He turned to go, but I called him back. "Please!" I begged. "I'll only keep you one minute. I'm sure you're joking, big brother, about being an ass, or poking fun at me. But I don't care. I need some advice so badly! I've no one but you to give it to me. I know you won't desert me, because if you were like that you wouldn't have come to stop at this hotel to watch over yournew sister—which I'm sure you did, though that may sound ever so conceited."
"Of course I won't desert you," he said. "I couldn't—now, even if I would. But I'll go away till you've had your dinner, and—and made yourself look less like a siren and more like an ordinary human being—if possible. Then I'll run up and knock, and you can come out in the passage to be advised."
"A siren—with a towel round her neck!" I laughed. "If I should sing to you, perhaps you might say—"
"Don't, for heaven's sake, or there would be an end of—your brother," he broke in, laughing a little. "It wouldn't need much more." And with that he was off.
He is very abrupt in his manner at times, certainly, this strange chauffeur, and yet one's feelings aren't exactly hurt. And one feels, somehow, as I think the motor seems to feel, as if one could trust to his guidance in the most dangerous places. I'm sure he would give his life to save the car, and I believe he would take a good deal of trouble to save me; indeed, he has already taken a good deal of trouble, in several ways.
When he had gone I set down the tray, shut the door, and went to see how I really did look with my hair hanging round my shoulders. My ideas on the subject of sirenhood are vague; but I must confess, if the creatures are like me with my hair down, they must be quite nice, harmless little persons. I admire my hair, there's so much of it; and at the ends, a good long way below my waist, there's such a thoroughly agreeable curl, like a yellow sea-wave just about to break. Of course, that sounds very vain; but why shouldn't one admire one'sown things, if one has things worth admiring? It seems rather ungrateful to Providence to cry them down; and ingratitude was never a favourite vice with me.
One would have said that the chauffeur knew by instinct what I liked best to eat, and he must have had a very persuasive way with the waiter. There was crême d'orge, in a big cup; there were sweetbreads, and there was lemon meringue. Nothing ever tasted better since my "birthday feasts" as a child, when I was allowed to order my own dinner.
My room being on the first floor, though separated by a labyrinth of quaint passages from Lady Turnour's, there was danger in a corridor conversation with Mr. Dane at an hour when people might be coming upstairs after dinner; but he was in such a hurry to escape from me that I had no time to explain; and I really had not the heart to make myself hideous, by way of disguise, as I'd planned before his knock at the door. As an alternative I put on a hat, pinning quite a thick veil over my face, and when the expected tap came again, I was prepared for it.
"Are you going out?" my brother asked, looking surprised, when I flitted into the dim corridor, with Lady Turnour's blue bag dutifully slipped on my arm.
"No," I answered. "I'mhiding. I know that sounds mysterious, or melodramatic, or something silly, but it's only disagreeable. And it's what I want to ask your advice about." Then, shamefacedly when it came to the point, I unfolded the tale of Monsieur Charretier.
"By Jove, and he's in this house!" exclaimed the chauffeur, genuinely interested, and not a bit sulky."You haven't an idea whether he's been actually tracking you?"
"If he has, he must have employed detectives, and clever ones, too," I said, defending my own strategy.
"Is he the sort of man who would do such a thing—put detectives on a girl who's run away from home to get rid of his attentions?"
"I don't know. I only know he has no idea of being a gentleman. What can you expect of Corn Plasters?"
"Don't throw his corn plasters in his face. He might be a good fellow in spite of them."
"Well, he isn't—or with them, either. He may be acting with my cousin's husband, who values him immensely, and wants him in the family."
"Is he very rich?"
"Disgustingly," said I, as I had said to Lady Kilmarny.
"Yet you bolted from a good home, where you had every comfort, rather than be pestered to marry him?"
"Oh, what do you call a 'good home,' and 'every comfort'? I had enough to eat and drink, a sunny room, decent clothes, and wasn't allowed to work except for Cousin Catherine. But that isn't my idea of goodness and comfort."
"Nor mine either."
"Yet you seem surprised at me."
"I was thinking that, little and fragile as you look—like a delicate piece of Dresden china—you're a brave girl."
"Oh, thank you!" I cried. "I do love to be called 'brave' better than anything, because I'm really such a coward. You don't think I've done wrong?"
"No-o. So far as you've told me."
"What, don't you believe I've told you the truth?" I flashed out.
"Of course. But do women ever tell the whole truth to men—even to their brothers? What about that kind friend of yours in England?"
"What kind friend?" I asked, confused for an instant. Then I remembered, and—almost—chuckled. The conversation I had had with him came back to me, and I recalled a queer look on his face which had puzzled me till I forgot it. Now I was on the point of blurting out: "Oh, the kind friend is a Miss Paget, who said she'd like to help me if I needed help," when a spirit of mischief seized me. I determined to keep up the little mystery I'd inadvertently made. "I know," I said gravely. "Quitea different kind of friend."
"Some one you like better than Monsieur Charretier?"
"Muchbetter."
"Rich, too?"
"Very rich, I believe, and of a noble family."
"Indeed! No doubt, then, you are wise, even from a worldly point of view, in refusing the man your people want you to marry, and taking—such extreme measures not to let yourself be over persuaded," said Mr. Dane, stiffly, in a changed tone, not at all friendly or nice, as before. "I meant to advise you not to go on to England with Lady Turnour, as the whole situation is so unsuitable; but now, of course, I shall say no more."
"It was about something else I wanted advice," I reminded him. "But I suppose I must have bored you. You suddenly seem so cross."
"I am not in the least cross," he returned, ferociously. "Why should I be?—even if I had a right, which I haven't."
"Not the right of a brother?"
"Hang the rights of a brother!" exclaimed Mr. Dane.
"Then don't you want to be my brother any more?"
He walked away from me a few steps, down the corridor, then turned abruptly and came back. "It isn't a question of what I want," said he, "but of what I can have. Sometimes I think that after all you're nothing but an outrageous little flirt."
"Sometimes? Why, you've only known me two days. As if you could judge!"
"Far be it from me to judge. But it seems as though the two days were two years."
"Thank you. Well, I may be a flirt—the French side of me, when the other side isn't looking. But I'm not flirting withyou."
"Why should you waste your time flirting with a wretched chauffeur?"
"Yes, why? Especially as I've other things to think of. But I don'twantyour advice about those things now. I wouldn't have it even if you begged me to. You've been too unkind."
"I beg your pardon, with all my heart," he said, his voice like itself again. "I'm a brute, I know! It's that beastly temper of mine, that is always getting me into trouble—with myself and others. Do forgive me, and let me help you. I want to very much."
"I just said I wouldn't if you begged."
"I don't beg. I insist. I'll inflict my advice on you,whether you like it or not. It's this: get the man out of Avignon the first thing to-morrow morning."
"That's easy to say!"
