The Motor Maid Part 27

Gilles to Nimes, therefore Arles was already a landmark in our past. I could walk about and amuse myself if I liked, but I must be at the inn before the return of my master and mistress to arrange a light repast collected at Arles, as we should have to lunch later at Nimes, and the resources of Aigues Mortes were not supposed to be worthy of millionaires in search of the picturesque. There were several neat packages, the contents of which would aid and abet such humble refreshment as the City of Dead Waters could produce; but I had more than an hour to play with; and much can be done in an hour by an enthusiast with a good circulation.

I had not quite realized, however, how largely my brother's companionship contributed to my pleasure on these excursions. We had seen almost everything together, and suddenly it occurred to me that I was taking his presence too much for granted. He would not go with me now, because in so small a round we were certain to run up against the Turnours, and her ladyship might be pleased to give me another lecture like that of evil memory at Avignon. I would have risked future punishment for the sake of present pleasure, and it was on my tongue to say so; but I swallowed the words with difficulty, like an over-large pill.

So it fell out that I wandered off alone, sustaining myself on high thoughts of Crusaders as I gazed up at the statue of St. Louis, and paced the sentinels' pathway round the gigantic ramparts, unchanged since Boccanegra built them. Looking down from the ramparts the town, enclosed in the fortress walls, was like a faded chessboard cast ash.o.r.e from the wreck of some ancient ship; and round the dark walls and towers waves of yellow sand and wastes of dead blue waters stretched as far as my gaze could reach, toward the tideless sea.

Louis bought this tangled desert of sand and water in the middle of the thirteenth century from an Abbot of Psalmodi, so the guide told me, and I liked the name of that abbot so much that I kept saying it over and over, to myself. Abbot of Psalmodi! It was to the ear what an old, illuminated missal is to the eye, rich with crimson lake, and gold, and ultramarine. It was as if I heard an echo from King Arthur's day, that dim, mysterious day when history was flushed with dawn; the Abbot of Psalmodi!

The heart of Aigues Mortes for me was the great tower of Constance, but a very wicked heart, full of clever and murderous devices, which was at its wickedest, not in the dark ages, but in the glittering times of Louis XIV. and of other Louis after him. That tower is the bad part of the dream where horrors acc.u.mulate and you struggle to cry out, while a spell holds you silent. In the days when Aigues Mortes was not a dream, but a terrible reality to the prisoners of that cruel tower, how many anguished cries must have broken the spell; cries from hideous little dungeons like rat-holes, cries from the far heights of the tower where women and children starved and were forgotten!

I was almost glad to get away; yet now that I am away I shall often go back--in my dream.

Alexander Dumas the elder went from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles, driving along the Beaucaire Ca.n.a.l, on that famous tour of his which took him also to Les Baux; and we too went from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles, though I'm sure the Turnours had no idea that it was a pilgrimage in famous footprints. Only the humble maid and chauffeur had the joy of knowing that. We had both read Dumas' account of his journey, and we laughed over the story of the little saint he stole at Les Baux.

It was a pleasant run to St. Gilles, though there was a shrewish nip in the wind which made me hope that Lady Turnour's mind was not running ahead to the mountains and gorges in front of her, not far away by days or miles now. I wanted her to get tangled up in them before she had time to think of the cold, and then it would be too late to turn tail.

I had just begun to call the little town of St. Gilles an "ugly hole,"

and wonder what St. Louis saw to love in it, when, coming out of a squalid, hilly street through which I had tried to pick my way on foot, alone, suddenly the facade of the wonderful old church burst upon my sight, a vision of beauty.

No self-respecting motor-car would have condescended to trust itself in such a street, and as a rabble of small male St. Gillesites swarmed round the Aigle when she stopped at the beginning of the ascent, Mr.

Dane had to play guardian angel. "I've been here before," he said, as usual, for this whole tour seems to be a twice-told tale for him. A few days ago I should have pitied him aloud for not being able to blow the dust off his old impressions; but now, when he speaks of past experiences, I think: "Oh, I wonder if this is another place a.s.sociated in his mind with that _horrid_ woman?" For on mature deliberation I have definitely niched her among the Horrors in my mental museum. In front of me walked Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour, whose very backs cried out their loathing of St. Gilles; but abruptly the expression of their shoulders changed; they had seen the facade, and even they could not help feeling vaguely that it must be unique in the world, that of its kind nothing could be more beautiful.

