spoken if she had been in my place. I don't know why I was sure, but I
was.
"Whatever Barrymore does in connection with a motor-car, is always
right, Countess," said Sir Ralph, "though in other walks of life I
wouldn't vouch for him."
His funny way of saying this made us all laugh and Mamma picked up the
good temper which she had lost in her first fright. She began to
apologize, but Mr. Barrymore wouldn't let her; and the storm was soon
forgotten in the interest with which we hung upon the Chauffeulier's
explorations.
He peered into the mysterious inner workings of the machine, tapped some
things, thumped others, and announced that one of the "cones of the
countershaft" was broken.
"There's no doubt that the undue strain yesterday and this morning
weakened it," he said, coming up from the depths with a green smear on
his noble brow. "What we've really to be thankful for is that it waited
to snap until we'd got up all the hills. Now, though as the Countess
says we seem to be miles from anywhere, we're actually within close
touch of civilization. Unless I'm out in my calculations, we must be
near a place called Limone, where, if there isn't much else, at least
there's a station on the new railway line. All we've got to do is to
find something to tow us, as we towed Dalmar-Kalm (a mere mule will
answer as well as a motor) to that station, where we can put the car on
the train and be at Cuneo in no time. The guide-books say that Cuneo's
interesting, and anyhow there are hotels of sorts there--also machine
tools, a forge, a lathe, and things of that kind which we can't carry
about with us."
"What a splendid adventure!" exclaimed Maida. "I love it; don't you,
Beechy?"
I answered that I entertained a wild passion for it; but all the same, I
wished I'd mentioned it first.
This settled Mamma's attitude towards the situation. She saw that it was
_young_ to enter into the spirit of the adventure, so she took the cue
from us and flung herself in with enthusiasm enough to make up for her
crossness.
"Somebody must go on an exploring expedition for a mule," said Mr.
Barrymore, "and as I'm the only one whose Italian is fairly fluent, I
suppose I must be the somebody. Miss Destrey, would you care to go with
me for the sake of a little exercise?"
In another minute I would have volunteered, but even thirteen-year-olds
have too much pride to be the third that makes a crowd. Gooseberry jam
is the only jam I don't like; so I kept still and let them go off
together, chaperoned by the little black dog. Sir Ralph stood by the
automobile talking to Mamma while I wandered aimlessly about, though I
could tell by the corner of his eye that she didn't occupy his whole
attention.
Just to see what would happen, I suddenly squatted down by the side of
the road, about twenty yards away, and began to dig furiously with the
point of my parasol. I hadn't been at work for three minutes when I was
rewarded. "The Countess has sent me to ask what you are doing, Miss
Beechy," announced a nice voice; and there was Sir Ralph peering over my
shoulder.
"I'm looking for one of my poor relations," said I. "A worm. She's sent
up word that she isn't in. But I don't believe it."
"I'm glad my rich relations aren't as prying as you are," said he. "I
often send that message when it would be exceedingly inconvenient to
have further inquiries pressed. Not to rich relations, though, for the
very good reason that they don't bother about me or other poor worms,
who have not my Félicité to defend them."
"Who's Félicité?" I asked, not sorry to keep Sir Ralph for my own sake
or that of Mamma--who was probably taking advantage of his absence to
put powder on her nose and pink stuff on her lips, by the aid of her
chatelaine mirror.
"Who's Félicité? You might as well ask who is the Queen of England.
Félicité is my cook--my housekeeper--my guide, philosopher and friend;
my all."
"That dear, fat duck who brought us tea the day we were at your house?"
"I have two ducks. But Félicité was the one who brought you the tea. The
other eats mice and fights the cat. Félicité doesn't eat mice, and
fights me."
"I loved her."
"So do I. And I could love you for loving her."
"Perhaps you'd better not."
"Why? It's safe and allowable for men of my age to love little girls."
"I'm different from other little girls. You said so yourself. Besides
what is your age?"
"Twenty-nine."
"You look about nineteen. Our Chauffeulier looks older than you do."
"Chauffeulier? Oh, I see, that's your name for Terry. It's rather
smart."
"I call it a title, not a name," said I. "I thought he ought to have
one, so I dubbed him that."
"He ought to be complimented."
"I mean him to be."
"Come now, tell me what name you've invented for me, Miss Beechy."
I shook my head. "You've got a ready-made title. But you look too boyish
to live up to it. The Chauffeulier would come up to my idea of a baronet
better than you do."
"Oh, you don't have to be dignified really to be a baronet, you know.
Terry--er--you mustn't mention to him that I told you; but he may be
something a good deal bigger than a baronet one day."
"He's a good deal bigger than a baronet now," said I, laughing, and
measuring Sir Ralph from head to foot. "But what may he be one day?"
"I mustn't say more. But if you're at all interested in him, that will
be enough to fix your attention."
"What would be the good of fixing my attention on him, if that's what
you mean," I inquired, "when he's got his attention fixed upon another?"
"Oh, you mustn't judge by appearances," said Sir Ralph hastily. "He
likes you awfully; though, of course, as you're so young, he can't show
it as he would to an older girl."
"I shall grow older," said I. "Even before we finish this trip I shall
be a _little_ older."
"Of course you will," Sir Ralph assured me soothingly. "By that time,
Terry will, no doubt, have screwed up courage to show you how much he
likes you."
"I shouldn't have thought he lacked courage," said I.
"Only where girls are concerned," explained Sir Ralph.
"He seems brave enough with my cousin Maida. It's Mamma and me he
doesn't say much to, unless we speak to him first."
"You see he's horribly afraid of being thought a fortune-hunter. He's
almost morbidly sensitive in that way."
"O-oh, I see," I echoed. "Is that the reason he's so stand-off with
us--because he knows we're rich?"
"Yes. Otherwise he'd be delightful, just as he is with Miss Destrey,
with whom he doesn't have to think of such things."
"You're fond of him, aren't you?" I asked, beginning again to dig for
the worm; for Sir Ralph was squatting beside me now, watching the point
of my parasol.
"Rather!" he exclaimed. "He's the finest fellow on earth. I should like
to see him as happy as he deserves to be."
"But you don't want him to fall in love with Maida?"
"That's the last thing I should choose for either of them. Though it's
early to talk of such contingencies, isn't it, as they've known each
other--we've all known each other--only a few days?"
"It only takes a few minutes for the most important things to happen,
such as being born and dying. _Why_ should falling in love take more? It
wouldn't with me."
"You're young to judge."
"Pooh, I've been in love several times. Now I come to think of it, I'm
in love this moment--or almost. _Why_ don't you want Mr. Barrymore to
fall in love with my cousin?"
"It would be imprudent."
"Perhaps you're falling in love with her yourself."
"I shouldn't wonder."
"If you'll tell me whether you are or not, I'll tell you who it is I
_think_ I'm in love with."
"Well, I _could_ be. Now for your secret."
"I give you leave to guess."
"Really?"
"And truly."
"Some one we've just been talking about?"
"'I could be.' Oh dear, I believe this worm _is_ out after all."
"This is most interesting. I don't mean about the worm. Terry's in luck
for once."
"But he thinks me a little girl."
"Little girls can be fascinating. Besides, I'll make it my business to
remind him that little girls don't take long to grow up."
"Will you really? But you won't let him know about this talk?"
"Sooner would I be torn in two by wild motor-cars. These confidences are
sacred."
"I'll say nice things about you to Maida," I volunteered.
He stared for a minute, and then laughed. "I should tell you not to if I
weren't certain that all the nice things in the world might be said on
that subject with no more effect upon Miss Destrey than a shower of rain
has on my duck's back. You must try and help me not to fall in love with
her."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because, for one reason, she'd never fall in love with me; and for
another, I couldn't in any event afford to love her, any more than can
my friend Terry Barrymore."
"Perhaps I'd better work her off on the Prince, and then you'd both be
out of danger," said I.
"It would at least save me anxiety about my friend, though I should
doubtless suffer in the process," replied Sir Ralph.
"I'll comfort you whenever I have time," I assured him.
"Do," he entreated. "It will be a real charity. And in the meantime, I
shan't be idle. I shall be working for you."
"Thank you ever so much," said I. "I should be glad if you'd report
progress from time to time."
"I will," said he. "We'll keep each other up, won't we?"
"Be-echy!" shrieked Mamma. "I've been screaming to you for the last
_twenty_ minutes. Come here at once and tell me what you're doing. It's
sure to be something naughty."
So we both came. But the only part that we mentioned was the worm. X
XII
A CHAPTER OF HORRORS
It is wonderful how well it passes time to have a secret understanding
with anybody; that is, if you're a girl, and the other person a man. Mr.
