CHAPTER XI

I decided to have my breakfast very early next morning, and would have thought it a coincidence that Mr. Dane should walk into the couriers' room at the same time if he hadn't coolly told me that he had been lying in wait for me to appear.

"I thought, for several reasons, you would be early," he said. "So, for all the same reasons and several more, I thought I'd be early too. I had to know what the situation was to be."

"The situation?" I repeated blankly.

"Between us. Am I to understand that we've quarrelled?"

"We had," I said. "But even on good grounds, it's difficult to keep on quarrelling with a person who has not only brought up your dinner and sauced it with good advice, but saved you from—from the dickens of a scrape."

"I hope she didn't row you any more afterward?"

"No. She was too much interested, all the time I was undressing her, in speculating about Monsieur Charretier to Sir Samuel. It seems that they struck up an acquaintance over their coffee on the strength of a little episode in the hall.

"Inadvertently I introduced them—threw them at each others' heads. Monsieur Charretier—Alphonse, as he once asked me to call him!—told her he was on his way to Cannes, where he heard that a friend of his, whom it was very necessary for him to see, was visiting a Russian Princess. He had stopped in Avignon, he said, because he was expecting the latest news of the friend, a change of address, perhaps; and—I don't know who proposed it, but anyway he arranged to go with Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour to the Palace of the Popes at ten o'clock. Her ladyship was quite taken with him, and remarked to Sir Samuel that there was nothing so fascinating as a French gentleman of the haut monde. Also she pronounced his broken English 'sweet.' She wondered if he was married, and whether the friend in Cannes was a woman or a man. Little did she know that her maid could have enlightened her! Their joining forces here is, as my American friend Pamela would say, 'the limit.'"

"Don't worry. The Palace of the Popes won't see him to-day," said the chauffeur. "He's gone. Got a telegram. Didn't even wait for letters, but told the manager to forward anything that came for him, Poste Restante, Genoa."

"Oh, then you—"

"Acted for you on my own responsibility. There was nothing else to do, if anything were to be done; and you'd seemed to fall in with my suggestion. It would have been a pity, I thought, if your visit to Avignon were to be spoiled by a thing like that."

"Meaning Monsieur Charretier? I hardly slept last night for dwelling on the pity of it."

"It's all right, then? I haven't put my foot into it?"

"Your foot! You've put your brains into it. You said the other night that I had presence of mind. It was nothing to yours."

"All's forgotten and forgiven, then?"

"It's forgotten that there was anything to forgive."

"And the 'motor maid' business? You didn't think it too clumsy?"

"I thought it most ingenious."

"It wasn't a lie, you know. I haven't a happy talent for lying. I do, or rather did when I had nothing else on hand, send occasional sketches to a paper. But the more I look at my 'motor maid,' the more I feel I should like to keep her—in my sketch-book—if you're willing I should have her?"

"Then I don't get my promised five shillings?" I laughed.

"I'll try and make up the loss to you in some other way."

"I have you to thank that I didn't lose my situation. So the debt is on my side."

"You owe me the scolding you got. I oughtn't to have lured you into the corridor."

"It was on my business. And there was no other way."

"It was my business to have thought of some other way."

"Are you your sister's keeper?"

"I wish I—Look here, mademoiselle ma soeur, I'm all out of repartees. Perhaps I shall be better after breakfast. I shall be able to eat, now that I know you've forgiven me."

"I don't believe you would care if I hadn't," I exclaimed. "You are so stolid, so phlegmatic, you Englishmen!"

"Do you think so? Well, it would have been a little awkward for me to have taken you about on a sightseeing expedition this morning if we were at daggers drawn—no matter how appropriate the situation might have been to Avignon manners of the Middle Ages, when everybody was either torturing everybody else or fighting to the death."

"Are you going to take me about?"

"That's for you to say."

"Isn't it for Lady Turnour to say?"

"Sir Samuel told me last night that I shouldn't be wanted till two o'clock, as he was going to see the town with her ladyship. He wanted to know if we could sandwich in something else this afternoon, as he considered a whole day too much for one place. I suggested Vaucluse for the afternoon, as it's but a short spin from Avignon, and I just happened to mention that her ladyship might find use for you there, to follow her to the fountain with extra wraps in case of mistral. I thought, of all places you'd hate to miss Vaucluse. And we're to come back here for the night."

I feared that Monsieur Charretier's sudden disappearance might upset the Turnours' plans, but Mr. Dane didn't think so. He had impressed it upon Sir Samuel that no motorist who had not thoroughly "done" Avignon and Vaucluse would be tolerated in automobiling circles.

He was right in his surmise, and though her ladyship was vexed at losing a new acquaintance whom it would have been "nice to know in Paris," she resigned herself for the morning to the society of husband and Baedeker. It was kind old Sir Samuel's proposal that I should be left free to do some sight-seeing on my own account while they were gone (I had meant to break my own shackles); and though my lady laughed to scorn the idea that a girl of my class should care for historical associations, she granted me liberty provided I utilized it in buying her certain stay-laces, shoe-strings, and other small horrors for which no woman enjoys shopping.

When she and Sir Samuel were out of the way, as safely disposed of as Monsieur Charretier himself, I felt so extravagantly happy in reaction, after all my worries, that I danced a jig in her ladyship's sacred bedchamber.

Then I prepared to start for my own personally conducted expedition; and this time I took no great pains to do my hair unbecomingly. Naturally, I didn't want to be a jarring note in harmonious Avignon, so I made myself look rather attractive for my jaunt with the chauffeur.

He was sauntering casually about the Place before the hotel, where long ago Marshal Brune was assassinated, and we walked away together as calmly as if we had been followed by a whole drove of well-trained chaperons. When one has joined the ranks of the lower classes, one might as well reap some advantages from the change!

"What we'll do," said Mr. Dane, "is to look first at all the things the Turnours are sure to look at last. By that plan we shall avoid them, and as I know my way about Avignon pretty well, you may set your mind at rest."

I can think of nothing more delightful than a day in Avignon, with an agreeable brother and—a mind at rest. I had both, and made the most of them.

When her ladyship's shoe-strings and stay-laces were off my mind and in my coat pocket, we wandered leisurely about the modern part of the wonderful town, which has been busier through the centuries in making history than almost any other in France. Seen by daylight, I no longer resented the existence of a new—comparatively new—Avignon. The pretty little theatre, with its dignified statues of Corneill and Moliere, seemed to invite me kindly to go in and listen to a play by the splendidly bewigged gentlemen sitting in stone chairs on either side of the door. The clock tower with its "Jacquemart" who stiffly struck the quarter hours with an automatic arm, while his wife criticized the gesture, commanded me to stop and watch his next stroke; and the curiosity shops offered me the most alluring bargains. People we met seemed to have plenty of time on their hands, and to be very good-natured, as if rich Provencal cooking agreed with their digestions.

Sure that the Turnours would be at the Palace of the Popes or in the Cathedral, we went to the Museum, and searched in vain among a riot of Roman remains for the tomb of Petrarch's Laura, which guide-books promised. In the end we had to be satisfied with a memorial cross made in the lovely lady's honour by order of some romantic Englishmen.

"Yet you say we're stolid and phlegmatic!" muttered Mr. Dane, as he read the inscription. (Evidently that remark had rankled.)

We had not a moment to waste, but the Turnours had to be avoided; so my brother proposed that we combine profit with prudence, and take a cab along the road leading out to Port St. Andre. Where the ancient tower of Philippe le Bel crowns a lower slope I should have my first sight of that grim mountain of architecture, the Palace of the Popes. It was the best place from which to see it, if its real grandeur were to be appreciated, he said—or else to go to Villeneuve, across the Rhone, which we dared not steal time to do; but the Turnours were certain not to think of anything so esoteric in the way of sight-seeing.

