The Motor Maid Part 19

"Why? Not because you want to 'pay me back' for asking you to lunch--or any such villainous thing, I hope, because--"

I shook my head. "I didn't think of that. I got it because I wanted to bring you luck."

Then he slipped the coin into an inside pocket of his coat. "Thank you,"

he said. "But didn't I tell you that you'd brought me something better than luck already?"

"What _is_ better than luck?"

"An interest in life. And the privilege of being a brother."

CHAPTER XII

It would be a singularly hard-headed, cold-hearted person who could set out for Vaucluse without the smallest thrill; and hard heads and cold hearts don't "run in our family." As we spun away from the Hotel de l'Europe soon after two o'clock that afternoon I felt that I was largely composed of thrill. Cold as the wind had grown, the thrill kept me warm, mingling in my veins with ozone.

Inside the car the middle-aged honeymooners had an air of desperate resignation which the consciousness of doing their duty according to Baedeker gives to tourists. The tap was turned on in the newly invented heating-apparatus in the car floor, through which hot water from the radiator can be made to circulate; and I wondered, if this extreme measure were resorted to already, what would be left to do when we reached those high, white alt.i.tudes of which the chauffeur had been speaking. I prayed that Lady Turnour might not read in the papers about the "phenomenal fall of snow" in those regions, for if she did I was afraid that even Mr. Dane's magnetic powers of persuasion might fail to get her there. He might dangle Queen Margherita of Italy over her head in vain, if worst came to worst: for what are queens to the most inveterate tuft-hunters if the feet be cold? Yet now that "adventures"

were vaguely prophesied, I felt I could not give up the promised gorges and mountains.

Out of Avignon we slid, past the old, old ramparts and the newer but impressive walls, and turned at the right into the Ma.r.s.eilles road.

"Vaucluse!" said a kilometre-stone, and then another and another repeated that enchanted and enchanting word, as we flew onward between the Rhone and the Durance.

This was our own old way again, as far as the Pont de Bonpas; then our road wound to the northeast, away from the world we knew--I said to myself--and into a world of romance, a world created by the love of Petrarch for Laura, and sacred to those two for ever more.

The ruined castle, with machicolated towers and haughty b.u.t.tresses, on the great rampart of a hill, was for me the porter's lodge at the entrance gate of an enchanted garden, where poetic flowers of love bloomed through seasons and centuries; laurels, roses, and lilies, and pansies for remembrance. We didn't see those flowers with our bodies'

eyes, but what of that? What did it matter that to the Turnours in their splendid gla.s.s cage this was just a road, with queer little gnome dwellings scooped out of solid rock to redeem it from common-placeness, with a fringe of deserted cottages farther on, and some ugly brickworks?

My spirit's eyes saw the flowers, and they cl.u.s.tered thicker and brighter about Pieverde, where I insisted to Mr. Dane that Laura had been born.

He was inclined to dispute this at first, and bring up the horrid theory that the pure white star of Petrarch's life had been a mere Madame de Sade, with a drove of uninteresting children. But eagerly I quoted Petrarch himself, using all the arguments on which Pamela and I prided ourselves at the Convent; and by the time we had got as far as that sweet "little Venice full of water wheels," L'Isle, I'd persuaded him to agree with me. In the midst of all that lovely, liquid music of running, trickling, fluting water, who could go on callously insisting that Laura resisted Petrarch merely because she was a fat married woman with a large family?

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

We were slipping past the banks of a little river, clear as sapphires and emeralds melted and mingled together. The sound of its singing drowned the sound of the motor, so that we seemed to glide toward Vaucluse noiselessly and reverently.

At the Inn of Petrarch and Laura the car had to stop; and looking up, we could see on the height above the castle home of Petrarch's dearest friend, Philippe de Caba.s.sole, guardian of Queen Jeanne of Naples. Up there on the cliff Petrarch's eyes must often have turned toward Pieverde with longing thoughts of Laura, that "white dove" who was always for him sixteen, as when he met her first.

No farther than the inn could any wheeled thing go; and having justified my presence by b.u.t.toning Lady Turnour up in her coat, and finding her m.u.f.f under several rugs, I stood by the car, gazing after the couple as they trudged off along the path to the hidden fairy fountain of Vaucluse. When they should have got well ahead I meant to go too, for if a cat may look at a king, a lady's maid may try to drink--if she can--a few drops from the cup of a great poet's inspiration. At first I resented those two ample, richly clad, prosaic backs marching st.u.r.dily toward the magic fountain; then suddenly the back of Sir Samuel became pathetic in my eyes. Hadn't he, I asked myself, loved his Emily ("Emmie, pet," as I've heard him call her) as long and faithfully as Petrarch loved his Laura? Perhaps, after all, he had earned the right to visit this shrine.

Rocks shut out from our sight the distant fountain, and the last windings of the path that led to it, clasping the secret with great stone arms, like those of an Oth.e.l.lo jealously guarding his young wife's beauty from eyes profane.

"Aren't you going now?" asked my brother, with a certain wistfulness.

"Ye-es. But what about you?"

"Oh, I've been here before, you know."

"Don't you believe in second times? Or is a second time always second best?"

"Not when--Of course I want to go. But I can't leave the car alone."

My eyes wandered toward the inn door. "There's a boy there who looks as if he were born to be a watch-dog," said I, basely tempting him.