Barrymore and Maida seemed hardly to have gone before they were back
again; which pleased me very much. In attendance was a man with a
mule--a grinning man; a ragged and reluctant mule; which was still more
reluctant when it found out what it was expected to do. However, after a
fine display of diplomacy on our Chauffeulier's part, and force on that
of the mule's owner, the animal was finally hitched to the automobile
with strong rope.
Mr. Barrymore had to sit in the driver's seat to steer, while the man
led the mule, but we others decided to walk. Mamma's heels are not quite
as high as her pride (when she's feeling pretty well), so she preferred
to march on the road rather than endure the ignominy of being dragged
into even the smallest of villages behind the meanest of beasts.
A train for Cuneo was due at Limone, it seemed, in an hour, and we could
walk there in about half that time, Mr. Barrymore thought. He had made
arrangements with the _capo di stazione_, as he called him, to have a
truck in readiness. The automobile would be put on it, and the truck
would be hitched to the train.
Maida and I were delighted with everything; and when Mamma grumbled a
little, and said this sort of thing wasn't what she'd expected, we
argued so powerfully that it was much more fun getting what you did not
expect, than what you did, that we brought her round to our point of
view, and set her laughing with the rest of us.
"After all, what does it matter, as long as we're all young together?"
said she, at last; and then I knew that the poor dear was happy.
Sir Ralph considered Limone an ordinary Italian village, but it seemed
fascinating to us. The fruit stalls, under overhanging balconies, looked
as if piled with splendid jewels; rubies, amethysts and pearls, globes
of gold, and silver, and coral, as big as those that Aladdin found in
the wonderful cave. Dark girls with starry eyes and clouds of hair stood
gossipping in old, carved doorways, or peered curiously down at us from
oddly shaped windows; and they were so handsome that we liked them even
when they doubled up with laughter at our procession, and called their
lovers and brothers to laugh too.
Men and women ran out from dark recesses where they sold things, and
from two-foot-wide alleys which the sun could never have even seen,
staring at us, and saying "molta bella" as Maida passed. She really was
very effective against the rich-coloured background--like a beautiful
white bird that had strayed into the narrow village streets, with
sunshine on its wings. But she didn't seem to realize that she was being
looked at in a different way from the rest of us. "I suppose we're as
great curiosities to them, as they are to us," she said, lingering to
gaze at the gorgeous fruit, or some quaint Catholic emblems for sale in
dingy windows, until Sir Ralph had to hurry her along lest we should
miss the train.
We were in plenty of time, though; and at the railroad depôt (according
to me), or the railway station (according to Sir Ralph and our
Chauffeulier), the automobile had been got onto the truck before the
train was signalled. Our tickets had been bought by Mr. Barrymore, who
would pay for them all, as he said it was "his funeral," and we stood in
a row on the platform, waiting, when the train boomed in.
As it slowed down, car after car passing us, Mamma gave a little scream
and pointed. "Look, there's another automobile on a truck!" said she.
"My goodness, if it isn't exactly like the Prince's!"
"And if that isn't exactly like the Prince!" echoed Sir Ralph, waving
his hand at the window of a car next to the truck.
We all broke into a shout of ribald joy. Not even a saint could have
helped it, I'm sure; for Maida is pretty near to a saint, and she was as
bad as any of us.
The Prince's head popped back into the window, like a rabbit's into its
hole; but in another second he must have realized that it was no use
playing 'possum when there, within a dozen yards, was that big scarlet
runner of his, as large as life, though not running for the moment. He
quickly decided to make the best of things by turning the tables upon
us, and pointing the finger of derision at our automobile, which by
careening himself out of the window he could see on its truck.
Before the train had stopped, he was down on the platform, gallantly
helping Mamma up the high step into the compartment where he had been
sitting; so we all followed.
"You broke something, I see," His Highness remarked jovially, as if
nothing had ever happened to him.
"It was you who broke it," said I, before either of our men could speak.
"But I mean something in your motor," he explained.
"Yes, its heart! The long agony of towing you up those miles of mountain
was too much for it. But motors' hearts can be mended."
"So can young ladies', _n'est-ce pas_? Well, this is an odd meeting. I
telegraphed you, Countess, to the hotel at Cuneo, where we arranged our
rendezvous, in case you arrived before me, to say that I was on the way;
but now we will all go there together. Since we parted I have had
adventures. So, evidently, have you. Joseph's repairs were so
unsatisfactory, owing to his own inefficiency and that of the machine
shop, that I saw the best thing to do was to come on by train to Cuneo,
where proper tools could be obtained. After some difficulty I found
horses to tow me up to the railway terminus at Vievola, where I
succeeded in getting a truck, and--_voila_!"
Whereupon Mamma poured a history of our exploits into the Prince's ears,
exaggerating a little, but saying nothing detrimental to our
Chauffeulier, who would perhaps not have cared or even heard if she had,
for he was showing things to Maida through the window.
"We're in Piedmont now," he said. "How peaceful and pretty, and
characteristically Italian it is, with the vines and chestnut trees and
mulberries! Who would think, to see this richly cultivated plain, that
it was once appropriately nicknamed 'the cockpit of Europe,' because of
all the fighting that has gone on here between so many nations, ever
since the dawn of civilization? It's just as hard to realize as to
believe that the tiny rills trickling over pebbly river-beds which we
pass can turn into mighty floods when they choose. When the snows melt
on Monte Viso--that great, white, leaning tower against the sky--and on
the other snow mountains, then is the time of danger in this land that
the sun loves."
Mamma thought the train rather restful after an automobile, but I
discouraged her in that opinion by saying that it sounded very
old-fashioned, and she amended it by hurriedly remarking that, anyhow,
she would soon be tired of resting and glad to get on again.
"That must be Cuneo, now," said Mr. Barrymore, pointing to a distant
town which seemed to grow suddenly up out of the plain, very important,
full of vivid colours, and modern looking after the strange, ancient
villages we had passed on the way.
When we got out of the train Joseph was on the platform, more depressed
than ever, but visibly brightening at sight of Mr. Barrymore, for whom
he evidently cherishes a lively admiration; or else he regards him as a
professional brother.
What happened to the two automobiles, I don't know, for we didn't stop
to see. Sir Ralph had a hurried consultation with Mr. Barrymore, and
then said that he would take us up to the hotel in a cab, with all our
luggage.
There wasn't room for the Prince in our ramshackle old vehicle, and he
took another, being apparently very anxious to arrive at the hotel
before us. He spoke to his driver, who lashed the one poor nag so
furiously that Maida cried out with rage, and they flashed past us, the
horse galloping as if Black Care were on his back. But something
happened to the harness, and they were obliged to stop; so we got ahead,
and reached the wide-arcaded square of the hotel first after all.
It was quite a grand-looking town, for a middle-sized one, but Mamma
drew back hastily when she had taken a step into the hall of the hotel.
"Oh, we can't stop here!" she exclaimed. "This must be the worst instead
of the best."
With that several little men in greasy dress-coats, spotted shirts, and
collars so low that you could see down their necks, sprang forward and
bowed very humbly, like automata. "May I have the extreme honour of
asking if it is her very high grace, Madame the Countess Dalmar and
suite who felicitate our humble hotel with their presence?" inquired the
fattest and spottiest in one long French breath.
Mamma drew herself up to her full height, which must be at least five
feet three, heels included. I don't know exactly what it is to bridle,
but I'm sure she did it. She also moistened her lips and smiled with
both dimples.
"Wee, wee, jay swee Countess Dalmar," she admitted, leaving her suite to
account for itself.
"Then I have here a telegram for madame," went on the man, giving her a
folded paper which, with an air, he drew forth from an unspeakable
pocket.
Mamma looked important enough for a princess, at least, as she accepted
(I can't say took) the paper and opened it. "Oh, I might have known,"
she said, "it's that one the Prince sent this morning. But isn't it
funny he telegraphs 'Automobile in grand condition, took hills like
bird, shall make slight détour for pleasure, but will reach Cuneo
almost as soon as your party. Dalmar-Kalm.' I don't understand, do you?"
"I understand why the Prince was willing to be left behind at Tenda, and
why he wanted to get to this hotel first, anyhow," said I; and Sir Ralph
and I were laughing like mad when his belated Highness appeared on the
scene. Seeing Mamma with the telegram in her hand, he explained volubly
that it had been sent before he decided to save time and wear and tear
by coming on the train; but he was red, and stammery, and Sir Ralph
looked almost sympathetic, which made me wonder whether _all_ motor-men
sometimes tell fibs.
