The Motor Maid Part 26

I'll take you there, and if he sees that you're interested in things, he'll talk to you."

"Oh, how glorious!" I breathed, quite awed at the prospect. "But if he should find out that we're only lady's-maid and chauffeur?"

"Do you think it would matter to him _who_ we were--a great genius like that? He wouldn't care if we were beggars, if we had souls and brains and hearts."

"Well, we have got _some_ of those things," I said. "Do let's hurry, and get to the museum before our betters. They can always be counted upon to spend an hour and a half at lunch if there's a good excuse, such as there's sure to be in this place, famous for rich Provencal cooking.

Whereas Monsieur Mistral looks as if he would grudge more than half an hour on an occupation so prosaic as eating."

"Nothing could be prosaic to him," said Mr. Dane. "And that's the secret of life, isn't it? I think you have it, too, and I'm trying to take daily lessons from you. By the time we part I hope I shan't be quite such a sulky, discontented brute as I am now."

"By the time we part!" The words gave me a queer, horrid little p.r.i.c.k, with just that nasty ache that comes when you jab a hatpin into your head instead of into your hat, and have got to pull it out again. I have grown so used to being constantly with him, and having him look after me and order me about in his dictatorial but curiously nice way, that I suppose I shall rather miss him for a week or two when this odd a.s.sociation of ours comes to an end.

It is strange how one ancient town can differ utterly from its neighbour, and what an extraordinary, unforgettable individuality each can have.

The whole effect of Avignon is mediaeval. In Arles your mind flies back at once to Rome, and then pushes away from Rome to find Greece. All among the red, pink, and yellow houses, huddled picturesquely together round the great arena, you see Rome in the carved columns and dark piles of brick built into mediaeval walls. The glow and colour of the shops and houses seem only to intensify the grimness and grayness of that Roman background, the immense wall of the arena. Greece you see in the eyes of the beautiful, stately women, young and old, in their cla.s.sic features, and the moulding of their n.o.ble figures. (No wonder Epistemon urged his giant to let the beautiful girls of Arles alone!) You feel Greece, too, in the soft charm of the atmosphere, the dreamy blue of the sky, and the sunshine, which is not quite garish golden, not quite pale silver; a special sky and special sunshine, which seem to belong to Arles alone, enclosing the city in a dream of vanished days. The very gaiety which must have sparkled there for happy Greek youths and maidens gives a strange, fascinating sadness to it now, as if one felt the weight of Roman rule which came and dimmed the sunlight.

It was delightful to walk the streets, to look at the lovely women in their becoming head-dresses, and to stare into the windows of curiosity shops. But there was the danger of committing _lese-majeste_ by running into the arms of the bride and groom at the museum, so "my brother"

hurried me along faster than I liked, until the fascination of the museum had enthralled me; then I thanked him, for Mistral was there, for the moment all alone.

Mr. Dane hadn't told me that they had met before, but Monsieur Mistral greeted him at once as an acquaintance, smiling one of his illuminating smiles. He even remembered certain treasures of the museum which the chauffeur--in unchauffeur days--had liked best. These were pointed out and their interest explained to me, best of all to my romantic, Latin side being the "Cabelladuro d'Or," the lovely golden hair of the dead Beauty of Les Baux, that enchanted princess whose magic sleep was so rudely broken. We all talked together of the exquisite Venus of Arles, agreeing that it was wicked to have transplanted her to the Louvre; and Mistral's eyes rested upon me with something like interest for a moment as I said that I had seen and loved her there. I felt flattered and happy, forgetting that I was only a servant, who ought scarcely to have dared speak in the presence of this great genius.

"She seems to understand something of the charm of Provence, which makes our country different from any other in the world, does she not?"

the poet said at last to my companion. "She would enjoy an August fete at Arles. Some day you ought to bring her."

Mr. Dane did not answer or look at me; and I was thankful for that, because I was being silly enough to blush. It was too easy so see what Monsieur Mistral thought!

