CHAPTER I

The roads at the crossing were wide and smooth, with cool woods on either side, but beyond them to the left rose the high, jagged, yellow-and-black mass of the mountains, bare on their upper reaches, and wooded in the shelter of the valleys, a splintered peak or two farthest inland showing snowcapped even in August. They dominated the narrow strip of fertile, hilly land between them and the sea, abrupt, savage, Central European. One of the roads led up through a cloven valley and was engulfed in it, the other ran more levelly along the sea coast. John stopped while we stared. It was not the first time that we had stopped in the last few days just to look at a landscape. The whole journey through these lands of astounding languages and suddenly varying costumes had been painted in opalescent sunlight and vivid shadows, but since morning we had been nearing the mountains. Now we found ourselves under them, but not yet in them, and two roads, equally wide and enticing, led forward to unmarked destinations.
2“It’s the road to the left,” I said, looking at the map. “It seems to branch off about here, but it might be a little farther on. It’s hard to tell with no markers.”
“Anyway, let’s not take it,” John objected. “Why pass up another day or so of driving? You never know what you may find if you don’t know where you’re going.”
I agreed.
“Helena doesn’t expect us any particular day, so that’s all right,” I said. “Let’s take the wrong road.”
It was a very long and beautiful wrong road. The mountains changed their angles, but did not move from their commanding position to our left. The sea became bluer, the sun climbed higher, and then presently, we were turning inland. We passed only small villages, or isolated farms, their buildings connected, in true Central-European fashion, by a series of little walled courts, where pigs and chickens, cows, human beings, dogs, donkeys, and even mules and horses mingled but did not stop. With firm faith in the brakes of passing cars they overflowed into the highway. John dodged them all expertly, having had almost a week of practise at it, and presently we came suddenly to a customs house with a barrier across the road.
3“This must be the Alarian frontier,” John said. “There’s always something at the end of a road. Shall we go through?”
“Why not?” I said. “We’re here, and we can get back to Helena’s across the mountains. There’s a rather famous Pass. Handsome scenery.”
“There are no shortcuts to beauty,” he proclaimed, grinning. “The farther we go the better it gets. Where’s your passport?”
4The inspector peered into the tonneau of our car, and seemed pained by the number of tightly strapped pieces he saw there. He gratefully accepted a pair of cigars from me, and then dutifully read our names with a thick accent, so that John became Yohn Coltaire, and I Marr-s-hall Carrr-veen. Our likenesses puzzled him a little. He stared from them to us several times before he decided that they were, after all, passable. He then waved us through the barrier, and we came, a hundred yards or so farther on, to a second barrier, where the performance was repeated, in the same order, as though rehearsed, like a comic opera chorus. The only difference was the uniform of the examiners. We were then given gracious permission to enter the realm of King Bela of Alaria.
“Chap I know,” John said, “went all through here last year and wrote a book about it. He said the roads were fine and the food and wines even better, if you like garlic and mutton. And he’s never tired of raving about the people. Maybe we’d better stop and do some painting.”
“You don’t have to go to Waldek,” I said. “If you’re seeking refuge in working I can go there by train alone.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Of course I want to go to Waldek. Those mountains make me feel as though they ought to be set down on canvas.”
“Work’s pretty fascinating,” I agreed, “if you’re not doing any.”
5“That’s not true,” John objected. “I’m not doing any, and don’t want to, but once I start I like it. You’ll see when we get to Waldek.”
“The mountains are there, too,” I promised him.
“I know,” he answered. “And I’ve never visited a Countess in a medi?val castle. I’m expecting a couple of ghosts and a bookful of legends, to say nothing of all the neighbors in for Kaffee Klatsch, and the feudal retainers in costume.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I feel a bit doubtful myself. I’ve never been to Waldek, and it’s eight years since I’ve seen Helena.”
“The grand finale to a perfect trip,” he enthused politely. “Reunion with a lost cousin and her beautiful daughter, the Countess Marie.”
“Only don’t blame me,” I warned, “if she isn’t. I haven’t seen the kid since she was about twelve or so. She was thin and pig-tailed then, and over fond of sticky French pastry and marrons glacés.”