"And easy to do—I hope. What would be his first act, do you think, if he got a wire from you, dated Genoa, and worded something like this: 'Hear you are following me. I send this to Avignon on chance, to tell you persecution must cease or I will find means to protect myself. Lys d'Angely.'"
"I think he'd hurry off to Genoa as fast as he could go—by train, leaving his car, or sending it on by rail. But how could I date a telegram from Genoa?"
"I know a man there who—"
"Elise, I'm astonished at you!" exclaimed the shocked voice of Lady Turnour. "Talking in corridors with strange young men! and you've been out, too, without my permission, andwithmy jewel-bag! How dare you?"
"I haven't been out," I ventured to contradict.
"Then you were going out—"
"And I had no intention of going out—"
"Don't answer me back like that! I won't stand it. What are you doing in your hat, done up in a thick veil, too, at this time of night, as if you were afraid of being recognized?"
I had to admit to myself that appearances were dreadfully against me. I didn't see how I could give any satisfactory explanation, and while I was fishing wildly in my brain without any bait, hoping to catch an inspiration, the chauffeur spoke for me.
"If your ladyship will permit me to explain," he began,more respectfully than I'd heard him speak to anyone yet, "it is my fault ma'mselle is dressed as she is."
"What on earth is he going to say?" I wondered wildly, as he paused an instant for Lady Turnour's consent, which perhaps an amazed silence gave. I believed that he didn't know himself what to say.
"I wanted your ladyship's maid, when she had nothing else to do, to put on her out-of-door things and let me make a sketch of her for an illustrated newspaper I sometimes draw for. Naturally she didn't care for her face to go into the paper, so she insisted upon a veil. My sketch is to be called, 'The Motor Maid,' and I shall get half a guinea for it, I hope, of which it's my intention to hand ma'mselle five shillings for obliging me. I hope your ladyship doesn't object to my earning something extra now and then, so long as it doesn't interfere with work?"
"Well," remarked Lady Turnour, taken aback by this extraordinary plea, as well she might have been, "I don't like to tell a person out and out that I don't believe a word he says, but I do go as far as this: I'll believe you when I see you making the sketch. And as for earning extra money, I should have thought Sir Samuel paid good enough wages for you to be willing to smoke a pipe and rest when your day's work was done, instead of gadding about corridors gossiping with lady's-maids who've no business to be outside their own room. But if you're so greedy after money—and if you want me to take Elise's word—"
"I'll just begin the sketch in your ladyship's presence, if I may be excused," said Mr. Dane, briskly. And tomy real surprise, as well as relief, he whipped a small canvas-covered sketch-book out of his pocket. It was almost like sleight of hand, and if he'd continued the exhibition with a few live rabbits and an anaconda or two I couldn't have been much more amazed.
"I'd like to have a look at that thing," observed Lady Turnour, suspiciously, as in a business-like manner he proceeded to release a neatly sharpened pencil from an elastic strap.
Without a word or a guilty twitch of an eyelid he handed her the book, and we both stood watching while the fat, heavily ringed and rosily manicured fingers turned over the pages.
He could sketch, I soon saw, better than I can, though I've (more or less) made my living at it. There were types of French peasants done in a few strokes, here and there a suggestion of a striking bit of mountain scenery, a quaint cottage, or a ruined castle. Last of all there was a very good representation of the Aigle, loaded up with the Turnours' smart luggage, and ready to start. My lips twitched a little, despite the strain of the situation, as I noted the exaggerated size of the crest on the door panel. It turned the whole thing into a caricature; but luckily her ladyship missed the point. She even allowed her face to relax into a faint smile of pleasure.
"This isn't bad," she condescended to remark.
"I thought of asking your ladyship and Sir Samuel if there would be any objection to my sending that to a Society motoring paper, and labelling it 'Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour's new sixty-horse-power Aigle on tourin Provence.' Or, if you would prefer my not using your name, I—"
"I see no reason why you shouldnotuse it," her ladyship cut in hastily, "and I'm sure Sir Samuel won't mind. Make a little extra money in that way if you like, while we're on the road, as you have this talent."
She gave him back the book, quite graciously, and the chauffeur began sketching me. In three minutes there I was—the "abominable little flirt!" in hat and veil, with Lady Turnour's bag in my hand, quite a neat figure of a motor maid.
"You may put, if you like, 'Lady Turnour's maid,'" said that young person's mistress, "if you think it would give some personal interest to your sketch for the paper."
"Oh, this is for quite a different sort of thing," he explained. "Not devoted to society news at all: more for caricatures andfunnybits."
"Oh, then I should certainly not wish my name to appear inthat," returned her ladyship, her tone adding that, on the other hand, such a publication was as suitable as it was welcome to a portrait ofme.
"Now, Elise, I wish you to take those things off atonce, and come to my room," she finished. "Mind, I don't want you should keep me waiting! And you can hand over that bag."
No hope of another word between us! Mr. Jack Dane saw this, and that it would be unwise to try for it. Pocketing the sketch-book, he saluted Lady Turnour with a finger to the height of his eyebrows, which gesture visibly added to her sense of importance. Then, without glancing at me, he turned and walked off.
It was not until he had disappeared round the bend of the corridor that her ladyship thought it right to leave me.
I knew that she had made this little expedition in search of her maid with the sole object of seeing what the mouse did while the cat was away—a trick worthy of her lodging-house past! And I knew equally well that before I tapped at her door a little later she had examined the contents of the blue bag to make sure that I had extracted nothing. How I pity the long procession of "slaveys" who must have followed each other drearily in that lodging-house under the landlady's jurisdiction. They, poor dears, could have had no chauffeur friends to save them from daily perils, and it isn't likely that their mistress allowed such luxuries as postmen or policemen.
I decided to have my breakfast very early next morning, and would have thought it a coincidence that Mr. Dane should walk into the couriers' room at the same time if he hadn't coolly told me that he had been lying in wait for me to appear.
"I thought, for several reasons, you would be early," he said. "So, for all the same reasons and several more, I thought I'd be early too. I had to know what the situation was to be."
"The situation?" I repeated blankly.
"Between us. Am I to understand that we've quarrelled?"
"We had," I said. "But even on good grounds, it's difficult to keep on quarrelling with a person who has not only brought up your dinner and sauced it with good advice, but saved you from—from thedickensof a scrape."
"I hope she didn't row you any more afterward?"
"No. She was too much interested, all the time I was undressing her, in speculating about Monsieur Charretier to Sir Samuel. It seems that they struck up an acquaintance over their coffee on the strength of a little episode in the hall.
