The World without the Boy
"A . . . somewhat headlong carriage."
--R.L. STEVENSON.
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.
[Illustration]