The Motor Maid Part 11

Mr. Bane or Dane didn't dare to glance at me. With perfect gravity he translated the guide's best bits, enlarging upon them here and there in a way which showed that he had independent knowledge of his own. And it was a feather in his cap that his eloquence eventually interested Lady Turnour. She made him tell her again how Frejus was Claustra Gallae to Caesar, and how it was the "Caput" for this part of the wonderful Via Aurelia, which started at Rome, never ending until it came to Arles.

"Why, we've been to Rome, and we're going to Arles," she exclaimed. "We can tell people we've been over the whole of the Via Aurelia, can't we?

We needn't mention that the automobile didn't arrive till after we got to Cannes. And anyway, you say there were once theatres there, and at Antibes, like the one at Frejus, so we've been making a kind of Roman pilgrimage all along, if we'd only known it."

"It is considered quite the thing to do, in Roman amphitheatres, to make a tour of the prisoners' cells and gladiators' dressing-rooms, the guide says," insinuated the chauffeur. And then, when the bride and bridegroom, reluctant but conscientious, were swimming round the vast bowl of masonry, like tea-leaves floating in a great cup, he turned to me.

"Why don't you thank me?" he inquired. "I was doing it for you. I knew you hated to miss all this, and I saw she meant to go on, so I intervened, in the only way I could think of, to touch her."

"If you're always as clever as that, I don't see why this shouldn't be _our_ trip," I said. "That will be a consolation."

"I'm afraid you'll often need more consolation than that," he answered.

"Lady Turnour is--as the Americans say--a pretty 'stiff proposition.'"

"Still, if you can hypnotize her into going to all the places, and stopping to look at all the nicest things, this will at least be a cheap automobile tour for us both."

I laughed, but he didn't; and I was sorry, for I thought I deserved a smile. And he has a nice one, with even white teeth in it, and a wistful sort of look in his eyes at the same time: a really interesting smile.

I wondered what he was thinking about that made him look so grave; but I conceitedly felt that it was something concerning me--or the situation of us both.

CHAPTER VIII

The tidal wave of pines followed us as, having had one glance at the Porte Doree, we left Frejus, old and new, behind. It followed us out of gay little St. Raphael, lying in its alluvial plain of flowers, and on along the coast past which the s.h.i.+ps of Augustus Caesar used to sail.

Not in my most starry dreams could I have fancied a road as beautiful as that which opened to us soon, winding above the dancing water.

Graceful dryad pines knelt by the wayside, stretching out their arms to the sea, where charming little bays shone behind enlacing branches, blue as the eyes of a wood-nymph gleaming shyly through the brown tangle of her hair. Pine balsam mingled with the bitter-sweet perfume of almond blossom, and caught a pungent tang of salt from the wind.

What romance--what beauty! It made me in love with life, just to pa.s.s this way, and know that so much hidden loveliness existed. I glanced furtively over my shoulder at the couple whose honeymoon it is--our master and mistress. Lady Turnour sat nodding in the conservatory atmosphere of her gla.s.s cage, and Sir Samuel was earnestly choosing a cigar.

Suddenly it struck me that Providence must have a vast sense of humour, and that the little inhabitants of this earth, high and low, must afford It a great deal of benevolent amus.e.m.e.nt.

All too soon we swept out of the forest, straight into a little town, St. Maxime, with a picturesque port of its own, where red-sailed fis.h.i.+ng boats lolled as idly as the dark-eyed young men in cafes near the sh.o.r.e.

A few tourists walking out from the hotel on the hill gazed rather curiously at us in our fine blue car; and we gazed away from them, across a sapphire gulf, to the distant houses of St. Tropez, banked high against a promontory of emerald.

I should have liked to run on to St. Tropez, for I knew his pretty legend; how he was one of the guards of St. Paul in prison, and was converted by the eloquence of his captive; but the chauffeur said that, after La Foux (famed home of miniature horses) the coast road would lose its surface of velvet. It would be laced in and out with crossings of a local railway line, and there would be so many b.u.mps that Lady Turnour was certain to wake up very cross.

"For your sake I don't want to make her cross," said he, and turned inland; but the way was no less beautiful. The pines were tired of running after us, but great cork trees marched beside the road, like an army of crusaders in disarray, half in, half out, of armour. Above, rose the Mountains of the Moors, whose very name seemed to ring with the distant echo of a Saracen war song; and here and there, on a bare, wild hillside, towered all that was left of some ancient castle, fallen into ruin. Cogolin was fine, and Grimaud was even finer.

