My Friend the Chauffeur Part 30

And she went on unfastening my waist.

PART IV

TOLD BY MAIDA DESTREY

XVII

A CHAPTER OF MOTOR MANIA

What becomes of the beautiful army of days marching away from us into the past? The wonderful days, each one differing from all the others: some shining in our memory, in glory of purple and gold, that we saw only as they pa.s.sed, with the setting of the sun; some smiling back at us, in their pale spring dress of green and rose; some weeping in grey; but all moving at the same pace along the same road? The strange days that have given us everything they had to give, and yet have taken from us little pieces of our souls. Where do the days go? There must be some splendid world where, when they have pa.s.sed down to the end of the long road, they all live together like queens, waited upon by those black slaves, the nights that have followed them like their shadows, holding up their robes.

I've had this thought in my mind often since I have been flashing across Europe in an automobile, grudging each day that slipped from me and would not stay a moment longer because I loved it. I wish I knew the way to the land where the days that have pa.s.sed live; for when those that are to come seem cold to me, I would like to go and pay the old ones a visit. How well I would know their faces, and how glad I would be to see them again in their own world!

Well, perhaps, even though I can never find the way there, I can see the days' portraits painted in rows in the picture gallery of a house I own.

It isn't a very big house yet, but at least one new room is being built onto it every year, and lately it has grown faster than ever before, though the architecture has improved. Fancy my being a householder! But I am, and so is everybody. We all have the House of our Past, of which we alone have a key, and whenever we wish, we can steal softly, secretly in, by dim pa.s.sages, to enter rooms sealed to the whole world except ourselves.

I have been making the picture gallery in mine, since I left America; but the pictures I care for most have been put up since I began motoring.

I suppose some very rich natures can be rich without travel, for they are born with caskets already full of jewels; but ordinary folk have empty caskets if they keep them shut up always in one safe, and I begin to see that mine were but poor things. I keep them wide open now, and every day, every hour, a beautiful new pearl or diamond drops in.

It seems strange to remember how reluctant I was to come away. I thought there could be nothing more beautiful, more satisfying to eyes and heart, than my home. The white, colonial house set back from the broad Hudson River among locust trees and tall, rustling maples; the sloping lawn, with the beds of geranium and verbena; the garden with its dear, old-fashioned flowers--holly-hocks, sweet-williams, bleeding-hearts, gra.s.s pinks, and yellow roses; the grey-green hills across the water; that picture stood to me for all that was ideal on earth. And then, the Sisters, with their soft ways and soft voices, their white robes and pale blue, floating veils; how their gracious figures blended with and accentuated the peaceful charm of the scene, shut away from the storms of this world throughout their lives!

I was partly right, for of its kind there could be nothing more beautiful than that picture, but my mistake was in the narrow-minded wish to let one suffice. I rejoice now in every new one I have hung up, and shall rejoice all the more when I am back again myself--just one of those white figures that flit across the old canvas.

Yes, I shall be one of those figures, of course. The Mother has always told me it was my true vocation; that peace and leisure for reflection and concentration of mind were the greatest earthly blessings a woman could have. Ever since, as a very small girl, I longed for the day when I should be allowed to wear one of those pretty, trailing, white cashmere dresses and long, pale blue veils, I have looked forward to joining the Sisterhood of good women who alone have ever given me love and the protection of home.

Nothing has happened to change my intentions, and they are _not_ changed. Only, I'm not homesick any more, as I used to be in the feverish Paris days, or even on the Riviera, when we did very little but rush back and forth between Monte Carlo and Cap Martin, with Prince Dalmar-Kalm and his friends.

I shall go home and carry out the plans I've had for all these years, but--I shall live--live--live--every single minute till the time comes for my good-bye to the world.

I should have liked to stay a month at Bellagio (with the wonderful garden of Serbelloni to explore from end to end), instead of the two days that we did stop; still, the moment our start was arranged, I was perfectly happy at the thought of being in the car again.

