My Friend the Chauffeur
Chauffeulier. "Please don't worry about me." Then he gave us a smile
and was off.
The coffee was so good that our spirits rose. We decided to unpack what
we needed, and then, by way of passing the time before dinner, take a
walk.
Strange to say, the Prince did not complain of his quarters, but, after
we had for the second time refused his offer of an escort to
Alessandria, became somewhat taciturn. We left him in the _salle a
manger_, Mamma heading the procession of three which trailed to our
room. Maida and I lingered behind for a moment, to play with our first
Italian cat, until a wild cry of "Fire!" from Mamma took us after her
with a rush. A cloud of wood smoke beat us back, but Maida pushed
bravely in, got a window open again, and, after all, there was nothing
more exciting than a smoky chimney.
Sir Ralph, hearing the clamour, flew to the rescue, poured water from
the pitcher into the ricketty three-legged stove, upset a good deal on
himself and on the cemented floor (which looked like a slab of frozen
sausage), and finally succeeded in putting out the fire, though not
until both beds were covered with blacks.
By this time the Ten of Clubs, the Nine, the Eight, and all the little
cards of the pack were dancing about us in a state bordering on frenzy,
but Maida and Sir Ralph together eventually evolved a kind of unlovely
order out of chaos, and everybody was told off to perform some task or
other: one to sweep, one to dust, one to change the bedding.
In self-defence we hurried off for our walk, leaving the unpacking for
later, and Sir Ralph proposed that we should find the machine shop where
the Chauffeulier was working.
We asked the way of a good many people, all of whom gave us different
directions, and at last arrived at a building which looked as if it
might be the right place. But there was Joseph pounding and mumbling to
himself, and no Mr. Barrymore.
In common humanity we stopped for a few words, and Joseph mistook our
inch of sympathy for an ell. Almost with tears he told us the history
of his day, and choked with rage at the prospect of the long task before
him. "What is it to His Highness that I lose a night's sleep?" he
demanded of a red-hot bar which he brandished at arm's length. "Less
than nothing, since he will sleep, believing that all will be ready for
him in the morning. But his dreams would be less calm if he knew what I
know."
"What do you know, Joseph?" asked Sir Ralph, edging nearer to the door.
"That the water-power will be shut off at eleven o'clock, the lathes
will no longer turn, and I can do nothing more till to-morrow morning at
six, which means that we will not get away till noon."
"By Jove, that's a bad look-out for us, too," said Sir Ralph, when we
had escaped from Joseph. "I suppose things will be the same at Terry's
place. What a den for you to be delayed in! But I've an idea the Prince
means to sneak quietly off to Alessandria, and will expect Joseph to
meet him there to-morrow morning. My prophetic soul divined as much from
his thoughtful air as we discussed our quarters."
It was almost dark when we found the other machine shop, at the end of a
long straight road with a brook running down it, and trees walking
beside it, straight and tall. It was a wonderful, luminous kind of
darkness, though, that hadn't forgotten the sunset, and the white
mountains were great banks of roses against a skyful of fading violets.
But the minute we stepped inside the machine shop, which was lighted up
by the red fire of a forge, night seemed suddenly to fall like a black
curtain, shutting down outside the open door and windows.
Two or three men were moving about the place, weedy little fellows; and
Mr. Barrymore was like a giant among them, a splendid giant, handsomer
than ever in a workman's blouse of blue linen, open at the throat, and
the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to show muscles that rippled under
the skin like waves on a river.
That was what I thought, at least; but Sir Ralph apparently differed
with me, for he said, "You do look a sweep. Isn't it about time you
dropped work, and thought of making yourself respectable for dinner?
Judging by appearances, that will take you several hours."
"I'm going to have a sandwich and some wine of the country here,"
answered the giant in the blue blouse. "Awfully good of you all to come
and call on me. Would you like to see the new cone, as far as it's got?"
Of course we said "yes," and were shown a thing which looked as if it
might be finished in ten minutes; but when Sir Ralph commented on it to
that effect, Mr. Barrymore went into technical explanations concerning
"cooling" and other details of which none of us understood anything
except that it would be an "all night job."
"But you can't work without the water-wheel, I suppose?" said Sir Ralph.
"And we've just heard from Joseph toiling away at a rival establishment,
that the water is taken off at eleven."
"This water won't be. I'm paying extra for it. As a great concession I'm
to have it all night. Joseph could have got it, too, if he'd had a
little forethought."
"Joseph and forethought! Never. And what is more, I don't think he'd
thank us for the information. He is rejoicing in the thought of an
excuse for bed."
"That's the difference between a chauffeur and a Chauffeulier," I
whispered to Maida.
"It's really very good of you to work so hard," said Mamma,
condescending to the blue blouse.
"I never enjoyed anything more in my life," replied its wearer, with a
quick glance towards Maida, which I intercepted. "The one drop of poison
in my cup is the thought of your discomfort," he went on, to us all.
"You must make them give you warming-pans anyhow, and be sure that the
beds are dry."
"I should think they're more like swamps than beds," said Mamma. "We
shall sit up rather than run any risk."