“She’s probably grown fat on them in eight years, and had a permanent wave. Still, I always hope for the best, and sometimes I’m surprised by getting something like it. Look at that, for instance.”
6We had topped the crest of a long, rolling hilltop, to the sudden edge of a low cliff, and looked almost directly upon the historic and fantastic city of Herrovosca, capital of Alaria. It was the first time either of us had ever seen an Oriental city. Geographically, of course, Herrovosca is not Oriental, but the Turks occupied it too long for it ever to look like a European city again. The houses below were whitewashed, or color washed, the shrubbery was thick and of an unbelievably luscious and vivid green, as I imagine the green of an oasis to be, with flecks of bright flowers to accent it and slender poplars pointed heavenward like minarets of silver. From the hilltop we looked almost directly down on the new part of the town. Pleasant villas were set back in their gardens behind high white walls, awninged roofs showed bright among the trees, the bright face of a small lake flashed, and through the center of the city flowed a river, crossed by a dozen bridges. Everything on our side of the river was new and bright, with ample space for trees. On the opposite bank there was little greenery except for a park that covered a small rocky hill. In the park was a huge old building, a massive grey stone structure with long wings of lighter stone that had been added later. Obviously it was the Royal Palace, the abode of the only Christian bachelor King in the world. Around the whole district was a double line of fortifications in perfect preservation. The outer wall crossed two of the bridges and was continued on our side of the river. In medi?val days the Herrovoscans did not dare to leave their defense to chance and the perfection of the walls suggested that the medi?val period was a very recent fact.
7At the foot of the little hill on which the Royal Palace stood, was a large square, flanked by a Cathedral on one side, and by two large, official-looking buildings on the other two, with the park of the Palace forming the fourth. It was all very quiet and peaceful. Not a sound came up to us from the city, though we were very close to it. We passed a few cars, some market and trucking wagons drawn by mules, horses and oxen in mixed pairs, a scattering of foot passengers, laden donkeys, and riders, each making its own special sound; but from the city there was only silence. It seemed unnaturally still, like a dead town.
8“It’s the wind,” John said, practically. “It’s carrying the sound away from us. Odd effect, though, isn’t it?”
“It’s the most scene-painterish city I ever saw in real life,” I said. It was hard to believe that it was real, but as we rolled down the hill sounds of activity gradually rose to meet us. As we crossed the river over one of the wide stone bridges, the first impression of unnatural quiet was erased. Herrovosca was like all cities, noisy, busy, self-centered, and its color faded a little as we approached. John turned away from the wide thoroughfare leading from the bridge, and followed several short narrow streets. They were quaint and full of atmosphere, both ocular and olfactory, but so short that in a few moments we found ourselves on another wide avenue, lined with trees and flowers, their wide walks dotted with nurse maids in gay caps with colored streamers, men and women of less than the highest class making quite a business of their promenade, staring at the fine, open carriages and cars in which the great ladies drove, and the handsome horses being ridden by young officers of the army. We were so much amused by the people that we almost drove past a gendarme who motioned us to one side so that two lancers might ride down the center of the street, tiny blue pennons waving from the tip of their long lances. A victoria followed, drawn by a handsome pair of black stallions. Behind that were two more lancers with four soldiers following on motor cycles. In the victoria were two ladies. One of them was bowing from right to left, graciously acknowledging the salutes of her subjects. The Queen Mother, of course. She was as handsome as her pictures, and of a conscious presence, like a great actress. She stared slightly as she bowed to us. Evidently tourists were not plentiful in Alaria.
9John fell in behind the cortege, driving slowly of necessity. We had a Baedeker, but did not bother to open it. It was so much pleasanter to wander on haphazard. When we came to a side street that looked interesting, we turned into it again. It smelt strongly of cheese and other native food products. White walls, grated windows, cobblestones, were everywhere, and nearly all of the lower classes wore their bright native costumes. There were so many of them, and so many uniforms, that civilian clothes became conspicuous. Practically no one lowly enough to walk wore them except the promenaders on the avenue.
