My Friend the Chauffeur
things began to happen. The road, which had been splendid all the way to
Asti and beyond, seemed suddenly to weary of virtue and turn eagerly to
vice. It grew rutty and rough-tempered, and just because misfortunes
never come singly, every creature we met took it into its head to regard
us with horror. Fear of us spread like an epidemic through the animal
kingdom of the neighbourhood. A horse drawing a wagon-load of earth
turned tail, broke his harness as if it had been of cobweb instead of
old rope, and sprang lightly as a gazelle with all four feet into
another wagon just ahead. A donkey, ambling gently along the road,
suddenly made for the opposite side, dragging his fruit-laden cart after
him, and smashed our big acetylene lamp into a brass pancake before Mr.
Barrymore could stop. Children bawled; women, old and young, ran
screaming up embankments and tried to climb walls at the bare sight of
us in the distance; old men shook their sticks; and for a climax we
plunged deep into a tossing sea of cattle just outside Alessandria.
It was market day, the Chauffeulier explained hastily, over his
shoulder, and the farmers and dealers who had bought creatures of any
sort, were taking them away. As far as we could see through a floating
cloud of dust, the long road looked like a picture of the animals'
procession on their way to the ark. Our automobile might have stood for
the ark, only it is to be hoped, for Noah's sake, after all he was doing
for them, that the creatures behaved less rudely at sight of it, novelty
though it must have been.
Great white, classic-looking oxen whose horns ought to have been
wreathed with roses, but weren't, pawed the air, bellowing, or pranced
down into ditches, pulling their new masters with them. Calves ran here
and there like rabbits, while their mothers stood on their hind legs and
pirouetted, their biscuit-coloured faces haggard with despair.
Mamma said that never before had she given cows credit for such
sensitive spirits, but perhaps it was only Italian ones which were like
that, and if so she would not drink milk in Italy. She was very much
frightened, too; and talking of an automobile supplying bumps, her grip
on Sir Ralph's arm must have supplied a regular pattern of bruises,
during the animal episode.
But worse than the terrified beasts were the ones that were not
terrified. Those were the most stupidly stolid things on earth, or the
most splendidly reckless, we couldn't tell which; we knew only that they
were irritating enough to have made Job dance with rage, if he had had
an automobile. What they did was to wheel round at the sound of our
horn, plant themselves squarely in the centre of the road, and stand
waiting to see what we were, or else to trot comfortably along, without
even taking the trouble to glance over their shoulders. As the road was
too narrow for us to pass on either side, with an enormous ox lolling
insolently in the middle, refusing to budge an inch, or an absurd cow
taking infinite pains to amble precisely in front of the motor's nose,
we were frequently forced to crawl for ten or fifteen minutes at the
pace of a snail, or to stop altogether and push a large beast out of the
way.
By the time we got into Alessandria, with its mighty maze of
fortifications, I was so weak from laughing that I giggled hysterically
at sight of the Prince standing in the doorway of a hotel which we were
sailing past. I pointed at him, as Maida had pointed at Vittorio
Alfieri's tablet, and Mamma gave a welcome meant to drown my giggle. Mr.
Barrymore stopped, and His Highness came to the side of the car.
"I was so sorry to miss you this morning," he said, "but after bidding
you _au revoir_ last evening, I suddenly remembered that I had a friend
in Alessandria whom I had not seen for long, and it occurred to me that
I would pay him a visit. After all, I might have saved myself the pain,
as I found that he was away."
"At least you saved yourself the pain of a bad night," said I.
"Oh, that would have been nothing," he exclaimed. "Indeed, if there were
hardships to be borne, I would have preferred to share them with you."
I don't know what would have happened at that moment if I'd met Maida's
eyes, or Sir Ralph's eyes, or indeed, any eyes on the prowl; but all
avoided mine.
The Prince was expecting, or said that he was expecting Joseph to arrive
at any instant with the car. Then he would follow us, and as we planned
to stop at Pavia and he did not, he would be in Milan before us. We had
suffered so many delays at the hands, or rather the hoofs of our
four-footed brethren, that we had no time to waste in compliments with
irrelevant Princes, so we quickly sped on again as well as the uneven
road would allow, leaving behind the big fortified town which Mr.
Barrymore said had been built by the Lombard League (whatever that was)
as a place of arms to defy the tyranny of the Emperors.
Though the road was poor, except in bits, and gave us all the bumps
mentioned in Sir Ralph's rules, the country was lovely and loveable.
Grapes, mulberries, rice, and stuff called maize, which looked exactly
like our American corn, grew together like a happy family of sisters,
and from the hills dotted about, more thickly than Mamma's crowns on her
toilet things, looked down old feudal castles as melancholy as the
cypresses that stood beside them, like the sole friends of their
adversity.
Of Tortona and Voghera I carried away only the ghost of an impression,
for we darted through their long main streets, deserted in the noon-tide
hour, and darted out again onto the straight white ribbon of road that
was leading us across all Northern Italy. It was so dusty that Mamma,
Maida, and I put on the motor-veils we had discarded after the first few
hours of the trip till now; things made of pongee silk, with windows of
talc over our eyes and little lace doors for our breath to pass through.
