The Car That Went Abroad Part 10

We discussed matters of real importance--that is to say, expenses. We said we would give ourselves an object lesson, this time, in what could really be done in motor economies. On our former trip we had now and again lunched by the roadside, with pleasing results. This time we would always do it. Before, we had stopped a few times at small inns in villages instead of seeking out hotels in the larger towns. Those few experiments had been altogether satisfactory, both as to price and entertainment. Perhaps this had been merely our good fortune, but we were willing to take further chances. From the fifty francs a day required for our party of four we might subtract a franc or so and still be nourished, body and soul. Thus we planned. When it was pleasant we enjoyed shopping for our roadside outfit; a basket, square, and of no great size; some agate cups and saucers; some knives and forks; also an alcohol stove, the kind that compacts itself into very small compa.s.s, aluminum, and very light-- I hope they have them elsewhere than in Switzerland, for their usefulness is above price.

Chapter II

THE NEW START

It was the first week in May when we started--the 5th, in fact. The car had been thoroughly overhauled, and I had spent a week personally on it, sc.r.a.ping and polishing, so that we might make a fine appearance as we stood in front of the hotel in the bright morning sunlight where our fellow guests would gather to see us glide away.

I have had many such showy dreams as that, and they have turned out pretty much alike. We did not start in the bright morning. It was not bright. It was raining, and it continued to rain until after eleven o'clock. By that time our fellow guests were not on hand. They had got tired and gone to secluded corners, or to their rooms, or drabbling into the village. When the sun finally came out only a straggler or two appeared. It was too bad.

We glided away, but not very far. I remembered, as we were pa.s.sing through the town, that it might be well to take some funds along, so we drove around to the bank to see what we could raise in that line. We couldn't raise anything--not a centime. It was just past twelve o'clock and, according to Swiss custom, the bank was closed for two hours. Not a soul was there--the place was locked, curtained, barred. Only dynamite would have opened it.

We consulted. We had some supplies in our basket to eat by the roadside as soon as we were well into the country. Very good; we would drive to some quiet back street in the suburbs and eat them now. We had two hours to wait--we need feel no sense of hurry. So we drove down into Vevey la Tour and, behind an old arch, where friends would not be likely to notice us, we sat in the car and ate our first luncheon, with a smocked boy for audience--a boy with a basket on his arm, probably delaying the machinery of his own household to study the working economies of ours.

Afterward we drove back to the bank, got our finances arranged, slipped down a side street to the lake-front, and fled away toward Montreux without looking behind us. It was not at all the departure we had planned.

It rained again at Montreux, but the sun was shining at Chillon, and the lake was blue. Through openings in the trees we could see the picture towns of Territet, Montreux, Clarens, and Vevey, skirting the sh.o.r.e--the white steamers plying up and down; the high-perched hotels, half lost in cloudland, and we thought that our travels could hardly provide a more charming vision than that. Then we were in Villeneuve, then in the open flat fields of the Rhone Valley, where, for Europe, the roads are poor; on through a jolty village to a bridge across the Rhone, and so along the south sh.o.r.e by Bouveret, to St. Gingolph, where we exhibited our papers at the Swiss _douane_, crossed a little brook, and were again in France. We were making the circuit of the lake, you see. All winter we had looked across to that sh.o.r.e, with its villages and snow-mantled hills. We would now see it at close range.

We realized one thing immediately. Swiss roads are not bad roads, by any means, but French roads are better. In fact, I have made up my mind that there is nothing more perfect in this world than a French road. I have touched upon this subject before, and I am likely to dwell upon it unduly, for it always excites me. Those roads are a perfect network in France, and I can never cease marveling at the money and labor they must have cost. They are so hard and smooth, so carefully graded and curved, so beautifully shaded, so scrupulously repaired--it would seem that half the wealth and effort of France must be expended on her highways. The road from St. Gingolph was wider than the one we had left behind. It was also a better road and in better repair. It was a floor. Here and there we came to groups of men working at it, though it needed nothing, that we could see. It skirted the mountains and lake-front. We could look across to our own side now--to Vevey and those other towns, and the cloud-climbing hotels, all bright in the sunshine.