"Inadvertently I introduced them—threw them at each others' heads. Monsieur Charretier—Alphonse,as he once asked me to call him!—told her he was on his way to Cannes, where he heard that a friend of his, whom it was very necessary for him to see, was visiting a Russian Princess. He had stopped in Avignon, he said, because he was expecting the latest news of the friend, a change of address, perhaps; and—I don't know who proposed it, but anyway he arranged to go with Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour to the Palace of the Popes at ten o'clock. Her ladyship was quite taken with him, and remarked to Sir Samuel that there was nothing so fascinating as a French gentleman of thehaut monde. Also she pronounced his broken English 'sweet.' She wondered if he was married, and whether the friend in Cannes was a woman or a man. Little did she know that her maid could have enlightened her! Their joining forces here is, as my American friend Pamela would say, 'thelimit.'"
"Don't worry. The Palace of the Popes won't see him to-day," said the chauffeur. "He's gone. Got a telegram. Didn't even wait for letters, but told the manager to forward anything that came for him, Poste Restante, Genoa."
"Oh, then you—"
"Acted for you on my own responsibility. There was nothing else to do, ifanythingwere to be done; and you'd seemed to fall in with my suggestion. It would have been a pity, I thought, if your visit to Avignon were to be spoiled by a thing like that."
"Meaning Monsieur Charretier? I hardly slept last night for dwelling on the pity of it."
"It's all right, then? I haven't put my foot into it?"
"Your foot! You've put yourbrainsinto it. You said the other night that I had presence of mind. It was nothing to yours."
"All's forgotten and forgiven, then?"
"It's forgotten that there was anything to forgive."
"And the 'motor maid' business? You didn't think it too clumsy?"
"I thought it most ingenious."
"It wasn't a lie, you know. I haven't a happy talent for lying. I do, or rather did when I had nothing else on hand, send occasional sketches to a paper. But the more I look at my 'motor maid,' the more I feel I should like to keep her—in my sketch-book—if you're willing I should have her?"
"Then I don't get my promised five shillings?" I laughed.
"I'll try and make up the loss to you in some other way."
"I have you to thank that I didn't lose my situation. So the debt is on my side."
"You owe me the scolding you got. I oughtn't to have lured you into the corridor."
"It was on my business. And there was no other way."
"It was my business to have thought of some other way."
"Are you your sister's keeper?"
"I wish I—Look here, mademoisellema soeur, I'm all out of repartees. Perhaps I shall be better after breakfast. I shall be able to eat, now that I know you've forgiven me."
"I don't believe you would care if I hadn't," Iexclaimed. "You are so stolid, so phlegmatic, you Englishmen!"
"Do you think so? Well, it would have been a little awkward for me to have taken you about on a sightseeing expedition this morning if we were at daggers drawn—no matter how appropriate the situation might have been to Avignon manners of the Middle Ages, when everybody was either torturing everybody else or fighting to the death."
"Areyou going to take me about?"
"That's for you to say."
"Isn't it for Lady Turnour to say?"
"Sir Samuel told me last night that I shouldn't be wanted till two o'clock, as he was going to see the town with her ladyship. He wanted to know if we could sandwich in something else this afternoon, as he considered a whole day too much for one place. I suggested Vaucluse for the afternoon, as it's but a short spin from Avignon, and I just happened to mention that her ladyship might find use for you there, to follow her to the fountain with extra wraps in case of mistral. I thought, of all places you'd hate to miss Vaucluse. And we're to come back here for the night."
I feared that Monsieur Charretier's sudden disappearance might upset the Turnours' plans, but Mr. Dane didn't think so. He had impressed it upon Sir Samuel that no motorist who had not thoroughly "done" Avignon and Vaucluse would be tolerated in automobiling circles.
He was right in his surmise, and though her ladyship was vexed at losing a new acquaintance whom it would have been "nice to know in Paris," she resigned herselffor the morning to the society of husband and Baedeker. It was kind old Sir Samuel's proposal that I should be left free to do some sight-seeing on my own account while they were gone (I had meant to break my own shackles); and though my lady laughed to scorn the idea that a girl of my class should care for historical associations, she granted me liberty provided I utilized it in buying her certain stay-laces, shoe-strings, and other small horrors for which no woman enjoys shopping.
When she and Sir Samuel were out of the way, as safely disposed of as Monsieur Charretier himself, I felt so extravagantly happy in reaction, after all my worries, that I danced a jig in her ladyship's sacred bedchamber.
Then I prepared to start for my own personally conducted expedition; and this time I took no great pains to do my hair unbecomingly. Naturally, I didn't want to be a jarring note in harmonious Avignon, so I made myself look rather attractive for my jaunt with the chauffeur.
He was sauntering casually about thePlacebefore the hotel, where long ago Marshal Brune was assassinated, and we walked away together as calmly as if we had been followed by a whole drove of well-trained chaperons. When one has joined the ranks of the lower classes, one might as well reap some advantages from the change!
"What we'll do," said Mr. Dane, "is to look first at all the things the Turnours are sure to look at last. By that plan we shall avoid them, and as I know my way about Avignon pretty well, you may set your mind at rest."
I can think of nothing more delightful than a day inAvignon, with an agreeable brother and—a mind at rest. I had both, and made the most of them.
When her ladyship's shoe-strings and stay-laces were off my mind and in my coat pocket, we wandered leisurely about the modern part of the wonderful town, which has been busier through the centuries in making history than almost any other in France. Seen by daylight, I no longer resented the existence of a new—comparatively new—Avignon. The pretty little theatre, with its dignified statues of Corneill and Molière, seemed to invite me kindly to go in and listen to a play by the splendidly bewigged gentlemen sitting in stone chairs on either side of the door. The clock tower with its "Jacquemart" who stiffly struck the quarter hours with an automatic arm, while his wife criticized the gesture, commanded me to stop and watch his next stroke; and the curiosity shops offered me the most alluring bargains. People we met seemed to have plenty of time on their hands, and to be very good-natured, as if rich Provençal cooking agreed with their digestions.
Sure that the Turnours would be at the Palace of the Popes or in the Cathedral, we went to the Museum, and searched in vain among a riot of Roman remains for the tomb of Petrarch's Laura, which guide-books promised. In the end we had to be satisfied with a memorial cross made in the lovely lady's honour by order of some romantic Englishmen.
"Yet you say we're stolid and phlegmatic!" muttered Mr. Dane, as he read the inscription. (Evidently that remark had rankled.)
We had not a moment to waste, but the Turnours hadto be avoided; so my brother proposed that we combine profit with prudence, and take a cab along the road leading out to Port St. André. Where the ancient tower of Philippe le Bel crowns a lower slope I should have my first sight of that grim mountain of architecture, the Palace of the Popes. It was the best place from which to see it, if its real grandeur were to be appreciated, he said—or else to go to Villeneuve, across the Rhône, which we dared not steal time to do; but the Turnours were certain not to think of anything so esoteric in the way of sight-seeing.
The vastness of the stupendous mass of brick and stone took my breath away for an instant, as I raised my eyes to look up, on a signal of "Now!" from Mr. Dane. It seemed as if all the history, not alone of Old Provence, but of France, might be packed away behind those tremendous buttresses.
