CHAPTER XVII
LADY TURNOUR opened her heart and her wardrobe and gave me a blouse the first thing in the morning, which act of generosity was the more remarkable as morning is not her best time. I have found that it is the early maid who catches the first snub, which otherwise might fall innocuously upon a husband. The blouse was one which I had heard her ladyship say she hated; but then her idea of true charity, combined, as it should be, with economy, is always to give to the poor what you would n't be found dead in yourself, because it is more blessed to give than to receive badly made things. On the same principle I immediately passed the gift on to a chambermaid of the hotel, who perhaps in her turn dropped it a grade lower in the social scale, and so it may go on forever, blouse without end; but all that is apart from the point. The important part of the transaction was the token that the dead past was to bury its dead; and possibly Sir Samuel timidly offered a waistcoat or a pair of boots to the chauffeur.
Instead of lying in bed, as Lady Turnour had threatened to do for a week, she was up earlier than usual, as well as ever she had been, and not more than half as disagreeable. Although the sky looked as if it might burst into tears at any moment, and although Orange has nothing but historic remains and historic records to show, she was ready to start, almost cheerfully, at ten o'clock.
I was allowed to be of the party, laden with mackintoshes for my master and mistress; and I did n't admire the triumphal arch at Orange nearly as much as I had admired the smaller and older one at St. Remy. But Lady Turnour admired it far more, and was so nice to Sir Samuel that he thought it the arch of the world. They put their heads together over the same volume of Baedeker, which was an exquisite pleasure to the poor man, and he was so pathetic I could have cried into his footsteps, as he read (pronouncing almost everything wrong) about the building of the Arch of Tiberius. "Why, that 's just like a sweet little statuette I used to have standing on a table in my drawing-room window!" exclaimed Lady Turnour, looking up at the beautiful Winged Victory. "You might think it was a copy!"
Although the histories say Orange was n't very important in Roman days, it has taken revenge by letting everything not Roman fall into decay, except, of course, its memories of the family through which William the Silent of Holland became William of Orange. The house of the first William of Orange, the hero of song who rode back wounded from Roncesvalles to his waiting wife, is gone now, save for a wall and a buttress or two on a lonely hill of the old town; yet the arch, which was old when his château was begun, still towers dark yellow as tarnished Etruscan gold against the sky; and the Roman theatre is the grandest out of Italy. Lady Turnour could not see why the Comédie Française should produce plays there, even once a year, when they could do it so much more comfortably at any modern theatre in the provinces if they must travel; and as to the gathering of the Felibres, she did n't even know what Felibres were, nor did she care, as she was unlikely to meet any in society. She would have proposed going on somewhere else, as there was so "little to see in Orange," but that rain came sweeping down, cold from the east, when I had followed the pair a quarter of a mile from the motor. They fled into their mackintoshes as a hermit-crab flees into his borrowed shell, and I was the only one the worse for wear when we reached the car. I did n't much mind the wetting, but it was rather nice to be fussed over by a brother, and forced into a coat of his, whether I liked or not. "The quality" must have seen me in it, through the glass, but Lady Turnour ignored the sight. Altogether, everything was agreeable, and the thunder-storm of last night, in clearing, had turned us into quite a happy family party.
It rained all day, and I sat in my room before a blazing fire of olive wood which a dear old waiter, exactly like a confidential servant of a pope, bestowed upon me out of sheer Provençal good nature. As he 's been in the hotel for thirty years, he is a privileged person, and can do what he likes.
Lady Turnour gave me a pile of stockings to look over, lest Satan should find some more ornamental use for my idle hands; so I asked Mr. Dane for his socks too; and pretended that I should consider it a slight upon my skill if he refused.