After being received with so much appreciation, Mamma began to think
that perhaps the hotel wasn't so dreadful after all; and when Sir Ralph
gave his opinion that it would prove as good as any other, she said that
we would stay.
"I should be sorry to hurt the people's feelings, as they seem such
_nice_ men," she sighed. "But--I suppose it will only be for coffee?"
"I'm sorely afraid it will be for dinner to-night and breakfast
to-morrow morning too," replied Sir Ralph. "It's too bad that virtue
such as ours should have such a reward. We did unto others as we would
they should do unto us; and this is the consequence. Terry intends to
work all night on the car, if he can get the mechanic to keep his shop
going, and we may hope to start as early in the morning as you like."
"Perhaps Joseph may have mine ready to-night, in which case I can take
the ladies on--" the Prince began, but Mamma was too overcome to hear
him. Trying to look like a Countess at all costs, she allowed herself
and us to be led, as lambs to the slaughter, up a flight of dirty stone
stairs, to see the bedrooms.
"You will have our best, is it not, Madame la Comtesse?" inquired the
man of the hotel, who seemed to be a cross between a manager and a
head-waiter, and who swelled with politeness behind a shirt-front that
resembled nothing so much as the ten of clubs. "Yes, I was sure of
that, gracious madame. You and your suite may assure yourselves that you
will be placed in our _chambres de luxe_."
With this announcement, he threw open a door, and stood salaaming that
we might file in before him.
Mamma pitched forward down a step, shrieked, tottered, saved herself by
clawing the air, while Maida and I both pitched after her, falling into
fits of laughter.
It could n't have been colder in the spotty man's family vault, and I
hope not as musty.
Maida flew to one of the two windows, set deep in the thickness of the
wall, and darkened by the stone arcade outside. But apparently it was
hermetically sealed, and so was the other which I attacked. The Ten of
Clubs looked shocked when we implored him to open something--anything;
and it was with reluctance that he unscrewed a window. "The ladies will
be cold," he said. "It is not the weather for letting into the house the
out of doors. We do that in the summer."
"Haven't these windows been opened since then?" gasped Maida.
"But no mademoiselle. Not to my knowledge."
"Make him show us other rooms, quick," said Mamma, who can't speak much
more French than a cat, though she had a lesson from a handsome young
gentleman every day at Cap Martin, at ten francs an hour.
"This is the only one that will accommodate the ladies," replied the Ten
of Clubs. "The other that we have unoccupied must be for the gentlemen."
The idea of our two men and the Prince as room-mates was so excruciating
that I suddenly felt equal to bearing any hardship; but Mamma hasn't the
same sense of humour I have, and she said that she knew she was
sickening for something, probably small-pox.
"Three of us in this room all night!" she wailed. "We shall never leave
the hotel alive."
At this juncture Sir Ralph appeared at the door, peeping gingerly in at
us, and looking the picture of misery.
"I'm so sorry for everything," he said. "Terry's down-stairs, and we
both feel that we're awful sweeps, though we hope you won't think we
are. He's going to interview the other hotels and see if he can find
anything better, so don't decide till he comes back."
We three female waifs stood about and smelt things and imagined that we
smelled still more things, while Sir Ralph exhausted himself in keeping
up a conversation with the Ten of Clubs, as if all four of our lives
depended upon it. The ordeal lasted only about ten minutes, though it
seemed a year, and then Mr. Barrymore's tall form loomed in the dark
doorway.
"There's nothing better," he announced desperately. "But you ladies can
go on to Alessandria by train with Dalmar-Kalm, who'll be only too happy
to take you."
"What, and desert Mr. Automobile-Micawber?" I cut in. "Never! We're none
of us _infirm old women_, are we, Mamma, that we should mind roughing
it, for once?"
"No-o," said Mamma. "It--I dare say it will be fun. And anyhow, we can
have them make a fire here, so it will be less like picnicking in one's
own grave."
The very thought of a fire was cheering, and we trooped off to the
_salle à manger_, where it was understood that the Prince had gone to
order coffee. Mr. Barrymore wouldn't stay, for he was anxious to get
back to the motor, which he had left at a machinist's, and deserted only
long enough to come and give us news. The "shop" was to keep open all
night, and he would work there, making a new cone. Joseph, it seemed,
was to work all night in another shop, and both automobiles were to be
ready in the morning.
"But you will be horribly tired, driving through the day and working
through the night," said Maida. "I for one would rather stop here
to-morrow."
"It's nothing, thanks. I shall rather like it," replied the
Chauffeulier. "Please don't worry about me." Then he gave us a smile
and was off.
The coffee was so good that our spirits rose. We decided to unpack what
we needed, and then, by way of passing the time before dinner, take a
walk.
Strange to say, the Prince did not complain of his quarters, but, after
we had for the second time refused his offer of an escort to
Alessandria, became somewhat taciturn. We left him in the _salle à
manger_, Mamma heading the procession of three which trailed to our
room. Maida and I lingered behind for a moment, to play with our first
Italian cat, until a wild cry of "Fire!" from Mamma took us after her
with a rush. A cloud of wood smoke beat us back, but Maida pushed
bravely in, got a window open again, and, after all, there was nothing
more exciting than a smoky chimney.
Sir Ralph, hearing the clamour, flew to the rescue, poured water from
the pitcher into the ricketty three-legged stove, upset a good deal on
himself and on the cemented floor (which looked like a slab of frozen
sausage), and finally succeeded in putting out the fire, though not
until both beds were covered with blacks.
By this time the Ten of Clubs, the Nine, the Eight, and all the little
cards of the pack were dancing about us in a state bordering on frenzy,
but Maida and Sir Ralph together eventually evolved a kind of unlovely
order out of chaos, and everybody was told off to perform some task or
other: one to sweep, one to dust, one to change the bedding.
In self-defence we hurried off for our walk, leaving the unpacking for
later, and Sir Ralph proposed that we should find the machine shop where
the Chauffeulier was working.
We asked the way of a good many people, all of whom gave us different
directions, and at last arrived at a building which looked as if it
might be the right place. But there was Joseph pounding and mumbling to
himself, and no Mr. Barrymore.
In common humanity we stopped for a few words, and Joseph mistook our
inch of sympathy for an ell. Almost with tears he told us the history
of his day, and choked with rage at the prospect of the long task before
him. "What is it to His Highness that I lose a night's sleep?" he
demanded of a red-hot bar which he brandished at arm's length. "Less
than nothing, since he will sleep, believing that all will be ready for
him in the morning. But his dreams would be less calm if he knew what I
know."
"What do you know, Joseph?" asked Sir Ralph, edging nearer to the door.
"That the water-power will be shut off at eleven o'clock, the lathes
will no longer turn, and I can do nothing more till to-morrow morning at
six, which means that we will not get away till noon."
"By Jove, that's a bad look-out for us, too," said Sir Ralph, when we
had escaped from Joseph. "I suppose things will be the same at Terry's
place. What a den for you to be delayed in! But I've an idea the Prince
means to sneak quietly off to Alessandria, and will expect Joseph to
meet him there to-morrow morning. My prophetic soul divined as much from
his thoughtful air as we discussed our quarters."
It was almost dark when we found the other machine shop, at the end of a
long straight road with a brook running down it, and trees walking
beside it, straight and tall. It was a wonderful, luminous kind of
darkness, though, that hadn't forgotten the sunset, and the white
mountains were great banks of roses against a skyful of fading violets.
But the minute we stepped inside the machine shop, which was lighted up
by the red fire of a forge, night seemed suddenly to fall like a black
curtain, shutting down outside the open door and windows.
Two or three men were moving about the place, weedy little fellows; and
Mr. Barrymore was like a giant among them, a splendid giant, handsomer
than ever in a workman's blouse of blue linen, open at the throat, and
the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to show muscles that rippled under
the skin like waves on a river.
That was what I thought, at least; but Sir Ralph apparently differed
with me, for he said, "You do look a sweep. Isn't it about time you
dropped work, and thought of making yourself respectable for dinner?
Judging by appearances, that will take you several hours."
"I'm going to have a sandwich and some wine of the country here,"
answered the giant in the blue blouse. "Awfully good of you all to come
and call on me. Would you like to see the new cone, as far as it's got?"
Of course we said "yes," and were shown a thing which looked as if it
might be finished in ten minutes; but when Sir Ralph commented on it to
that effect, Mr. Barrymore went into technical explanations concerning
"cooling" and other details of which none of us understood anything
except that it would be an "all night job."
"But you can't work without the water-wheel, I suppose?" said Sir Ralph.
"And we've just heard from Joseph toiling away at a rival establishment,
that the water is taken off at eleven."
