The Motor Maid Part 20

Both looked more Greek than Roman, but that was because Greek workmen helped to build them for Julius Caesar, when he determined that posterity should not forget his defeat of great Vercingetorix, and should do justice to the memory of Marius.

When I was small I used to dislike poor Vercingetorix, and be glad that he had to surrender, so that I might be rid of him, owing to the dreadful difficulty of p.r.o.nouncing his name; but when we had got out of the car, and I saw him on the archway, a tall, carved captive, who had kept his head through all the centuries, while Caesar (with a hand on the prisoner's shoulder) had lost his, my heart softened to him for the first time.

I thought the Triumphal Monument to Marius even more beautiful than the Archway, and felt as angry as Marius must, that the guide-books should take it away from the hero and wrongfully call it a mausoleum for somebody else. But Mr. Dane a.s.sured me with the obstinate air people have when learned authorities back their opinions, that the Arch was really the more interesting of the two--the first Triumphal Archway set up outside Italy, said he, and bade me reflect on that; still, I would turn my eyes toward the graceful monument, so wickedly annexed by the three Julii, and then away over the wide plain that lay beneath this ragged spur of the Alpilles. In the distance I could see Avignon, and the pale, opal-tinted, gold-veined hills that fold in the fountain of Vaucluse. Never, since we came into Provence, had I been able so clearly to realize the wild fascination of her haggard beauty. "Here Marius stood in his camp," I thought, "shading his eyes from the fierce sun, and looking out over this strange, arid country for the Barbarians he meant to conquer." My heart beat with an intoxicating excitement, such as one feels on seeing great mountains or the ocean for the first time; and then down I tumbled, with a b.u.mp, off my pedestal, when Lady Turnour wanted to know what I supposed she'd brought me for, if not to put on her extra cloak without waiting to be told.

Watches are really luxuries, not necessities, with the Turnours, because their appet.i.tes always strike the hour of one, and if they're sometimes a little in advance, they can be relied upon never to be behindhand. I knew before I glanced at the little bracelet-watch Pamela gave me (hidden under my sleeve) that it must be on the stroke of half-past twelve when her ladyship began to complain of the sharp wind, and say we had better be getting back to St. Remy. She was cross, as usual when she is hungry, and said that if I continued to go about "like a snail in a dream" whenever she fetched me to carry her things on these short expeditions, she would leave me in the hotel to mend her clothes; whereupon I became actually servile in my ministrations. I brushed a microscopic speck of dust off her gown; I pushed in a hairpin; I tucked up a flying end of veil; I straightened her toque, and made myself altogether indispensable; for the bare idea of being left behind was a box on the ear. I could not endure such a punishment--and the front seat would look so empty, so unfinished, without me!

As we went back down the steep hill from old Glanum, St. Remy appeared a little oasis of spring in the midst of a winter which had come back for something it had forgotten. All its surrounding orchards and gardens, screened from the shrewish Mistral by the shoulders of the Alpilles, and again by lines of tall cypress trees and netted, dry bamboos, had begun to bloom richly like the earlier gardens on the Riviera. There was a pinky-white haze of apple blossoms; and even the plane trees in the long main street were hung with dainty, primrose-coloured spheres, like little fairy lanterns. Not only did every man seem a possible Felibre, but every girl was a beauty. Some of them wore a charming and becoming head-dress, such as I never saw before, and the chauffeur said it was the head-dress of the women of Arles, where we would go day after to-morrow.

Impertinent chauffeurs or couriers would have been more out of place in poetic St. Remy than the sensational Nostradamus himself; and there was no trouble of that sort for me in lunching at the pleasant, quiet hotel.

Mr. Dane had bought a French translation of Mistral's "Memoires," and as we ate, he and I alone together, he read me the incident of the child-poet and his three wettings in quest of the adored water-flowers.

Nothing could be more beautiful than the wording of the exquisite thoughts, yet I wished we could have seen those thoughts embodied in Provencal, the language practically created by Mistral, as Italian was by Dante and Petrarch, or German by Goethe.