"Why didn't you tell me you knew him already?" I asked, when we had reluctantly left the museum (which might be invaded by the Philistines at any minute) and were on our way to the famous Church of St. Trophime.

That we meant to see first, saving the theatre for sunset.

"Oh," answered the chauffeur evasively, "I wasn't at all sure he'd remember me. He has so many admirers, and sees so many people."

"I have a sort of idea that your last visit to this part of the world was paid _en prince_, all the same!" I was impertinent enough to say.

He laughed. "Well, it was rather different from this one, anyhow," he admitted. "A little while ago it made me pretty sick to compare the past with the present, but I don't feel like that now."

"Why have you changed?" I asked.

"Partly the influence of your cheerful mind."

"Thank you. And the other part?"

"Another influence, even more powerful."

"I should like to know what it is, so that I might try to come under it, too, if it's beneficent," that ever-lively curiosity of mine prompted me to say.

"I am inclined to think it is not beneficent," he answered, smiling mysteriously. "Anyhow, I'm not going to tell you what it is."

"You never do tell me anything about yourself," I exclaimed crossly, "whereas I've given you my whole history, almost from the day I cut my first tooth, up to that when I--adopted my first brother."

"Or had him thrust upon you," he amended. "You see, you've nothing to reproach yourself with in your past, so you can talk of it without bitterness. I can't--yet. Only to think of some things makes me feel venomous, and though I really believe I'm improving in the sunbath of your example, which I have every day, the cure isn't complete yet. Until I am able to talk of a certain person without wanting to sprinkle my conversation with curses, I mean to be silent. But I owe it to you that I don't _want_ to curse her any more. A short time ago it gave me actual pleasure."

So it is to a woman he owes his misfortunes! As Alice said in Wonderland, it grows "mysteriouser and mysteriouser." Also it grows more romantic, when one puts two and two together; and I have always been great at that. The "sentimental a.s.sociation" of the battlement garden plus the inspiration to evil language, equal (in my fancy) one fair, faithless lady, once loved, now hated. I hate her, too, whatever she did, and I should like to box her ears. I hope she's _quite_ old, and married, and that she makes up her complexion, and everything else which causes men to tire of their first loves sooner or later. Not that it is anything to me, personally; but one owes a little loyalty to one's friends.

The porch and cloisters of St. Trophime's were too perfectly beautiful to be marred by a mood; but my brother Jack's mysteriously wicked sweetheart would keep coming in between me and the wonderful carvings in the most disturbing way. Some women never know when they are wanted! But I did my best to make Mr. Dane forget her by taking an intelligent interest in everything, especially the things he cared for most, though once, in an absent-minded instant, I did unfortunately say: "I don't admire that type of girl," when we were talking about a sculptured saint; and although he looked surprised I thought it too complicated to try and explain.

The afternoon light was burnishing the ancient stone carvings to copper when we left the cloisters of St. Trophime, took one last look at the porch, and turned toward the amphitheatre. We were right to have waited, for the vast circle was golden in the sunset, like a heavy bracelet, dropped by Atlas one day, when he stretched a weary arm; and the beautiful fragments of coloured marbles, which the Greeks loved and Christians destroyed, were the jewels of that great bracelet. The place was so pathetically beautiful in the dying day that a soft sadness pressed upon me like a hand on my forehead, and echoes of the long-dead past, when Greek Arles was a harbour of commerce by sea and river, or when it was Roman Arelate, rich and cruel, rang in my ears as we wandered through the cells of prisoners, the dens of lions, and the rooms of gladiators, where the young "men about town" used to pat their favourites on oiled backs, or make their bets on ivory tablets.

"If we were here by moonlight, we should see ghosts," I said. "Come, let us go before it grows any darker or sadder. The shadows seem to move. I think there's a lion crouching in that black corner."

"He won't hurt you, sister Una," said my brother Jack. "There's one thing you must see here before I take you home--back to the hotel, I mean; and that is the Saracen Tower, as they call it."