There was a discussion as to how we should begin the journey to Lecco and Desenzano, where we were to sleep one night, for our difficulty lay in the fact that there's but one road on which you can drive away from the wooded, wedge-like promontory which Bellagio pushes out into the lake; the steep, narrow road up to Civenna and down again to Canzo and a.s.so, by which we had come. As our car had done the climb and descent so well, Mr. Barrymore wanted to do it again, perhaps with a wicked desire to force the Prince into accompanying us or seeming timid about the capabilities of his automobile. But when Aunt Kathryn discovered how easy the alternative was (simply to put the car on a steamer as far as Varenna, then running along a good road from there southward to Lecco), she said that Mr. Barrymore's way would be tempting Providence, with whose designs, I must say she appears to have an intimate acquaintance.

Heaven had spared us the first time, she argued, but now if we deliberately flew in its face, it would certainly not be considerate on a second occasion.

I was ready so much earlier on the last morning than Aunt Kathryn or Beechy, that I ordered coffee and rolls for myself alone on the terrace; and they had just appeared when Mr. Barrymore came out. He was going presently to see to the car, so naturally we had breakfast together, with an addition of some exquisite wild strawberries, gleaming like _cabouchon_ rubies under a froth of whipped cream. It was only eight o'clock, when we finished, and he said there would be time for one last stroll through the divinest garden in Italy, if I cared for it. Of course I did care, so we walked together up the rose-bordered path from the sweet-smelling flower-zone to the pine-belt that culminates in the pirates' castle. While we stood looking down over the three arms of the lake in their glittering blue sleeves, a voice spoke behind us: "Ah, Miss Destrey, I've found you at last. Your cousin asked me to look for you and bring you back as soon as possible. You are urgently wanted for something, though what was not confided to me."

The Prince used to be troublesome when he first attached himself to our party. If ever he happened to meet me in the big hall or the garden of the hotel at Cap Martin, when neither Aunt Kathryn nor Beechy was with me, he always made some pretext to talk and pay me stupid compliments, though he would flee if my relations came in sight. After the trip began, however, his manner was suddenly different, and he showed no more desire for my society than I for his; therefore I was surprised by an equally sudden change this morning. It was hardly to be defined in words, but it was very noticeable. Even his way of looking at me was not the same. At Cap Martin it used to be rather bold, as if I were the kind of person who ought to be flattered by any attention from a Prince Dalmar-Kalm. Later, if he glanced at me at all, it was with an odd expression, as if he wished me to regret something, I really couldn't imagine what. But now there was a sort of reverence in his gaze and manner, as if I were a queen and he were one of my courtiers. As I'm not a queen, and wouldn't care to have him for a courtier if I were, I wasn't pleased when he attempted to keep at my side going down by the narrow path up which Mr. Barrymore and I had walked together. He didn't precisely thrust Mr. Barrymore out of the way, but seemed to take it for granted, as it were by right of his rank, that it was for him, not the others to walk beside me.

I resented this, for to my mind it is horribly caddish for a person to snub another not his equal in fortune; and as Mr. Barrymore never pushes himself forward when people behave as if he were their inferior, I determined to show unmistakably which man I valued more. Consequently, when the Prince persisted in keeping at my shoulder, I turned and talked over it to Mr. Barrymore following behind. But on the terrace level with the hotel he had to leave us, for the automobile was to be shipped on board a cargo-boat that sailed for Varenna some time before ours.

"Why are you always unkind to me? Have I been so unfortunate as to vex you in any way?" asked the Prince, when we were alone.

"I am neither kind nor unkind," I replied in a practical, dry sort of tone. "I am going in now to see why they want me."

"Please don't be in such a hurry," said the Prince. "Perhaps I made Miss Beechy's message too urgent, for I had seen you with the chauffeur, and I could not bear that you should be alone with him."

