A. M. Williamson

“ I have met few, if any, queens in daily life, but I'm almost sure that the Queen of England, for instance, wouldn't consider it beneath her dignity to take some notice of her chauffeur's existence if she were starting on a motor tour. Lady Turnour was miles above it, however. So far as she was concerned, one would have thought that the car ran itself; that at sight of her and Sir Samuel, the arbiters of its destiny, its heart began to beat, its body to tremble with delight at the honour in store for it. ”

“ Louis saw to love in it, when, coming out of a squalid, hilly street through which I had tried to pick my way on foot, alone, suddenly the façade of the wonderful old church burst upon my sight, a vision of beauty.
No self-respecting motor-car would have condescended to trust itself in such a street, and as a rabble of small male St. Gillesites swarmed round the Aigle when she stopped at the beginning of the ascent, Mr. Dane had to play guardian angel. "I've been here before," he said, as usual, for this whole tour seems to be a twice-told tale for him. ”

“ So we came to Les Vignes, and lunched together at a table set out of doors, close to the car, that she might not be left alone. We had for food a strange and somewhat evil combination; wild hare and wild boar; but they seemed to suit the landscape somehow, as did the mystical music of the conch-shells, blown by passing boatmen. It was like being waked from a dream of old-time romance, by a rude hand shaking one's shoulder, to hear the voices of Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour, he mildly arguing, she disputing, as usual.
Poetry fled like a dryad of some classic wood, scared by a motor omnibus ”

“ Dear old Sir Samuel, with his nice red face! I almost loved him. The car seemed like a long-lost aunt. And as for the chauffeur, my brother—I found that I dared not think of him. As in my imagination I saw his eyes, his good dark eyes, clear as a brook, and the lines his brown face took when he thought intently, the tears began running down my cheeks.
"Oh, Jack—Jack, come and help me!" I called.
That comes of thinking people's Christian names. They will pop out of your mouth when you least expect it. ”

“ The car plunged boldly through the veil of deep blue shadow which hung, ghostlike, over the serpentine curves of the white road; and out of its twilight-mystery rose always the faint singing of a little river that ran beside us, under the steep gray wall of towering rock.
[Pg 85] At the top of the gorge a surprise of beauty waited for us as our way led along a sinuous road cut into the swelling mountain-side. Far off lay the sea, with an army of tremendous purple rocks hurling themselves headlong into the molten gold of the water, like a drove of mammoths. ”

“ I envied no one in the world, not even the lovely lady of the battlement garden. He was mine for to-day, in spite of her—so there!
Sir Samuel got into the boat, and wrapped his wife in rugs. The boatmen pushed off. Away the flat-bottomed punt slid down the clear green stream, the sun shining, the cascades sparkling, the strange precipices which wall the gorge, copper-tinted in the morning light. It was the most wonderful world; yet Lady Turnour was cackling angrily. Was she afraid? Had she changed her mind? No, the saints be praised! ”

“ And even as the mistral tweaked our noses with a chilly thumb and finger, our eyes caught sight of the second and more dreaded plague: the deceitfully gentle-seeming Durance, which in its rage can come tearing down from the Alps with the roar of a famished lion.
Far above the wide river, the Aigle glided across a high-hung suspension bridge, the song of the water floating [Pg 105] up to our ears mingling with the purr of the motor—two giant forces, one set loose by nature, the other by man, duetting harmoniously together, while the wind wailed over our heads. ”

“ If I could have moved, I believe I should have bolted like a frightened rabbit, perfectly regardless of what Lady Turnour might think, caring only to dart away without being caught by the man I'd done such wild deeds to escape. But I was as helpless as a person in a nightmare; and, indeed, it was as unreal and dreadful to me as a nightmare to see that fat, fur-coated figure walking toward me, with the bearded face of Monsieur Charretier showing between turned-up collar and motor-cap surmounted by lifted goggles. ”

“ If I hadn't quite known before, I knew suddenly, all in a minute, that I was in love, oh, but humiliatingly deep in love, with the chauffeur! It seemed to me that no nice, well-regulated girl could ever have let herself go tobogganing down such a steep hill, splash into such a sea of love, unless the man were at the bottom in a boat, holding out his arms to catch her as she fell. But the chauffeur hadn't the slightest intention of holding out his arms to the poor little motor maid. He went on mending the chain, and when he got into the car beside me again he began to talk about the weather. ”