The vastness of the stupendous mass of brick and stone took my breath away for an instant, as I raised my eyes to look up, on a signal of "Now!" from Mr. Dane. It seemed as if all the history, not alone of Old Provence, but of France, might be packed away behind those tremendous buttresses.

Of what romances, what tragedies, what triumphs, and what despairs could those huge walls and towers tell, if the echoes whispering through them could crystallize into words!

There Queen Jeanne of Naples—that fateful Marie Stuart of Provence—stood in her youth and beauty before her accusers, knowing she must buy her pardon, if for pardon she could hope. There the wretched Bishop of Cahors suffered tortures incredible for plots his enemies vowed he had conceived against the Pope. There came messages from Western Kings and Eastern Emperors; there Bertrand du Guesclin, my favourite hero, was excommunicated: and there great Rienzi lay in prison.

"Now I think we might risk going to the Palace," said Mr. Dane, when we had stood gazing in silence for more minutes than we could well afford. So we made haste back, and walked up to the Rochers des Doms, where we lurked cautiously in the handsome modern gardens, glorying in the view over the old and new bridges, and to far off Villeneuve, where the Man in the Iron Mask was first imprisoned. When we had admired the statue of Althen the Persian, with his hand full of the beneficent madder that did so much for Provence, we were rewarded for our patience by seeing Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour rush out from the Papal Palace, looking furious.

"They look like that, because they've been inside," said the chauffeur. "Their souls aren't artistic enough to resent consciously the ruin and degradation of the place, but even they can be depressed by the hideous whitewashed barracks which were once splendid rooms, worthy of kings. You will look as they do if you go in."

"I hope my cheeks wouldn't be dark purple and my nose a pale lilac!" I exclaimed.

"You're twenty, at most, and Lady Turnour's forty-five, at least," said my brother. "You can stand the pinch of Mistral; but the inside of that noble old pile is enough to turn the hair gray. It would be much more original to let your imagination draw the picture."

"Then I will!" I cried, knowing that nothing pleases a man more in a girl than taking his advice. By the lateness of the hour we judged that the Turnours must have visited the Cathedral before they "did" the Palace, so we went boldly on to Notre Dame des Doms, beloved of Charlemagne.

No wonder, I said, that he had thought it worth restoring from the ruins Saracens had left! Nothing could be more glorious than the situation of the historic church, once first in importance, perhaps, in all Christendom; and nothing could be more purely classic than the west porch. We strained the muscles of our necks staring up at ancient, fading frescoes, and rested them again in gazing at famous tombs; then it was time to go, if we were not to start for Vaucluse too hungry to feed satisfactorily on thoughts of Laura and Petrarch.

"Now to our own trough with the other beasts," I sighed. "What an anti-climax! From the cathedral to the couriers' dining-room."

"I thought that we might have our own private trough, just this once, if you don't object," said the chauffeur, almost wistfully. "It would be a shame to spoil the memory of a perfect morning, wouldn't it, so don't you think you might accept my humble invitation?"

I hesitated.

"Is it conventionality or economy that gives you pause?" he asked. "If it's the latter, or rather a regard for my pocket, your conscience can be easy. My pocket feels heavy and my heart light to-day. I remember a little restaurant not far off where they do you in great style for a franc or two. Will you come with me?"

He looked quite eager, and I felt myself unable to resist temptation. "Yes," said I, "and thank you."

A biting wind, more like March than flowery April, nearly blew us down into the town, and I was glad to find shelter in the warm, clean little restaurant.

"Is my nose lilac after all?" I inquired, when a dear old smiling waiter had trotted off with our order, murmuring benevolently, "Doude de zuide, M'sieur," like a true compatriot of Tartarin.

"A faint pink from the cheeks is undeniably reflected upon it," admitted the chauffeur. "We're going to be let in for a cold snap as we get up north," he went on. "I read in the papers this morning that there's been a 'phenomenal fall of snow for the season' on the Cevennes and the mountains of Auvergne. Do you weaken on the Gorges of the Tarn now I've told you that?"

"Mine not to reason why. Mine but to do or die," I transposed, smiling with conspicuous bravery.

"Not at all. It's yours to choose. I haven't even broken the Gorges, yet, to the slaves of my hypnotic powers. I warn you that, if all the papers say about snow is true, we may have adventures on the way. Would you rather—"

"I'd rather have the adventures," I broke in, and had as nearly as possible added "with you," but I stopped myself in time.

We lunched more gaily than double-dyed millionaires, and afterward, while my host was paying away his hard-earned francs for our food, I slipped out of the restaurant and into a little shop I had noticed close by. The window was full of odds and ends, souvenirs of Avignon; and there were picture-postcards, photographs, and coins with heads of saints on them. In passing, on the way to lunch, I'd noticed a silver St. Christopher, about the size of a two-franc piece; and as the Aigle carries the saint like a figure-head, a glittering, golden statuette six or seven inches high, I had guessed that St. Christopher must have been chosen to fill the honourable position of patron saint for motors and motorists.

"What's the price of that?" I asked, pointing to the coin.

It was ten francs, a good deal more than I could afford, more than half my whole remaining fortune. "Could not madame make it a little cheaper?" I pleaded with the fat lady whose extremely aquiline nose proclaimed that she had no personal interest in saints. But no, madame could not make it cheaper; the coin was of real silver, the figure well chased; a recherche little pocket-piece, and a great luck-bringer for anybody connected with the automobile. No accident would presume to happen to one who carried that on his person. Madame had, however, other coins of St. Christopher, smaller coins in white metal which could scarcely be told from silver. If mademoiselle wished to see them—

But mademoiselle did not wish to see them. It would be worse than nothing to give a base imitation. Instead of feeling flattered, St. Christopher would have a right to be annoyed, and perhaps to punish. Recklessly I passed across the counter ten francs, and made the coveted saint mine. Then I darted out, just in time to meet Mr. Dane at the door of the restaurant.

"This is for you," I said. "It's to give you luck."

I pressed the coin into his hand, and he looked at it on his open palm. For an instant I was afraid he was going to make fun of it, and my superstition concerning it, which I couldn't quite deny if cross-questioned. But his smile didn't mean that.

"You've just bought this—to give to me?" he asked.

"Yes," I nodded.

"Why? Not because you want to 'pay me back' for asking you to lunch—or any such villainous thing, I hope, because—"

I shook my head. "I didn't think of that. I got it because I wanted to bring you luck."

Then he slipped the coin into an inside pocket of his coat. "Thank you," he said. "But didn't I tell you that you'd brought me something better than luck already?"

"What is better than luck?"

"An interest in life. And the privilege of being a brother."



CHAPTER XII

It would be a singularly hard-headed, cold-hearted person who could set out for Vaucluse without the smallest thrill; and hard heads and cold hearts don't "run in our family." As we spun away from the Hotel de l'Europe soon after two o'clock that afternoon I felt that I was largely composed of thrill. Cold as the wind had grown, the thrill kept me warm, mingling in my veins with ozone.

Inside the car the middle-aged honeymooners had an air of desperate resignation which the consciousness of doing their duty according to Baedeker gives to tourists. The tap was turned on in the newly invented heating-apparatus in the car floor, through which hot water from the radiator can be made to circulate; and I wondered, if this extreme measure were resorted to already, what would be left to do when we reached those high, white altitudes of which the chauffeur had been speaking. I prayed that Lady Turnour might not read in the papers about the "phenomenal fall of snow" in those regions, for if she did I was afraid that even Mr. Dane's magnetic powers of persuasion might fail to get her there. He might dangle Queen Margherita of Italy over her head in vain, if worst came to worst: for what are queens to the most inveterate tuft-hunters if the feet be cold? Yet now that "adventures" were vaguely prophesied, I felt I could not give up the promised gorges and mountains.