"This water won't be. I'm paying extra for it. As a great concession I'm
to have it all night. Joseph could have got it, too, if he'd had a
little forethought."
"Joseph and forethought! Never. And what is more, I don't think he'd
thank us for the information. He is rejoicing in the thought of an
excuse for bed."
"That's the difference between a chauffeur and a Chauffeulier," I
whispered to Maida.
"It's really very good of you to work so hard," said Mamma,
condescending to the blue blouse.
"I never enjoyed anything more in my life," replied its wearer, with a
quick glance towards Maida, which I intercepted. "The one drop of poison
in my cup is the thought of your discomfort," he went on, to us all.
"You must make them give you warming-pans anyhow, and be sure that the
beds are dry."
"I should think they're more like swamps than beds," said Mamma. "We
shall sit up rather than run any risk."
"Besides," I began, "there might be--"
[Illustration: _Two or three men were moving about the place_]
"_Hush_, Beechy!" she indignantly cut me short.
"I was only going to say there might be--"
"You mustn't say it."
"Sofa birds."
"You naughty, dreadful child. I am astonished."
"Don't prig or vipe, Mamma. Sir Ralph, don't you think those are nice
abbreviations? I made them up myself. 'Prig', be priggish.' Vipe', be
viperish. Mamma's not at all nice when she's either."
"I think you're all wonderfully good-natured," remarked Mr. Barrymore
hastily. "You are the right sort of people for a motoring trip, and no
other sort ought to undertake one. Only men and women of fairly
venturesome dispositions, who revel in the unexpected, and love
adventure, who can find fun in hardships, and keep happy in the midst of
disappointments, should set out on such an expedition as this."
"In fact, _young_ people like ourselves," added Mamma, beaming again.
"Yes, young in heart, if not in body. I hope to be still motoring when
I'm eighty; but I shall feel a boy."
We left him hammering, and looking radiantly happy, which was more than
we were as we wandered back to the arcaded town and our hotel; but we
felt obliged to live up to the reputation Mr. Barrymore had just given
us.
Somehow, the Ten of Clubs and his assistant cards (there were no
chambermaids) had contrived to make a fire that didn't smoke, and the
bed linen looked clean, though coarse. Dinner--which we ate with our
feet on boards under the table, to keep them off the cold stone
floor--was astonishingly good, and we quite enjoyed grating cheese into
our soup on a funny little grater with which each one of us was
supplied. We had a delicious red wine with a little sparkle in it,
called Nebiolo, which Sir Ralph ordered because he thought we would like
it; and when we had finished dining, Mamma felt so much encouraged that
she spoke quite cheerfully of the coming night.
We went to our room early, as we were to start at eight next day, and
try to get on to Pavia and Milan. We had said nothing to the Prince
about the water-wheel, as it was not our affair to get Joseph into
trouble with his master; and I'm afraid that all of us except Mamma
derived a sinful amusement from the thought of His Highness's surprise
in the morning, at Alessandria or elsewhere. Even Maida's eyes twinkled
naughtily as he bade us "_au revoir_, till our start," kissing Mamma's
hand, and saying nothing of his night plans.
"I wonder, if we _could_ go to bed, after all?" soliloquized Mamma,
looking wistfully at the hard pillows and the red-cased down coverlets,
when we were in our room. "What was that Mr. Terrymore said about
warming-pans? I should have thought they were obsolete, except to hang
up on parlour walls."
"I should think nothing that was in use six hundred years ago, was
obsolete in an Italian town like this," said I. "Anyhow, I'll ring and
see."
I did ring, but nobody answered, of course, and I had to yell over the
top of the stairs for five minutes, when the Ten of Clubs appeared,
looking much injured, having evidently believed that he was rid of us
for the night.
He almost wept in his earnest endeavours to assure us that the bedding
was as dry and warm as the down on a swan's breast; but when Maida
insisted on warming-pans, he admitted that they existed in the house.
We were sleepy, but having ordered warming-pans which might stalk in at
any moment, we could not well begin to undress until they had been
produced and manipulated. We waited an hour, until we were nodding in
our chairs, and all started from a troubled doze at the sound of loud
knocking at the door.
In the passage outside stood four sad-faced young men of the card tribe,
bearing two large and extraordinary implements. One looked like a couple
of kitchen chairs lashed together foot to foot, to make a cage, or
frame, the space between being lined with sheets of metal. The other was
a great copper dish with big enough holes pricked in the cover to show
the red glow from a quantity of acrid smelling wood-ashes.
All four came into the room, solemn and silent, while we watched them,
struck dumb with amazement.
They set down the things on the floor, turned open the larger bed of the
two, which Mamma and I were to share, put in the huge frame, shoved the
copper bowl inside it, as a cook would shove a dish into the oven, and
replaced the covering. Then they stood and gravely waited for ten or
fifteen minutes, till they thought that the dampness had been cooked
out. We stood by also, momentarily expecting to see the bed break into
flames; but nothing happened, except rather a nice, hot smell. At last,
with one accord they flew at the blankets, turned them down, took out
dish and frame, and repeated the same process with Maida's narrow bunk.
It took us nearly an hour afterwards to get ready for bed, but when we
crept in at last it was like cuddling down in a hot bird's-nest, odorous
of cooked moss.
In the daytime we hadn't noticed that the hotel was particularly noisy,
though it apparently had most other vices; but ten o'clock seemed the
hour when all the activities of the house and town began.
Church bells boomed; electric bells rang; myriads of heavy carts rolled
through the stone-paved square; people sang, whistled, laughed,
gossipped, quarrelled, and even danced in the street under our windows,
while those in the hotel had apparently been advised by their physicians
to run up and down stairs for hours without stopping, for the good of
their livers.
It was a busy night for everybody, and my one consolation was in
planning the dreadful tortures I would inflict on the whole population
of Cuneo if I were King of Italy. I thought of some very original
things, but the worst of it was, when I did finally fall asleep I
dreamed that they were being tried on me.
XIII
A CHAPTER OF WILD BEASTS
"The dear thing! How nice to see it again! I could kiss it," I heard
Maida saying. Something was snorting dreadfully, too. I'm not sure which
waked me. But I sleepily asked Maida what it was she could kiss.
"Why, the automobile, of course," she replied. "Now, Beechy, _don't_
drop off again. It's down there in the courtyard. Can't you hear it
calling? This is the third time I've tried to wake you up."
"Oh, I thought it was the Ten of Clubs roaring, while I dipped him
repeatedly into boiling cod-liver oil," I murmured; but I jumped out of
bed and dressed myself as if the house were on fire.
Mamma said that she had been up since six; and I knew why; she hadn't
liked to make herself beautiful under the eyes of Maida, so exquisitely
adorned by Nature. But she was fresh and gay as a cricket.
In the _salle à manger_ were Sir Ralph and Mr. Barrymore, who had
brought the motor from the machine shop. He looked as well tubbed and
groomed as if he had had two hours for his toilet, instead of twenty
minutes; and we laughed a great deal as we told our night adventures,
feeling as if we'd been friends for months, if not years. It was much
nicer without the Prince, I thought, though Mamma kept glancing at the
door, and showed her disappointment on learning that he had stolen off
to sleep at Alessandria. Joseph, it seemed, had telegraphed him this
morning about the water-wheel, and the news that his automobile couldn't
be ready till twelve or one o'clock.
As we thankfully turned our backs on Cuneo we realized why it had been
given a name signifying "wedge," because of the two river torrents, the
Stura and Gesso, that whittle the town to a point, one on either side.
For a while we ran smoothly along a road on a high embankment, which
reminded Sir Ralph and the Chauffeulier of the Loire; less beautiful
though, they thought, despite the great wedding-ring of white mountains
that girdled the country round.
By and by the mountains dwindled to hills, purple and blue in the
distance, misty spring-green in the foreground; in place of the
dandelions of yesterday we had a carpet of buttercups woven in gold on
either side of the road. There was always the river, too; and, as Maida
said, water brightens a landscape as a diamond brightens a ring.
The air was as warm now as on the Riviera but there was a tingle of
youth and spring in it, while at Cap Martin it was already heavy with
the perfume of summer flowers. And we had not to be sorry for poor
people to-day, for there were no poverty-stricken villages. The country
was rich, every inch cultivated, and there were comfortable farms with
tall, important-looking gateways. But, then, Mr. Barrymore told us that
it was no safer to judge an Italian farm by its gateway than an Italian
village shop by the contents of its windows.
After a while, just as we might have begun to tire of the far-reaching
plain, it broke into billows, each earthy wave crested by a ruined
château, or a still thriving mediæval town. Bra was the finest, with a
grand old red-brown castle towering high on a hill, and throwing a cool
shadow all across the hot, white road below.