Of what romances, what tragedies, what triumphs, and what despairs could those huge walls and towers tell, if the echoes whispering through them could crystallize into words!
There Queen Jeanne of Naples—that fateful Marie Stuart of Provence—stood in her youth and beauty before her accusers, knowing she must buy her pardon, if for pardon she could hope. There the wretched Bishop of Cahors suffered tortures incredible for plots his enemies vowed he had conceived against the Pope. There came messages from Western Kings and Eastern Emperors; there Bertrand du Guesclin, my favourite hero, was excommunicated: and there great Rienzi lay in prison.
"Now I think we might risk going to the Palace," saidMr. Dane, when we had stood gazing in silence for more minutes than we could well afford. So we made haste back, and walked up to the Rochers des Doms, where we lurked cautiously in the handsome modern gardens, glorying in the view over the old and new bridges, and to far off Villeneuve, where the Man in the Iron Mask was first imprisoned. 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."
"I hope my cheeks wouldn't be dark purple and my nose a pale lilac!" I exclaimed.
"You're twenty, at most, and Lady Turnour's forty-five, at least," said my brother. "You can stand the pinch of Mistral; but the inside of that noble old pile is enough to turn the hair gray. It would be much more original to let your imagination draw the picture."
"Then I will!" I cried, knowing that nothing pleases a man more in a girl than taking his advice. By the lateness of the hour we judged that the Turnours must have visited the Cathedral before they "did" the Palace, so we went boldly on to Notre Dame des Doms, beloved of Charlemagne.
No wonder, I said, that he had thought it worth restoring from the ruins Saracens had left! Nothing could be more glorious than the situation of the historic church, once first in importance, perhaps, in all Christendom; and nothing could be more purely classic than the west porch. We strained the muscles of our necks staring up at ancient, fading frescoes, and rested them again in gazing at famous tombs; then it was time to go, if we were not to start for Vaucluse too hungry to feed satisfactorily on thoughts of Laura and Petrarch.
"Now to our own trough with the other beasts," I sighed. "What an anti-climax! From the cathedral to the couriers' dining-room."
"I thought that we might have our own private trough, just this once, if you don't object," said the chauffeur, almost wistfully. "It would be a shame to spoil the memory of a perfect morning, wouldn't it, so don't you think you might accept my humble invitation?"
I hesitated.
"Is it conventionality or economy that gives you pause?" he asked. "If it's the latter, or rather a regard for my pocket, your conscience can be easy. My pocket feels heavy and my heart light to-day. I remember a little restaurant not far off where they do you in great style for a franc or two. Will you come with me?"
He looked quite eager, and I felt myself unable to resist temptation. "Yes," said I, "and thank you."
A biting wind, more like March than flowery April, nearly blew us down into the town, and I was glad to find shelter in the warm, clean little restaurant.
"Ismy nose lilac after all?" I inquired, when a dearold smiling waiter had trotted off with our order, murmuring benevolently, "Doude de zuide, M'sieur," like a true compatriot of Tartarin.
"A faint pink from the cheeks is undeniably reflected upon it," admitted the chauffeur. "We're going to be let in for a cold snap as we get up north," he went on. "I read in the papers this morning that there's been a 'phenomenal fall of snow for the season' on the Cevennes and the mountains of Auvergne. Do you weaken on the Gorges of the Tarn now I've told you that?"
"Mine not to reason why. Mine but to do or die," I transposed, smiling with conspicuous bravery.
"Not at all. It's yours to choose. I haven't even broken the Gorges, yet, to the slaves of my hypnotic powers. I warn you that, if all the papers say about snow is true, we may have adventures on the way. Would you rather—"
"I'd rather have the adventures," I broke in, and had as nearly as possible added "with you," but I stopped myself in time.
We lunched more gaily than double-dyed millionaires, and afterward, while my host was paying away his hard-earned francs for our food, I slipped out of the restaurant and into a little shop I had noticed close by. The window was full of odds and ends, souvenirs of Avignon; and there were picture-postcards, photographs, and coins with heads of saints on them. In passing, on the way to lunch, I'd noticed a silver St. Christopher, about the size of a two-franc piece; and as the Aigle carries the saint like a figure-head, a glittering, golden statuette sixor seven inches high, I had guessed that St. Christopher must have been chosen to fill the honourable position of patron saint for motors and motorists.
"What's the price of that?" I asked, pointing to the coin.
It was ten francs, a good deal more than I could afford, more than half my whole remaining fortune. "Could not madame make it a little cheaper?" I pleaded with the fat lady whose extremely aquiline nose proclaimed that she had no personal interest in saints. But no, madame could not make it cheaper; the coin was of real silver, the figure well chased; a recherché little pocket-piece, and a great luck-bringer for anybody connected with the automobile. No accident would presume to happen to one who carriedthaton his person. Madame had, however, other coins of St. Christopher, smaller coins in white metal which could scarcely be told from silver. If mademoiselle wished to see them—
But mademoiselle did not wish to see them. It would be worse than nothing to give a base imitation. Instead of feeling flattered, St. Christopher would have a right to be annoyed, and perhaps to punish. Recklessly I passed across the counter ten francs, and made the coveted saint mine. Then I darted out, just in time to meet Mr. Dane at the door of the restaurant.
"This is for you," I said. "It's to give you luck."
I pressed the coin into his hand, and he looked at it on his open palm. For an instant I was afraid he was going to make fun of it, and my superstition concerning it, which I couldn't quite deny if cross-questioned. But his smile didn't mean that.
"You've just bought this—to give to me?" he asked.
"Yes," I nodded.
"Why? Not because you want to 'pay me back' for asking you to lunch—or any such villainous thing, I hope, because—"
I shook my head. "I didn't think of that. I got it because I wanted to bring you luck."
Then he slipped the coin into an inside pocket of his coat. "Thank you," he said. "But didn't I tell you that you'd brought me something better than luck already?"
"Whatisbetter than luck?"
"An interest in life. And the privilege of being a brother."
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. The tap was turned on in the newly invented heating-apparatus in the car floor, through which hot water from the radiator can be made to circulate; and I wondered, if this extreme measure were resorted to already, what would be left to do when we reached those high, white altitudes of which the chauffeur had been speaking. I prayed that Lady Turnour might not read in the papers about the "phenomenal fall of snow" in those regions, for if she did I was afraid that even Mr. Dane's magnetic powers of persuasion might fail to get her there. He might dangle Queen Margherita of Italy over her head in vain, if worst came to worst: for what are queens to the most inveterate tuft-hunters if the feet be cold? Yet now that "adventures" werevaguely prophesied, I felt I could not give up the promised gorges and mountains.
Out of Avignon we slid, past the old, old ramparts and the newer but impressive walls, and turned at the right into the Marseilles road. "Vaucluse!" said a kilometre-stone, and then another and another repeated that enchanted and enchanting word, as we flew onward between the Rhône and the Durance.