It was fun when we would slacken speed in some town or village, to see
how the young Italians tried to pry into the motor-masks' secrets and
find out if we were pretty. How much more they would have stared at
Maida than at her two grey-clad companions, if they had known! But
behind the pongee and the talc, for once our features could flaunt
themselves on an equality with hers. Even monks, brown of face and
robe, gliding noiselessly through wide market places in the blue shadows
of hoary campaniles, searched those talc windows of ours with a
curiosity that was pathetic. Young officers, with great dark eyes and
slender figures tightly buttoned-up in grey-blue uniforms, visibly
preened themselves as the car with the three veiled ladies would sweep
round a corner; and really I think there must be something rather
alluring about a passing glance from a pair of eyes in a face that will
always remain a mystery. If I were a man I believe I should find it so.
Anyway, it's fun for a girl to guess how she would feel about things if
she were a man. I suppose though, we 're generally wrong.
After we 'd frightened enough horses and other domestic animals to
overstock the whole of Northern Italy and felt quite old in consequence
(considerably over thirteen), a sweet peace fell suddenly upon us. We
had passed the place where Napoleon's great battle was fought, and
Voghera, where we might have stopped to see the baths but didn't,
because we were all too hungry to be sincerely interested in anything
absolutely unconnected with meals. Then turning towards Pavia, we turned
at the same moment into Arcadia. There were no more beasts in our path,
unless it was a squirrel or two; there were no houses, no people; there
was only quiet country, with a narrow but deliciously smooth road,
colonies of chestnut and acacia trees, and tall growths of scented
grasses and blossoming grain. It was more like a by-path through meadows
than an important road leading to a great town, and Mr. Barrymore had
begun to wonder aloud if he could possibly have made a mistake at some
cross-way, when we spun round a corner, and saw before us a wide yellow
river. It lay straight in front, and we had to pass to the other side on
the oddest bridge I ever saw; just old grey planks laid close together
on top of a long, long line of big black boats that moved up and down
with a lazy motion as the golden water of the Po flowed underneath.
"This is a famous bridge," said the Chauffeulier; so Mamma hurried to
get out her camera and take a picture, while we picked our way daintily
over the wobbly boards at a foot pace; and another of the man at the far
end, who made us pay toll--so much for each wheel, so much for each
passenger. Maida never takes photographs. She says she likes better just
to keep a picture-gallery in her brain. Mamma always takes them, but as
she usually has three or four on the same film, making a jumble of
Chicago street-cars with Italian faces, legs, and sun-dials, as
intricate as an Irish stew, I don't see that in the end they will be
much of an ornament to the journal of travel we're all keeping.
"This is where the Po and the Ticino meet, so we're near Pavia," Mr.
Barrymore told us; and if our eyes brightened behind our masks, it
wasn't so much with interest in his information, as at the thought of
lunch. For we were to lunch at Pavia, before seeing the Certosa that
Maida had been talking about for hours with the Chauffeulier; and before
us, as we crossed the Ticino--bridged by a dear, old, arching,
wooden-roofed thing supported with a hundred granite columns--bubbled
and soared a group of grey domes and campaniles against a turquoise sky.
The roofed bridge, that seemed to be a lounging place and promenade, led
into a stately city, which impressed me as a regular factory for turning
out Italian history, so old it was, and so conscious, in a dignified
kind of way, of its own impressiveness. I felt sure that, if I could
only remember, I must have studied heaps of things about this place at
school; and the town was full of students who were probably studying
them, with more profit, now. They were very Italian, very good-looking,
very young youths, indeed; and they were all so interested in us that it
seemed ungrateful not to pay more attention to them than to their
background. They grouped round our automobile with a crowd of less
interesting people, when we had stopped before a hotel, and some of the
students came so close in the hope of seeing what was behind the
motor-veils, that Maida was embarrassed, and Mamma and I pretended to
be.
XIV
A CHAPTER OF SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
Mamma's lunch was spoiled because, in pronouncing "campanile" for the
first time, she rhymed it with the river Nile, and realized what she had
done when some one else soon after inadvertently said it in the right
way. She didn't get over this for a long time, so the landlord profited,
and must have been pleased, as all the Italians at the table d'hote took
twice of everything. Those who were not officers were middle-aged men
with fat smiles which made them look like what I call "drummers," and
Sir Ralph wastes time in naming commercial travellers. He and Mr.
Barrymore explained that, at all these quiet provincial hotels with
their domed roofs and painted ceilings, their long tables and great
flasks of wine hung in metal slings, more than half the customers come
every day to eat steadily through cheap monthly subscriptions.
"They can live like fighting cocks for next to nothing," said Sir Ralph.
"If _The Riviera Sun_ ever suffers an eclipse, I shall probably end my
days in a place like this, Pavia for choice, because then I can make my
friends at home believe that I live here to worship the Certosa."
Now to make up for her slip about the campanile, Mamma began to talk
about the Certosa as if it were an intimate friend of hers; but though