Part 16 (1/2)

”No more afternoon calls on chateaux for me, after _that_ experience,”

I gasped, when we were safely seated in the homelike vehicle which I had not sufficiently appreciated before.

”Oh, I shall be disappointed if you won't go with me to the Chateau of St. Pierre which we saw in the photograph--that quaint ma.s.s of towers and pinnacles, on the very top of a peaked rock,” said the Boy. ”I've been looking forward to it more than to anything else, but I shan't have courage to do it alone.”

”Courage?” I echoed. ”After the brazen way in which you stalked through the scattered belongings of the family at Aymaville, you would stop at nothing.”

”In other words, I suppose you think me a typical Yankee boy? But I really was nervous, and inclined to apologise to somebody for being alive. That's why I can't go through another such ordeal without company; yet I wouldn't miss this eleventh-century castle for a bag of your English sovereigns.”

”If only it had been left alone, and not restored!” I groaned. ”In that case we should meet no one but bats.”

”We? Then you will go with me?”

”I suppose so,” I sighed. ”It can't add more than a dozen grey hairs, and what are they among so many?”

A few kilometres further on we reached the ”bizarre monticule,” from which sprouted a still more bizarre chateau. From our low level, it was impossible to tell where the rock stopped, and where the castle began, so deftly had man seized every point of vantage offered by Nature--and ”points” they literally were.

The ascent from the road to the chateau was much like climbing a fire-escape to the top of a New York sky-sc.r.a.per, but we earned the right to cry ”Excelsior!” at last, had we not by that moment been speechless. History now repeated itself. I rang; the castle gate was opened, but this time by a major-domo who had already in some marvellous way learned that strangers might be expected.

Never was so appallingly hospitable a man, and I trusted that even the Boy suffered from his kindness. Madame la Baronne, who was away for the afternoon, would chide him if guests were allowed to leave her house without refreshment. Eat we must, and drink we must, in the beautiful hall evidently used as a sitting-room by the absent chatelaine. Her wine and her cakes were served on an ancient silver tray, almost as old as the family traditions, and it was not until we had done to both such justice as the major-domo thought fair that he would consent to let us go further.

The house was really of superlative interest, though spoiled here and there by eccentric modern decoration. Much of the window gla.s.s had remained intact through centuries; the walls were twelve feet thick; the oak-beamed ceilings magnificent, and the secret stairways and rooms in the thickness of the walls, bewildering; but when our conductor began leading us into the bedrooms in daily use by the ladies of the castle, my gorge rose. ”This is awful,” I said. ”I can't go on. What if Madame la Baronne returns and finds a strange man and a boy in her bedroom? Good heavens, now he's opening the door of the bath!”

”We must go on,” whispered the Boy, convulsed with silent laughter.

”If we don't, the major-domo won't understand our scruples. He'll think we're tired, and don't appreciate the castle. It would never do to hurt his feelings, when he has been so kind.”

”To the bitter end, then,” I answered desperately; and no sooner were the words out of my mouth than the bitter end came. It consisted of a collision with the Baronne's dressing-jacket, which hung from a hook, and tapped me on the shoulder with one empty frilled sleeve, in soft admonition. I could bear no more. One must draw the line somewhere, and I drew the line at intruding upon ladies' dressing-jackets in their most sacred fastnesses.

If I had been a woman, my pent-up emotion at this moment would have culminated in hysterics, but being a man, I merely bolted, stumbling, as I fled, over my absent hostess' bedroom slippers. I scuttled down a winding flight of tower stairs, broke incontinently into a lighted region which turned out to be a kitchen, startled the cook, apologised incontinently, and somehow found myself, like Alice in Wonderland, back in the great entrance hail. There, starting at every sound, lest a returning family party should catch me ”lurking,” I awaited the Boy.

We left, finally, showering francs and compliments; but I crawled out a decrepid wreck, and refused pitilessly to do more than view the exterior of other chateaux. It was evening when we saw our white hotel once more, and a haze of starlight dusted the sky and all the blue distance with silver powder.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XIV

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.”