Out of Avignon we slid, past the old, old ramparts and the newer but impressive walls, and turned at the right into the Marseilles road. "Vaucluse!" said a kilometre-stone, and then another and another repeated that enchanted and enchanting word, as we flew onward between the Rhone and the Durance.

This was our own old way again, as far as the Pont de Bonpas; then our road wound to the northeast, away from the world we knew—I said to myself—and into a world of romance, a world created by the love of Petrarch for Laura, and sacred to those two for ever more.

The ruined castle, with machicolated towers and haughty buttresses, on the great rampart of a hill, was for me the porter's lodge at the entrance gate of an enchanted garden, where poetic flowers of love bloomed through seasons and centuries; laurels, roses, and lilies, and pansies for remembrance. We didn't see those flowers with our bodies' eyes, but what of that? What did it matter that to the Turnours in their splendid glass cage this was just a road, with queer little gnome dwellings scooped out of solid rock to redeem it from common-placeness, with a fringe of deserted cottages farther on, and some ugly brickworks? My spirit's eyes saw the flowers, and they clustered thicker and brighter about Pieverde, where I insisted to Mr. Dane that Laura had been born.

He was inclined to dispute this at first, and bring up the horrid theory that the pure white star of Petrarch's life had been a mere Madame de Sade, with a drove of uninteresting children. But eagerly I quoted Petrarch himself, using all the arguments on which Pamela and I prided ourselves at the Convent; and by the time we had got as far as that sweet "little Venice full of water wheels," L'Isle, I'd persuaded him to agree with me. In the midst of all that lovely, liquid music of running, trickling, fluting water, who could go on callously insisting that Laura resisted Petrarch merely because she was a fat married woman with a large family?

All was green and pastoral here, and we seemed to have come into eternal spring after the bleak, windy plains encircling Avignon. It was beautiful to remember Petrarch's description of his golden-haired, dark-eyed love, fair and tall as a lily, sitting in the grass among the violets, where her bare feet gleamed whiter than the daisies when she took off her sandals. Even Nicolete, flower of Provencal song, had no whiter feet than Laura, I am sure!

We were slipping past the banks of a little river, clear as sapphires and emeralds melted and mingled together. The sound of its singing drowned the sound of the motor, so that we seemed to glide toward Vaucluse noiselessly and reverently.

At the Inn of Petrarch and Laura the car had to stop; and looking up, we could see on the height above the castle home of Petrarch's dearest friend, Philippe de Cabassole, guardian of Queen Jeanne of Naples. Up there on the cliff Petrarch's eyes must often have turned toward Pieverde with longing thoughts of Laura, that "white dove" who was always for him sixteen, as when he met her first.

No farther than the inn could any wheeled thing go; and having justified my presence by buttoning Lady Turnour up in her coat, and finding her muff under several rugs, I stood by the car, gazing after the couple as they trudged off along the path to the hidden fairy fountain of Vaucluse. When they should have got well ahead I meant to go too, for if a cat may look at a king, a lady's maid may try to drink—if she can—a few drops from the cup of a great poet's inspiration. At first I resented those two ample, richly clad, prosaic backs marching sturdily toward the magic fountain; then suddenly the back of Sir Samuel became pathetic in my eyes. Hadn't he, I asked myself, loved his Emily ("Emmie, pet," as I've heard him call her) as long and faithfully as Petrarch loved his Laura? Perhaps, after all, he had earned the right to visit this shrine.

Rocks shut out from our sight the distant fountain, and the last windings of the path that led to it, clasping the secret with great stone arms, like those of an Othello jealously guarding his young wife's beauty from eyes profane.

"Aren't you going now?" asked my brother, with a certain wistfulness.

"Ye-es. But what about you?"

"Oh, I've been here before, you know."

"Don't you believe in second times? Or is a second time always second best?"

"Not when—Of course I want to go. But I can't leave the car alone."

My eyes wandered toward the inn door. "There's a boy there who looks as if he were born to be a watch-dog," said I, basely tempting him. "Couldn't you—"

"No, I couldn't," he said decidedly. "At a place like this, where there are a lot of tourists about, it wouldn't be right. It was different at Valescure, when I took you in to lunch."

"You mean I mustn't make that a precedent."

"I don't mean anything conceited."

"But you won't desert Mr. Micawber. I believe I shall name the car Micawber! Well, then, I must go by myself—and if I should fall into the fountain and be drowned—"

"Don't talk nonsense, and don't do anything foolish," said Mr. Dane, sternly, whereupon I turned my back upon him, and plunged into the cool shadows of the gorge. The great white cliff of limestone was my goal, and always it towered ahead, as I followed the narrow pathway above the singing water. I sighed as I paused to look at a garden which maybe once was Petrarch's, for it was sad to find my way to fairyland, alone. Even a brother's company would have been better than none, I thought!

Soon I met my master and mistress coming back.

There was nothing much to see, said her ladyship, sharply, and I mustn't be long; but Sir Samuel ventured to plead with her.

"Let the girl have ten minutes or so, if she likes, dear," said he. "We'll be wanting a cup of hot coffee at the inn. And it is a pretty place." There was something in his voice which told me that he would have felt the charm—if his bride had let him.

Pools of water, deep among the rocks, were purple-pansy colour or beryl green; but the "Source" itself, in its cup of stone, was like a block of malachite. There was no visible bubbling of underground springs fighting their way up to break the crystal surface of the fountain,—this fountain so unlike any other fountain; but to the listening ear came a moaning and rushing of unseen waters, now the high crying of Arethusa escaping from her pursuing lover, now rich, low notes as of an organ played in a vast cavern.

Above the gorge, the towering rocks with their huge holes and archways hollowed out by turbulent water in dim, forgotten ages, looked exactly as if the whole front wall had been knocked off a giant's castle, exposing its secret labyrinths of rough-hewn rooms, floor rising above floor even to the attics where the giant's servants had lived, and down to the cellars where the giant's pet dragons were kept in chains.

I hadn't yet exhausted my ten minutes, though I began to have a guilty consciousness that they would soon be gone, when I heard a step behind me, and turning, saw Mr. Dane.

"They're having coffee in the car," he said. "Sir Samuel proposed it to his wife, as if he thought it would be rather more select and exclusive for her than drinking it in the inn; but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was because he wanted to let me off. Not a bad old boy, Sir Samuel."

So we saw the fountain of Vaucluse together, after all. I don't know why that should have seemed important to me, but it did—a little.

We didn't say much to each other, all the way back to Avignon, but I felt that the day had been a brilliant success, and was sure that the next could not be as good. "What—not with St. Remy and Les Baux?" exclaimed my brother. But I knew very little about St. Remy, and still less about Les Baux. For a minute I was ashamed to confess, but then I told myself that this was a much worse kind of vanity than being pleased with the colour of one's hair or the length of one's eyelashes. Mr. Jack Dane was too polite to show surprise at my ignorance; but that evening, just as I was getting ready to go down to dinner, up he came with a tray, as he had the night before; and on the tray, among covered dishes, was a book.

"Two of your chauffeur-admirers from Aix are in the dining-room," he said, "so I thought you'd rather stop up in your room and read T.A. Cook's 'Old Provence,' than go downstairs. Anyway, it will be better for you."