"Couldn't you--"

"No, I couldn't," he said decidedly. "At a place like this, where there are a lot of tourists about, it wouldn't be right. It was different at Valescure, when I took you in to lunch."

"You mean I mustn't make that a precedent."

"I don't mean anything conceited."

"But you won't desert Mr. Micawber. I believe I shall name the car Micawber! Well, then, I must go by myself--and if I should fall into the fountain and be drowned--"

"Don't talk nonsense, and don't do anything foolish," said Mr. Dane, sternly, whereupon I turned my back upon him, and plunged into the cool shadows of the gorge. The great white cliff of limestone was my goal, and always it towered ahead, as I followed the narrow pathway above the singing water. I sighed as I paused to look at a garden which maybe once was Petrarch's, for it was sad to find my way to fairyland, alone. Even a brother's company would have been better than none, I thought!

Soon I met my master and mistress coming back.

There was nothing much to see, said her ladyship, sharply, and I mustn't be long; but Sir Samuel ventured to plead with her.

"Let the girl have ten minutes or so, if she likes, dear," said he.

"We'll be wanting a cup of hot coffee at the inn. And it is a pretty place." There was something in his voice which told me that he would have felt the charm--if his bride had let him.

Pools of water, deep among the rocks, were purple-pansy colour or beryl green; but the "Source" itself, in its cup of stone, was like a block of malachite. There was no visible bubbling of underground springs fighting their way up to break the crystal surface of the fountain,--this fountain so unlike any other fountain; but to the listening ear came a moaning and rushing of unseen waters, now the high crying of Arethusa escaping from her pursuing lover, now rich, low notes as of an organ played in a vast cavern.

Above the gorge, the towering rocks with their huge holes and archways hollowed out by turbulent water in dim, forgotten ages, looked exactly as if the whole front wall had been knocked off a giant's castle, exposing its secret labyrinths of rough-hewn rooms, floor rising above floor even to the attics where the giant's servants had lived, and down to the cellars where the giant's pet dragons were kept in chains.

I hadn't yet exhausted my ten minutes, though I began to have a guilty consciousness that they would soon be gone, when I heard a step behind me, and turning, saw Mr. Dane.

"They're having coffee in the car," he said. "Sir Samuel proposed it to his wife, as if he thought it would be rather more select and exclusive for her than drinking it in the inn; but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was because he wanted to let me off. Not a bad old boy, Sir Samuel."

So we saw the fountain of Vaucluse together, after all. I don't know why that should have seemed important to me, but it did--a little.

We didn't say much to each other, all the way back to Avignon, but I felt that the day had been a brilliant success, and was sure that the next could not be as good. "What--not with St. Remy and Les Baux?"

exclaimed my brother. But I knew very little about St. Remy, and still less about Les Baux. For a minute I was ashamed to confess, but then I told myself that this was a much worse kind of vanity than being pleased with the colour of one's hair or the length of one's eyelashes. Mr. Jack Dane was too polite to show surprise at my ignorance; but that evening, just as I was getting ready to go down to dinner, up he came with a tray, as he had the night before; and on the tray, among covered dishes, was a book.

"Two of your chauffeur-admirers from Aix are in the dining-room," he said, "so I thought you'd rather stop up in your room and read T.A.

Cook's 'Old Provence,' than go downstairs. Anyway, it will be better for you."

I was half angry, half flattered that he should arrange my life for me in this off-hand way, whether I liked it or not; but the French half of me will do almost anything rather than be ungracious; and it would have been ungracious to say I was tired of dining in my room, and could take care of myself, when he had given himself the trouble of carrying up my dinner. So I swallowed all less obvious emotions than meek grat.i.tude for food, physical and mental; and was soon so deeply absorbed in the delightful book that I forgot to eat my pudding. I sat up late with it--the book, not the pudding--after putting Lady Turnour to bed (almost literally, because she thinks it refined to be helpless), and when morning came I was no longer disgracefully ignorant of St. Remy and Les Baux.

Mr. Dane had mapped out the programme of places to see, using Avignon as a centre, and there were so many notabilities at the Hotel de l'Europe following the same itinerary, with insignificant variations, that Lady Turnour was quite contented with the arrangements made for her.

Morning was for St. Remy; afternoon was for Les Baux, "because the thing is to see the sunset there," I heard her telling an extremely rich-looking American lady, laying down the law as if she had planned the whole trip herself, with a learned reason for each detail.

The way to St. Remy was along a small but pretty country road, which had a misleading air, as if it didn't want you to think it was taking you to a place of any importance. And yet we were in the heart of Mistral-land; not Mistral the east wind, but Mistral the poet of Provence, great enough to be worthy of the land he loves, great enough to carry on the glory of it to future generations. At any moment we might meet a Fellore. I looked with interest at each man we saw, and some looked back at me with flattering curiosity; for a woman's eyes are almost as mysterious behind a three-cornered talc window as behind a yashmak, or zenana gratings.

St. Remy itself--birthplace of Nostradamus, maker of powders and prophecies--was charming in the sunlight, with its straight avenue of trees like the pillars of a long gray and green corridor in a vast palace; but we swept on toward the "Plateau des Antiquities," up a steep slope with St. Remy the modern at our backs; then suddenly I found myself crying out with delight at sight of the splendid Triumphal Archway and the gracious Monument we had come out to see.