10“That’s the way people ought to dress,” John approved. “Bright colors. Makes you feel cheerful.”
After we had been driving about for some minutes we came suddenly out of the twisting maze of streets, and found ourselves in the large square we had seen from the hill above the city. John stopped the car to look around us. If he had not we should have been run into by a large dark car travelling very fast. It turned into the open gates of the Palace park. The sentries jumped out of the way and managed to salute almost at the same time as it charged up the steep short hill with a roar of its open motor. We caught just a glimpse of a young girl alone in the tonneau. She was leaning forward in an eager and excited pose. I probably should not have noticed her otherwise. Almost before that car had disappeared another followed it, with another lone passenger, this time a thin man, and two liveried servants. Though his car was travelling at the same frantic rate as the first, the thin man was leaning back as though time meant nothing to him.
11“Something’s going on,” John said. “That’s what always happens sooner or later to spoil any trip.”
“Excitement?” I asked.
“Yes,” John said, disgustedly. “Something you can’t be in on because you’re a stranger.”
“Look how pleasant and peaceful this square is,” I protested.
It was quite a beautiful square, paved with huge blocks of red and black marble. The roadway ran around the four sides, but the two cars that passed us had driven across the center. Royal prerogative, probably. Facing us rose the great bulk of the Cathedral, built of some dark stone, so weathered that it seemed almost black. Its twin spires had once been gilded, but were now a rusty red. To our right and left were the two large grey buildings of obviously official character, and further to the right rose the Royal Palace on its rocky, park-like hill. A stone wall ran around it, and, toward the square, where a tower jutted down, it almost touched the wall, just beyond two colossal wrought-iron gates. Farther back, a light and fanciful covered bridge had been added, reaching from the wall to the Cathedral, and offering the members of the Royal Household a private entrance to the church. Its architecture was Renaissance, and it might have been a part of Versailles, so graceful and completely French was its style. It was a noticeable contrast to the Cathedral and the Palace. Through its rows of glazed windows I could see the blue sky beyond.
12“Let’s stay here a few days,” I suggested. “We can amuse ourselves, though the place looks so quiet and tranquil I don’t suppose anything will ever happen here again.”
“That’s a fine reason for staying in a place.” John snorted.
“You could paint,” I offered.
“Let’s find a hotel,” he said. “I’m hungry, and I’d like to get a bath before dinner. You probably have to announce your intention to bathe well ahead here.”
13Artists and actors, I have noticed, are always thinking of food. In John’s case it is not poverty but appetite. If he had less money he might be a better artist. Not that he can’t paint, but that his money buys him so many more vivid amusements that he doesn’t. He stepped on the starter, but before he got the motor running a great bell began to toll. At first we thought it came from the Cathedral in front of us, but in a moment we realised that it was in the great tower of the fortress-Palace. It was twenty minutes past three, too early for an Angelus, and no clock rings at twenty minutes past an hour. It boomed solemnly, funereally.
“Sounds like a death knell,” John said. “But if any member of the Royal Family were dead the Queen wouldn’t have been driving around the city as she was half an hour ago, bowing to the populace. She’s supposed to be hard boiled, but she’d have to be pretty icy to manage that.”
The bell tolled on, and as it rang, people began running into the square. They were excited, gesticulating, talking rapidly. Obviously the bell had some serious significance. I called in German to several people before one would stop. And, as he answered, the Cathedral bell began ringing, and others all over the city followed it.
“Der K?nig ist tod!”
14The King was dead. It must have been very sudden, then. Assassinated, probably. To Balkan rulers assassination is almost a natural form of death.
And still the people came. More and more thickly they packed the square.
“We’d better get out of this,” John said, and started the motor, “if we don’t we’ll be hemmed in by the crowd, and won’t be able to.” But we were already hemmed in. We moved ahead not more than a few feet, the crowds were coming too fast to let us through. A man in a blue blouse climbed on the running board. He had a full red beard and shining brown eyes.
“How did the King die?” I asked.
“They are all saying different things,” the man replied, “but all I know is that the King is dead, and there will be trouble in Herrovosca.”