I was half angry, half flattered that he should arrange my life for me in this off-hand way, whether I liked it or not; but the French half of me will do almost anything rather than be ungracious; and it would have been ungracious to say I was tired of dining in my room, and could take care of myself, when he had given himself the trouble of carrying up my dinner. So I swallowed all less obvious emotions than meek gratitude for food, physical and mental; and was soon so deeply absorbed in the delightful book that I forgot to eat my pudding. I sat up late with it—the book, not the pudding—after putting Lady Turnour to bed (almost literally, because she thinks it refined to be helpless), and when morning came I was no longer disgracefully ignorant of St. Remy and Les Baux.

Mr. Dane had mapped out the programme of places to see, using Avignon as a centre, and there were so many notabilities at the Hotel de l'Europe following the same itinerary, with insignificant variations, that Lady Turnour was quite contented with the arrangements made for her.

Morning was for St. Remy; afternoon was for Les Baux, "because the thing is to see the sunset there," I heard her telling an extremely rich-looking American lady, laying down the law as if she had planned the whole trip herself, with a learned reason for each detail.

The way to St. Remy was along a small but pretty country road, which had a misleading air, as if it didn't want you to think it was taking you to a place of any importance. And yet we were in the heart of Mistral-land; not Mistral the east wind, but Mistral the poet of Provence, great enough to be worthy of the land he loves, great enough to carry on the glory of it to future generations. At any moment we might meet a Fellore. I looked with interest at each man we saw, and some looked back at me with flattering curiosity; for a woman's eyes are almost as mysterious behind a three-cornered talc window as behind a yashmak, or zenana gratings.

St. Remy itself—birthplace of Nostradamus, maker of powders and prophecies—was charming in the sunlight, with its straight avenue of trees like the pillars of a long gray and green corridor in a vast palace; but we swept on toward the "Plateau des Antiquities," up a steep slope with St. Remy the modern at our backs; then suddenly I found myself crying out with delight at sight of the splendid Triumphal Archway and the gracious Monument we had come out to see.

Both looked more Greek than Roman, but that was because Greek workmen helped to build them for Julius Caesar, when he determined that posterity should not forget his defeat of great Vercingetorix, and should do justice to the memory of Marius.

When I was small I used to dislike poor Vercingetorix, and be glad that he had to surrender, so that I might be rid of him, owing to the dreadful difficulty of pronouncing his name; but when we had got out of the car, and I saw him on the archway, a tall, carved captive, who had kept his head through all the centuries, while Caesar (with a hand on the prisoner's shoulder) had lost his, my heart softened to him for the first time.

I thought the Triumphal Monument to Marius even more beautiful than the Archway, and felt as angry as Marius must, that the guide-books should take it away from the hero and wrongfully call it a mausoleum for somebody else. But Mr. Dane assured me with the obstinate air people have when learned authorities back their opinions, that the Arch was really the more interesting of the two—the first Triumphal Archway set up outside Italy, said he, and bade me reflect on that; still, I would turn my eyes toward the graceful monument, so wickedly annexed by the three Julii, and then away over the wide plain that lay beneath this ragged spur of the Alpilles. In the distance I could see Avignon, and the pale, opal-tinted, gold-veined hills that fold in the fountain of Vaucluse. Never, since we came into Provence, had I been able so clearly to realize the wild fascination of her haggard beauty. "Here Marius stood in his camp," I thought, "shading his eyes from the fierce sun, and looking out over this strange, arid country for the Barbarians he meant to conquer." My heart beat with an intoxicating excitement, such as one feels on seeing great mountains or the ocean for the first time; and then down I tumbled, with a bump, off my pedestal, when Lady Turnour wanted to know what I supposed she'd brought me for, if not to put on her extra cloak without waiting to be told.

Watches are really luxuries, not necessities, with the Turnours, because their appetites always strike the hour of one, and if they're sometimes a little in advance, they can be relied upon never to be behindhand. I knew before I glanced at the little bracelet-watch Pamela gave me (hidden under my sleeve) that it must be on the stroke of half-past twelve when her ladyship began to complain of the sharp wind, and say we had better be getting back to St. Remy. She was cross, as usual when she is hungry, and said that if I continued to go about "like a snail in a dream" whenever she fetched me to carry her things on these short expeditions, she would leave me in the hotel to mend her clothes; whereupon I became actually servile in my ministrations. I brushed a microscopic speck of dust off her gown; I pushed in a hairpin; I tucked up a flying end of veil; I straightened her toque, and made myself altogether indispensable; for the bare idea of being left behind was a box on the ear. I could not endure such a punishment—and the front seat would look so empty, so unfinished, without me!

As we went back down the steep hill from old Glanum, St. Remy appeared a little oasis of spring in the midst of a winter which had come back for something it had forgotten. All its surrounding orchards and gardens, screened from the shrewish Mistral by the shoulders of the Alpilles, and again by lines of tall cypress trees and netted, dry bamboos, had begun to bloom richly like the earlier gardens on the Riviera. There was a pinky-white haze of apple blossoms; and even the plane trees in the long main street were hung with dainty, primrose-coloured spheres, like little fairy lanterns. Not only did every man seem a possible Felibre, but every girl was a beauty. Some of them wore a charming and becoming head-dress, such as I never saw before, and the chauffeur said it was the head-dress of the women of Arles, where we would go day after to-morrow.

Impertinent chauffeurs or couriers would have been more out of place in poetic St. Remy than the sensational Nostradamus himself; and there was no trouble of that sort for me in lunching at the pleasant, quiet hotel. Mr. Dane had bought a French translation of Mistral's "Memoires," and as we ate, he and I alone together, he read me the incident of the child-poet and his three wettings in quest of the adored water-flowers. Nothing could be more beautiful than the wording of the exquisite thoughts, yet I wished we could have seen those thoughts embodied in Provencal, the language practically created by Mistral, as Italian was by Dante and Petrarch, or German by Goethe.

Not far away lay Mas du Juge, described in the book, where he was born, and Maillane, where he lives, and I longed to drive that way; but as the Turnours would be sure to say that there was nothing to see, the chauffeur thought it wiser not to turn out of our road. We might find the poet at Arles, perhaps, in his museum there, or lunching at the Hotel du Forum, a favourite haunt of his on museum days.

Starting for Les Baux, we turned our faces straight toward the wild little mountains loved by Mistral, his dear Alpilles. They soon surrounded us in tumbling gray waves, piled up on either side of the road as the Red Sea must have tumultuously fenced in the path of the Israelites. Strange, hummocky mountains were everywhere, as far as we could see; mountains of incredible, nightmare shapes, and of great ledges set with gigantic busts of ancient heroes, some nobly carved, some hideously caricatured, roughly hewn in gray limestone, or red rock that looked like bronze. On we went, climbing up and up, a road like a python's back; but not yet was there any glimpse of the old "robber fortress" of Les Baux about which I had read, and later dreamed, last night. I knew it would be wonderful, astonishing, a Dead City, a Pompeii of the Feudal Age, yet different from any other ancient town the whole world over—a place of tangled histories; yet I tried vainly to picture what it would be like. Then, suddenly, we reached a turn in that strange road which, if it had led downhill instead of up, would have seemed like the way Orpheus took to reach Hades.

We had come face to face with a huge chasm in the rock, a gap with sheer walls sliced clean down, like a cut in a great cheese; and I felt instinctively that this must be the dark doorway through which we should see Les Baux.

Through the cut in the stone cheese our road carried us; and the busts on the rocky ledges were so near now we could almost have put out our hands and touched them—but curiously enough, in this place of all others, they were the likenesses of modern men. Mr. Dane and I picked out an unmistakable Gladstone on the right, a characteristic Beaconsfield on the left; and farther on Mr. Chamberlain's head was fantastically grafted on to the body of a prehistoric animal. We were just tracing Pierpont Morgan's profile, near a few of Hannibal's elephants, when the car sprang clear of the chasm, out upon the other side of the doorway; and there rose before us Les Baux, a hundred times more wonderful, more tragic, than I had hoped to find it.