"We must stop in Asti, if it's but for ten minutes," said Sir Ralph.
"Why?" asked Maida, over her shoulder (she was sitting in the front seat
again, where Mr. Barrymore had contrived to put her). "Do you mean on
account of Vittorio Alfieri?"
"Who is he?" inquired Mamma; and I was wondering, too; but I hate to
show that I don't know things Maida knows.
"Oh, he was a charming poet, born in Asti in the middle of the
eighteenth century," said Maida. "I've read a lot about him, at--at
home. He had one of the prettiest love stories in history. It is like an
Anthony Hope romance. I thought, perhaps, Sir Ralph wanted us to see the
house where he lived."
"I'm ashamed to say it was the Asti Spumante I was thinking of,"
confessed Sir Ralph. "It's a wine for children, but it might amuse you
all to taste it on its native heath; and you could drink the health of
Vittorio Alfieri--in a better world."
Mamma thought that proceeding rather too Popish for a professed
Presbyterian; nevertheless, we decided to have the wine. We approached
Asti by way of a massive gateway, which formed a part of the ancient
fortifications of the city; and though we had seen several others rather
like it since coming into Piedmont and Lombardy, it struck me with a
sort of awe that I would have been ashamed to put into words, except on
paper, for fear somebody might laugh. I suppose it's because I come from
a country where we think houses aged at fifty, and antique at a hundred;
but these old fortified towns and ruined castles frowning down from
rocky heights give me the kind of eerie thrill one might have if one had
just died and was being introduced to scenery and society on the fixed
stars or planets.
At home it had always seemed so useless to know which was which, Guelfs
or Ghibellines, when I was studying history, that I made no effort to
fix them in my mind; but now, when I caught snatches of talk between
Maida and the Chauffeulier, to whom the Guelfs and Ghibellines are still
apparently as real as Republicans and Democrats were to Papa, I wished
that I knew a little more about them. But how could I tell in those days
that I would ever be darting about in a country where George Washington
and Abraham Lincoln would seem more unreal than the Swabian Emperors,
the Marquesses of Montferrat, and the Princes of Savoie ever did to me
in Denver?
I envied Maida when I heard her say that the House of Savoie had been
like Goethe's star, "unhasting and unresting" in its absorption of
other principalities, marquisates, counties, duchies, and provinces,
which it had matched into one great mosaic, at last, making the kingdom
of Italy. Mr. Barrymore loves Italy so much that he likes her for
knowing these things, and I think I shall steal that book she bought at
Nice, and is always reading--Hallam's "Middle Ages."
The effect of the grim old gateways, even upon me, is a little marred by
the fact that from out of their shadows usually jump small
blue-uniformed Octroi men like Jacks from a box. At Asti there was a
particularly fussy one, who wouldn't take Mr. Barrymore's word that we'd
nothing to declare, but poked and prodded at our hold-alls and bags, and
even sniffed as if he suspected us of spirits, tobacco, or onions. He
looked so comic as he did this that Maida laughed, which appeared to
overwhelm him with remorse, as if an angel had had hysterics. He
flushed, bowed, motioned for us to pass on, and we sailed into a wide,
rather stately old street.
"Oh, look!" Maida cried out, pointing, and the Chauffeulier slowed down
before a house with a marble tablet on it. It was almost a palace; and
Mamma began to feel some respect for Vittorio Alfieri when she read on
the slab of marble that he had been born there. "Why, he must have been
a gentleman!" she exclaimed.
Maida and Mr. Barrymore laughed at that, and Sir Ralph said that
evidently the Countess had a small opinion of poets.
"Another Countess loved Alfieri," remarked Mr. Barrymore; and when Mamma
heard that, she made a note to buy his poems. But I don't believe she
knew who the Countess of Albany was, though she was able to join feebly
in the conversation about the Young Pretender.
We went into the house, and wandered about some cold, gloomy rooms, in
one of which Vittorio had happened to be born. We saw his portrait, and
a sonnet in his own handwriting, which Mr. Barrymore translated for
Maida, and would for me, perhaps, only I was too proud to interrupt.
Altogether I should have felt quite out of it if it hadn't been for
Sir Ralph. After our talk about the worm and other things, he couldn't
help guessing what my feelings were, and he did his best to make me
forget my sorrow. He said that he didn't know anything about the Italian
poets except the really necessary ones, such as Dante and Petrarch, and
as little as possible of them. Then he asked about the American ones,
and seemed interested in Walt Whitman and Eugene Field and James
Whitcomb Riley, all of whom I can recite by the yard.
When we had scraped up every item of interest about Alfieri, as Papa
used to scrape up butter for his bread rather than take a fresh bit, we
spun on again to an old-fashioned hotel, where everybody rushed to meet
us, bowing, and looked ready to cry when they found we didn't want
rooms.
"Perhaps the Countess would absolve you from your vow of temperance,
Terry, that you may have the exquisite delight of quaffing a little Asti
Spumante," said Sir Ralph to Mr. Barrymore, when we were at a table in a
large, cool dining-room.
"Why, of course," replied Mamma, and then opened her eyes wide when both
men laughed, and Mr. Barrymore intimated that Sir Ralph's head would be
improved by punching. Neither of them would take any of the wine when it
came, though it looked fascinating, fizzling out of beautiful bottles
decked with gold and silver foil, like champagne. It tasted like
champagne too, so far as I could tell; but perhaps I'm not a judge, as
there was never any wine except elderberry at home, and I've only had
champagne twice since I've been the child of a Countess. The Asti was
nice and sweet. I loved it, and so did Mamma, who said she would have
it, torrents of it, at the next dinner party she gave. But when Sir
Ralph hurried to tell her that it was cheap, she vacillated, worrying
lest it shouldn't be worthy to go with her crowns.
I don't know whether it was the Spumante, or the sunshine, as golden as
the wine, but I felt quite happy again when we drove out of Asti. I
didn't care at all that I wasn't sitting beside Mr. Barrymore, though I
thought that I probably should care again by and by. Mamma was happy,
too, and Sir Ralph amused us by planning a book to be called "Motoring
for Experts, by Experts." There were a good many Rules for
Automobilists, such as:--
No. 1. Never believe you have got money enough with you when you start.
Whatever you think will be right, be sure you will want exactly twice as
much.
No. 2. Never suppose you have plenty of time, or plenty of room for your
luggage. Never get up in the morning at the time your chauffeur (not Mr.
Barrymore, but others) tells you he will have the car ready. Do not
leave your bed till the automobile is under your window, and do not pack
the things you have used for the night until the chauffeur has started
your motor for the third time.
No. 3. All invalids, except those suffering from pessimism, may hope to
be benefited by motoring; but pessimism in a mild form often becomes
fatally exaggerated by experience with automobiles, especially in
chauffeurs.
No. 4. Hoping that things which have begun to go wrong with a motor will
mend, should be like an atheist's definition of faith: "believing what
you know isn't true." If you _think_ a bearing is hot, but hope against
hope it 's only oil you smell, make up your mind that it _is_ the
bearing.
No. 5. Never dream that you'll get anywhere sooner than you thought you
would, for it will always be later; or that a road may improve, for it
is sure to grow worse; or that your chauffeur, or anyone you meet, knows
anything about the country through which you are to pass, for every one
will direct you the wrong way.
No. 6. If your chauffeur tells you that your car will be ready in an
hour, it will be three, if not four; if he says that you can start on
again that afternoon, it will be to-morrow before lunch.
No. 7. Put not your trust in Princes, nor in the motor-cars of Princes.
No. 8. Cultivate your bump of presence of mind, and the automobile will
see that you have plenty of other bumps.
We hadn't got half to the end of the rules we had thought of, when
things began to happen. The road, which had been splendid all the way to
Asti and beyond, seemed suddenly to weary of virtue and turn eagerly to
vice. It grew rutty and rough-tempered, and just because misfortunes
never come singly, every creature we met took it into its head to regard
us with horror. Fear of us spread like an epidemic through the animal
kingdom of the neighbourhood. A horse drawing a wagon-load of earth
turned tail, broke his harness as if it had been of cobweb instead of
old rope, and sprang lightly as a gazelle with all four feet into
another wagon just ahead. A donkey, ambling gently along the road,
suddenly made for the opposite side, dragging his fruit-laden cart after
him, and smashed our big acetylene lamp into a brass pancake before Mr.
Barrymore could stop. Children bawled; women, old and young, ran
screaming up embankments and tried to climb walls at the bare sight of
us in the distance; old men shook their sticks; and for a climax we
plunged deep into a tossing sea of cattle just outside Alessandria.