We pa.s.sed a nameless village or two and were at Evian, a watering-place which has grown in fame and wealth these later years--a resort of fine residences and handsome hotels--not our kind of hotels, but plenty good enough for persons whose tastes have not been refined down to our budget and daily program of economies.

It was at Thonon--quaint old Thonon, once a residence of the Counts and Dukes of Savoy--that we found a hostelry of our kind. It had begun raining again, and, besides, it was well toward evening. We pulled up in front of the Hotel d'Europe, one of the least extravagant of the red-book hostelries, and I went in. The "_Bureau_" as the French call the office, was not very inviting. It was rather dingy and somber, and n.o.body was there. I found a bell and rang it and a woman appeared--not a very attractive woman, but a kindly person who could understand my "_Vous avez des chambres?_" which went a good ways. She had "_des chambres_" and certainly no fault could be found with those. They were of immense size, the beds were soft, smooth, and spotlessly clean. Yes, there was a garage, free. I went back with my report. The dinner might be bad, we said, but it would only be for once--besides, it was raining harder. So we went in, and when the shower pa.s.sed we took a walk along the lake-front, where there is an old chateau, once the home of royalty, now the storehouse of plaster or something, and we stopped to look at a public laundry--a square stone pool under a shed, where the women get down on their knees and place the garments on a board and scrub them with a brush, while the cold water from the mountains runs in and out and is never warmed at all.

Returning by another way, we found about the smallest church in the world, built at one corner of the old domain. A woman came with a key and let us into it and we sat in the little chairs and inspected the tiny altar and all the sacred things with especial interest, for one of the purposes of our pilgrimages was to see churches--the great cathedrals of France. Across from the church stood a ruined tower, matted with vines, the remains of a tenth-century chateau--already old when the one on the lake-front was new. We speak lightly of a few centuries more or less, but, after all, there was a goodly period between the tenth and the fourteenth, a period long enough to cover American history from Montezuma to date. These old towers, once filled with life and voices and movement, are fascinating things. We stood looking at this one while the dusk gathered. Then it began sprinkling again and it was dinner time.

So we returned to the hotel and I may as well say here, at once, that I do not believe there are any bad dinners in France. I have forgotten what we had, but I suppose it was fish and omelet, and meat and chicken, and salad and dessert, and I know it was all hot and delicious, and served daintily in courses, and we went to those soft beds happy and soothed, fell asleep to the sound of the rain pattering outside, and felt not a care in the world.

Chapter III

INTO THE JURAS

It was still drizzling next morning, so we were in no hurry to leave. We plodded about the gray streets, picking up some things for the lunch basket, and Narcissa and the Joy got a chance to try their nice new French on real French people and were gratified to find that it worked just the same as it did on Swiss people. Then the sky cleared and I backed the car out of the big stable where it had spent the night, and we packed on our bags and paid our bill--twenty-seven francs for all, or about one dollar and thirty-five cents each for dinner, lodging, and breakfast--tips, one franc each to waitress, chambermaid, and garageman.

If they were dissatisfied they did not look it, and presently we were once more on the road, all the cylinders working and bankruptcy not yet in sight. It was glorious and fresh along the lake-front--also appetizing. We stopped by and by for a little mid-morning luncheon, and a pa.s.sing motorist, who probably could not believe we would stop merely to eat at that hour, drew up to ask if anything was wrong with our car and if he could help. They are kindly people, these French and Swiss.

Stop your car by the roadside and begin to hammer something, or to take off a tire, and you will have offers of a.s.sistance from four out of every five cars that pa.s.s.