Not far away lay Mas du Juge, described in the book, where he was born, and Maillane, where he lives, and I longed to drive that way; but as the Turnours would be sure to say that there was nothing to see, the chauffeur thought it wiser not to turn out of our road. We might find the poet at Arles, perhaps, in his museum there, or lunching at the Hotel du Forum, a favourite haunt of his on museum days.

Starting for Les Baux, we turned our faces straight toward the wild little mountains loved by Mistral, his dear Alpilles. They soon surrounded us in tumbling gray waves, piled up on either side of the road as the Red Sea must have tumultuously fenced in the path of the Israelites. Strange, hummocky mountains were everywhere, as far as we could see; mountains of incredible, nightmare shapes, and of great ledges set with gigantic busts of ancient heroes, some n.o.bly carved, some hideously caricatured, roughly hewn in gray limestone, or red rock that looked like bronze. On we went, climbing up and up, a road like a python's back; but not yet was there any glimpse of the old "robber fortress" of Les Baux about which I had read, and later dreamed, last night. I knew it would be wonderful, astonishing, a Dead City, a Pompeii of the Feudal Age, yet different from any other ancient town the whole world over--a place of tangled histories; yet I tried vainly to picture what it would be like. Then, suddenly, we reached a turn in that strange road which, if it had led downhill instead of up, would have seemed like the way Orpheus took to reach Hades.

We had come face to face with a huge chasm in the rock, a gap with sheer walls sliced clean down, like a cut in a great cheese; and I felt instinctively that this must be the dark doorway through which we should see Les Baux.

Through the cut in the stone cheese our road carried us; and the busts on the rocky ledges were so near now we could almost have put out our hands and touched them--but curiously enough, in this place of all others, they were the likenesses of modern men. Mr. Dane and I picked out an unmistakable Gladstone on the right, a characteristic Beaconsfield on the left; and farther on Mr. Chamberlain's head was fantastically grafted on to the body of a prehistoric animal. We were just tracing Pierpont Morgan's profile, near a few of Hannibal's elephants, when the car sprang clear of the chasm, out upon the other side of the doorway; and there rose before us Les Baux, a hundred times more wonderful, more tragic, than I had hoped to find it.

Far, far below our mountain road lay a valley so flat that it might have been levelled on purpose for the tilting of knights in great tournaments. Above and around us (for suddenly we were in as well as under it) was a City of Ghosts.

Huge ma.s.ses of rock, like t.i.tan babies' playthings, had been hollowed out for dwellings, fit houses for our late cousins the cave-dwellers.

There were colossal pillars and dark, high doorways such as one sees in pictures of the temples at Thebes; but all this, said Mr. Jack Dane, was merely a preface for what was yet to come, only an immense quarry whence the stones to build Les Baux had been torn. We were still on the road to the real Les Baux; and even as he spoke, the Aigle was clawing her way bravely up a hill steeper than any we had mounted. At the top she turned abruptly, and stopped in a queer, forlorn little place, where to my astonishment our journey ended in front of a small house ambitiously named Hotel Monte Carlo. Then I remembered the story I had read: how a young prince of the Grimaldi family came begging Louis XIII. to protect him from Spain; how Louis, who didn't want Spain to grab Monaco, promptly gave soldiers; how the Grimaldi's shrewd wit did more to get the Spanish out of the little princ.i.p.ality than did the fighting men from France; and how Louis, as a reward, turned poor, war-worn Les Baux into a Grimaldi marquisate.

That little episode in history accounted for the Hotel Monte Carlo; and I wondered if it were put up on the site of the Grimaldis' miniature pleasure-palace, which the forest-burning revolutionists tore down just before Les Baux, after all its strange pa.s.sings from hand to hand, became the property of the nation.

Against the rocks a few mean houses leaned apologetically, but on every side rose the ruins of a proud, dead past: a past beginning with the ruts of chariot-wheels graven on the rock-paved street. I thought, as I looked at the sordid little village of to-day, which had crawled into the very midst of the fortress, of some words I'd read last night: "a rat in the heart of a dead princess."

