting round it,
my Italian beauty had made Boy a present of my name, whether he wanted
it or not.
[Illustration]