It was market day, the Chauffeulier explained hastily, over his
shoulder, and the farmers and dealers who had bought creatures of any
sort, were taking them away. As far as we could see through a floating
cloud of dust, the long road looked like a picture of the animals'
procession on their way to the ark. Our automobile might have stood for
the ark, only it is to be hoped, for Noah's sake, after all he was doing
for them, that the creatures behaved less rudely at sight of it, novelty
though it must have been.
Great white, classic-looking oxen whose horns ought to have been
wreathed with roses, but weren't, pawed the air, bellowing, or pranced
down into ditches, pulling their new masters with them. Calves ran here
and there like rabbits, while their mothers stood on their hind legs and
pirouetted, their biscuit-coloured faces haggard with despair.
Mamma said that never before had she given cows credit for such
sensitive spirits, but perhaps it was only Italian ones which were like
that, and if so she would not drink milk in Italy. She was very much
frightened, too; and talking of an automobile supplying bumps, her grip
on Sir Ralph's arm must have supplied a regular pattern of bruises,
during the animal episode.
But worse than the terrified beasts were the ones that were not
terrified. Those were the most stupidly stolid things on earth, or the
most splendidly reckless, we couldn't tell which; we knew only that they
were irritating enough to have made Job dance with rage, if he had had
an automobile. What they did was to wheel round at the sound of our
horn, plant themselves squarely in the centre of the road, and stand
waiting to see what we were, or else to trot comfortably along, without
even taking the trouble to glance over their shoulders. As the road was
too narrow for us to pass on either side, with an enormous ox lolling
insolently in the middle, refusing to budge an inch, or an absurd cow
taking infinite pains to amble precisely in front of the motor's nose,
we were frequently forced to crawl for ten or fifteen minutes at the
pace of a snail, or to stop altogether and push a large beast out of the
way.
By the time we got into Alessandria, with its mighty maze of
fortifications, I was so weak from laughing that I giggled hysterically
at sight of the Prince standing in the doorway of a hotel which we were
sailing past. I pointed at him, as Maida had pointed at Vittorio
Alfieri's tablet, and Mamma gave a welcome meant to drown my giggle. Mr.
Barrymore stopped, and His Highness came to the side of the car.
"I was so sorry to miss you this morning," he said, "but after bidding
you _au revoir_ last evening, I suddenly remembered that I had a friend
in Alessandria whom I had not seen for long, and it occurred to me that
I would pay him a visit. After all, I might have saved myself the pain,
as I found that he was away."
"At least you saved yourself the pain of a bad night," said I.
"Oh, that would have been nothing," he exclaimed. "Indeed, if there were
hardships to be borne, I would have preferred to share them with you."
I don't know what would have happened at that moment if I'd met Maida's
eyes, or Sir Ralph's eyes, or indeed, any eyes on the prowl; but all
avoided mine.
The Prince was expecting, or said that he was expecting Joseph to arrive
at any instant with the car. Then he would follow us, and as we planned
to stop at Pavia and he did not, he would be in Milan before us. We had
suffered so many delays at the hands, or rather the hoofs of our
four-footed brethren, that we had no time to waste in compliments with
irrelevant Princes, so we quickly sped on again as well as the uneven
road would allow, leaving behind the big fortified town which Mr.
Barrymore said had been built by the Lombard League (whatever that was)
as a place of arms to defy the tyranny of the Emperors.
Though the road was poor, except in bits, and gave us all the bumps
mentioned in Sir Ralph's rules, the country was lovely and loveable.
Grapes, mulberries, rice, and stuff called maize, which looked exactly
like our American corn, grew together like a happy family of sisters,
and from the hills dotted about, more thickly than Mamma's crowns on her
toilet things, looked down old feudal castles as melancholy as the
cypresses that stood beside them, like the sole friends of their
adversity.
Of Tortona and Voghera I carried away only the ghost of an impression,
for we darted through their long main streets, deserted in the noon-tide
hour, and darted out again onto the straight white ribbon of road that
was leading us across all Northern Italy. It was so dusty that Mamma,
Maida, and I put on the motor-veils we had discarded after the first few
hours of the trip till now; things made of pongee silk, with windows of
talc over our eyes and little lace doors for our breath to pass through.
It was fun when we would slacken speed in some town or village, to see
how the young Italians tried to pry into the motor-masks' secrets and
find out if we were pretty. How much more they would have stared at
Maida than at her two grey-clad companions, if they had known! But
behind the pongee and the talc, for once our features could flaunt
themselves on an equality with hers. Even monks, brown of face and
robe, gliding noiselessly through wide market places in the blue shadows
of hoary campaniles, searched those talc windows of ours with a
curiosity that was pathetic. Young officers, with great dark eyes and
slender figures tightly buttoned-up in grey-blue uniforms, visibly
preened themselves as the car with the three veiled ladies would sweep
round a corner; and really I think there must be something rather
alluring about a passing glance from a pair of eyes in a face that will
always remain a mystery. If I were a man I believe I should find it so.
Anyway, it's fun for a girl to guess how she would feel about things if
she were a man. I suppose though, we 're generally wrong.
After we 'd frightened enough horses and other domestic animals to
overstock the whole of Northern Italy and felt quite old in consequence
(considerably over thirteen), a sweet peace fell suddenly upon us. We
had passed the place where Napoleon's great battle was fought, and
Voghera, where we might have stopped to see the baths but didn't,
because we were all too hungry to be sincerely interested in anything
absolutely unconnected with meals. Then turning towards Pavia, we turned
at the same moment into Arcadia. There were no more beasts in our path,
unless it was a squirrel or two; there were no houses, no people; there
was only quiet country, with a narrow but deliciously smooth road,
colonies of chestnut and acacia trees, and tall growths of scented
grasses and blossoming grain. It was more like a by-path through meadows
than an important road leading to a great town, and Mr. Barrymore had
begun to wonder aloud if he could possibly have made a mistake at some
cross-way, when we spun round a corner, and saw before us a wide yellow
river. It lay straight in front, and we had to pass to the other side on
the oddest bridge I ever saw; just old grey planks laid close together
on top of a long, long line of big black boats that moved up and down
with a lazy motion as the golden water of the Po flowed underneath.
"This is a famous bridge," said the Chauffeulier; so Mamma hurried to
get out her camera and take a picture, while we picked our way daintily
over the wobbly boards at a foot pace; and another of the man at the far
end, who made us pay toll--so much for each wheel, so much for each
passenger. Maida never takes photographs. She says she likes better just
to keep a picture-gallery in her brain. Mamma always takes them, but as
she usually has three or four on the same film, making a jumble of
Chicago street-cars with Italian faces, legs, and sun-dials, as
intricate as an Irish stew, I don't see that in the end they will be
much of an ornament to the journal of travel we're all keeping.
"This is where the Po and the Ticino meet, so we're near Pavia," Mr.
Barrymore told us; and if our eyes brightened behind our masks, it
wasn't so much with interest in his information, as at the thought of
lunch. For we were to lunch at Pavia, before seeing the Certosa that
Maida had been talking about for hours with the Chauffeulier; and before
us, as we crossed the Ticino--bridged by a dear, old, arching,
wooden-roofed thing supported with a hundred granite columns--bubbled
and soared a group of grey domes and campaniles against a turquoise sky.
The roofed bridge, that seemed to be a lounging place and promenade, led
into a stately city, which impressed me as a regular factory for turning
out Italian history, so old it was, and so conscious, in a dignified
kind of way, of its own impressiveness. I felt sure that, if I could
only remember, I must have studied heaps of things about this place at
school; and the town was full of students who were probably studying
them, with more profit, now. They were very Italian, very good-looking,
very young youths, indeed; and they were all so interested in us that it
seemed ungrateful not to pay more attention to them than to their
background. They grouped round our automobile with a crowd of less
interesting people, when we had stopped before a hotel, and some of the
students came so close in the hope of seeing what was behind the
motor-veils, that Maida was embarrassed, and Mamma and I pretended to
be.
XIV
A CHAPTER OF SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
Mamma's lunch was spoiled because, in pronouncing "campanile" for the
first time, she rhymed it with the river Nile, and realized what she had
done when some one else soon after inadvertently said it in the right
way. She didn't get over this for a long time, so the landlord profited,
and must have been pleased, as all the Italians at the table d'hôte took
twice of everything. Those who were not officers were middle-aged men
with fat smiles which made them look like what I call "drummers," and
Sir Ralph wastes time in naming commercial travellers. He and Mr.
Barrymore explained that, at all these quiet provincial hotels with
their domed roofs and painted ceilings, their long tables and great
flasks of wine hung in metal slings, more than half the customers come
every day to eat steadily through cheap monthly subscriptions.
