Part 23 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XVII
The Little Game of Flirtation
”To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you.”
--WALT WHITMAN.
The Contessa had to be pacified, but she adored romance, and she was pleased to say that the story of the bag, lost and found, which I--not the Boy--told her, came under that category. She was in the best of tempers for a day of travelling, and saw us off, before her friends were dressed and ready to begin their drive to Chamounix.
”They are taking as long as they can, on purpose,” she whispered to me, with the air of a naughty child planning mischief behind the backs of its elders. ”Anything to keep me to themselves and away from you!
But you are walking, and the way is uphill for a very long time, so the hotel people say. We shall catch you up, and just to spite the Di Nivolis, if nothing more, I shall beg first one of you, then the other, to let me give you a lift. Neither of you must refuse, or I shall cry, and no man has ever made me cry yet.”
”I'm sure no man ever will,” I answered promptly.
”And no boy?” she asked, with a long-lashed glance at my companion, who had given no answer save a smile.
”I wonder how you would look when you cried, Contessa?” was the only reply the little wretch deigned, but instead of offending, it appeared to amuse her. She watched our cavalcade out of the hotel garden (the _rucksack_ once more on Souris' faithless back), and the silver bells of her laughter lightly rang us down the road.
Again we had to pa.s.s through Martigny Bourg, and presently, turning aside from the road which had led me to the Grand St. Bernard, we took the way on the right, almost at once feeling the rise of the hill.
Steeper and steeper it grew, and warmer and warmer we, though the day was young. Often we were glad of the excuse the view gave us to stop and look back, down into the wide bowl of the Rhone Valley, with a heat-haze of quivering blue, creating an effect of great distance, like a ”gauze drop” on the stage.
Surely this was the longest lull on earth, and when we reached the top--if we ever did--we should find that we had been climbing Jack's Beanstalk, coming out into a different world! Up and up we dragged for hours, the Boy determined not to take to donkey-back, despite the protestations of Innocentina, emphatic, but slightly modified by constant a.s.sociation with the man she was engaged in converting.
Sometimes we were ministered to by small maidens, with marvellously neat, sleek hair, who sprang up under our eyes, apparently from rabbit-holes, their arms hooked into the handles of big fruit baskets which might easily have been their bathtubs or cradles. If we seemed inclined to turn away with an expressionless gaze, the little creatures forged after us with a determined trot, laid back with tiny brown hands the dainty white napkin hiding the basket's contents, and tempted us with purple plums or mellow pears. In the end, we invariably succ.u.mbed to these wiles, even when we had sickened at the thought of fruit, and were obliged surrept.i.tiously to hide our purchases by the wayside, when the st.u.r.dy young vendors' backs were turned.
We carried our panamas in our hands, and the Boy's short chestnut curls clung to his forehead in damp rings, making him look absurdly childish. I wondered at myself for discussing with eager interest, as I often did, so many of life's unanswerable questions with such a slip of boyhood. Still, I knew that I should often do it again, while we remained together, and that he would know how to measure wits with mine, to my disadvantage, compelling always my respect for his opinions, unless he happened to be in an inconsequential or impish mood.
After a long climb, we called a halt at the most attractive of several little wayside chalets we had pa.s.sed. Each was thoughtfully provided with an awning or wooden roof stretching across the road to give shade to travellers, who were lured to pause by bottles of bright-coloured syrups, wine, and beer displayed on flower-decked tables. Our chosen chalet made a specialty of milk, and a view. There was a rough balcony at the back, built over a sheer precipice, and far beneath, the Rhone Valley spread itself for our eyes. We sat resting, with gla.s.ses of rich yellow milk in our hands, when a voice under the road-shelter in front roused us from reverie. It was the Contessa greeting Joseph and Innocentina, who were reposing on a bench in the delicious shade.
”I was just thinking it was rather queer they hadn't caught us up,” I said, rising; and then I asked myself why I had said it; for, when I came to cross-question my own thoughts, they had to own up that the Contessa had not been in them.
”Oh, it was the Contessa you were thinking of, then, when you sat looking as if you were a thousand miles away, and had left your body behind to keep your place?” said the Boy, jumping up quickly. ”Well, here she is; your mind may be at ease.”
We returned to the front of the house, through the neat, bare ”living-room,” the Boy a step or two ahead of me, as if anxious to greet the new arrivals. Off came his hat, and he stood leaning against the carriage, looking up into the warm brown eyes of Gaeta, which were warmer and brighter than ever because of this sudden show of devotion.
Had the magnetism of her coquetry fired him? I wondered, it would be strange if it were not so, for she was beautiful, and her manner flattering to a boy so young. Somehow, my spirits were dashed at the thought that my companion's last words to me might be explained by jealousy of an older man with a pretty woman. It would be hard if it were to come to this between us. Though I had talked of going to see her in Monte Carlo, the b.u.t.terfly Contessa was no more to me than a delicate pastel on someone else's wall, or a gay refrain, which charms the ear without haunting the memory. I would not interfere with the Boy; if he chose to encourage Gaeta to flirt with him, he need not fear me; but I had liked to think he valued my comrades.h.i.+p. Now, a fancy for this child-woman would rob me of him. Instead of being piqued by the Contessa's growing preference for the Boy, as I ought to have been by all the rules of the game of flirtation, I was conscious of anger against her as an intruder.
This feeling increased almost to sulkiness when the Boy was invited to take a seat in the carriage beside the gloomy Baron, and accepted promptly.
The driving party had been delayed a long time in starting, Gaeta explained, making large eyes which blamed her friends for everything; and the driver had brought his horses slowly, oh, so slowly, up the long hill, the stupid fellow. But now the carriage flashed ahead, and I was left to tramp on alone, while the Contessa and the Boy flirted, and Joseph and Innocentina bickered, all alike unmindful of me.
We lunched at the Col de Forclaz, where the hill, tired of going up, ran down to another valley. There was a G.o.dlike a.s.semblage of mountains, white and blue, mountains as far as the eye could reach, and I had a thought or two which I would have liked to exchange for some of the Boy's. But if he had ever really had any thoughts, save for the fun of the moment, he had the air of forgetting them all for Gaeta. When, in a tone of unenthusiastic politeness, she asked if I would not take my friend's place in the carriage for a while when we started on again, out of pure spite against the little wretch who had dropped me for her I said that I would.
I could not see the Boy's face, to make sure if he were disappointed, but I hoped it. As for myself, I would fain have walked. In a scene of such exalted beauty, Gaeta's little quips and quirks struck a wrong note. Sitting with my back to the horses, I could see the Boy walking on behind, his face raised mountain-ward and sky-ward, and I longed to know of what he was thinking, for evidently he had left his aggravating, ”awfully-jolly-don't-you-know” mood in the carriage with the Contessa.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”SITTING WITH MY BACK TO THE HORSES.”]