That was before I saw it, for a respectful distance must be maintained between Those Who Pay and Those Who Work; but I guessed from the backs that something extraordinary was about to be revealed. Then it was revealed, and I would have given a good deal to have some one to whom I could exclaim "Isn't it glorious!"

Still, I am luckily very good chums with myself, and it is never too much trouble to think out new adjectives for my own benefit, or to indicate quaint points of view. I was soon making the best of my own society in the way of intelligent companionship, shaking crumbs of half-forgotten history out of my memory, and finding a dried currant of fact here and there. In convent days there was hardly a saint or saintess with whom I hadn't a bowing acquaintance, and although a good many have cut me since, I can generally recall something about them, if necessary, as t.i.tle worshippers can about the aristocracy. I thought hard for a minute, and suddenly up rolled a curtain in my mind, and there in his niche stood St. Gilles. He was born in Athens, and was a most highly connected saint, with the blood of Greek kings in his veins, all of which was eventually spilled like water in the name of religion.

It seemed very suitable that such perfection of carving and proportion as was shown in steps, towers, facade, and frieze should be dedicated to a Greek saint, who must have adored and understood true beauty as few of his brother saints could.

Mr. Dane had said, just before I started, that there was a gem of a spiral staircase, called the Vis de St. Gilles, which I ought to see, and a house, unspoiled since mediaeval days; but the question of these sights was settled adversely for me by my master and mistress. The frieze they did admire, but it sufficed. Their inner man and woman clamoured for a feast, and the eyes must be sacrificed.

As for me, I did not count even as a sacrifice, of course, but I followed them back to the car as I'd followed them from it, and the car flew toward Nimes.

Just at first, for a few moments which I hate to confess to myself now, I was disappointed in Nimes. The town looked cold, and modern, and conceited after the melancholy charm of Arles and the mediaeval aspect of Avignon; but that was only as we drove to our stately hotel in its large, dignified square. Afterward--after the inevitable lunching and unpacking--when I started out once again in the society of my adopted relative, I prayed to be forgiven.

A gale was blowing, but little cared we. A toque or a picture-hat make all the difference in the world to a woman's impressions, even of Paradise--if the wind be ever more than a lovely zephyr there. Lady Turnour had insisted on changing her motoring hat for a Gainsborough confection which would, I was deadly certain, cause her to loathe Nimes while memory should last; but the better part was mine. Toqued and veiled, the mistral could crack its cheeks if it liked; it couldn't hurt mine, or do unseemly things to my hair.

In the gardens of Louis XIV. I gave myself to Nimes as devotee forever; and as the glories of the past slowly dawned upon me, that Past round which the King had planted his flowers and formal trees, and placed vases and statues, I wished I were a worthier worshipper at the shrine.

I think that there can be no more beautiful town in the world than Nimes in springtime. The wind brought fairy perfumes, and lovely little green and golden puff-b.a.l.l.s fell from the budding trees at our feet, as if they wanted to surprise us. The fish in the crystal clear water of the old Roman baths, which King Louis tried to spoil but couldn't, swam back and forth in a golden net of sunshine. We two children of the twentieth century amused ourselves in attempting to reconstruct the baths as they must have looked in the first century; and the glimmering columns under the green water, now lost to the eye, now seen again, white and elusive as mermaids playing hide and seek, helped our imagination.

Far easier was it to go back to Rome in the Temple of Diana, so beautiful in ruin and so little changed except by time, as to bring to the heart a pang of mingled joy and pain, of sadness which women love and men resent--unless they are poets. Doves were cooing softly there, the only oracles of the temple in these days; and what they said to each other and to us seemed more mysterious than the sayings of common doves, because their ancestors had no doubt handed down much wisdom to them, from generation to generation, ever since Diana was taken seriously as a G.o.ddess, or perhaps even since the dim days when Celtic G.o.ds were reigning powers.

From the gardens we went slowly to that other temple which unthinking people and guide-books have named the Maison Carree, the most lovely temple out of Greece, and the one which has suffered most from sheer, uncompromising stupidity in modern days. Now it rests from persecution, though it shows its scars; and I wondered dully, as I stood gazing at the Corinthian columns--strong, yet graceful--how so dull a copy as the Madeleine could possibly have been evolved from such perfection.

Inside in the museum was the dearest old gentleman in a tall hat, who explained to us with ingenuous pride and dignity the splendid collection of coins which he himself had given to the town. It was easy to see that they were the immediate jewels of his soul; there was not one piece which he did not know and love as if it had been his child, though there were so many thousands that he alone could keep strict count of them. He insisted gravely upon the superlative value of the least significant in appearance, but he could joke a little about other things than coins.