Strange, haggard hill, whispered about by history ever since Christians ran before Alaric the Visigoth, and hid in its caverns already echoing with legends of mysterious Phoenician treasure! Strange robber house of Les Baux, founded thirteen hundred years ago, and claiming half Provence two centuries later! No wonder, after all the fighting and plundering, loving and hating, that all it asks now is for its bleached, picked bones to be left in peace!

I thought this, standing by the little Hotel Monte Carlo, waiting for my mistress and her husband to be supplied with a guide. He was the most intelligent and efficient-seeming guide imaginable, who looked as if he had the whole history of Les Baux behind his bright dark eyes; and I hoped that the humble maid and chauffeur might be allowed to follow the "quality" within respectful earshot.

Soon they began to walk on, and I turned to look at my brother, who was lingering by the car. Already the guide had begun to be interesting. I caught a few words: "Celtic caverns"--"Leibulf, the first Count"--"the terrible Turenne, called the 'Fleau de Provence'--the Lady Alix's guardian"--which made me long to hear more; but I didn't want to crawl on until my Fellow Worm could crawl with me.

"I can't go," he said. "It wouldn't do to leave the car here. There are several gipsy faces at the inn window, you see. Why there should be gipsies I don't know; but there are, for those are gipsies or I'll eat my cap. And I've got to keep watch on deck."

"How horrid to leave you here alone, seeing nothing--not even the sunset!" I exclaimed. "I think I shall stop with you, unless _she_ calls me--"

"You'll do nothing of the kind," he had begun, when the summons came, sooner than I had expected.

CHAPTER XIII

"Elise, come here and put what this guide is saying into English," was the command, and I flew to obey. To hear him tell what he knew was like turning over the leaves of the Book of Les Baux; and I tried to do him justice in my translation; but it was disheartening to see Lady Turnour's lack-l.u.s.tre gaze wander as dully about the rock-hewn barracks of Roman soldiers as if she had been in her own lodging-house cellar, and to be interrupted by her complaints of the cold wind as we went up the silent streets, past deserted palaces of dead and gone n.o.bles, toward the crown of all--the Chateau.

Nothing moved her to any show of interest in this grave of mighty memories, of mighty warrior princes, and of lovely ladies with names sweet as music and perfume of potpourri. Wandering in a splendid confusion of feudal and mediaeval relics--walls with carved doorways, and doorways without walls; beautiful, purposeless columns whose occupation had long been gone; carved marvels of fireplaces standing up sadly from wrecked floors of fair ladies' boudoirs or great banqueting halls, the stout, painted woman broke in upon the guide's story to talk of any irrelevant matter that jumped into her mind. She suddenly bethought herself to scold Sir Samuel about "Bertie," from whom a letter had evidently been forwarded, and who had been spending too much money to please her ladyship.

"That stepson of yours is a regular bad egg," said she.

"Never you mind," retorted Sir Samuel, defending his favourite. "Many a bad egg has turned over a new leaf."

My lip quivered, but I fixed my eyes firmly upon the guide, who was now devoting his attention entirely to his one respectful listener. I was ashamed of my companions, but I couldn't help catching stray fragments of the conversation, and the involuntary mixing of Bertie's affairs with the Religious Wars, and the destruction of Les Baux by Richelieu's soldiers, had a positively weird effect on my mind. Bertie, it seemed--(or was it Richelieu?) was invited to visit at the chateau of a French marquis called de Roquemartine (or was it good King Rene, who inherited Les Baux because he was a count of Provence?), and the chateau was near Clermont-Ferrand. Lady Turnour was of opinion that it would be well to make a condition before sending the cheque which Bertie wanted to pay his bridge debts (or was he in debt because the Lady Douce and her sister Stephanette of Les Baux had quarrelled?). If the advice of Dane, the chauffeur, were taken, they would be motoring to Clermont-Ferrand; and why not say to Bertie: "No cheque unless you get us an invitation to visit the Roquemartines while you are there?" (Or was it that they wanted an invitation to the boudoir of Queen Jeanne, Rene's beloved wife, who lived at Les Baux sometimes, and had very beautiful things around her--tapestries and Eastern rugs, and wondrous rosaries, and jewelled Books of Hours?) Really, it was very bewildering; but in my despair one drop of comfort fell. That chateau near Clermont-Ferrand would prove a lodestar, and help Mr. Jack Dane to lure the Turnours through chill gorges and over snowy mountains.