“ The garden on the battlements at Beaucaire seemed to bring out all that's best in Lady Turnour, and she was—for her—quite radiant when we arrived at Arles. Not that it was much credit to her to be radiant, when the road had been perfect, and the car had behaved like an angel, as usual; but small favours from small natures are thankfully received; and just as it is a blight upon the spirits of the whole party when her ladyship frowns, so do we cheer up and hope for better things when she smiles. ”

“ It would be a singularly hard-headed, cold-hearted person who could set out for Vaucluse without the smallest thrill; and hard heads and cold hearts don't "run in our family." As we spun away from the Hotel de l'Europe soon after two o'clock that afternoon I felt that I was largely composed of thrill. Cold as the wind had grown, the thrill kept me warm, mingling in my veins with ozone.
Inside the car the middle-aged honeymooners had an air of desperate resignation which the consciousness of doing their duty according to Baedeker gives to tourists. ”

“ In such a strange world as this, after all, it was no harder to believe in dragons, than in hiding countesses, fed and tended for months upon months by faithful servants, while the red Revolution raged; yet the countess and her cave were vouched for by history, which ignored the dragon and his.
Not only had each mountain at least one cavern, but every really eligible crag had its ruined castle; and each ruin had its romance, which clung like the perfume of roses to a shattered vase. There were rocks shaped like processions of marching monks following uplifted crucifixes ”

“ If it hadn't been for Pamela I should at this moment have been crawling slowly, cheaply, down Riviera-ward in a second-class train, sitting bolt upright in a second-class carriage with smudges on my nose, while perhaps some second-class child shed jammy crumbs on my frock, and its second-class baby sister howled.
"Oh, why did I leave my peaceful home?" wailed the lady in the lower berth.
Heaven alone (unless it were the dog) knew why she had, and knew how heartily I wished she hadn't. A good thing Cerberus was on guard, or I might have dropped a pillow accidentally on her head! ”

“ Swinging smoothly round curve after curve, the noble car running free and cooing in sheer joy of fiery life, as she swooped from height to depth, I, too, felt the joy of life as I had hardly ever felt it before. The chauffeur and I did not speak often, but I looked up at him sometimes because of the pleasure I had in seeing and re-seeing the face in which I had come to have perfect confidence ”

“ Evidently animal magnetism can leak through talc, for suddenly the chauffeur glanced sharply round at me, as if I had called him. "Did you speak?" he asked.
"Dear me, no, I shouldn't have dared," I hurried to assure him. Again he transferred his attention from the road to me, though only a fraction, and for only the fraction of a second. I felt that he saw me as an eagle on the wing might see a fly on a boulder toward which he was steering between intervening clouds.
"Why shouldn't you dare?" he wanted to know. ”

“ All was green and pastoral here, and we seemed to have come into eternal spring after the bleak, windy plains encircling Avignon. It was beautiful to remember Petrarch's description of his golden-haired, dark-eyed love, fair and tall as a lily, sitting in the grass among the violets, where her bare feet gleamed whiter than the daisies when she took off her sandals. Even Nicolete, flower of Provençal song, had no whiter feet than Laura, I am sure! ”

“ As we wound through the gorge the landscape became so strange, hewn in such immensity of conception, that it seemed prehistoric. We, in the blue car, were anachronisms, or so I felt until I remembered how, in pre-motoring days, I used to think that owning an automobile must be [Pg 258] like having a half-tamed minotaur in the family. As for the Aigle, she was a friendly, not a vicious, monster, and as if to make up for her mistakes of yesterday, she was to-day more like a demi-goddess serving an earthly apprenticeship in fulfilment of a vow than a dragon of any sort. ”

“ Lady Turnour opened her heart and her wardrobe and gave me a blouse the first thing in the morning, which act of generosity was the more remarkable as morning is not her best time. I have found that it is the early maid who catches the first snub, which otherwise might fall innocuously upon a husband. The blouse was one which I had heard her ladyship say she hated; but then her idea of true charity, combined, as it should be, with economy, is always to give to the poor what you wouldn't be found dead in yourself, because it is more blessed to give than to receive badly made things. ”