Far, far below our mountain road lay a valley so flat that it might have been levelled on purpose for the tilting of knights in great tournaments. Above and around us (for suddenly we were in as well as under it) was a City of Ghosts.

Huge masses of rock, like Titan babies' playthings, had been hollowed out for dwellings, fit houses for our late cousins the cave-dwellers. There were colossal pillars and dark, high doorways such as one sees in pictures of the temples at Thebes; but all this, said Mr. Jack Dane, was merely a preface for what was yet to come, only an immense quarry whence the stones to build Les Baux had been torn. We were still on the road to the real Les Baux; and even as he spoke, the Aigle was clawing her way bravely up a hill steeper than any we had mounted. At the top she turned abruptly, and stopped in a queer, forlorn little place, where to my astonishment our journey ended in front of a small house ambitiously named Hotel Monte Carlo. Then I remembered the story I had read: how a young prince of the Grimaldi family came begging Louis XIII. to protect him from Spain; how Louis, who didn't want Spain to grab Monaco, promptly gave soldiers; how the Grimaldi's shrewd wit did more to get the Spanish out of the little principality than did the fighting men from France; and how Louis, as a reward, turned poor, war-worn Les Baux into a Grimaldi marquisate.

That little episode in history accounted for the Hotel Monte Carlo; and I wondered if it were put up on the site of the Grimaldis' miniature pleasure-palace, which the forest-burning revolutionists tore down just before Les Baux, after all its strange passings from hand to hand, became the property of the nation.

Against the rocks a few mean houses leaned apologetically, but on every side rose the ruins of a proud, dead past: a past beginning with the ruts of chariot-wheels graven on the rock-paved street. I thought, as I looked at the sordid little village of to-day, which had crawled into the very midst of the fortress, of some words I'd read last night: "a rat in the heart of a dead princess."

Strange, haggard hill, whispered about by history ever since Christians ran before Alaric the Visigoth, and hid in its caverns already echoing with legends of mysterious Phoenician treasure! Strange robber house of Les Baux, founded thirteen hundred years ago, and claiming half Provence two centuries later! No wonder, after all the fighting and plundering, loving and hating, that all it asks now is for its bleached, picked bones to be left in peace!

I thought this, standing by the little Hotel Monte Carlo, waiting for my mistress and her husband to be supplied with a guide. He was the most intelligent and efficient-seeming guide imaginable, who looked as if he had the whole history of Les Baux behind his bright dark eyes; and I hoped that the humble maid and chauffeur might be allowed to follow the "quality" within respectful earshot.

Soon they began to walk on, and I turned to look at my brother, who was lingering by the car. Already the guide had begun to be interesting. I caught a few words: "Celtic caverns"—"Leibulf, the first Count"—"the terrible Turenne, called the 'Fleau de Provence'—the Lady Alix's guardian"—which made me long to hear more; but I didn't want to crawl on until my Fellow Worm could crawl with me.

"I can't go," he said. "It wouldn't do to leave the car here. There are several gipsy faces at the inn window, you see. Why there should be gipsies I don't know; but there are, for those are gipsies or I'll eat my cap. And I've got to keep watch on deck."

"How horrid to leave you here alone, seeing nothing—not even the sunset!" I exclaimed. "I think I shall stop with you, unless she calls me—"

"You'll do nothing of the kind," he had begun, when the summons came, sooner than I had expected.



CHAPTER XIII

"Elise, come here and put what this guide is saying into English," was the command, and I flew to obey. To hear him tell what he knew was like turning over the leaves of the Book of Les Baux; and I tried to do him justice in my translation; but it was disheartening to see Lady Turnour's lack-lustre gaze wander as dully about the rock-hewn barracks of Roman soldiers as if she had been in her own lodging-house cellar, and to be interrupted by her complaints of the cold wind as we went up the silent streets, past deserted palaces of dead and gone nobles, toward the crown of all—the Chateau.

Nothing moved her to any show of interest in this grave of mighty memories, of mighty warrior princes, and of lovely ladies with names sweet as music and perfume of potpourri. Wandering in a splendid confusion of feudal and mediaeval relics—walls with carved doorways, and doorways without walls; beautiful, purposeless columns whose occupation had long been gone; carved marvels of fireplaces standing up sadly from wrecked floors of fair ladies' boudoirs or great banqueting halls, the stout, painted woman broke in upon the guide's story to talk of any irrelevant matter that jumped into her mind. She suddenly bethought herself to scold Sir Samuel about "Bertie," from whom a letter had evidently been forwarded, and who had been spending too much money to please her ladyship.

"That stepson of yours is a regular bad egg," said she.

"Never you mind," retorted Sir Samuel, defending his favourite. "Many a bad egg has turned over a new leaf."

My lip quivered, but I fixed my eyes firmly upon the guide, who was now devoting his attention entirely to his one respectful listener. I was ashamed of my companions, but I couldn't help catching stray fragments of the conversation, and the involuntary mixing of Bertie's affairs with the Religious Wars, and the destruction of Les Baux by Richelieu's soldiers, had a positively weird effect on my mind. Bertie, it seemed—(or was it Richelieu?) was invited to visit at the chateau of a French marquis called de Roquemartine (or was it good King Rene, who inherited Les Baux because he was a count of Provence?), and the chateau was near Clermont-Ferrand. Lady Turnour was of opinion that it would be well to make a condition before sending the cheque which Bertie wanted to pay his bridge debts (or was he in debt because the Lady Douce and her sister Stephanette of Les Baux had quarrelled?). If the advice of Dane, the chauffeur, were taken, they would be motoring to Clermont-Ferrand; and why not say to Bertie: "No cheque unless you get us an invitation to visit the Roquemartines while you are there?" (Or was it that they wanted an invitation to the boudoir of Queen Jeanne, Rene's beloved wife, who lived at Les Baux sometimes, and had very beautiful things around her—tapestries and Eastern rugs, and wondrous rosaries, and jewelled Books of Hours?) Really, it was very bewildering; but in my despair one drop of comfort fell. That chateau near Clermont-Ferrand would prove a lodestar, and help Mr. Jack Dane to lure the Turnours through chill gorges and over snowy mountains.

"Lodestar" really was a good word for the attraction, I thought, and I would repeat it to the chauffeur. But it rose over the horizon of my intellect probably because the guide talked of Countess Alix, last heiress of the great House of Les Baux. "As she lay dying," he said, "the star that had watched over and guided the fortunes of her house came down from the sky, according to the legend, and shone pale and sad in her bedchamber till she was dead. Then it burst, and its light was extinguished in darkness for ever."

Eventually Sir Samuel's eye brightened for the Tudor rose decoration, in the ruined chateau, relic of an alliance between an English princess and the House of Les Baux; and Lady Turnour didn't interrupt once when the guide told of the latest important discovery in the City of Ghosts. "Near the altar of the Virgin here," he began, in just the right, hushed tone, "they found in a tomb the body of a beautiful young girl. There she lay, as the tomb was opened, just for an instant—long enough for the eye to take in the picture—as lovely as the loveliest lady of Les Baux, that famed princess Cecilie, known through Provence as Passe-Rose. Her long golden hair was in two great plaits, one over either shoulder, and her hands were crossed upon her breast, holding a Book of Hours. But in a second, as the air touched her, she was gone like a dream; her sweet young face, white as milk, and half smiling, her long dark eyelashes, even the Book of Hours, all crumbled into dust, fine as powder. Only the golden hair, tied with blue ribbon, was left; and when you go to Arles you can see it in the Museum of Monsieur Mistral."