This was our own old way again, as far as the Pont de Bonpas; then our road wound to the northeast, away from the world we knew—I said to myself—and into a world of romance, a world created by the love of Petrarch for Laura, and sacred to those two for ever more.
The ruined castle, with machicolated towers and haughty buttresses, on the great rampart of a hill, was for me the porter's lodge at the entrance gate of an enchanted garden, where poetic flowers of love bloomed through seasons and centuries; laurels, roses, and lilies, and pansies for remembrance. We didn't see those flowers with our bodies' eyes, but what of that? What did it matter that to the Turnours in their splendid glass cage this was just a road, with queer little gnome dwellings scooped out of solid rock to redeem it from common-placeness, with a fringe of deserted cottages farther on, and some ugly brickworks? My spirit's eyes saw the flowers, and they clustered thicker and brighter about Pieverde, where I insisted to Mr. Dane that Laura had been born.
He was inclined to dispute this at first, and bring up the horrid theory that the pure white star of Petrarch's life had been a mere Madame de Sade, with a drove ofuninteresting children. But eagerly I quoted Petrarch himself, using all the arguments on which Pamela and I prided ourselves at the Convent; and by the time we had got as far as that sweet "little Venice full of water wheels," L'Isle, I'd persuaded him to agree with me. In the midst of all that lovely, liquid music of running, trickling, fluting water, who could go on callously insisting that Laura resisted Petrarch merely because she was a fat married woman with a large family?
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!
We were slipping past the banks of a little river, clear as sapphires and emeralds melted and mingled together. The sound of its singing drowned the sound of the motor, so that we seemed to glide toward Vaucluse noiselessly and reverently.
At the Inn of Petrarch and Laura the car had to stop; and looking up, we could see on the height above the castle home of Petrarch's dearest friend, Philippe de Cabassole, guardian of Queen Jeanne of Naples. Up there on the cliff Petrarch's eyes must often have turned toward Pieverde with longing thoughts of Laura, that "white dove" who was always for him sixteen, as when he met her first.
No farther than the inn could any wheeled thing go; and having justified my presence by buttoning Lady Turnour up in her coat, and finding her muff under several rugs, I stood by the car, gazing after the couple as they trudged off along the path to the hidden fairy fountain of Vaucluse. When they should have got well ahead I meant to go too, for if a cat may look at a king, a lady's maid may try to drink—if she can—a few drops from the cup of a great poet's inspiration. At first I resented those two ample, richly clad, prosaic backs marching sturdily toward the magic fountain; then suddenly the back of Sir Samuel became pathetic in my eyes. Hadn't he, I asked myself, loved his Emily ("Emmie, pet," as I've heard him call her) as long and faithfully as Petrarch loved his Laura? Perhaps, after all, he had earned the right to visit this shrine.
Rocks shut out from our sight the distant fountain, and the last windings of the path that led to it, clasping the secret with great stone arms, like those of an Othello jealously guarding his young wife's beauty from eyes profane.
"Aren't you going now?" asked my brother, with a certain wistfulness.
"Ye-es. But what about you?"
"Oh, I've been here before, you know."
"Don't you believe in second times? Or is a second time always second best?"
"Not when—Of course I want to go. But I can't leave the car alone."
My eyes wandered toward the inn door. "There's a boy there who looks as if he were born to be awatch-dog," said I, basely tempting him. "Couldn't you—"
"No, I couldn't," he said decidedly. "At a place like this, where there are a lot of tourists about, it wouldn't be right. It was different at Valescure, when I took you in to lunch."
"You mean I mustn't make that a precedent."
"I don't mean anything conceited."
"But you won't desert Mr. Micawber. I believe I shall name the car Micawber! Well, then, I must go by myself—and if I should fall into the fountain and be drowned—"
"Don't talk nonsense, and don't do anything foolish," said Mr. Dane, sternly, whereupon I turned my back upon him, and plunged into the cool shadows of the gorge. The great white cliff of limestone was my goal, and always it towered ahead, as I followed the narrow pathway above the singing water. I sighed as I paused to look at a garden which maybe once was Petrarch's, for it was sad to find my way to fairyland, alone. Even a brother's company would have been better than none, I thought!
Soon I met my master and mistress coming back.
There was nothing much to see, said her ladyship, sharply, and I mustn't be long; but Sir Samuel ventured to plead with her.
"Let the girl have ten minutes or so, if she likes, dear," said he. "We'll be wanting a cup of hot coffee at the inn. And it is a pretty place." There was something in his voice which told me that he would have felt the charm—if his bride had let him.
Pools of water, deep among the rocks, were purple-pansy colour or beryl green; but the "Source" itself, in its cup of stone, was like a block of malachite. There was no visible bubbling of underground springs fighting their way up to break the crystal surface of the fountain,—this fountain so unlike any other fountain; but to the listening ear came a moaning and rushing of unseen waters, now the high crying of Arethusa escaping from her pursuing lover, now rich, low notes as of an organ played in a vast cavern.
Above the gorge, the towering rocks with their huge holes and archways hollowed out by turbulent water in dim, forgotten ages, looked exactly as if the whole front wall had been knocked off a giant's castle, exposing its secret labyrinths of rough-hewn rooms, floor rising above floor even to the attics where the giant's servants had lived, and down to the cellars where the giant's pet dragons were kept in chains.
I hadn't yet exhausted my ten minutes, though I began to have a guilty consciousness that they would soon be gone, when I heard a step behind me, and turning, saw Mr. Dane.
"They're having coffee in the car," he said. "Sir Samuel proposed it to his wife, as if he thought it would be rather more select and exclusive for her than drinking it in the inn; but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was because he wanted to let me off. Not a bad old boy, Sir Samuel."
So we saw the fountain of Vaucluse together, after all. I don't know why that should have seemed important to me, but it did—a little.
We didn't say much to each other, all the way back to Avignon, but I felt that the day had been a brilliant success, and was sure that the next could not be as good. "What—not with St. Remy and Les Baux?" exclaimed my brother. But I knew very little about St. Remy, and still less about Les Baux. For a minute I was ashamed to confess, but then I told myself that this was a much worse kind of vanity than being pleased with the colour of one's hair or the length of one's eyelashes. Mr. Jack Dane was too polite to show surprise at my ignorance; but that evening, just as I was getting ready to go down to dinner, up he came with a tray, as he had the night before; and on the tray, among covered dishes, was a book.
"Two of your chauffeur-admirers from Aix are in the dining-room," he said, "so I thought you'd rather stop up in your room and read T.A. Cook's 'Old Provence,' than go downstairs. Anyway, it will be better for you."