"It is stupid to speak of Mr. Barrymore as the chauffeur," I exclaimed in a rage. "And it's not your affair Prince, to concern yourself with my actions."

With that I darted into the long corridor that opens from the terrace, and left him furiously tugging at his moustache.

"Did you send the Prince to call me in, Beechy?" I asked, after I had tapped at her door.

"I happened to see the Prince and have a little talk with him in the garden a few minutes ago," said she, "and I told him if he saw you he might say we'd be glad if you'd come. Mamma's in such a stew finishing her packing, and it would be nice if you'd help shut the dressing-bag."

Aunt Kathryn hadn't been herself, it seemed to me, during our two days at Bellagio. This morning she had a headache, and though I'd hoped that she would walk down to the boat with the Prince, she decided to take the hotel omnibus, so I was pestered with him once more. Beechy and Sir Ralph were having an argument of some sort (in which I heard that funny nickname "the Chauffeulier" occur several times), and as Mr. Barrymore had gone ahead with the car and our luggage, the Prince kept with me all the way through the terraced garden, then down the quaint street of steps past the bright-coloured silk-shops, to the crowded little quay. I should have thought that after my last words he would have avoided me, but apparently he hadn't understood that he was being snubbed. He even put himself out to be nice to the black dog from Airole, which is my shadow now, and detests the Prince as openly as he secretly detests it.

It was scarcely half an hour's sail to Varenna, and ten minutes after landing there, we were in the car, bowling smoothly along a charming road close by the side of Lecco, the eastern arm of the triple lake of Como.

For a time we ran opposite the promontory of Bellagio, with the white crescent of the Villa Serbelloni conspicuous on the darkly wooded hillside. Near us was an electric railway which burrowed into tunnels, as did our own road now and then, to save itself from extinction in a wall of rock. As we went on, we found the scenery of Lecco more wild and rugged than that of Como with its many villas, each one of which might have been Claude Melnotte's. Villages were spa.r.s.ely scattered on the sides of high, sheer mountains which reared their bared shoulders up to a sky of pure ultramarine, but Lecco itself was big and not picturesque, taking an air of up-to-date importance from the railway station which connects this magic land with the rest of Italy.

"I shouldn't care to stop in this town," said Beechy, when Mr. Barrymore slowed down before an imposing gla.s.s-fronted hotel with gorgeous ornamentations of iron and a wonderful gateway. "After what we've come from, Lecco _does_ look unromantic and prosaic, though I daresay this hotel is nice and will give us a good lunch."

"Nevertheless it's the _Promessi Sposi_ country," answered Mr.

Barrymore.

"What's that?" asked Beechy and Aunt Kathryn together. But I knew; for in the garret at home there's an old, old copy of "The Betrothed," which is Manzoni's _I Promessi Sposi_ in English, and I found and read it when I was a small girl. It was very long, and perhaps I should find it a little dull now though I hope not, for I loved it then, reading in delicious secrecy and stealth, because the Sisterhood doesn't allow youthful pupils to batten on love stories, no matter how old-fashioned.

I hadn't thought of the book for years; but evidently its story had been lying all this time carefully put away in a parcel, gathering dust on some forgotten shelf in my brain, for down it tumbled at the mention of the name. As Mr. Barrymore explained to Aunt Kathryn that this was the country of _I Promessi Sposi_ because the scenes of Manzoni's romance had been laid in the neighbourhood, I could see as plainly as if they lay before my eyes the quaint woodcuts representing the beautiful heroine, Lucia, her lover, Renzo, and the wicked Prince Innominato.

Nevertheless I took some credit to myself for remembering the old book so well, and fancied that there weren't many other travellers nowadays who would have it. But pride usually goes before a fall, as hard-hearted nurses tell vain little girls who have come to grief in their prettiest dresses; and at lunch it appeared that the humblest, most youthful waiter at Lecco knew more about the cla.s.sic romance of the country than I did. Indeed, not a character in the book that wasn't well represented in a picture on the wall or a painted post-card, and all seemed at least as real to the people of Lecco as any of their modern fellow-citizens.

