And then, almost suddenly, we began to go down, and came upon a barrier across the road, with a small stone building beside it. It was the Rheatian customs. We had forgotten all about that. The frontier, of course, was somewhere back in the mountains. I remembered it as I had seen it traced in a dash-and-dot line on the Baedeker map. Each country, for the safety and comfort of its men, no doubt, ignored the rocky strip of no-man’s-land with its dozen or so inhabitants,—if there were more they were hidden well—and placed its customs houses miles apart.
We stopped and honked the horn, and presently a soldier came with an electric torch in one hand and a red and a white table napkin in the other. He glanced casually at our passports, asked us if we had any tobacco or spirits, and then waved us on, too intent to get back to his dinner to prove our statements by examination. We bade him “Gute nacht,” as he opened the gates, but he did not wait even for us to get through them before he had gone back to his dinner.
A few hundred yards farther and we were out of that dismal country, on a lower spur of the mountains, with lights twinkling through the trees below us, and soon there were fields and fences and farm animals, and a trim hamlet where we asked the way to Waldek, and were directed with German politeness to continue as we were going, “but three kilometers farther, then turn to the left, and at the top of the hill you will see the castle directly ahead.”
We were at the top of the hill almost before we knew it, looking down into the little valley where Helena’s widowhood had made her sole mistress. It was prosperously cultivated, and dotted with little thatched farm houses. Beyond, high on a jagged hill, rose the dark towers of the castle, with lights in the lower windows. It was a fairy-book sort of place, with cypress trees cutting clean lines into the sky, less wild and warlike than the manor house on the Alarian side of the mountains, yet stern with the feudal flavor of an old ballad. Over it loomed a thunder cloud, cut at jagged intervals by lightning.
“Entirely up to specifications,” John said, as we dipped into the valley. “We’ll stay here and do some painting.”
“Right,” I said, “she’ll be glad to have us, so don’t worry about that.”
The steep grade to the castle we made with difficulty, in slippery, sticky mud, through a driving rain. The car coughed and sputtered, but climbed steadily enough, and we finally arrived, wet, but hopeful of food and rest, at Helena’s ancient threshold. We rolled across a wooden bridge over the old moat that had once protected the Waldeks from invading hordes, then I climbed out stiffly, and rattled the great, wrought-iron knocker that hung on the gate, and presently footsteps came toward us. The gate swung open in two giant halves. We entered a large courtyard. At one side, part of an ancient stable had been converted into a garage. Two servants carried the luggage from the car, and another presently came to lead us to the living quarters of the castle.
“Spooky place,” John muttered.
“Nonsense,” I said, “you’re afraid it’s going to be dull, and you are trying to cook up an excuse to leave, which isn’t decent, before you’ve even met your hostess. Wait till you see Marie, too. I’ve a hunch she’s going to be rather a nice little thing, in spite of the pastries and marrons glacés.”
Helena came to receive us in the great Hall. It was hung with ancient embroideries, and furnished like a department store. Antique French upholstery, Turkish carpets, Russian enamels, English prints, Asiatic vases, Chinese jades, and a hundred other varieties of bibelots combined themselves, under the immensity of the carved stone groinings, into a somehow beautiful whole. John was impressed.