That was our last night at Avignon, and early in the morning I packed for Arles, where we would sleep. But on the way we stopped at Tarascon, so splendid with its memories of Du Guesclin, and the towers of King René's great chateau reflected in a water-mirror, that no Tartarin could be blamed if he were born with a boasting spirit. And there are other things in Tarascon for its Tartarins to be proud of, besides the noble old castle where King René used to spend his springs and summers when he was tired of living in state at Aix. There is the church of Saint Martha, and the beautiful Hotel de Ville, and—almost best of all for its quaintness, though far from beautiful—the great Tarasque lurking in a dark and secret lair.
We could n't go into the château, but perhaps it was better to see it only from the outside, and remember it always in a crystal picture, framed with the turquoise of the sky. Besides, not going in gave us more time for Beaucaire, just across the river—Beaucaire of the Fair; Beaucaire of sweet Nicolete and her faithful lover Aucassin.
I know a song about Nicolete of the white feet and hair of yellow gold, and I sang it below my breath, sitting beside my brother Jack, as we crossed the bridge. Although I sang so softly, he heard, and turned to me for an instant. "You can sing!" he said.
"You don't like singing," I suggested.
"Only better than most things—that 's all."
"Yet you did n't want me to sing the other night."
"That was because your hair was down. I couldn't stand both together."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you? All the better. Never mind trying to guess. Let 's think about the fair. Would n't you have liked to come here in the days when it was one of the greatest shows in all France?"
"I could n't have come in a motor then."
"You 're getting to be an enthusiast. You 'll have to marry a millionaire with at least a forty-horse-power car."
"I happen to be running away from one now, in a sixty-horse-power car. But I don't want to think of him in this romantic country. The idea of Corn Plasters, near the garden where Nicolete's little feet tripped among the daisies by moonlight, is too appalling."
"Up on the hill are the towers of the castle where Aucassin was in prison for his love of Nicolete," said the chauffeur. "If only I can induce them to go there, and walk in the garden on the battlements! It 's beautiful, full of great perfumed Provençal roses, and quantities of fleur-de-lys growing wild under pine trees and peering out of formal yew hedges. You never saw anything quite like it. Oh, I must manage the thing somehow."
"I think you could, in their present mood," said I. "They 're quite properly honey-moony since the storm, which was a blessing in disguise. They 'll go up, and feel romantic and young; but as for me ⸺"
"You 'll go up, and be the things they can only feel. I should like to go with you there ⸺" he broke off, looking wistful.
"Oh, do get some one to guard the car, and come," I begged him. "You 've seen it all before?"
"Yes."
"You look as if the place had sentimental memories for you." He smiled. "There is a sentiment attaching to it. Some day I may tell you ⸺" he stopped again. "No, I don't think I 'll do that."
Suddenly the thought of the garden was spoiled for me. I imagined that, in happier days, he must have walked there with a girl he loved. Perhaps he loved her still, only misfortune had come to him, and they could not marry. In that case, I 'd been misjudging him, maybe. His bluntnesses and abruptnesses and coldnesses did n't mean that the compartments were "love-tight," as I 'd fancied, but that they were already full to overflowing.
He did induce the Turnours to see the garden on the old battlements, and he did find a suitable watch-dog for the car in order to be my companion. And he was less self-conscious and happier in his manner than he had been since the first day or two of our acquaintance. Also the garden, starred with spring flowers, was even more lovely than I had expected. I ought to have enjoyed every moment there; but—it is never pleasant to be with a man when you think he is wishing that you were another girl.
"Was she pretty?" I couldn't resist asking.
For an instant he looked bewildered; then he understood. "Very," he replied, smiling. "About the prettiest girl I ever saw. The description of Nicolete would fit her very well. 'The clear face, delicately fine,' and all that. But I don't let my mind dwell much on girls in these days, when I can help it, as you can well imagine."
"And when you can't help it?" I wanted to know.
"Oh, when I can't help it, I feel like a bear with a sore head, and no honey in my hollow tree."
So that is why he is so disagreeable, sometimes! He is thinking of the girl of the battlemented garden at Beaucaire. I shall try and find out all about her; but I don't know that I shall feel better satisfied when I have.