Up a steep ascent, through shadowy forests we had pa.s.sed, now and then coming suddenly upon a little red-roofed village nestling among the trees as a strawberry among its leaves, when abruptly we flashed out where s.p.a.ces of sky and silver sea opened. Between hills that seemed to sweep a curtsey to us, we flew down an apple-paring road toward Hyeres.

The Turnours had lunched, if not wisely, probably too well, at Valescure about one o'clock, and it wasn't yet four; but the air at the beautiful Costebelle hotels is said to be perpetually glittering with Royalties and other bright beings of the great world, so her ladys.h.i.+p wouldn't have been persuaded to miss the place.

Not that anyone tried to persuade her, for the two powers behind the throne (and in front of the car) wanted to go--not to see the Royalties, but the beauties of Costebelle itself.

We slipped gently through the town of Hyeres, whose avenues of giant palms looked like great sea anemones turned into trees, and then spurted up a hill into a vast and fragrant grove that smelled of a thousand flowers. In the grove stood three hotels, with wide views over jade-green lagoons to an indigo sea; and at the most charming of the trio we stopped.

Nothing was said about tea for the two servants, but while the "quality"

had theirs on an exquisite terrace, the chauffeur brought a steaming cup to me, as I sat in the car.

"This was given me for my _beaux yeux_," he said, "but I don't want any tea, so please take it, and don't let it be wasted."

I was convinced that he had paid for that cup of tea with coin harder if not brighter than the _beaux yeux_ in question; but it would have hurt his feelings if I had refused, therefore I drank the tea and thanked the giver.

"You are being very kind to me," I said, "Mr. Bane or Dane; so do you mind telling me which it is?"

"Dane," he replied shortly. "Not that it matters. A chauffeur by any other name would smell as much of oil and petrol. It's actually my real name, too. Are you surprised? I was either too proud or too stubborn to change it--I'm not sure which--when I took up 'shuvving' for a livelihood."

"No, I'm not surprised," I said. "You don't look like the sort of man who would change his name as if it were a coat. I've kept mine, too, to 'maid' with. You 'shuv,' I 'maid.' It sounds like an exercise in a strange language."

"That's precisely what it is," he answered. "A difficult language to learn at first, but I'm getting the 'hang' of it. I hope you won't need to pursue the study very thoroughly."

"And you think you will?"

"I think so," he said, his face hardening a little, and looking dogged.

"I don't see any way out of it for the present."

I was silent for almost a whole minute--which can seem a long time to a woman--half hoping that he meant to tell me something about himself; how it was that he'd decided to be a professional chauffeur, and so on. I was sure there must be a story, an interesting story--perhaps a romantic one--and if he confided in me, I would in him. Why not, when--on my part, at least--there's nothing to conceal, and we're bound to be companions of the Road for weal or woe? But if he felt any temptation to be expansive he resisted it, like a true Englishman; and to break a silence which grew almost embarra.s.sing I was driven to ask him, quite brazenly, if he had no curiosity to know my name.

"Not exactly curiosity," said he, smiling his pleasant smile again. "I'm never curious about people I--like, or feel that I'm going to like. It isn't my nature."

"It's just the opposite with me."

"We're of opposite s.e.xes."

"You believe that explains it? I don't know. Man may be a fellow creature, I suppose--though they didn't teach me that at the Convent.

But tell me this: even if you have no curiosity, because you hope you can manage to endure me, _do_ you think I look like an 'Elise'?"

"Somehow, you don't. Names have different colours for me. Elise is bright pink. You ought to be silver, or pale blue."

"Elise is my professional name; Lady Turnour is my sponsor. My real name's Lys--Lys d'Angely."

"Good! Lys _is_ silver."

"I wish I could coin it. Let me see if I can guess what you ought to be?

You look like--like--well, Jack would suit you. But that's too good to be true. I shall never meet a 'Jack' except in books and ballads."

"My name is John Claud. But when I was a boy, I always fought any chap who called me 'Claud,' and tried to give him a black eye or a b.l.o.o.d.y nose. You may call me Jack, if you like."

"Certainly not. I shall call you Mr. Dane."

"Shuvvers are never mistered."

"Not even by the females of their kind? I always supposed that manners were very toploftical in the servants' hall."

"We may both soon know."