“Revolution?” I asked.
“Who knows? Perhaps. The Soviet—a republic—perhaps the Prince Conrad may be clever enough and strong enough to hold the throne—who knows? And the Queen will not be idle.”
“But the King died suddenly?”
15“Oh, very suddenly. I saw him myself only this morning. He was driving out with some friends. Two cars full. Going up to the mountains to hunt, I heard, and not an hour ago the Queen was driving through the streets as she does every day when the weather is fine.”
“Not such a comfortable moment to time our visit,” I said. “There’ll probably be just enough trouble here to be a bother.”
“I suppose so,” John said, “and we don’t understand the language enough to be in the fun. Let’s go on tomorrow to your Cousin Helena’s place and leave the Alarians to settle their difficulties without us.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I was afraid that he would want to stay. “She’ll be glad enough to see someone from home, at least she ought to be. She hasn’t for a long enough time. We can’t very well go on today. It’ll be too late by the time we’ve had dinner.”
16The whole city seemed to be alive with the sound of the bells. And, then, quite suddenly, they stopped. Not quite all at once. The Palace bell stopped first, and then the Cathedral bell, and then all the others, one after another. In the odd silence that followed we looked at each other in something like alarm, for the populace was silent, too, and a silent populace may so easily be a dangerous one. In a moment, though, they all began shouting, in cumulative waves of noise, louder and more frantically. Little groups formed around leaders. Speakers began haranguing all who would listen, and if the silence had been ominous the din was enormously more so.
“Do not be alarmed,” our bearded giant counselled. “The knell has been tolled for King Bela. Now you will hear, they will ring again for the new King. Prince Conrad has become King Conrad the Fourth.”
As he spoke a carillon sounded from the Cathedral, playing a fine marching hymn. Voices took up the melody, the whole square swayed and sang, the men’s heads were uncovered, many people dropped to their knees, others shouted above the singing.
17The King was dead. The city was singing a greeting to the new King, and praying that his reign might be a happy and a prosperous one. I remembered, as I sat listening to those bells, all the troubles of Alaria in the last years. Yolanda, the Queen Mother, was a German; an energetic, politically-minded woman who had ruled her husband and bettered the condition of the country relentlessly, without ever winning anything from her adopted people but dislike. Her husband, and her elder son, and a daughter, had been assassinated seven or eight years before. I counted back. It was after I had seen Helena in Paris. Someone, how or why I could not remember, had thrown a bomb. Bela, the younger son, had become King, with his mother as Regent until he was eighteen. Then he had ruled badly and erratically, partly dominated by his mother, whose unpopularity he shared and augmented by his cruelty and by refusing to marry. He was not more than twenty-five or six, but already he had become a figure of motley reputation, his name linked with that of a half dozen ladies of prominence in their chosen profession. He was an irresponsible and rather savage wastrel. I could just remember having seen a few mentions of a Prince Conrad, the heir to the throne, who was reputed to be on extremely bad terms with his cousin the King, and was consequently living more or less in retirement. Now the bells were calling him from obscurity to a throne. I wondered if he knew yet that he was a king.
18The carillons ceased, one by one, as the tolling had ceased, and a new bell began sounding from the Cathedral. The ringing seemed to have been going on for hours. I felt deafened, tired. I glanced at my watch. It was quarter past four, an hour since the first bell had tolled.
The man beside us explained, “Now they will proclaim Conrad King, from the steps of the Cathedral. If he is in the city he will appear. Wait only, you will see it all.”
We waited, of course. We had to, since all the others apparently wanted to see it all, too. Such part of the crowd as could get near enough climbed on our car. We watched while more minutes went by.
The other bells were still, only the great bell of the Cathedral boomed on and on. Then through the windows of the bridge we saw the silhouettes of several figures pass. A murmur ran through the crowd.