I was half angry, half flattered that he should arrange my life for me in this off-hand way, whether I liked it or not; but the French half of me will do almost anything rather than be ungracious; and it would have been ungracious to say I was tired of dining in my room, and could take care of myself, when he had given himself the trouble of carrying up my dinner. So I swallowed all less obvious emotions than meek gratitude for food, physical and mental; and was soon so deeply absorbed in the delightful book that I forgot to eat my pudding. I sat up late with it—the book, not the pudding—after putting Lady Turnour to bed (almost literally, because she thinks it refined to be helpless), and whenmorning came I was no longer disgracefully ignorant of St. Remy and Les Baux.
Mr. Dane had mapped out the programme of places to see, using Avignon as a centre, and there were so many notabilities at the Hotel de l'Europe following the same itinerary, with insignificant variations, that Lady Turnour was quite contented with the arrangements made for her.
Morning was for St. Remy; afternoon was for Les Baux, "because the thing is to see the sunset there," I heard her telling an extremely rich-looking American lady, laying down the law as if she had planned the whole trip herself, with a learned reason for each detail.
The way to St. Remy was along a small but pretty country road, which had a misleading air, as if it didn't want you to think it was taking you to a place of any importance. And yet we were in the heart of Mistral-land; not Mistral the east wind, but Mistral the poet of Provence, great enough to be worthy of the land he loves, great enough to carry on the glory of it to future generations. At any moment we might meet a Fellore. I looked with interest at each man we saw, and some looked back at me with flattering curiosity; for a woman's eyes are almost as mysterious behind a three-cornered talc window as behind a yashmak, or zenana gratings.
St. Remy itself—birthplace of Nostradamus, maker of powders and prophecies—was charming in the sunlight, with its straight avenue of trees like the pillars of a long gray and green corridor in a vast palace; but we swept on toward the "Plateau des Antiquities," up asteep slope with St. Remy the modern at our backs; then suddenly I found myself crying out with delight at sight of the splendid Triumphal Archway and the gracious Monument we had come out to see.
Both looked more Greek than Roman, but that was because Greek workmen helped to build them for Julius Cæsar, when he determined that posterity should not forget his defeat of great Vercingetorix, and should do justice to the memory of Marius.
When I was small I used to dislike poor Vercingetorix, and be glad that he had to surrender, so that I might be rid of him, owing to the dreadful difficulty of pronouncing his name; but when we had got out of the car, and I saw him on the archway, a tall, carved captive, who had kept his head through all the centuries, while Cæsar (with a hand on the prisoner's shoulder) had lost his, my heart softened to him for the first time.
I thought the Triumphal Monument to Marius even more beautiful than the Archway, and felt as angry as Marius must, that the guide-books should take it away from the hero and wrongfully call it a mausoleum for somebody else. But Mr. Dane assured me with the obstinate air people have when learned authorities back their opinions, that the Arch was really the more interesting of the two—the first Triumphal Archway set up outside Italy, said he, and bade me reflect on that; still, I would turn my eyes toward the graceful monument, so wickedly annexed by the three Julii, and then away over the wide plain that lay beneath this ragged spur of the Alpilles. In the distance I could see Avignon,and the pale, opal-tinted, gold-veined hills that fold in the fountain of Vaucluse. Never, since we came into Provence, had I been able so clearly to realize the wild fascination of her haggard beauty. "Here Marius stood in his camp," I thought, "shading his eyes from the fierce sun, and looking out over this strange, arid country for the Barbarians he meant to conquer." My heart beat with an intoxicating excitement, such as one feels on seeing great mountains or the ocean for the first time; and then down I tumbled, with a bump, off my pedestal, when Lady Turnour wanted to know what I supposed she'd brought me for, if not to put on her extra cloak without waiting to be told.
Watches are really luxuries, not necessities, with the Turnours, because their appetites always strike the hour of one, and if they're sometimes a little in advance, they can be relied upon never to be behindhand. I knew before I glanced at the little bracelet-watch Pamela gave me (hidden under my sleeve) that it must be on the stroke of half-past twelve when her ladyship began to complain of the sharp wind, and say we had better be getting back to St. Remy. She was cross, as usual when she is hungry, and said that if I continued to go about "like a snail in a dream" whenever she fetched me to carry her things on these short expeditions, she would leave me in the hotel to mend her clothes; whereupon I became actually servile in my ministrations. I brushed a microscopic speck of dust off her gown; I pushed in a hairpin; I tucked up a flying end of veil; I straightened her toque, and made myself altogether indispensable; for the bare idea of being left behind was a box on the ear. I could notendure such a punishment—and the front seat would look so empty, so unfinished, without me!
As we went back down the steep hill from old Glanum, St. Remy appeared a little oasis of spring in the midst of a winter which had come back for something it had forgotten. All its surrounding orchards and gardens, screened from the shrewish Mistral by the shoulders of the Alpilles, and again by lines of tall cypress trees and netted, dry bamboos, had begun to bloom richly like the earlier gardens on the Riviera. There was a pinky-white haze of apple blossoms; and even the plane trees in the long main street were hung with dainty, primrose-coloured spheres, like little fairy lanterns. Not only did every man seem a possible Felibre, but every girl was a beauty. Some of them wore a charming and becoming head-dress, such as I never saw before, and the chauffeur said it was the head-dress of the women of Arles, where we would go day after to-morrow.
Impertinent chauffeurs or couriers would have been more out of place in poetic St. Remy than the sensational Nostradamus himself; and there was no trouble of that sort for me in lunching at the pleasant, quiet hotel. Mr. Dane had bought a French translation of Mistral's "Memoires," and as we ate, he and I alone together, he read me the incident of the child-poet and his three wettings in quest of the adored water-flowers. Nothing could be more beautiful than the wording of the exquisite thoughts, yet I wished we could have seen those thoughts embodied in Provençal, the language practically created by Mistral, as Italian was by Dante and Petrarch, or German by Goethe.
Not far away lay Mas du Juge, described in the book, where he was born, and Maillane, where he lives, and I longed to drive that way; but as the Turnours would be sure to say that there was nothing to see, the chauffeur thought it wiser not to turn out of our road. We might find the poet at Arles, perhaps, in his museum there, or lunching at the Hotel du Forum, a favourite haunt of his on museum days.
Starting for Les Baux, we turned our faces straight toward the wild little mountains loved by Mistral, his dear Alpilles. They soon surrounded us in tumbling gray waves, piled up on either side of the road as the Red Sea must have tumultuously fenced in the path of the Israelites. Strange, hummocky mountains were everywhere, as far as we could see; mountains of incredible, nightmare shapes, and of great ledges set with gigantic busts of ancient heroes, some nobly carved, some hideously caricatured, roughly hewn in gray limestone, or red rock that looked like bronze. On we went, climbing up and up, a road like a python's back; but not yet was there any glimpse of the old "robber fortress" of Les Baux about which I had read, and later dreamed, last night. I knew it would be wonderful, astonishing, a Dead City, a Pompeii of the Feudal Age, yet different from any other ancient town the whole world over—a place of tangled histories; yet I tried vainly to picture what it would be like. Then, suddenly, we reached a turn in that strange road which, if it had led downhill instead of up, would have seemed like the way Orpheus took to reach Hades.