"Besides," I began, "there might be--"
"_Hush_, Beechy!" she indignantly cut me short.
"I was only going to say there might be--"
"You mustn't say it."
"Sofa birds."
"You naughty, dreadful child. I am astonished."
"Don't prig or vipe, Mamma. Sir Ralph, don't you think those are nice
abbreviations? I made them up myself. 'Prig', be priggish.' Vipe', be
viperish. Mamma's not at all nice when she's either."
"I think you're all wonderfully good-natured," remarked Mr. Barrymore
hastily. "You are the right sort of people for a motoring trip, and no
other sort ought to undertake one. Only men and women of fairly
venturesome dispositions, who revel in the unexpected, and love
adventure, who can find fun in hardships, and keep happy in the midst of
disappointments, should set out on such an expedition as this."
"In fact, _young_ people like ourselves," added Mamma, beaming again.
"Yes, young in heart, if not in body. I hope to be still motoring when
I'm eighty; but I shall feel a boy."
We left him hammering, and looking radiantly happy, which was more than
we were as we wandered back to the arcaded town and our hotel; but we
felt obliged to live up to the reputation Mr. Barrymore had just given
us.
Somehow, the Ten of Clubs and his assistant cards (there were no
chambermaids) had contrived to make a fire that didn't smoke, and the
bed linen looked clean, though coarse. Dinner--which we ate with our
feet on boards under the table, to keep them off the cold stone
floor--was astonishingly good, and we quite enjoyed grating cheese into
our soup on a funny little grater with which each one of us was
supplied. We had a delicious red wine with a little sparkle in it,
called Nebiolo, which Sir Ralph ordered because he thought we would like
it; and when we had finished dining, Mamma felt so much encouraged that
she spoke quite cheerfully of the coming night.
We went to our room early, as we were to start at eight next day, and
try to get on to Pavia and Milan. We had said nothing to the Prince
about the water-wheel, as it was not our affair to get Joseph into
trouble with his master; and I'm afraid that all of us except Mamma
derived a sinful amusement from the thought of His Highness's surprise
in the morning, at Alessandria or elsewhere. Even Maida's eyes twinkled
naughtily as he bade us "_au revoir_, till our start," kissing Mamma's
hand, and saying nothing of his night plans.
"I wonder, if we _could_ go to bed, after all?" soliloquized Mamma,
looking wistfully at the hard pillows and the red-cased down coverlets,
when we were in our room. "What was that Mr. Terrymore said about
warming-pans? I should have thought they were obsolete, except to hang
up on parlour walls."
"I should think nothing that was in use six hundred years ago, was
obsolete in an Italian town like this," said I. "Anyhow, I'll ring and
see."
I did ring, but nobody answered, of course, and I had to yell over the
top of the stairs for five minutes, when the Ten of Clubs appeared,
looking much injured, having evidently believed that he was rid of us
for the night.
He almost wept in his earnest endeavours to assure us that the bedding
was as dry and warm as the down on a swan's breast; but when Maida
insisted on warming-pans, he admitted that they existed in the house.
We were sleepy, but having ordered warming-pans which might stalk in at
any moment, we could not well begin to undress until they had been
produced and manipulated. We waited an hour, until we were nodding in
our chairs, and all started from a troubled doze at the sound of loud
knocking at the door.
In the passage outside stood four sad-faced young men of the card tribe,
bearing two large and extraordinary implements. One looked like a couple
of kitchen chairs lashed together foot to foot, to make a cage, or
frame, the space between being lined with sheets of metal. The other was
a great copper dish with big enough holes pricked in the cover to show
the red glow from a quantity of acrid smelling wood-ashes.
All four came into the room, solemn and silent, while we watched them,
struck dumb with amazement.
They set down the things on the floor, turned open the larger bed of the
two, which Mamma and I were to share, put in the huge frame, shoved the
copper bowl inside it, as a cook would shove a dish into the oven, and
replaced the covering. Then they stood and gravely waited for ten or
fifteen minutes, till they thought that the dampness had been cooked
out. We stood by also, momentarily expecting to see the bed break into
flames; but nothing happened, except rather a nice, hot smell. At last,
with one accord they flew at the blankets, turned them down, took out
dish and frame, and repeated the same process with Maida's narrow bunk.
It took us nearly an hour afterwards to get ready for bed, but when we
crept in at last it was like cuddling down in a hot bird's-nest, odorous
of cooked moss.
In the daytime we hadn't noticed that the hotel was particularly noisy,
though it apparently had most other vices; but ten o'clock seemed the
hour when all the activities of the house and town began.
Church bells boomed; electric bells rang; myriads of heavy carts rolled
through the stone-paved square; people sang, whistled, laughed,
gossipped, quarrelled, and even danced in the street under our windows,
while those in the hotel had apparently been advised by their physicians
to run up and down stairs for hours without stopping, for the good of
their livers.
It was a busy night for everybody, and my one consolation was in
planning the dreadful tortures I would inflict on the whole population
of Cuneo if I were King of Italy. I thought of some very original
things, but the worst of it was, when I did finally fall asleep I
dreamed that they were being tried on me.
XIII
A CHAPTER OF WILD BEASTS