"They can live like fighting cocks for next to nothing," said Sir Ralph.
"If _The Riviera Sun_ ever suffers an eclipse, I shall probably end my
days in a place like this, Pavia for choice, because then I can make my
friends at home believe that I live here to worship the Certosa."
Now to make up for her slip about the campanile, Mamma began to talk
about the Certosa as if it were an intimate friend of hers; but though
she hurried to get out the word while Sir Ralph's pronunciation of it
still echoed under the painted dome, her first syllable was shaped so
much like a "Shirt" that I had to take a drink of water quickly. It is a
funny thing, if people have no ear for music, and can't tell one tune
from another, they don't seem to _hear_ foreign words rightly, and so,
when they speak, their pronunciation is like "Yankee Doodle" disguised
as "God Save the King." It is that way with Mamma; but luckily for me,
Papa had an Ear.
We had to pass through "Pavia of the Hundred Towers" after a look at the
grand old Castello, and go out into Arcadian country again to reach the
Certosa. Our way lay northward now instead of east, beside a canal
bright as crystal, and blue as sapphire because it was a mirror for the
sky. Then, we turned abruptly down a little side road, which looked as
if it led nowhere in particular, and suddenly a wonderful thing loomed
up before us.
I don't know much about churches, but there are some things which one is
born knowing, I suppose; such as the difference between really great
things and those that don't touch greatness. One wouldn't need to be
told by a guide-book that the Certosa of Pavia is great--as great as
anything ever made, perhaps. Even "little Beechy Kidder" felt that at
first glance; and then--there was nothing to say. It was too beautiful
to chatter about. But it did seem strange that so pure and lovely a
building could have owed its existence to a crime. I had heard Mr.
Barrymore telling Mamma that it was originally founded in thirteen
hundred and something, by the first Duke of Milan with the view of
taking off the attention of Heaven from a murder he had committed--quite
in his own family--which got rid of his father-in-law, and all the
father-in-law's sons and daughters at the same time. No wonder it took a
whole Certosa to atone for it, with statues of the founder dotted about,
presenting models of the church to the Virgin; or praying with clasped
hands; or having his funeral procession in great pomp. But I didn't like
his face; and judging from its expression, I shouldn't be surprised if
he were glad the Certosa had been taken away from the monks to be made a
national monument, so that more people could glorify him.
It wasn't until I had seen a great many other things, however, that I
made acquaintance with his Dukeship Gian Galeazzo Visconti (it is
always easy to remember wicked peoples' names), for at first sight there
was only the wonderful gateway, with a glimpse of the dazzling marble
church, a splendid great dome, and some bewildering towers glittering in
the sun.
Mr. Barrymore hired a youth to guard the automobile and the dog while we
went in, strange figures for such a place, in our motoring get-up. I
didn't know before what exquisite stuff terra-cotta could be, but had
despised it in America as the thing cheap statuettes are made of. Now,
when I saw it mellowed by centuries, combined with marble, and moulded
into arches and cornices, and a thousand marvellous ornamentations, I
made up my mind that I would never have a house of my own unless it
could have terra-cotta window and door-frames, and chimneys, and
everything else besides that could possibly be made of terra-cotta.
But the cloisters, great and small, were better than anything else;
better than the façade; better than the marble church, with all the
lovely little side chapels; better than anything I ever saw; and I
walked about alone, pleased with myself because, in spite of my
ignorance, I had enough sense of appreciation to be happy. Still, I
wasn't sorry when Sir Ralph left Mamma listening with Maida, to things
Mr. Barrymore was saying about moulded brick and terra-cotta
architecture in North Italy, to join me.
"Terry says there's something in the world more beautiful than this," he
remarked.
"I suppose he's thinking of Maida," said I.
"Not at all. Probably, if you could see into his mind you'd discover
that he's wishing you hadn't wandered away from his orations. The thing
which he considers more beautiful is the cloister of Monreale, at
Palermo, in Sicily. But, then, this isn't the part of Italy Terry loves
best. He won't begin to shine till he gets to Verona; and even Verona he
calls only a charming inn where the world's great travellers have left
mementoes of their passage, rather than a true Italian town stamped with
the divine genius of Italy. When he's at Venice, he'll be at home.
You'll like Terry in Venice."
"The question is, will he like _me_ in
Venice?" I asked, looking out of the corner of my eye at the tall
Chauffeulier in his leather-coat, showing a heavenly white marble
doorway to Maida, and Mamma.
"Of course he will. You mustn't be discouraged by his manner. If only he
thought you were poor!"
"Shall I intimate to him that Maida is very rich?"
"No, no. I wouldn't deceive him about that. Let well alone. All will
come right in time."
"Meanwhile, I suppose I must put up with you?"
"If you can. Unless I bore you. Would you rather I left you alone?"
"No-o. There's just enough of you to fill an aching void," said I,
pertly. But he didn't seem to mind at all, and was very kind in telling
about frescoes and things, although he calls himself ignorant. He has
forgotten the boast in his advertisement perhaps, or he's trying to live
up to it as well as he can when his chauffeur isn't available.
We stopped so long at the Certosa that the sun had gone far down the
west as we walked through the beautiful, strange gateway to the roadside
resting-place of our car.
Where crowds come from in the country is as mysterious as where pins and
hairpins go to; but anyhow, there was a wide ring of people round the
automobile, in which our hired caretaker sat gazing condescendingly on
the throng. When we arrived on the scene, with our hands full of scents
made and bottled by the banished monks, quaint pottery, and photographs
of frescoes, general interest was transferred to us, but only for a
moment. Even Maida's beauty failed as an attraction beside the
starting-handle of the car, when the Chauffeulier turned it.
"Don't you see many motors here?" asked Sir Ralph of our deposed guard,
and he shook his head. "Not one a month," he said, "though they say that
some of the rich men in Milan use them. I do not know where they go."
Almost as he spoke a big one shot by, heading for Alessandria and--who
knows but for Cuneo? When we came to think, it was the first we had seen
since Ventimiglia, though on the French side of the Riviera the things
had been a pest to everybody--who hadn't one.
As we started, the sinking sun turned a million tiny clouds floating up
from behind the world into rose-pink marabout feathers, which by-and-by
were silvered round their curly edges by a wonderful light kindled
somewhere in the east. It grew brighter and brighter as the
rose-coloured plumes first took fire down at the western horizon, and
then burned to ruddy ashes. When half the sky was silver up came
floating a huge pearl, glistening white, and flattened out of the
perfect round on one side, like two or three of the biggest pearls on
Mamma's long rope.
Even in America I never saw the sunset-glow so quickly quenched by a
white torrent of moonlight. But on this night it was not white; it was
soft and creamy, like mother-of-pearl. And as the opal gleam of the sky
darkened to deep amethyst the stars came out clear and sparkling and
curiously distinct one from the other, like great hanging lamps of
silver, diamond-crusted.
All the world was bathed in this creamy light, while the sky
scintillated with jewels like the flashing of a spangled fan, as we
drove into the outskirts of Milan.
It had been lucky for us that there was a moon, as we had a crumpled
brass waffle in the place of our big lamp; but the effect of the town
lights, orange-yellow mingling with the white radiance pouring down from
the sky, was wonderful and mysterious on arched gateways, on dark
façades of tall buildings, on statues, on columns, on fountains. Coming
in out of the country stillness, the noise and rush of the big city
seemed appalling. Fierce electric trams dashed clanging and flashing in
all directions, making a pandemonium worse than Chicago or the streets
of Paris. Horses and carts darted across the glittering tracks under our
noses, bicyclists spun between our car and lumbering hotel omnibuses,
and hadn't an inch to spare. In the middle of one huge street was
something that looked like a Roman ruin, with every shadow sharp as a
point of jet in the confused blending of light. Brazen bells boomed,
mellow chimes fluted, church clocks mingled their voices, each trying to
tell the hour first; and to add to the bewildering effect of our entry,
drivers and people on foot waved their arms, yelling wildly something I
couldn't understand.
Mr. Barrymore understood, however, and only just in time to save an
accident, for it seemed that we were on the wrong side of the road.
Suddenly and arbitrarily it was the rule to keep on the left side
instead of the right, and the Chauffeulier shot across before a tram,
approaching at the speed of a train, could run us down.
"That's the worst of this part of Italy," I heard him shout over the din
to Maida. "Any town that chooses makes a different rule for itself and
its suburbs, and then expects strangers to know by instinct just where
and when it changes."