“ Gazing wistfully back, as one does gaze at places one fears never to see again, the Castle of the Nymphs looked like a fantastic water-flower standing up out of the green river, on its thick stem of rock. Then it was gone; for our time was not quite our own, and we dared [Pg 257] not linger, lest the boat with our Betters should arrive at the meeting place before we reached it in the car. But there were compensations, for almost with every moment the gorge grew grander. Cascades sparkled in the sun like blowing diamond-dust. The rocks seemed set with jewels, or patterned with mosaic ”

“ Looking ahead, it appeared to have been bitten off round the edge here and there, just at the stiffest zigs and zags of the nightmare road. And far down the mountain the way went winding under our eyes, like the loops of a lasso; short, jerky loops, as we came to each new turn, to which the length of our chassis forced us to bow and curtsey on our slippery, sliding skates. Forward the Aigle had to go until her bonnet hung over the precipice, then to be cautiously backed for a foot or two, before she could glide ticklishly down the next steep gradient. ”

“ Seeing beautiful things when you travel by rail consists mostly on getting half a glimpse, beginning to exclaim, "Oh, look there!" then plunging into the black gulf of a tunnel, and not coming out again until after the best bit has carefully disappeared behind an uninteresting, fat-bodied mountain. But travelling by motor-car! Oh, the difference! One sees, one feels; one is never, never bored, or impatient to arrive anywhere. ”

“ Perhaps the windows aren't really crystal, but they were all bevelly and glittering in the sunshine, and seemed to run round the car from back to front, giving the effect of a Cinderella Coach fitted on to a motor. Never was paint so blue, never was crest on carriage panel so large and so like a vague, over-ripe tomato. Never was a chauffeur so long, so slim, so smart, so leathery. ”

“ Jack Dane hurled himself like a catapult from the hotel. He dashed the weedy youths out of his way like ninepins, jumped to his seat, and the car and the car's occupants were safe.
"You are a trump, Miss d'Angely," said he, as we boomed away from the hotel, scattering the crowd before us as an eddy of wind scatters autumn leaves. "You did just the right thing at just the right time. It was all my fault. I oughtn't to have left the motor going."
"It was Sir Samuel's fault," I contradicted him.
"No. Whatever goes wrong with the car is always the chauffeur's fault. ”

“ The stone floor had been worn smooth by many feet and several centuries, and the blank gray walls were brightened with drapery of flags, yards of coloured cotton, paper flowers and evergreens, arranged with an effect which none save Latin hands could have given. Dinner above and below stairs was early, and before ten the guests began to assemble in the ballroom. All the servant-world had dined in ball costume, excepting Jack and myself, and it was only at the last minute that the cricket hopped upstairs and wriggled into its neatly reduced lobster shell. ”

“ And she was enjoying herself so much, the pretty, expensive-looking creature! As Pamela would say, it was evident that she was "having the time of her life," revelling in the admiration and rivalry of the two men; delighted with her own power over them, and her importance as a beauty and an heiress, the only unmarried girl in the house party; amusing herself by making one man miserable and the other happy, sending them up and down on a mental sea-saw, by turns.
As for the little Duc de Divonne, his profile is of the Roman Emperor order, and his eyes like the last coals in a dying fire. ”

“ From snow-covered billows which should have been sprayed with mountain wild-flowers by now, a fierce blast pounced down on us like a swooping bird of prey. We felt the swift whirr of its wings, which almost took our breath away, and made the Aigle quiver; but like a bull that meets its enemy with lowered horns, the brave car's bonnet seemed to defy the wind and face it squarely. We swept on toward the snow-reaches whence the wind-torrent came. ”

“ Down got I also, to relieve the car of my weight during the weird process of "jacking up," though the chauffeur assured me that I didn't matter any more than a fly on the wheel. Our birds of paradise remained in their cage, however, Lady Turnour glaring whenever she caught a glimpse of the chauffeur's head, as if he had bitten that hole in the tyre. But before us loomed mountains—disagreeable-looking mountains—more like embonpoints growing out of the earth's surface than ornamental elevations. ”