The landlord was so shocked at the idea of our going on without driving a few kilometres to Acquate, the village where Renzo and Lucia had lived, and visiting the wayside shrine where Don Roderigo accosted Lucia, that Aunt Kathryn was fired with a desire to go, though the Prince (who had come the same way we had) would have dissuaded her by saying there was nothing worth seeing. "I believe you don't approve of stories about wicked Princes like Innominato," said Beechy, "and that's why you don't want us to go. You're afraid we'll get suspicious if we know too much about them." After that speech the Prince didn't object any more, and even went with us in his car, when we had rounded off our lunch with the Robiolo cheese of the country.

It was a short drive to Lucia's village; we could have walked in less than an hour, but that wouldn't have pleased Aunt Kathryn.

Appropriately, we pa.s.sed a statue of Manzoni on the way--a delightful Manzoni seated comfortably on a monument (with sculptured medallions from scenes in his books) almost within sight of the road to Acquate, and quite within sight of Monte Resegno, where the castle of wicked Innominato still stands. Then no sooner had we turned into the narrow road leading up to the little mountain hamlet than our intentions became the property of every pa.s.ser-by, every peasant, every worker from the wire factories.

"_I Promessi Sposi_," they would say to each other in a matter-of-course way, with an accompanying nod that settled our destination without a loophole of doubt.

In Acquate itself, a tiny but picturesque old village (draped with wistaria from end to end, as if it were _en fete_), everything was reminiscent and commemorative of the romance that had made its fame.

Here was Via Cristoforo; there Via Renzo; while naturally Via Lucia led us up to the ancient grey _osteria_ where the virtuous heroine was born and lived. We went in, of course, and Sir Ralph ordered red wine of the country, to give us an excuse to sit and stare at the coloured lithographs and statuettes of the lovers, and to peep into the really beautiful old kitchen with the ruddy gleams of copper in its dusky shadows, its bright bits of painted china, its pretty window and huge fireplace.

On a shelf close by the fire sat a cat, and I attempted to stroke it, for it looked old enough and important enough to have belonged to Lucia herself. But I might have known that it would not suffer my caresses, for it's nearly always so with foreign cats and dogs, I find. The lack of confidence in their own attractions which they show is as pathetic as that of a neglected wife; they never seem to think of themselves as pets.

Aunt Kathryn would persist in talking of Innominato as "Abominato"

(which was after all more appropriate), and the generous display of Lucia's charms in the pictures caused her basely to doubt that most virtuous maiden's genuine merit. "If the girl hadn't worn such dresses, they wouldn't have painted her in them," she argued. "If she _did_ wear them, she was a minx who got no more than she might have expected, prancing about lonely mountain roads in such shameless things. And I don't want a piece of wood from the shutter of her bedroom to take away with me. I should be mortified to tell any ladies in Denver what it was; and what's the good of carting souvenirs of your travels around with you, if you can't tell people about them?"

We got back to our lakeside hotel sooner than we had thought, and the landlord prayed us to see one more of Lecco's great sights. "It is not as if I asked you to go out of your way to look at some fine old ruin or a beautiful view," he pleaded. "You have seen many such on your journey, and you will see many more; but this thing to which I would send you is unique. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world; and to go will take you five minutes."

This excited Aunt Kathryn's curiosity, but when she heard that "it" was only a wonderful model of the cathedral at Milan, exact in every smallest detail and made by one man, she thought that she would seize the opportunity of lying down while the others went, and be fresh for our start, in an hour's time.

The idea of a model in wood of such a masterpiece as the Milan Cathedral didn't particularly recommend itself to me; but when we had arrived at a curiosity shop, and been ushered into a huge inner room, I suddenly changed my mind, for what I saw there was wonderful--as wonderful in its way as the great Cathedral itself.