There was an old mosaic which we admired, with a faded G.o.d of Love riding a winged steed.

"_L'Amour s'en va_," he chuckled, pointing to the half-obliterated figure. "_N'est pas?_" and he turned to me for confirmation. "I don't know yet," I answered.

"Mademoiselle is very fortunate--but very young," said the dear old gentleman, looking like a late eighteenth-century portrait as he smiled under his high hat. "And what thinks monsieur?"

"That it is better not to give him a chance to fly away, by keeping the door shut against him in the beginning," replied Mr. Dane, as coldly as if he kept his heart on ice.

Sunset was fading, like Love on the mosaic, when we came to the amphitheatre; but the sky was still stained red, and each great arch of stone framed a separate ruby. It was a strange effect, almost sinister in its splendour, and all the air was rose-coloured.

"Is it a good omen or an evil one for our future?" I asked.

"Means storms, I think," the chauffeur answered in the laconic way he affects sometimes, but there was an odd smile in his eyes, almost like defiance--of me, or of Fate. I didn't know which but I should have liked to know.

CHAPTER XX

The wind sang me to sleep that night in Nimes--sang in my dreams, and sang me awake when morning turned a white searchlight on my eyelids.

I was glad to see sunshine, for this was the day of our flight into the north, and if the sky frowned on the enterprise Lady Turnour might frown too, in spite of Bertie and his chateau.

It was cold, and I trembled lest the word "snow" should be dropped by the bridegroom into the ear of the bride; but nothing was said of the weather or of any change in the programme, while I and paint and powder and copper tresses were doing what Nature had refused to do for her ladyship.

"Cold morning, madame!" remarked the porter, who came to bring more wood for the sitting-room fire before breakfast. He was a polite and pleasant man, but I could have boxed his ears. "Madame departs to-day in her automobile? Is it to go south or north? Because in the north--"

With great presence of mind I dropped a pile of maps and guide-books.

"What a clumsy creature you are!" exclaimed her ladyship, playing into my hands. "I couldn't understand the last part of what he said."

Luckily by this time the man was gone; and my memory of his words was extraordinarily vague. But a dozen things contrived to keep me in suspense. Every one who came near Lady Turnour had something to say about the weather. Then, for the first time, it occurred to the Aigle to play a trick upon us. Just as the luggage was piled in, after numerous little delays, she cast a shoe; in other words, burst a tyre, apparently without any reason except a mischievous desire to be aggravating.

Another half hour wasted! And fat, silvery clouds were poking up their great white heads over the horizon in the north, where, perhaps, they were shaking out powder.

The next thing that happened was a snap and a tinkle in our inner workings, rather like the sound you might expect if a giantess dropped a hairpin. "Chain broken!" grumbled the chauffeur, as he stopped the car on the level of a long, straight road, and jumped nimbly down. "We oughtn't to have boasted yesterday."

"Who's superst.i.tious now?" I taunted him, as he searched the tool-box in the same way a child ransacks a Christmas stocking.

"Oh, about motor-cars! That's a different thing," said he calmly. "Cold, isn't it? My fingers are so stiff they feel as if they were all thumbs."

"Et tu, Brute," I wailed. "For _goodness_' sake, don't let _her_ hear you. She's capable even now of turning back. The invitation to the chateau hasn't come--and we're not safely in the gorges yet."

"Nor shan't be soon, if this sort of thing keeps on," remarked the chauffeur. "We shall have to lunch at Alais."

"You say that as if it was the devil's kitchen."

"There's probably first rate cooking in the devil's kitchen; I'm not so sure about the inns at Alais."

"But it's arranged to picnic on the road to-day for the first time, you know. They put up such good things at Nimes, and I was to make coffee in the tea-basket."

"That's why I wanted to get on. Picnic country doesn't begin till after Alais. Who could lunch on a dull roadside like this? Only a starving tramp wouldn't get indigestion."

It was true, and I began to detest the unknown Alais. Perhaps, after all, we might sweep through the place, I thought, without the idea of lunch occurring to the pa.s.sengers. But Mr. Dane's heart-to-heart talk with the Aigle resulted in quite a lengthy argument; and no sooner did a town group itself in the distance than Sir Samuel knocked on the gla.s.s behind us.

"What place is this?" he asked.