"Lodestar" really was a good word for the attraction, I thought, and I would repeat it to the chauffeur. But it rose over the horizon of my intellect probably because the guide talked of Countess Alix, last heiress of the great House of Les Baux. "As she lay dying," he said, "the star that had watched over and guided the fortunes of her house came down from the sky, according to the legend, and shone pale and sad in her bedchamber till she was dead. Then it burst, and its light was extinguished in darkness for ever."

Eventually Sir Samuel's eye brightened for the Tudor rose decoration, in the ruined chateau, relic of an alliance between an English princess and the House of Les Baux; and Lady Turnour didn't interrupt once when the guide told of the latest important discovery in the City of Ghosts.

"Near the altar of the Virgin here," he began, in just the right, hushed tone, "they found in a tomb the body of a beautiful young girl. There she lay, as the tomb was opened, just for an instant--long enough for the eye to take in the picture--as lovely as the loveliest lady of Les Baux, that famed princess Cecilie, known through Provence as Pa.s.se-Rose.

Her long golden hair was in two great plaits, one over either shoulder, and her hands were crossed upon her breast, holding a Book of Hours. But in a second, as the air touched her, she was gone like a dream; her sweet young face, white as milk, and half smiling, her long dark eyelashes, even the Book of Hours, all crumbled into dust, fine as powder. Only the golden hair, tied with blue ribbon, was left; and when you go to Arles you can see it in the Museum of Monsieur Mistral."

"Make a note of hair for Arles, Sam," said her ladyship, gravely; and just as solemnly he obeyed, scribbling a few words in the pocket memorandum-book in which the poor man industriously puts down all the things which his wife thinks he ought to remember.

"Anything else interesting ever been found here?" she wanted to know.

"Any jewels or things of that sort?"

I pa.s.sed the question on to the guide.

Many things had been found, he said: coins, vases, pottery, and mosaics.

Occasionally such things were turned up, though usually, nowadays, of no great value; but it was the hope of finding something which brought the gipsies. Often there were gypsies at Les Baux. They would go to Les Saintes Maries, the place of the sacred church where the two sainted Maries came ash.o.r.e from Palestine in their little boat, and they would pray to Sarah, whose tomb was also in that wonderful church. Had we seen it yet? No? But it was not far. Many people went, though the great day was on May twenty-fourth, when the Archbishop of Aix lowered the ark of relics from the roof, and healed those of the sick who were true believers. It was for Sarah, though, that the gipsies made their pilgrimages. They thought that prayers at her tomb would bring them whatever they desired; and sometimes, when they were able to come on as far as Les Baux, they would wish at the tomb to find the buried Phoenician treasure, for which many had searched generation after generation, since history began, but none had ever found.

I did not say anything about the gipsies at the inn-window, but I saw now that Mr. Dane had done wisely in sticking to his post. A sixty-horse-power Aigle might largely make up for a disappointment in the matter of treasure, even if she had to be towed down into the valley by a horse.

"Calve, and all the great singers, come here sometimes by moonlight in their motors," went on the guide, "after the great musical festival of Orange in the month of August. They stand on the piles of stone among the ruins when all is white under the moon, and they sing--ah! but they sing! It is wonderful. They do it for their own pleasure, and there is no audience except the ghosts--and me, for they allow me to listen. Yet I think, if our eyes could be opened to such things, we would see grouped round a n.o.ble company of knights and ladies--such a company as would be hard to get together in these days."