There is another little patch of Switzerland again at the end of the lake, and presently you run into Geneva, and trouble. Geneva is certainly a curious place. The map of it looks as easy as nothing and you go gliding into it full of confidence, and presently find yourself in a perfect mess of streets that are not on the map at all, while all the streets that _are_ on the map certainly have changed their names, for you cannot find them where they should be, and no one has ever heard of them. Besides, the wind is generally blowing--the _bise_--which does not simplify matters. Narcissa inquired and I inquired, and then the Joy, who, privately, I think, speaks the best French of any of us, also inquired; but the combined result was just a big coalyard which a very good-looking street led us straight into, making it necessary to back out and apologize and feel ashamed. Then we heard somebody calling us, and, looking around, saw the man in gray who had last directed us, and who also felt ashamed, it seemed--of us, or himself, or something--and had run after us to get us out of the mess. So he directed us again and we started, but the labyrinth closed in once more--the dust and narrow streets and blind alleys--and once again we heard a voice, and there was the man in gray--he must have run a half a mile this time--waving and calling and pointing the path out of the maze. It seemed that they were fixing all the good streets and we must get through by circuitous bad ones to the side of the city toward France. I asked him why they didn't leave the good streets alone and fix the bad ones, but he only smiled and explained some more, and once more we went astray, and yet once more his voice came calling down the wind and he came up breathlessly, and this time followed with us, refusing even standing room on the running-board, until he got us out of the city proper and well headed for France. We had grown fond of that man and grieved to see him go. We had known him hardly ten minutes, I think, but friendships are not to be measured by time.

On a pretty hill where a little stream of water trickled we ate our first real luncheon--that is to say, we used our new stove. We cooked eggs and made coffee, and when there came a sprinkle we stood under our umbrellas or sat in the car and felt that this was really a kind of gypsying, and worth while.

There was a waving meadow just above the bank and I went up there to look about a little. No house was in sight, but this meadow was a part of some man's farm. It was familiar in every corner to him--he had known it always. Perhaps he had played in it as a child--his children had played in it after him--it was inseparable from the life and happiness of a home. Yet to us it was merely the field above our luncheon place--a locality hardly noticed or thought of--barely to be remembered at all.

Crossing another lonely but fertile land, we entered the hills. We skirted mountainsides--sometimes in sun, sometimes in shower--descended a steep road, and pa.s.sed under a great arched battlement that was part of a frowning fortress guarding the frontier of France. Not far beyond, at the foot of a long decline, lay a beautiful city, just where the mountains notched to form a pa.s.sage for the Rhone. It was Bellegarde, and as we drew nearer some of the illusions of beauty disappeared.

French cities generally show best from a distance. Their streets are not very clean and they are seldom in repair. The French have the best roads and the poorest streets in the world.

We drew up in front of the custom house, and exhibited our French _triptyque_. It was all right, and after it was indorsed I thought we were through. This was not true. A long, excited individual appeared from somewhere and began nervously to inspect our baggage. Suddenly he came upon a small empty cigar box which I had put in, thinking it might be useful. Cigars are forbidden, and at sight of the empty box our wild-eyed attenuation had a fit. He turned the box upside down and shook it; he turned it sidewise and looked into it; shook it again and knocked on it as if bound to make the cigars appear. He seemed to decide that I had hidden the cigars, for he made a raid on things in general. He looked into the gasoline tank, he went through the pockets of the catch-all and scattered our guidebooks and maps; then he had up the cushion of the back seat and went into the compartment where this time was our a.s.sortment of hats. You never saw millinery fly as it did in that man's hands, with the head of the family and Narcissa and the Joy grabbing at their flowers and feathers, and saying things in English that would have hurt that man if he could have understood them. As for him, he was repeating, steadily, "_Pas derange_"--"_Pas derange_," when all the time he was deranging ruthlessly and even permanently. He got through at last, smiled, bowed, and retired--pleased, evidently, with the thoroughness of his investigation. But for some reason he entirely overlooked our bags strapped on the footboard. We did not remind him.

The Pert of the Rhone is at Bellegarde. The pert is a place where in dry weather the Rhone disappears entirely from sight for the s.p.a.ce of seventy yards, to come boiling up again from some unknown mystery.