So we went into the Saracen Tower, and high up on the wall I saw the presentment of a hand.

"That is the Hand of Fatima," explained the guide, who had been following rather than conducting us, because the chauffeur knew almost as much about the amphitheatre as he did. "You should touch it, mademoiselle, for luck. All the young ladies like to do that here; and the young men also, for that matter."

Instantly my brother lifted me up, so that I might touch the hand; and then I would not be content unless he touched it too.

I had dinner in the couriers' room that evening, with my brother, when I had dressed Lady Turnour for hers. We were rather late, and had the room to ourselves, for the crowd which had collected there at luncheon time had vanished by train or motor. There was a nice old waiter, who was frankly interested in us, recognizing perhaps that, as a maid and chauffeur, we were out of the beaten track. He wanted to know if we had done any sight-seeing in Arles, and seemed to take it as a personal compliment that we had.

"Mademoiselle touched the Hand of Fatima, of course?" he asked, letting a trickle of sauce spill out of a sauce-boat in his friendly eagerness for my answer.

"Oh, yes, I saw to it that she did that," replied Mr. Dane, with conscious virtue in the achievement.

"It is for luck, isn't it?" I said, to make conversation.

"And more especially for love," came the unexpected answer.

"For love!" I exclaimed.

"But yes," chuckled the old man. "If a young girl puts her hand on the Hand of Fatima at Arles, that hand puts love into hers. Her fate is sealed within the month, so it is said."

"Nonsense!" remarked Mr. Dane, "I never heard that silly story before."

And he went on eating his dinner with extraordinary nonchalance and an unusual, almost abnormal, appet.i.te.

CHAPTER XIX

I shall always feel that I dreamed Aigues Mortes: that I fell asleep at night--oh, but fell very far, so much farther than one usually falls even when one wakes with the sensation of dropping from a great height, that I went b.u.mping down, down from century to century, until I touched earth in a strange, drear land, to find I had gone back in time about seven hundred years.

Not that there is a conspicuous amount either of land or earth at Aigues Mortes, City of Dead Waters--if the place really does exist, which I begin to doubt already; but I have only to shut my eyes to call it up; and in my memory I shall often use it as a background for some mediaeval picture painted with my mind. For with my mind I can rival Raphael. It is only when I try to execute my fancies that I fail, and then they "all come different," which is heart breaking. But it will be something to have the background always ready.

The dream did not begin while we spun gaily from Arles to Aigues Mortes, through pleasant if sometimes puerile-seeming country (puerile only because we hadn't its history dropping from our fingers' ends); but there was time, between coming in sight of the huge, gray-brown towers and driving in through the fortified gateway, for me to take that great leap from the present far down into the past.

To my own surprise, I didn't want to think of the motor-car. It had brought us to older places, but within this walled quadrangle it was as if we had come full tilt into a picture; and the automobile was not an artistic touch. Ingrate that I was, I turned my back upon the Aigle, and was thankful when Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour walked out of my sight around the corner of the picture. I pretended, when they had disappeared, that I had painted them out, and that they would cease to exist unless I relented and painted them in again, as eventually I should have to do. But I had no wish to paint the driver of the car out of my picture, for in spite of his chauffeur's dress he is of a type which suits any century, any country--that clear-cut, slightly stern, aquiline type which you find alike on Roman coins and in modern drawing-rooms. He would have done very well for one of St. Louis's crusaders, waiting here at Aigues Mortes to sail for Palestine with his king, from the sole harbour the monarch could claim as his on all the Mediterranean coast. I decided to let him remain in the dream picture, therefore, and told him so, which seemed to please him, for his eyes lighted up. He always understands exactly what I mean when I say odd things. I should never have felt _quite_ the same to him again, I think, if he had stared and asked "What dream picture?"

I had been brought on this expedition strictly for use, not for ornament. We were going from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles and from St.