"Make a note of hair for Arles, Sam," said her ladyship, gravely; and just as solemnly he obeyed, scribbling a few words in the pocket memorandum-book in which the poor man industriously puts down all the things which his wife thinks he ought to remember.

"Anything else interesting ever been found here?" she wanted to know. "Any jewels or things of that sort?"

I passed the question on to the guide.

Many things had been found, he said: coins, vases, pottery, and mosaics. Occasionally such things were turned up, though usually, nowadays, of no great value; but it was the hope of finding something which brought the gipsies. Often there were gypsies at Les Baux. They would go to Les Saintes Maries, the place of the sacred church where the two sainted Maries came ashore from Palestine in their little boat, and they would pray to Sarah, whose tomb was also in that wonderful church. Had we seen it yet? No? But it was not far. Many people went, though the great day was on May twenty-fourth, when the Archbishop of Aix lowered the ark of relics from the roof, and healed those of the sick who were true believers. It was for Sarah, though, that the gipsies made their pilgrimages. They thought that prayers at her tomb would bring them whatever they desired; and sometimes, when they were able to come on as far as Les Baux, they would wish at the tomb to find the buried Phoenician treasure, for which many had searched generation after generation, since history began, but none had ever found.

I did not say anything about the gipsies at the inn-window, but I saw now that Mr. Dane had done wisely in sticking to his post. A sixty-horse-power Aigle might largely make up for a disappointment in the matter of treasure, even if she had to be towed down into the valley by a horse.

"Calve, and all the great singers, come here sometimes by moonlight in their motors," went on the guide, "after the great musical festival of Orange in the month of August. They stand on the piles of stone among the ruins when all is white under the moon, and they sing—ah! but they sing! It is wonderful. They do it for their own pleasure, and there is no audience except the ghosts—and me, for they allow me to listen. Yet I think, if our eyes could be opened to such things, we would see grouped round a noble company of knights and ladies—such a company as would be hard to get together in these days."

"Well, I would rather sing here in August than April!" exclaimed Lady Turnour, with the air of a spoiled prima donna. And then she shivered and wanted to go down to the car without waiting for the sunset, which, after all, could only be like any other mountain sunset, and she could see plenty of better ones next summer in Switzerland. She felt so chilled, she was quite anxious about herself, and should certainly not dare to start for Avignon until she had had a glass of steaming hot rum punch or something of that sort, at the inn. Did the guide think she could get it—and have it sent out to her in the car, as nothing would induce her to go inside that little den?

The guide thought it probable that something hot might be obtained, though there might be a few minutes' delay while the water was made to boil, as it would be an unusual order.

A few minutes! thought I, eagerly, looking at the sun, which was hurrying westward. I knew what "a few minutes" at such an inn would mean—half an hour at least; and apparently I was no longer needed as an interpreter. Without a thought of me, now that I had ceased to be useful, Lady Turnour slipped her arm into her husband's for support (her high-heeled shoes and the rough, steep streets had not been made for each other), and began trotting down the hill, in advance of the guide. They had finished with him, too, and were already deep in a discussion as to whether rum punch, or hot whisky-and-water with sugar and lemon were better, for warding off a chill. I didn't see why I shouldn't linger a little on the wide plateau, with the Dead City looming above me like a skeleton seated on a ruined throne, and half southern France spread out in a vast plain, a thousand feet below.

It was wonderful there, and strangely, almost terribly still. Once the sea had washed the feet of the cliff, dim ages ago. Now my eyes had to travel far to the Mediterranean, where Marseilles gloomed dark against the burnished glimmer of the water. I could see the Etang de Berre, too, and imagine I saw the Aurelian Way, and gloomy old Aigues-Mortes, which we were to visit later. At lunch we had talked of a poem of Mistral's, which a friend of Mr. Dane's had put into French—a poem all about a legendary duel. And it was down there, in that far-stretching field, that the duel was fought.

As I looked I realized that the clouds boiling up from some vast cauldron behind the world were choking the horizon with their purple folds. They were beautiful as the banners of a royal army advancing over the horizon, but—they would hide the sun as he went down to bathe in the sea. He was embroidering their edges with gold now. I was seeing the best at this moment. If I started to go back, I should have time to pause here and there, gazing at things the Turnours had hurried past.

I went down slowly, reluctantly, the melancholy charm of the place catching at my dress as I walked, like the supplicating fingers of a ghost condemned to dumbness. There was one rock-hewn house I had wanted to see, coming up, which Lady Turnour had scorned, saying "when you've been in one, you've been in all." And she had not understood the guide's story of a legend that was attached to this particular house. Perhaps if she had she would not have cared; but now I was free I couldn't resist the temptation of going in, to poke about a little. You could go several floors down, the guide had said; that was certain, but the tale was, that a secret way led down from the lowest cellar of this cave house, continuing—if one could only find it—to the enchanted cavern far below, where Taven, the witch, kept and cured of illness the girl loved by Mireio.

I didn't know who Mireio was, except that he lived in songs and legends of Old Provence, but the story sounded like a beautiful romance; and then, the guide had added that some people thought the Kabre d'Or, or Phoenician treasure, was hidden somewhere between Les Baux and the "Fairy Grotto," or the "Gorge of Hell," near by.

Caves have always had the most extraordinary, magical fascination for me. When I was a child, I believed that if I could only go into one I should be allowed to find fairyland; and even in an ordinary, every-day cellar I was never quite without hope. The smell of a cellar suggested the most cool, delightful, shadowy mysteries to me, at that time, and does still.

It was as if the ghostly hand that had been pulling me back, begging me not to leave Les Baux, led me gently but insistently through the doorway of the rock house.

It was not yet dark inside. I tiptoed my way through some rough bits of debris, to the back of the big room, crudely cut out of stone. There were shelves where the dwellers had set lights or stored provisions, and there was nothing else to see except a square hole in the floor, below which a staircase had been hewn. A glimmer of light came up to me, gray as a bat's wing, and I knew that there must be some opening for ventilation below.

I felt that I would give anything to go down those rough stone stairs, only half way down, perhaps; just far enough to see what lay underneath. It was as if Taven herself had called me, saying: "Come, I have something to show you."

I put a foot on the first step, then the other foot wanted a chance to touch the next step, and so on, each demanding its own turn in fairness. I had gone down eight steps, counting each one, when I heard a faint rustling noise. I stopped, my heart giving a jump, like a bird in a cage.

There were no windows in the underground room, which was much smaller and less regular in shape than the one above, but a faint twilight seemed to rain down into it in streaks, like spears of rain, and I guessed that holes had been made in the rock to give light and ventilation. Something alive was down there, moving. I was frightened; I hardly dared to look. And I had a nightmare feeling of being struck dumb and motionless. I tried to turn and run up the stairs but I had to look, and the gray filtering light struck into a pair of eyes.



CHAPTER XIV

They were great black eyes, sunken into the face of an old woman. She stood in a corner, and it occurred to me that she had perhaps run there, as much afraid of me as I was of her. No eyes were ever like those, I thought, except the eyes of a gipsy.

"What are you doing?" I stammered, in French, hardly expecting her to understand and answer me; but she replied in an old, cracked voice that sounded hollow and unreal in the cavern.

"I have been asleep," she said. "I am waiting for my sons. We are in Les Baux on business. I thought, when I heard you, it was my boys coming to fetch me. I can't go till they are here, because I have dropped my rosary with a silver crucifix down below, and the way is too steep for me. They must get it."

"Do they know you are here?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," she returned. "They will come at six. We shall perhaps have our supper and sleep in this house to-night. Then we will go away in the morning."

"It is only a little after five now," I told her. "You frightened me at first."