Articles have been thrown in on one side--even live animals, it is said--but they have never reappeared on the other. What becomes of them is a matter of speculation. Perhaps some fearful underground maelstrom holds them. There was no pert when we were there--there had been too much rain. The Rhone went tearing through a gorge where we judged the pert should be located in less watery seasons.

During the rest of the afternoon we had rather a damp time--showery and sloppy, for many of the roads of these Jura foothills were in the process of repair, and the rain had stopped the repairs halfway. It was getting toward dusk when we came to Nantua--a lost and forgotten town among the Jura cliffs. We stopped in front of the showier hotel there, everything looked so rain-beaten and discouraging, but the woman who ran it was even showier than her hotel and insisted on our taking a parlor suite at some fabulous price. So we drove away and drew up rather sadly at the Hotel du Lac, which on that dull evening was far from fascinating. Yet the rooms they showed us were good, and the dinner--a surprise of fresh trout just caught, served sizzling hot, fine baked potatoes and steak, with good red wine aplenty--was such as to make us forswear forevermore the showy hotels for the humbler inns of France.

But I am moving too fast. Before dinner we walked for a little in the gray evening and came to an old church--one of the oldest in France, it is said, built in the ninth century and called St. Michels. It is over a thousand years old and looks it. It has not been much rebuilt, I think, for invasion and revolution appear seldom to have surmounted the natural ramparts of Nantua, and only the stormbeat and the corrosion of the centuries have written the story of decay. Very likely it is as little changed as any church of its time. The hand of restoration has troubled it little. We slipped in through the gathering dusk, and tiptoed about, for there were a few lights flickering near the altar and the outlines of bowed heads. Presently a priest was silhouetted against the altar lights as he crossed and pa.s.sed out by a side door. He was one of a long line that stretched back through more than half of the Christian era and most of the history of France. When the first priest pa.s.sed in front of that altar France was still under the Carlovingian dynasty--under Charles the Fat, perhaps; and William of Normandy would not conquer England for two hundred years. Then nearly four hundred years more would creep by--dim mediaeval years--before Joan of Arc should unfurl her banner of victory and martyrdom. You see how far back into the mists we are stepping here. And all those evenings the altar lights have been lit and the ministration of priests has not failed.

There is a fine picture by Eugene Delacroix in the old church, and we came back next morning to look at it. It is a St. Sebastian, and not the conventional, ridiculous St. Sebastian of some of the old masters--a mere human pincushion--but a beautiful youth, prostrate and dying, pierced by two arrows, one of which a pitying male figure is drawing from his shoulder. It must be a priceless picture. How can they afford to keep it here?

The weather seemed to have cleared, and the roads, though wet, were neither soft nor slippery. French roads, in fact, are seldom either--and the fresh going along the lake-front was delightful enough. But we were in the real Juras now, and one does not go through that range on a water grade. We were presently among the hills, the road ahead of us rising to the sky. Then it began to rain again, but the road was a good firm one and the car never pulled better.

It was magnificent climbing. On the steepest grades and elbow turns we dropped back to second, but never to low, and there was no lagging. On the high levels we stopped to let the engine cool and to add water from the wayside hollows. We were in the clouds soon, and sometimes it was raining, sometimes not. It seemed for the most part an uninhabited land--no houses and few fields--the ground covered with a short bushy growth, gra.s.s and flowers. A good deal of it was rocky and barren.

On the very highest point of the Jura range, where we had stopped to cool the motor, a woman came along, leading three little children. She came up and said a few words in what sounded like an attempt at English.

We tried our French on her, but it did not seem to get inside. I said she must speak some mountain patois, for we had used those same words lower down with good results. But then she began her English again--it was surely English this time, and, listening closely, we got the fringes and tag ends of a curious story. She was Italian, and had been in New York City. There, it seemed, she had married a Frenchman from the Juras, who, in time, when his homeland had called him, had brought her back to the hills. There he had died, leaving her with six children. She had a little hut up the side lane, where they were trying to scratch a living from the stony soil. Yes, she had chickens, and could let us have some eggs. She also brought a pail with water for the radiator.