We had come face to face with a huge chasm in therock, a gap with sheer walls sliced clean down, like a cut in a great cheese; and I felt instinctively that this must be the dark doorway through which we should see Les Baux.
Through the cut in the stone cheese our road carried us; and the busts on the rocky ledges were so near now we could almost have put out our hands and touched them—but curiously enough, in this place of all others, they were the likenesses of modern men. Mr. Dane and I picked out an unmistakable Gladstone on the right, a characteristic Beaconsfield on the left; and farther on Mr. Chamberlain's head was fantastically grafted on to the body of a prehistoric animal. We were just tracing Pierpont Morgan's profile, near a few of Hannibal's elephants, when the car sprang clear of the chasm, out upon the other side of the doorway; and there rose before us Les Baux, a hundred times more wonderful, more tragic, than I had hoped to find it.
Far, far below our mountain road lay a valley so flat that it might have been levelled on purpose for the tilting of knights in great tournaments. Above and around us (for suddenly we were in as well as under it) was a City of Ghosts.
Huge masses of rock, like Titan babies' playthings, had been hollowed out for dwellings, fit houses for our late cousins the cave-dwellers. There were colossal pillars and dark, high doorways such as one sees in pictures of the temples at Thebes; but all this, said Mr. Jack Dane, was merely a preface for what was yet to come, only an immense quarry whence the stones to build Les Baux had been torn. We were still on the road to the real LesBaux; and even as he spoke, the Aigle was clawing her way bravely up a hill steeper than any we had mounted. At the top she turned abruptly, and stopped in a queer, forlorn little place, where to my astonishment our journey ended in front of a small house ambitiously named Hotel Monte Carlo. Then I remembered the story I had read: how a young prince of the Grimaldi family came begging Louis XIII. to protect him from Spain; how Louis, who didn't want Spain to grab Monaco, promptly gave soldiers; how the Grimaldi's shrewd wit did more to get the Spanish out of the little principality than did the fighting men from France; and how Louis, as a reward, turned poor, war-worn Les Baux into a Grimaldi marquisate.
That little episode in history accounted for the Hotel Monte Carlo; and I wondered if it were put up on the site of the Grimaldis' miniature pleasure-palace, which the forest-burning revolutionists tore down just before Les Baux, after all its strange passings from hand to hand, became the property of the nation.
Against the rocks a few mean houses leaned apologetically, but on every side rose the ruins of a proud, dead past: a past beginning with the ruts of chariot-wheels graven on the rock-paved street. I thought, as I looked at the sordid little village of to-day, which had crawled into the very midst of the fortress, of some words I'd read last night: "a rat in the heart of a dead princess."
Strange, haggard hill, whispered about by history ever since Christians ran before Alaric the Visigoth, and hid in its caverns already echoing with legends of mysterious Phoenician treasure! Strange robber house of Les Baux,founded thirteen hundred years ago, and claiming half Provence two centuries later! No wonder, after all the fighting and plundering, loving and hating, that all it asks now is for its bleached, picked bones to be left in peace!
I thought this, standing by the little Hotel Monte Carlo, waiting for my mistress and her husband to be supplied with a guide. He was the most intelligent and efficient-seeming guide imaginable, who looked as if he had the whole history of Les Baux behind his bright dark eyes; and I hoped that the humble maid and chauffeur might be allowed to follow the "quality" within respectful earshot.
Soon they began to walk on, and I turned to look at my brother, who was lingering by the car. Already the guide had begun to be interesting. I caught a few words: "Celtic caverns"—"Leibulf, the first Count"—"the terrible Turenne, called the 'Fléau de Provence'—the Lady Alix's guardian"—which made me long to hear more; but I didn't want to crawl on until my Fellow Worm could crawl with me.
"I can't go," he said. "It wouldn't do to leave the car here. There are several gipsy faces at the inn window, you see. Why there should be gipsies I don't know; but there are, for those are gipsies or I'll eat my cap. And I've got to keep watch on deck."
"How horrid to leave you here alone, seeing nothing—not even the sunset!" I exclaimed. "I think I shall stop with you, unlessshecalls me—"
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he had begun, when the summons came, sooner than I had expected.
"Elise, come here and put what this guide is saying into English," was the command, and I flew to obey. To hear him tell what he knew was like turning over the leaves of the Book of Les Baux; and I tried to do him justice in my translation; but it was disheartening to see Lady Turnour's lack-lustre gaze wander as dully about the rock-hewn barracks of Roman soldiers as if she had been in her own lodging-house cellar, and to be interrupted by her complaints of the cold wind as we went up the silent streets, past deserted palaces of dead and gone nobles, toward the crown of all—the Château.
Nothing moved her to any show of interest in this grave of mighty memories, of mighty warrior princes, and of lovely ladies with names sweet as music and perfume of potpourri. Wandering in a splendid confusion of feudal and mediæval relics—walls with carved doorways, and doorways without walls; beautiful, purposeless columns whose occupation had long been gone; carved marvels of fireplaces standing up sadly from wrecked floors of fair ladies' boudoirs or great banqueting halls, the stout, painted woman broke in upon the guide's story to talk of any irrelevant matter that jumped into her mind. She suddenly bethought herself to scold Sir Samuel about "Bertie," from whom a letter had evidentlybeen forwarded, and who had been spending too much money to please her ladyship.
"That stepson of yours is a regular bad egg," said she.
"Never you mind," retorted Sir Samuel, defending his favourite. "Many a bad egg has turned over a new leaf."
My lip quivered, but I fixed my eyes firmly upon the guide, who was now devoting his attention entirely to his one respectful listener. I was ashamed of my companions, but I couldn't help catching stray fragments of the conversation, and the involuntary mixing of Bertie's affairs with the Religious Wars, and the destruction of Les Baux by Richelieu's soldiers, had a positively weird effect on my mind. Bertie, it seemed—(or was it Richelieu?) was invited to visit at the château of a French marquis called de Roquemartine (or was it good King René, who inherited Les Baux because he was a count of Provence?), and the château was near Clermont-Ferrand. Lady Turnour was of opinion that it would be well to make a condition before sending the cheque which Bertie wanted to pay his bridge debts (or was he in debt because the Lady Douce and her sister Stephanette of Les Baux had quarrelled?). If the advice of Dane, the chauffeur, were taken, they would be motoring to Clermont-Ferrand; and why not say to Bertie: "No cheque unless you get us an invitation to visit the Roquemartines while you are there?" (Or was it that they wanted an invitation to the boudoir of Queen Jeanne, René's beloved wife, who lived at Les Baux sometimes, and had very beautiful things around her—tapestries and Eastern rugs, and wondrous rosaries, and jewelled Booksof Hours?) Really, it was very bewildering; but in my despair one drop of comfort fell. That château near Clermont-Ferrand would prove a lodestar, and help Mr. Jack Dane to lure the Turnours through chill gorges and over snowy mountains.