“ Yes, they were there, plenty of heroes, almost all handsome, with splendid dark eyes that searched flatteringly to penetrate the mystery of my talc triangle. They didn't know, poor dears, that there was nothing better than a lady's-maid behind it. What a waste of gorgeous glances!
I laughed to myself at the fancy, and the chauffeur sitting beside me wanted to know why; but I wouldn't tell him. One really can't say everything to a man one has known only for a day. ”

“ Never had the car gone better; but Lady Turnour had objected to the early start which the chauffeur wanted, and the sun was nearly overhead when many a huge shoulder of glittering marble still walled us away from our journey's end. The cold was the pitiless cold of northern midwinter, and I remembered with a shiver that Millau and Clermont-Ferrand were separated from one another by nearly two hundred and fifty kilometres of such mountain roads as these. ”

“ But on the way we stopped at Tarascon, so splendid with its memories of Du Guesclin, and the towers of King René's great château reflected in a water-mirror, that no Tartarin could be blamed if he were born with a boasting spirit. And there are other things in Tarascon for its Tartarins to be proud of, besides the noble old castle where King René used to spend his springs and summers when he was tired of living in state at Aix. ”

“ When we had admired the statue of Althen the Persian, with his hand full of the beneficent madder that did so much for Provence, we were rewarded for our patience by seeing Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour rush out from the Papal Palace, looking furious.
"They look like that, because they've been inside," said the chauffeur. "Their souls aren't artistic enough to resent consciously the ruin and degradation of the place, but even they can be depressed by the hideous whitewashed barracks which were once splendid rooms, worthy of kings. You will look as they do if you go in." ”

“ Seeing that Dane stuck like grim death to his determination and his steering-wheel, Sir Samuel shut the window and devoted himself to calming his wife who, I imagine, threatened to tear open the door and jump out. The important thing was that he kept her from doing it, perhaps by bribes of gold and precious stones, and the Aigle moved on, writhing like a wounded snake as she obeyed the hand on the wheel. If the slightest thing should go wrong in the steering-gear, as we read of in other motor-cars each time we picked up a newspaper—but other cars were not in charge of Mr. Jack Dane. ”

“ As if men knew when women ought to wear their jewels, and when not! But he was green with jealousy of the things his stepfather had given her; wanted everything himself.
She went on to describe the other members of the house party, and mouthed their titles with delight, though she had only her own maid to impress. Everyone had a title, it seemed, except Bertie, and the American girl he wanted to marry, Miss Nelson, a sister of the young marquise. ”

“ What if he had known that I always call him "Jack" to myself?
He not only pumped the kettle full, but carried it into the kitchen, and bullied or flattered the goddesses there until they gave him the hottest place for it on the red-hot stove. Meanwhile, as my eyes accustomed themselves to darkness after light, I spied in the courtyard of the pump a shed piled with wood; and my uncomfortably prophetic soul said that if Lady Turnour were to have a fire, the woodpile and I must do the trick together. Souls can be mistaken though, sometimes, if consciences never can ”

“ Far away it stretched, over garden, and pineland, and flowery meadow-spaces, to the blue, silver-sewn sea, which to my fancy looked Homeric. Nothing modern caught the eye to break the romance of the illusion. All was as it might have been twenty or thirty centuries ago, when on the Mediterranean sailed "Phoenicians, mariners renowned, greedy merchantmen with countless gauds in a black ship."
I had just begun to play that I was a young woman of Tyre, taken on an adventurous excursion by an indulgent father, when presto! Lady Turnour's voice brought me back to the present with a jump. ”

“ Bending out from the front seat of the motor, my gaze plunged far down into the beds of foaming rivers, or soared far up to the dazzling white world of snow and steely sky toward which we steadily forged on. Oh, there was no hope of hiding the snow now from those whom it might concern! But Lady Turnour still believed, perhaps, that we should avoid it.
The higher the Aigle rose, climbing the wonderful road of snakelike twistings and turnings above sheer precipices, [Pg 223] the more thrilling was the effect of the savage landscape upon our souls—those of us who consciously possess souls. ”

“ Tiny girls, like walking dolls, with dresses to the ground, bobbed us curtseys; and sturdy little boys, curled up beside ancient grandfathers, in carts with old boots protecting the brakes, saluted like miniature soldiers, or pulled off their quaint round caps, as they stared in big-eyed wonder at our grand, blue car. For them we were prince and princess, not chauffeur and maid. ”