She cackled a laugh. "I am nothing to be afraid of," she chuckled. "I am very old. Besides, there is no harm in me. If you have the time, I could tell your fortune."

"I'm afraid I haven't time," I said, though I was tempted. To have one's fortune told in a cavern under a rock house where Romans had lived, told by a real, live gipsy who looked as if she might be a lineal descendant from Taven, and who was probably fresh from worshipping at the tomb of Sarah! It would be an experience. No girl I knew, not even Pam herself, who is always having adventures, could ever have had one as good as this. If only I need not miss it!

"It would take no more than five minutes," she pleaded in her queer French, which was barely understandable, and evidently not the tongue in which she was most at home.

"Well, then," I said, hastily calculating that it was no more than ten minutes since Lady Turnour and Sir Samuel left me, and that the water for their punch couldn't possibly have begun to boil yet. "Well, then, perhaps I might have five minutes' fortune, if it doesn't cost too much; but I'm very poor—poorer than you, maybe."

"That cannot be, for then you would have less than nothing," said the old woman, cackling again. "But it is your company I like to have, more than your money. I have been waiting here a long time, and I am dull. No fortune can be expected to come true, however, unless the teller's hand be crossed with silver, otherwise I might give it you for nothing. But a two-franc piece—"

"I think I have as much as that," I cut her short, as she paused on the hint; and deciding not to ask her, as I felt inclined, to come to the upper room lest we should be interrupted, I went down the remaining five or six high steps, and got out my purse under a long, straight rod of gray light.

There were only a few francs left, but I would have beggared myself to buy this adventure, and thought it cheap at the price she named. I found a two-franc piece—a bright new one, worthy of its destiny—and looking up as I shut my purse, I saw the old woman's eyes fixed on me, and sharp as gimlets. Used to the dusk now, I could see her dark face distinctly, and so like a hungry crow did she look that I was startled. But it was only for a second that I felt a little uncomfortable. She was so old and weak, I was so young and strong, that even if she were an evil creature who wanted to do me harm, I could shake her off and run away as easily as a bird could escape from a tied cat.

"Make a cross with the silver piece on my palm," she said.

I did as she told me, and it was a dark and dirty palm, in the hollow of which seemed to lie a tiny pool of shadow. Her eyes darted to the bracelet-watch as my wrist slipped out of the protecting sleeve, and I drew back my hand quickly. She plucked the coin from my fingers, and then told me to give her my left hand.

"You can't see the lines," I said. "It's too dark."

"I see with my night eyes," she answered, as a witch might have answered. "And I feel. I have the quick touch of the blind. I can feel the pores in a flower-petal."

Impressed, I let her hold my hand in one of her lean claws while she lightly passed the spread fingers of the other down the length of mine from the tips to the joining with the palm, and then along the palm itself, up and down and across. It was like having a feather drawn over my hand.

"You have foreign blood in your veins," she said. "You are not all French. But you have the charm of the Latin girl. You can make men love you. You make them love you whether you wish or not, and whether they wish or not. Sometimes that is a great trouble to you. You are anxious now, for many reasons. One of the reasons is a man, but there is more than one who loves you. You make one of them unhappy, and yourself unhappy, too. The man you ought to love is young and handsome, and dark—very dark. Do not think ever of marrying a fair man. You are on a journey now. Something very unexpected will happen to you at the end—something to do with a man, and something to do with a woman. Be careful then, for your future happiness may depend on your actions in a moment of surprise. You are not rich, but you have a lucky hand. You could find things hidden if you set yourself to look for them."

"Hidden treasure?" I asked, laughingly, and venturing to break in because she was speaking slowly now, as if she had come to the end of her string of prophecies.

"Perhaps. Yes. If you looked for the hidden treasure here, you might be the one to find it after all these hundreds of years. Who knows? These things happen to the lucky ones."

"Well, if I believed that I'd been born for such luck, I'd try to come back some day, and have a look," I said. "I should begin in this house, I think."

"It is never so lucky to return for things as to try and get them at the right time," the old woman pronounced. "If you would like to wait till my sons come—"

"No, I wouldn't," I said. "I must go now."

"If you would at least do me a favour, for the good fortune I have told you so cheap," she begged. "I, who in my day have had as much as two louis from great ladies who would know their fortune!"

"What is the favour?" I asked.

"Oh, it is next to nothing. Only to go down to the foot of the stairs in the cellar below this, and pick up my rosary, which I dropped, and which I know is lying there."

"It's too dark," I said. "I couldn't see to find it—and you said your sons were coming soon."

"Not soon enough, for when you are gone, and I am alone, I should like to pray at the time of vespers. And it is not so dark as you think. Besides, this will be the test of the fortune I have just told you. If it's true that you have the lucky hand for finding you will put it on the rosary in an instant. That will be a sign you can find anything. Unless you are afraid, mademoiselle—"

"Of course I'm not afraid," I said, for I always have been ashamed of my fear of the dark, and have forced myself to fight against it. "If the rosary is at the foot of the staircase I'll try and get it for you, but I won't go any farther."

Her corner was close by the opening where more steps were cut into the rock. I could see the bottom, I thought, and started down quickly, because I was in a hurry to come back and be on my way home—to the Aigle.

Six, seven steps, and then—crash! down I came on my hands and knees.

Oh, how it hurt! And how it made my head ring! Fireworks went off before my eyes, and I felt stupid, inclined to lie still. But suddenly the idea flashed into my brain, like lightning darting among dark clouds, that the old woman had made me do this thing on purpose. She had played me a trick—and if she had, she must have some bad reason for doing it. Those two sons of hers! I scrambled up, shocked and jarred by the fall, my hands and knees smarting as if they were skinned.

"I've fallen down," I cried. "Do you hear?"

No answer.

I called again. It was as still as a grave up above. It seemed to me that it could not be so unnaturally, so inhumanly still, if there were a living, breathing creature there. I was sure now that the horrible old thing had known what would happen, had wanted it to happen, and had gone hobbling away to fetch her wicked gipsy sons. How she had looked at my poor little purse! How she had looked at Pamela's watch!

I saw now how it was that I had been so stupid. The dim light from above had lain on the last step and made it appear as if the floor were near; but there was a gap between the stairway and the bottom of the cellar. The lower steps had been hewn away—perhaps in a quest for the ever-elusive treasure. Maybe a crack had appeared, and people, always searching, had suspected a secret opening and tried to find it. Anyway, there was the gap, and there was a rough pile of broken stone not far off, which had once been the end of the rocky stairway. It was lucky that I hadn't struck my forehead against it in falling—the only bit of luck which the fortune-teller had brought me!

As it was, I was not seriously hurt. Perhaps I had torn my dress, and I should certainly have to buy a new pair of gloves, whether I could afford them or not; otherwise I didn't think I should suffer, except for a few black-and-blue patches. But how was I to get out of this dark hole? That was the question. I was too hot with anger against the sly old fox of a woman, who had pretended that she wanted to say her prayers, to feel the chill of fear; but I couldn't help understanding that she had got me into this trap with the object of annexing my watch and purse or anything else of value. Perhaps the gipsy sons would rob me first, and then murder me, rather than I should live to tell; but if they meant to do that they would have to come and be at it soon, or I should be missed and sought.

This last fancy really did turn me cold, and the nice hot anger which had kept me warm began to ooze out at my fingers and toes. I thought of my brave new brother, who would fight ten gipsy men to save me if he only knew; and then I wanted to cry.

But that would be the silliest thing I could do. Soon they would begin to look for me (oh, how furious Lady Turnour would be that I should dare keep her waiting, and at the fuss about a servant!) and if I screamed at the top of my voice maybe some one would hear.