It was like being shot out of a catapult from the Inferno straight to
Paradise, as Sir Ralph said, when suddenly we saved ourselves from the
hurly-burly, flashing into a noble square with room for a thousand
street-cars and as many automobiles to browse together in peace and
harmony.
A mass of glimmering white towers and pinnacles, the Cathedral rose, a
miracle of beauty in the flood of moonlight that turned grey into white,
old marble into snow, and gave to each of the myriad carvings the
lace-like delicacy of frost-work.
"I wanted you to see the Duomo first by moonlight," said Mr. Barrymore,
after we had sat still, gazing up for some moments, with even the car
motionless and silent. "To-morrow morning you can come again for the
detail, and spend as much time as you like inside, for I hope it won't
take us many hours to run to Bellagio; but you will never forget
to-night's impression."
"I shall never forget anything that has happened, or that we've seen on
this trip," Maida answered, in a voice that told me how much she felt
her words. But if she had anything more to say the motor impolitely
drowned it, and we were whirled away again via pandemonium, to quite a
grand hotel.
The first person we met in a big, square hall full of
wicker chairs and tables, was Prince Dalmar-Kalm, in evening dress,
looking as calm as if he had never heard of an automobile. He flung
agreeable smiles at Maida and me, but his real welcome was for his
"chère Comtesse," and she was delighted, poor dear, to be made much of
at the expense of two girls, one a beauty.
"I arrived over an hour ago," he said, "very dusty, a little tired, a
good deal hungry; but, of course, I would not have dreamed of dining
without you."
"Did you get in on the car, or on the cars, this time?" I asked.
"But certainly in the car," said he, reproachfully. "Joseph met me at
Alessandria early in the afternoon, and once started, we went as the
wind goes--a splendid pace, without a single break-down. I passed your
automobile at Pavia, and thought of joining you at the Certosa, where
you no doubt were at the time; but I decided that it would be more
satisfactory to keep on and greet you here. I knew you would take my
advice, as you promised, Comtesse, and come to this hotel, so I ventured
to have my place laid at your table and order a few extras which I
thought you would like. Have pity, I beg, on a starving man, and make
yourselves ready in twenty minutes."
"But Mr. Barrymore can't join us then," Maida objected to Mamma, in a
low voice. "He has the car to look after before he can dress, and after
the good day he has given us wouldn't it be ungrateful to begin without
him?"
"My dear girl, when all's said and done, he _is_ the chauffeur," replied
Mamma, at her worst under His Highness's influence. "It would be a
pretty thing if we were to keep the Prince waiting for him. _You_ can
come down later if you like."
"Very well, I will," said Maida, very pink as to her cheeks and bright
as to her eyes. I didn't think she would dare keep her word, for fear
Mr. Barrymore might believe she cared too much about him; but just
because he's poor and she imagines he is snubbed, she will do anything.
Everybody except the Chauffeulier had been at table for a quarter of an
hour, and hors d'oeuvres and soup, and fish, had given place to beef,
when Maida came in, dressed in white, and looking beautiful. As she
appeared at one door Mr. Barrymore appeared at another, and was just in
time to pull out her chair instead of letting the waiter do it.
The Chauffeulier, seeing we had ploughed through half the menu, wouldn't
have bothered with soup or fish, but Maida insisted on having both,
piping hot too, though she never cares what she eats; so the belated one
got as good a dinner as anybody. Whether he realized that Maida had
waited for him I don't know, but he was so unusually talkative and full
of fun that I longed to "vipe" somebody, feeling as I did that his
cheerfulness was due to Maida's kindness. Unfortunately there was no
excuse for viping; but I suddenly thought how I could throw a little
cold water. "Have you noticed, Mr. Barrymore," I asked, "that my cousin
Maida never wears anything except black, or grey, or white?"
He looked at her. "Yes, I have noticed," he said, with an expression in
his eyes which added that he'd noticed everything concerning her. "But
then," he went on, "I haven't had time to see her whole wardrobe."
"If you had, it would be the same," said I. "It's a pity, I think, for
blue and pink and pale green, and a lot of other things would be so
becoming. But she's got an idea into her head that because, when she
goes back home a few months from now, she will enter that old con--"
"Beechy, please!" broke in Maida, her face almost as pink as an American
Beauty rose.
"Well you _are_ going to, aren't you?" I flew out at her. "Or have you
changed your mind--already?"
"I think you are very unkind," she said, in a low voice, turning white
instead of red, and Mr. Barrymore bit his lip, looking as if he would
rather shake me than eat his dinner. Then all at once I was dreadfully
sorry for hurting Maida, partly because Mr. Barrymore glared, partly
because she is an angel; but I would have died in agony sooner than say
so, or show that I cared, though I had such a lump in my throat I could
scarcely swallow. Of course everybody thought I had turned sulky, for I
shrugged my shoulders and pouted, and didn't speak another word. By and
by I really did begin to sulk, because if one puts on a certain
expression of face, after a while one finds thoughts that match it
stealing into one's mind. I grew so cross with myself and the whole
party, that when Mamma said she was tired and headachy, and would go to
our sitting-room if Maida didn't object, I determined that whatever
happened those two shouldn't have the satisfaction of a _tête-à-tête_.
Every one had finished except Maida and the Chauffeulier, who had only
got as far as the chicken and salad stage; and when Mamma proposed
going, a look came over the Prince's face which I translated to myself
as, "_Rien à faire ici_." Since our talk in the garden at San Dalmazzo,
he has given himself no more trouble for Maida or me; all is for Mamma,
at least, when she is present; so I wasn't surprised when he said that
he had several telegrams to send off, and would excuse himself.
"But about to-morrow," he exclaimed, pausing when he had risen. "Shall
you stop to see the Cathedral, and something of Milan by daylight,
before going on to the Lake of Como?"
"Oh, yes," Maida answered. "Mr. Barrymore says we shall have plenty of
time."
"He is quite right," replied the Prince so graciously that I instantly
asked myself what little game he was playing now. "It is not far from
here to Bellagio, where you intend to stop. You will go, of course, by
way of the Brianza?" (This to the Chauffeulier.)
"I suppose we must," answered Mr. Barrymore. "I don't know anything at
first-hand about the road, but at the garage they tell me motors
occasionally do it. The gradients are steep according to the route-book,
but unless there's something worse than meets the eye there, our car
will get through all right."
"I have already driven over the whole length of that road," said the
Prince. "Not _en automobile_, but, no doubt, what a couple of horses can
do, your twelve horse-power car can do better. As for me, I have been
in Milan many a time, and its sights are an old story. I will therefore
go on early to-morrow morning, leaving your party to follow; for I have
acquaintances who live in a charming villa near Bellagio--the Duke and
Duchess of Gravellotti--and I wish to ask them as soon as possible to
call on the Countess."
Mamma was delighted at the prospect of receiving a call from a real,
live Duke and Duchess, so she shed rays of gratitude upon the Prince,
and trotted out both her dimples.
"Come, Beechy," she said. "We'll go now, as Maida doesn't mind."
"I haven't finished my nuts and raisins, and I want some of those
_marrons glacés_ afterwards," said I. "I'll stay and eat them, and
chaperon Maida. I guess she needs it more than you, Mamma, though you're
both an awful responsibility for me."
That sent Mamma away with a vexed rustle of three separate layers of
silk. The Prince walked after her, just far enough behind not to step on
her train (he isn't the kind of man who would ever tear a woman's dress,
though he might pull her reputation to pieces), and Maida, Mr.
Barrymore, Sir Ralph, and I were left together.
Both men had jumped up when Mamma rose, but they sat down again when she
had turned her back, the Chauffeulier (presumably) to finish his dinner,
Sir Ralph to keep me in countenance. But there was no more gaiety. My
douche of cold water had quenched Mr. Barrymore's Irish spirits, and
Maida was depressed. I was the "spoil-sport;" but I "stuck it out," as
Sir Ralph would have said, to the bitter end.
When we all streamed into the big hall there sat Mamma in a corner with
the Prince, instead of having gone up-stairs to nurse her headache. What
was worse, she was letting the man teach her to smoke a cigarette in
imitation of some Russian ladies in another corner. They were puffing
away as calmly as they breathed, because it was the same thing with
them; but Mamma was far from calm. She was flirting with all her might,
and feeling tremendously pretty and popular.
She didn't see me until I had stalked up behind her. "Mamma!" I said, in
a tone of freezing virtue. "Four years ago, you spanked me for that. And
if Papa were here now, what would _he_ do to you?"
She started as if a mouse had sprung at her--and Mamma is dreadfully
afraid of little innocent mice. Then she began to explain and apologize
as if she had been thirteen, and I--well, I'll _say_ twenty-nine.
I foresee that I am going to have trouble with Mamma.