The Adventure of Princess Sylvia. Williamson Alice Muriel

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СКАЧАТЬ out in the solid rock such a habitation as this must alone have cost more than most chamois-hunters could save in a lifetime; but after her first ejaculation she expressed no further amazement, only admiration.

      The man stood aside that she might pass into the outer room, and, though she was not invited to further exploration, she could see by the several doors cut in the walls that this was not the sole accommodation which the curious house could boast.

      On the stone floor rugs of deer and chamois skin were spread; in a rack of oak, ornamented with splendid antlers and studded with the sharp, pointed horns of the chamois, were suspended guns of modern make and brightly polished knives. The table in the middle of the room had been carved with exceeding skill; and the half-dozen chairs were oddly fashioned of stags antlers, formed to hold fur-cushioned, wooden seats. A carved dresser of black oak held a store of the brightly coloured china made by the peasants in the valley below, eked out with platters and tankards of old pewter; and in the great fireplace a gipsy kettle was suspended over a red bed of fragrant pine-wood embers.

      "This is a place fit for a king – or even an emperor," Sylvia said, with demure graciousness, when the bare-kneed young man had offered her a seat and crossed the room to open the closed cupboard under the dresser. He was stooping as she spoke, but at her last words looked quickly round over his shoulder.

      "We peasants are not afraid of a little work when it is for our own comfort," he responded, "And most of the things you see are homemade during the long winters."

      "Then you are all very clever. But, tell me, has the Emperor ever been your guest? I have read – let me see, could it have been in a guide- book, or perhaps in some society paper? – that he comes occasionally to the mountains here."

      "Oh yes; the Kaiser has been at this hut – once, twice, perhaps." Her host laid a loaf of black bread, a cut cheese, and a knuckle of ham on the table. He then glanced at his guest, expecting her to come forward; but she sat still on her throne of antlers, her little feet in their strong mountain boots, daintily crossed under the short tweed skirt.

      "I hear your Kaiser is a good chamois-hunter," she leisurely remarked. "But that, perhaps, is only the flattery which makes the atmosphere of kings. No doubt, you could give him many points in chamois-hunting?"

      The young man smiled. "The Emperor is not a bad shot," he returned.

      "For an amateur. But you are a professional. I wager now that you would not change places with the Emperor?"

      How the chamois-hunter laughed and showed his white teeth! There were those in the towns he scorned, who would have been astonished at his levity.

      "Change places with the Emperor? Not – unless I were obliged, gna' Fräulein. Not now, at all events," with a meaning bow and glance.

      "Thank you. You are quite a courtier. One of the things they say of him in England is that he dislikes women. But perhaps he does not understand them?"

      "Indeed, lady? I had not heard that they were so difficult of comprehension."

      "Ah, that shows how little you chamois-hunters know them. Why, we can't even understand ourselves! Though – a very odd thing – we have no difficulty in reading one another, and knowing all each other's faults."

      "That would seem to say a man should get a woman to choose his wife for him."

      "I'm not so sure. Yet the Emperor, we hear, will let his Chancellor choose his."

      "Ah! Were you told this also in England?"

      "Yes. For the gossip is that she's an English Princess. Now, what is the good of being an Emperor if he can't even pick out a wife to please himself?"

      "I know little about such high matters, gna' Fräulein. But I fancied that Royal folk chose wives to please the people rather than themselves. If the lady be of good blood, virtuous, of the right religion, and pleasant to look at, why – those are the principal things, I suppose."

      "So should I not suppose, if I were a man – and an emperor. I should want to fall in love."

      "Safer not; he might fall in love with the wrong woman." And the chamois-hunter looked with a certain intentness into his guest's deep eyes.

      She flushed under the gaze, and answered at random, "I doubt it he could fall in love. A man who would let his Chancellor choose! He can have no heart at all."

      "He has perhaps found other things more important in life than women."

      "Chamois, for instance. You would sympathize there."

      "Chamois give good sport. They are hard to find; hard to hit when you have found them."

      "So are the best types of women. Those who, like the chamois (and the plant I spoke of), live only in high places. Oh, for the sake of my sex, I hope that one day your Emperor will be forced to change his mind – that a woman will make him change it!"

      "Perhaps a woman has – already."

      Sylvia grew pale. Was she too late? Or was this a hidden compliment which the chamois-hunter did not guess she had the clue to understand? She could not answer. The silence grew electrical, and he broke it with some slight confusion. "It is a pity the Kaiser cannot hear you. He might be converted to your more English views."

      "Or he might clap me into prison for lèse-majesté."

      "He would not do that, gna' Fräulein– if he's anything like me."

      "Which is just what he is – in appearance, I mean, judging by his pictures."

      "You have seen his pictures?"

      "Oh, yes – you are really rather like him, only browner and bigger,

      perhaps. Yet I am glad that you are a chamois-hunter and not an emperor – as glad as you can be."

      "Will you tell me why, lady?"

      "Oh, for one reason because I could not ask him to do what I'm going to ask of you. You have laid the bread and ham ready, but you forgot to cut it."

      "A thousand pardons. Our conversation has sent my wits wool-gathering. My mind should have been on my manners, instead of such far-off things as emperors." He began hewing at the black loaf as if it were an enemy to be conquered. And there were few in Rhaetia who had ever seen those dark eyes so bright.

      "I like ham and bread cut thin, if you please," said Sylvia. "There – that is better. I will sit here, if you will bring the things to me. You are very kind – and I find that I am tired."

      "A draught of our Rhaetian beer will put better heart into you, it may be," suggested the hunter, taking up the plate of bread and meat he had cut, placing it in her hand, and returning to draw a tankard of foaming amber liquid from a quaint hogshead in a corner.

      But Sylvia waved the krug away with a smile and a pretty gesture. "My head has proved to be not strong enough for your mountains; I'm sure it isn't strong enough for your beer. Have you some cold water?"

      The hunter of chamois laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Our water here is fit only for the outside of the body," he explained. "To us, that is no deprivation, as we are true Rhaetians for our beer. But on your account I am sorry."

      "Perhaps you have milk?" asked Sylvia. "I could scarcely count the cows, they were so many as I came up the СКАЧАТЬ