19Slowly the great door of the Cathedral opened. Behind it there was revealed an impressive group. Ceremonially they advanced to the top of the steps. There were probably twenty soldiers first. They turned, and spread out fanwise. Then came four officers in brilliant uniforms, to stand in front of the soldiers, their gold braid shining. Next came nine men in sober black, their ages and figures widely varied. They took their places in front of the officers. Then came the Queen Mother, draped theatrically, and becomingly, in black crepe, leaning on the arm of another man in black. She walked to the very edge of the steps and stood there in an attitude so simple as to suggest a pose. A cheer started in several parts of the square at once, but before it gained any volume it died out again in little ripples of surprise and chatter. The red-bearded man beside us was talking so hard in Alarian with a dozen people at once that he could not answer our questions. A slender girl in white and a tall thin man in black were coming through the Cathedral doorway. I was reasonably certain they were the two who had rushed past us in their cars when we first came into the square. No wonder they had been in a hurry. The man, obviously, was Prince Conrad, but I wondered who the girl in white could be. She was in an important position on the platform, yet I could not remember that there was any woman in the Royal Family of Alaria except the Queen Mother. I wondered if Bela could have married secretly one of the many girls whose pictures had been in the papers with his.
20The crowd began to cheer in earnest at the sight of Conrad, and in staccato counterpoint rose also flashes of disapproval, and some of the people were merely silent. I held my breath. This wasn’t my country, it was all a lot of hocus-pocus, and the government of Alaria was nothing to me anyway, but I was thrilled for all that. I couldn’t help myself, and John was like a child with a toy.
“The King! The King! King Conrad!” shouted our red-bearded man.
“Who is the girl in white?” John asked him for the dozenth time, and at last he answered. “No one knows,” he said, “I never saw her before. Perhaps Conrad will soon be married. They will tell us presently.”
21Conrad held up his hand for silence, and the Queen Mother, whose head had been bowed in her grief, raised it in a triumphant gesture, as though instead of having reached the end of a long reign at the death of her son, she had just begun a new one. It was the gesture of a woman of courage. She had always had that, certainly. Queen Yolanda of Alaria had made her name the symbol of the successful and beautiful, but domineering and unpopular, woman, full of energy and even of genius. I was suddenly sorry for Yolanda. For years she had been lending her Royal name to every project that offered her money—especially in America. No doubt she shared the usual European view that America was so far beyond the limits of the known world that what she might authorise on that broad continent did not matter. She had written for the magazines, endorsed cigarettes, extended her illustrious hospitality to wealthy but otherwise socially dubious persons. Alaria had benefitted by her scheming. So, no doubt, had she. The country had for years been too poor to afford hospitals or other public improvements. It had also been too poor to afford her the array and the surroundings suitable to a queen. What she wanted she had acquired by the means she found possible. But she had reached the end of her road. Even her ingenuity would not be able to find a way out of giving up the crown of her adopted country to Conrad, and he had opposed her openly for years.
22And then Conrad began to speak. The crowd listened with interest. Our guide translated for us in a whisper, very quickly and roughly. The first part of his speech was a eulogy of King Bela. There wasn’t much to be said in praise of that young man, but what there was Conrad said. From Bela he turned to praise Yolanda for her energy, her enterprise, her cleverness in the face of all obstacles and difficulties. Then he spoke of Bela’s father, and what a happy family they had been until that terrible day of the assassination. He described the dreadful moment when the bomb had burst, and the drive back to the Palace, the mother weeping tragically over her children and her dead husband. The scene in the Palace when the royal physician had declared the King and his elder son dead. The little Princess Maria Lalena was yet alive. The mother’s misery because of the child’s wounds, her prayers for her life.
23All that was known to the crowd. They listened politely, even interestedly, but little murmurs of impatience began to float about that he should tell again a tale so old and so well known, and having so little to do with his own accession to the throne. But still he spoke on, and suddenly he said something that brought gasps from the crowd. Our interpreter forgot us again until John pulled at his arm. Conrad then was ushering forward the girl in white, the soldiers presented arms at the gesture. The girl bowed, her hands crossed on her breast, like a picture of some early Christian martyr. The red-beard’s eyes were wide with amazement, “The Princess!” he cried, “The dead Princess! It is she! Viva Maria Lalena! Viva, viva! The Queen! She is the Queen!”
John was almost as excited as the man himself, “That girl in white?” he demanded.