"Lodestar" really was a good word for the attraction, I thought, and I would repeat it to the chauffeur. But it rose over the horizon of my intellect probably because the guide talked of Countess Alix, last heiress of the great House of Les Baux. "As she lay dying," he said, "the star that had watched over and guided the fortunes of her house came down from the sky, according to the legend, and shone pale and sad in her bedchamber till she was dead. Then it burst, and its light was extinguished in darkness for ever."
Eventually Sir Samuel's eye brightened for the Tudor rose decoration, in the ruined château, relic of an alliance between an English princess and the House of Les Baux; and Lady Turnour didn't interrupt once when the guide told of the latest important discovery in the City of Ghosts. "Near the altar of the Virgin here," he began, in just the right, hushed tone, "they found in a tomb the body of a beautiful young girl. There she lay, as the tomb was opened, just for an instant—long enough for the eye to take in the picture—as lovely as the loveliest lady of Les Baux, that famed princess Cecilie, known through Provence as Passe-Rose. Her long golden hair was in two great plaits, one over either shoulder, and her hands were crossed upon her breast, holding a Book of Hours. But in a second, as the air touched her, she was gone like a dream; her sweet young face, white as milk, and halfsmiling, her long dark eyelashes, even the Book of Hours, all crumbled into dust, fine as powder. Only the golden hair, tied with blue ribbon, was left; and when you go to Arles you can see it in the Museum of Monsieur Mistral."
"Make a note of hair for Arles, Sam," said her ladyship, gravely; and just as solemnly he obeyed, scribbling a few words in the pocket memorandum-book in which the poor man industriously puts down all the things which his wife thinks he ought to remember.
"Anything else interesting ever been found here?" she wanted to know. "Any jewels or things of that sort?"
I passed the question on to the guide.
Many things had been found, he said: coins, vases, pottery, and mosaics. Occasionally such things were turned up, though usually, nowadays, of no great value; but it was the hope of finding something which brought the gipsies. Often there were gypsies at Les Baux. They would go to Les Saintes Maries, the place of the sacred church where the two sainted Maries came ashore from Palestine in their little boat, and they would pray to Sarah, whose tomb was also in that wonderful church. Had we seen it yet? No? But it was not far. Many people went, though the great day was on May twenty-fourth, when the Archbishop of Aix lowered the ark of relics from the roof, and healed those of the sick who were true believers. It was for Sarah, though, that the gipsies made their pilgrimages. They thought that prayers at her tomb would bring them whatever they desired; and sometimes, when they were able to come on as far asLes Baux, they would wish at the tomb to find the buried Phoenician treasure, for which many had searched generation after generation, since history began, but none had ever found.
I did not say anything about the gipsies at the inn-window, but I saw now that Mr. Dane had done wisely in sticking to his post. A sixty-horse-power Aigle might largely make up for a disappointment in the matter of treasure, even if she had to be towed down into the valley by a horse.
"Calvé, and all the great singers, come here sometimes by moonlight in their motors," went on the guide, "after the great musical festival of Orange in the month of August. They stand on the piles of stone among the ruins when all is white under the moon, and they sing—ah! but they sing! It is wonderful. They do it for their own pleasure, and there is no audience except the ghosts—and me, for they allow me to listen. Yet I think, if our eyes could be opened to such things, we would see grouped round a noble company of knights and ladies—such a company as would be hard to get together in these days."
"Well, I would rather sing here in August than April!" exclaimed Lady Turnour, with the air of a spoiled prima donna. And then she shivered and wanted to go down to the car without waiting for the sunset, which, after all, could only be like any other mountain sunset, and she could see plenty of better ones next summer in Switzerland. She felt so chilled, she was quite anxious about herself, and should certainly not dare to start for Avignon until she had had a glass of steaming hot rum punchor something of that sort, at the inn. Did the guide think she could get it—and have it sent out to her in the car, as nothing would induce her to go inside that little den?
The guide thought it probable that something hot might be obtained, though there might be a few minutes' delay while the water was made to boil, as it would be an unusual order.
A few minutes! thought I, eagerly, looking at the sun, which was hurrying westward. I knew what "a few minutes" at such an inn would mean—half an hour at least; and apparently I was no longer needed as an interpreter. Without a thought of me, now that I had ceased to be useful, Lady Turnour slipped her arm into her husband's for support (her high-heeled shoes and the rough, steep streets had not been made for each other), and began trotting down the hill, in advance of the guide. They had finished with him, too, and were already deep in a discussion as to whether rum punch, or hot whisky-and-water with sugar and lemon were better, for warding off a chill. I didn't see why I shouldn't linger a little on the wide plateau, with the Dead City looming above me like a skeleton seated on a ruined throne, and half southern France spread out in a vast plain, a thousand feet below.
It was wonderful there, and strangely, almost terribly still. Once the sea had washed the feet of the cliff, dim ages ago. Now my eyes had to travel far to the Mediterranean, where Marseilles gloomed dark against the burnished glimmer of the water. I could see the Etang de Berre, too, and imagine I saw the Aurelian Way, andgloomy old Aigues-Mortes, which we were to visit later. At lunch we had talked of a poem of Mistral's, which a friend of Mr. Dane's had put into French—a poem all about a legendary duel. And it was down there, in that far-stretching field, that the duel was fought.
As I looked I realized that the clouds boiling up from some vast cauldron behind the world were choking the horizon with their purple folds. They were beautiful as the banners of a royal army advancing over the horizon, but—they would hide the sun as he went down to bathe in the sea. He was embroidering their edges with gold now. I was seeing the best at this moment. If I started to go back, I should have time to pause here and there, gazing at things the Turnours had hurried past.
I went down slowly, reluctantly, the melancholy charm of the place catching at my dress as I walked, like the supplicating fingers of a ghost condemned to dumbness. There was one rock-hewn house I had wanted to see, coming up, which Lady Turnour had scorned, saying "when you've been in one, you've been in all." And she had not understood the guide's story of a legend that was attached to this particular house. Perhaps if she had she would not have cared; but now I was free I couldn't resist the temptation of going in, to poke about a little. You could go several floors down, the guide had said; that was certain, but the tale was, that a secret way led down from the lowest cellar of this cave house, continuing—if one could only find it—to the enchanted cavern far below, where Taven, the witch, kept and cured of illness the girl loved by Mireio.
I didn't know who Mireio was, except that he lived insongs and legends of Old Provence, but the story sounded like a beautiful romance; and then, the guide had added that some people thought the Kabre d'Or, or Phoenician treasure, was hidden somewhere between Les Baux and the "Fairy Grotto," or the "Gorge of Hell," near by.