"Well, I would rather sing here in August than April!" exclaimed Lady Turnour, with the air of a spoiled prima donna. And then she shivered and wanted to go down to the car without waiting for the sunset, which, after all, could only be like any other mountain sunset, and she could see plenty of better ones next summer in Switzerland. She felt so chilled, she was quite anxious about herself, and should certainly not dare to start for Avignon until she had had a gla.s.s of steaming hot rum punch or something of that sort, at the inn. Did the guide think she could get it--and have it sent out to her in the car, as nothing would induce her to go inside that little den?

The guide thought it probable that something hot might be obtained, though there might be a few minutes' delay while the water was made to boil, as it would be an unusual order.

A few minutes! thought I, eagerly, looking at the sun, which was hurrying westward. I knew what "a few minutes" at such an inn would mean--half an hour at least; and apparently I was no longer needed as an interpreter. Without a thought of me, now that I had ceased to be useful, Lady Turnour slipped her arm into her husband's for support (her high-heeled shoes and the rough, steep streets had not been made for each other), and began trotting down the hill, in advance of the guide.

They had finished with him, too, and were already deep in a discussion as to whether rum punch, or hot whisky-and-water with sugar and lemon were better, for warding off a chill. I didn't see why I shouldn't linger a little on the wide plateau, with the Dead City looming above me like a skeleton seated on a ruined throne, and half southern France spread out in a vast plain, a thousand feet below.

It was wonderful there, and strangely, almost terribly still. Once the sea had washed the feet of the cliff, dim ages ago. Now my eyes had to travel far to the Mediterranean, where Ma.r.s.eilles gloomed dark against the burnished glimmer of the water. I could see the Etang de Berre, too, and imagine I saw the Aurelian Way, and gloomy old Aigues-Mortes, which we were to visit later. At lunch we had talked of a poem of Mistral's, which a friend of Mr. Dane's had put into French--a poem all about a legendary duel. And it was down there, in that far-stretching field, that the duel was fought.

As I looked I realized that the clouds boiling up from some vast cauldron behind the world were choking the horizon with their purple folds. They were beautiful as the banners of a royal army advancing over the horizon, but--they would hide the sun as he went down to bathe in the sea. He was embroidering their edges with gold now. I was seeing the best at this moment. If I started to go back, I should have time to pause here and there, gazing at things the Turnours had hurried past.

I went down slowly, reluctantly, the melancholy charm of the place catching at my dress as I walked, like the supplicating fingers of a ghost condemned to dumbness. There was one rock-hewn house I had wanted to see, coming up, which Lady Turnour had scorned, saying "when you've been in one, you've been in all." And she had not understood the guide's story of a legend that was attached to this particular house. Perhaps if she had she would not have cared; but now I was free I couldn't resist the temptation of going in, to poke about a little. You could go several floors down, the guide had said; that was certain, but the tale was, that a secret way led down from the lowest cellar of this cave house, continuing--if one could only find it--to the enchanted cavern far below, where Taven, the witch, kept and cured of illness the girl loved by Mireio.

I didn't know who Mireio was, except that he lived in songs and legends of Old Provence, but the story sounded like a beautiful romance; and then, the guide had added that some people thought the Kabre d'Or, or Phoenician treasure, was hidden somewhere between Les Baux and the "Fairy Grotto," or the "Gorge of h.e.l.l," near by.

Caves have always had the most extraordinary, magical fascination for me. When I was a child, I believed that if I could only go into one I should be allowed to find fairyland; and even in an ordinary, every-day cellar I was never quite without hope. The smell of a cellar suggested the most cool, delightful, shadowy mysteries to me, at that time, and does still.

It was as if the ghostly hand that had been pulling me back, begging me not to leave Les Baux, led me gently but insistently through the doorway of the rock house.

It was not yet dark inside. I tiptoed my way through some rough bits of debris, to the back of the big room, crudely cut out of stone. There were shelves where the dwellers had set lights or stored provisions, and there was nothing else to see except a square hole in the floor, below which a staircase had been hewn. A glimmer of light came up to me, gray as a bat's wing, and I knew that there must be some opening for ventilation below.