“Yes, yes, the one in white, who else? They will hold the coronation festivities in two weeks’ time. We have not had a reigning queen since the days of good Queen Anna, two hundred years ago. She will be another Queen Anna, and we will all be prosperous and happy as our ancestors were in the days of Queen Anna! Viva! Viva!” and he threw his hat in the air and caught it again, to show his approval.
24But in other parts of the crowd there was less enthusiasm. One woman in a red shawl was hissing through strong white teeth, her brown face alight with venom. The crowd surged forward toward the steps. If the new slim Queen had been there alone they might have done her some harm, but Yolanda stood on one side of her, and Conrad on the other, and each of them looked quite capable of holding any mere crowd at bay.
“That girl in white,” John said, “is the prettiest little thing I ever saw—appealing. Poor child, she looks dazed.”
A short man in a red blouse began shouting then, others echoed him, “Conrad, Conrad! Maria Lalena is dead—Impostor—Conrad! Conrad!”
And Conrad, slim and black on the Cathedral steps, seemed to grow in height. The crowd moved and swayed and pushed and shouted. They were growing more and more excited. In their efforts to get a better view, the people left a lane in front of our car.
“There’s your chance,” I urged. “Start the car, and let’s get away, now.”
“It’s a fine show, free,” John objected.
25“It’s not going to be free, long,” I said. “There are a lot of police over there, and if they start getting ugly we’ll probably spend a month or so in a smelly jail for having been present, though foreign.”
“All right,” John agreed, and started the engine. Little by little he inched his way along. Our interpreter lost his hat and jumped off our running board. A woman with a baby took his place. The baby was crying. The woman’s hair had come unpinned, and covered her shoulders in a dark curly mass, not too clean. The car crawled along slowly, stopped, rolled on for another slow foot or two. Not far to the right a narrow alley opened, leading apparently to some back door in one of the government buildings. The turbulence grew. Conrad was speaking again, but we could not understand him. Then there were more people coming up the alley, but they were so anxious to see that they ran around the car, and let us through, foot by foot: we obstructed their view.
26It was almost half a city block down the alley, which was practically a tunnel. The corner was difficult. Probably ours was the first car that had attempted it, but by edging forward and back, and bending one mudguard a little, we made it. Then a few feet and we were in a street again, a street we might have thought crowded an hour ago. However, we could get through it slowly, and then, quite suddenly, there was no more crowd, only scattered, running figures, all going the same way, toward the square, the Princess, Conrad, and the Queen.
“Do you suppose we can get food in this town?” John asked. I didn’t. The whole population seemed to be either in the square or on its way there. Every house and shop was closed and barred.
“Barricaded inside as well is my guess,” John said, “for there’s very likely to be a lot of trouble for someone here tonight unless something is done to stop it. Yolanda has played a trump, but now it’s Conrad’s turn, and he talked to the crowd as though he knew what he was about. If he wants the throne, and he isn’t assassinated, I’m betting on him, for all of Maria Lalena’s pretty, childish appeal.”
27“Still,” I said, “if he wants the throne he’s gummed his own game a bit, presenting her to the world as the Queen. I don’t see how he can expect to eat his own words later and remain much of a favorite.”
“All the same,” John went on, “he has waited a long time, and he doesn’t look as though he were fool enough to let a couple of women all dressed up for the last act get away with an eleventh hour conjuring trick to grab his throne away again.”
“He must want peace,” I protested, “more than a throne, or he never would have made that speech. And I’m all for that little Princess. Sweet sixteen, and baby eyes.”
“Nice to look at,” John agreed, “but not quite the stuff to cope with the ubiquitous Soviet and all the other problems of a modern state. I’d rather do my rooting for Prince Conrad. I think he looks like a decent chap.”
“All right,” I said, “but I suggest that you do any rooting in English. Then no one will understand you and it won’t get us in trouble with the authorities. And now, I have a fine suggestion. Let’s beat it for the frontier and Castle Waldek.”