A little farther along we cooked the eggs and laid out all our nice lunch things on natural stone tables and looked far down the Jura slope on an ancient village and an old castle, the beginning of the world across the range.

It was not raining now, and the air was soft and pleasant and the spot as clean and sweet as could be. Presently the water was boiling and the coffee made--instantaneous coffee, the George Washington kind. And nothing could be fresher than those eggs, nothing unless it was the b.u.t.ter--unsalted b.u.t.ter, which with jam and rolls is about the best thing in the world to finish on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DESCENDING THE JURAS]

We descended the Jura grades on the engine brake--that is, I let in the clutch, cut off the gasoline supply and descended on first or second speed, according to the grade. That saves the wheel brake and does no damage to the motor. I suppose everybody knows the trick, but I did not learn it right away, and there may be others who know as little. It was a long way to the lower levels, and some of the grades were steep. Then they became gradual, and we coasted--then the way flattened and we were looking across a level valley, threaded by perfectly ordered roads to a distant town whose roofs and spires gleamed in the sunlight of the May afternoon. It was Bourg, and one of the spires belonged to the church of Brou.

Chapter IV

A POEM IN ARCHITECTURE

The church of Brou is like no other church in the world. In the first place, instead of dragging through centuries of building and never quite reaching completion, it was begun and finished in the s.p.a.ce of twenty-five years--from 1511 to 1536--and it was supervised and paid for by a single person, Margaret of Austria, who built it in fulfillment of a vow made by her mother-in-law, Margaret of Bourbon. The last Margaret died before she could undertake her project, and her son, Philibert II, Duke of Savoy, called "The Handsome," followed before he could carry out her wishes. So his d.u.c.h.ess, the other Margaret, undertook the work, and here on this plain, between the Juras and the Saone, she wrought a marvel in exquisite church building which still remains a marvel, almost untouched by any blight, after four hundred turbulent years. Matthew Arnold wrote a poem on the church of Brou which may convey the wonder of its beauty. I shall read it some day, and if it is as beautiful as the church I shall commit it, and on days when things seem rather ugly and harsh and rasping I will find some quiet corner and shut my eyes and say the lines and picture a sunlit May afternoon and the church of Brou.

Then, perhaps, I shall not remember any more the petty things of the moment but only the architectural shrine which one woman reared in honor of another, her mother-in-law.

It is not a great cathedral, but it is by no means a little church. Its lofty nave is bare of furnishings, which perhaps lends to its impression of bigness. But then you pa.s.s through the carved doors of a magnificent _juba_ screen, and the bareness disappears. The oaken choir seats are carved with the richness of embroidery, and beyond them are the tombs--those of the two Margarets, and of Philibert--husband and son.

I suppose the world can show no more exquisitely wrought tombs than these. Perhaps their very richness defeats their art value, but I would rather have them so, for it reveals, somehow, the thoroughness and sincerity of Margaret's intent--her determination to fulfill to the final letter every imagined possibility in that other's vow.

The mother's tomb is a sort of bower--a marble alcove of great splendor, within and without. Philibert's tomb, which stands in the center of the church, between the other two, is a bier, supported by female figures and fluted columns and interwoven decorations, exquisitely chiseled. Six cupids and a crouching lion guard the royal figure above; and the whole, in spite of its richness, is of great dignity. The tomb of the d.u.c.h.ess Margaret herself is a lofty canopy of marble incrustations, the elaborateness of which no words can tell. It is the superlative of Gothic decoration at a period when Gothic extravagance was supreme.

Like her husband Margaret sleeps in double effigy, the sovereign in state above, the figure of mortality, compa.s.sed by the marble supports, below. The mortality of the queen is draped, but in the case of Philibert, the naked figure, rather dim through the inters.p.a.ces, has a curiously lifelike, even startling effect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOMB OF MARGARET OF AUSTRIA, CHURCH OF BROU]