28John agreed to that, but added a proviso that we beat it fast because we probably should not be allowed to cross the frontier after whatever moment the authorities might have settled as the right one to close the Pass to strangers. Mountain roads would probably be inconvenient in the dark, anyway. My watch showed seven minutes past six. It was three hours since we had first stopped in the Cathedral Square. “We may have time, tonight,” I said, “though I doubt it. Let’s get out of here anyway. Once we are out of the city we will be able to forget all about the affairs of the Alarian Royal Family, and good riddance, too.”
“Stick-in-a-rut,” said John, “I was just beginning to enjoy myself.”
All the traffic was headed in the opposite direction, so we made excellent time. There were no road signs in the city, but I guided our career by a combination of the Baedeker map and the sun. We were lucky, and came out on the right road after only one short detour. When we found it, it was a wide city street, closely lined with beautiful houses, with grass and trees before them. Soon it became a street of villas, and then quite suddenly we were in the real country, with the high mountains of the frontier looming ahead of us in the distance.
29We drove probably five or six miles before we came to a small town with an inn. We stopped there long enough to buy cold meat, sliced bread, and a bottle of warm wine so that we could eat as we drove. I took the wheel, and munched contentedly. The bread was heavy, dark, peasant’s fare, the wine was the commonest, and the meat mere boiled mutton, but we were hungry enough to enjoy it, while feeling a little sorry to be on the road again, and even I was a little sorrier that our way did not lie in the path of riots and revolutions. I was just thinking that it was a pity, in a way, not to have stayed, when john spoke. “Of course all that was none of our business,” he said, “and if we had stayed we should probably have been jailed as spies and died of boredom and bad food and dirt, and I know I’m talking nonsense, but I have a small boy’s hankering to be back in the middle of that square.”
“Don’t worry,” I cautioned, “we’re not out of Alaria yet, though we’ll go back if you say so.”
30However, like two civilised men, though we both really wanted to go back, we did not want to enough to turn the car around, or perhaps we were ashamed to admit it to each other. In any case we continued on our way toward the frontier and Helena. I took out my desire for excitement in driving faster.
The customs house on the Alarian side of the frontier was a small stone and stucco building at the bottom of a steep incline. Straight ahead the road rose toward the Pass. It was lonely at the foot of the mountains, and the shadows were deep enough to breed superstition. No wonder the people could believe that queer old legend of the Black Ghost, so famous as to be mentioned even by Baedeker. The shadowy rocky masses ahead of us provided a perfect setting for any ghost, particularly a black one.
“There’s something about this fool country,” John said, “that I like. I suppose it would be ghastly dull to live here, but I’d almost be willing to have a whack at it. Consider that as a permanent home, for instance, and compare it with a neat suburban house in Brookline.”
31On our right was a high hill, about a mile or so away, but the air was clear enough so that we could see it distinctly. On the rocky top of the hill a long white manor house stood as though it had grown there. Probably once it had been fortified to resist an army. No doubt it had been called upon to do so not long ago. I could imagine its owners swooping down on travellers through the Pass and exacting tolls with a heavy hand. Perhaps, I thought, they might have been responsible for the legend of the Black Ghost, though it looked like a pretty solid home for a phantom.
We drew up, perforce, before the customs house. Alaria had taken no chances when she built it there. The road narrowed to make its way between two sharp high walls of rock, which had been supplemented by masonry and a gateway with tightly closed, wrought iron gates. I produced my passport, and John not only offered his for examination, but a bill of sale for the car, a round dozen French cards of varying sizes and colors permitting him to drive and to circulate and what not in the streets of Paris. “They’re so impressive-looking,” he explained to me, with his un-Bostonian grin.
32A common soldier took them and gave them to a sergeant. The sergeant looked wise, turned them all over to examine the reverse sides, and held them to the light to look for a watermark. No doubt that would be quite as illuminating to an Alarian as Paris driving permits. At last he shook his head dubiously, and took the whole lot inside the building.
After a moment or two he returned and beckoned to us.
“It’s their damned revolution following us up,” John said, “and it would have been a lot more fun to be detained in Herrovosca than it will here.”
“You never can tell,” I said, “we may find doom, or romance, or any number of amusing things ahead.”