I took a long breath, and gave vent to a blood-curdling shriek which would have made the fortune of an actress on the stage. Odd! I couldn't help thinking of that at the time. One thinks of queer things at the most inappropriate moments.

It was a glorious howl, but the rock walls seemed to catch it as a battledore catches a shuttlecock, and send it bounding back to me. I knew then that a cry from those depths would not carry far; and the fear at my heart gave a sharp, rat-like bite.

If I could scramble up! I thought; and promptly tried.

It looked almost easy; but for me it was impossible. A very tall woman might have done it, perhaps, but I have only five foot four in my Frenchiest French heels; and the broken-off place was higher than my waist. With good hand-hold I might have dragged myself up, but the steps above did not come at the right height to give me leverage; and always, though I tried again and again, till my cut hands bled, I couldn't climb up. And how silly it seemed, the whole thing! I was just like a young fly that had come buzzing and bumbling round an ugly old spider's web, too foolish to know that it was a web. And even now how lightly the fly's feet were entangled! A spring, and I should be out of prison.

"Oh, the little more, and how much it is! And the little less, and what worlds away!"

The words came and spoke themselves in my ears, as if they were determined to make me cry.

I was desperately frightened and homesick—homesick even for Lady Turnour. I should have felt like kissing the hem of her dress if I could only have seen her now—and I wasn't able to smile when I thought what a rage she'd be in if I did it. She would have me sent off to an insane asylum: but even that would be much gayer and more homelike than an underground cellar in the Ghost City of Les Baux.

Dear old Sir Samuel, with his nice red face! I almost loved him. The car seemed like a long-lost aunt. And as for the chauffeur, my brother—I found that I dared not think of him. As in my imagination I saw his eyes, his good dark eyes, clear as a brook, and the lines his brown face took when he thought intently, the tears began running down my cheeks.

"Oh, Jack—Jack, come and help me!" I called.

That comes of thinking people's Christian names. They will pop out of your mouth when you least expect it. But it mattered little enough now, except that the sound of the name and the echo of it fluttering back to me made my tears feel boiling hot—hotter than the punch which the Turnours must have finished by this time.

"Jack! Jack!" I called again.

Then I heard a stone rattle up above, somewhere, and a sick horror rushed over me, because of the gipsy men coming back with their wicked old mother.

It was only a very dark gray in the cellar, to my unaccustomed eyes, but suddenly it turned black, with purple edges. I knew then I was going to faint, because I've done it once or twice before, and things always began by being black with purple edges.



CHAPTER XV

"For heaven's sake, wake up—tell me you're not hurt!" a familiar voice was saying in my ear, or I was dreaming it. And because it was such a good dream I was afraid to break it by waking to some horror, so I kept my eyes shut, hoping and hoping for it to come again.

In an instant, it did come. "Child—little girl—wake up! Can't you speak to me?"

His hand, holding mine, was warm and extraordinarily comforting. Suddenly I felt so happy and so perfectly safe that I was paid for everything. My head was on somebody's arm, and I knew very well now who the somebody was. He was real, and not a dream. I sighed cozily and opened my eyes. His face was quite close to mine.

"Thank God!" he said. "Are you all right?"

"Now you're here," I answered. "I thought they were coming to kill me."

"Who?" he asked, quite fiercely.

"An old gipsy woman and her sons."

"Those people!" he exclaimed. "Why, it was they who told me you were in this place. If it hadn't been for them I shouldn't have found you so soon—though I would have found you. The wretches! What made you think—"

"The old woman was in the room above," I said, "waiting for her sons; and she begged me to look down here for a rosary she dropped. She must have known the bottom steps were gone. She wanted me to fall; and though I called, she didn't answer, because she'd probably hobbled off to find her sons and bring them back to rob me. I haven't hurt myself much, but when I found I couldn't climb up I was so frightened! I thought no one would ever come—except those horrible gipsies. And when I heard a sound above I was sure they were here. I felt sick and strange, and I suppose I must have fainted."

"I heard you call, just as I got into the upper room. Then, though I answered, everything was still. Jove! I had some bad minutes! But you're sure you're all right now?"

"Sure," I answered, sitting up. "Did I call you 'Jack'? If I did, it was only because one can't shriek 'Mister,' and anyway you told me to."

"Now I know you're all right, or you wouldn't bother about conventionalities. I wish I had some brandy for you—"

"I wouldn't take it if you had."

"That sounds like you. That's encouraging! Are you strong enough to let me get you up into the light and air?"

"Quite!" I replied briskly, letting him help me to my feet. "But how are we to get up?"

"I'll show you. It will be easy."

"Let's look first for the wicked old creature's rosary. If it isn't here, it's certain she's a fraud."

"I should think it's certain without looking. I'd like to put the old serpent in prison."

"I wouldn't care to trouble, now I'm safe. And anyway, how could we prove she meant her sons to rob me, since they hadn't begun the act, and so couldn't be caught in it?"

"She didn't know you had a man to look after you. When the guide and I came this way, searching, we met a gipsy woman with two awful brutes, and asked if they'd seen a young lady in a gray coat. They were all three on their way here, as you thought; but when they saw us close to this house, of course, they dared not carry out their plan, and the old woman made the best of a bad business. No doubt they're as far off by this time as they could get. It might be difficult to prove anything, but I'd like to try."

"I wouldn't," I said. "But let's look for that rosary. Have you any matches?"

"Plenty." He took out a match-case, and held a wax vesta for me to peer about in the neighbourhood of the broken stairway.

"Here's something glittering!" I exclaimed, just as I had been about to give up the search in vain. "She said there was a silver crucifix."

I slipped my fingers into a crack where the rock had been split in breaking off the lower steps. A small, bright thing was there, almost buried in debris, but I could not get my fingers in deep enough to dislodge it. Impatiently I pulled out a hat-pin, and worked until I had unearthed—not the rosary, but a silver coin.

"Somebody else has been down here, dropping money," I said, handing the piece up for Mr. Dane to examine.

"Then it was a long time ago," he replied, "for the coin has the head of Louis XIII. on it."

"Oh, then she was right!" I cried. "I can find lost treasure. I'm going to look for more. I believe that piece must have fallen out of a hole I've found here, which goes back ever so far into the rock. I can get my arm in nearly to the elbow."

"Who was 'right'?" my brother wanted to know.

"The gipsy. She told my fortune. That was why I didn't refuse to look for her rosary."

"I should have thought a child would have known better," he remarked, scornfully; and his tone hurt my sensitiveness the more because his voice had been so anxious and his words so kind when I was fainting. He had called me "child" and "little girl." I remembered well, and the words had been saying themselves over in my mind ever since. I rather thought that they betrayed a secret—that perhaps he had been getting to care for me a little. That idea pleased me, because he had been abrupt sometimes, and I hadn't known what to make of him. Every girl owes it to herself to understand a man thoroughly—at least, as much of his character and feelings as may concern her. Besides, it is not soothing to one's vanity to try—well, yes, I may as well confess that!—to try and please a man, yet to know you've failed after days of association so constant and intimate that hours are equal to the same number of months in an ordinary acquaintance. Now, after thinking I'd made the discovery that he really had found me attractive, it was a shock to be spoken to in this way.

"Oh, you are cross!" I exclaimed, still poking about in the hole under the stairway.

"I'm not cross," he said, "but if I were, you'd deserve it, because you know you've been foolish. And if you don't know, you ought to, so that you may be wiser next time. The idea of a sensible young woman chumming up in a lonely cave, with a dirty old gipsy certain to be a thief, if not worse, letting her tell fortunes, and then falling into a trap like this. I wouldn't have believed it of you!"

"I think you're perfectly horrid," said I. "I wish you had let the guide find me. He would have done it just as well, and been much more polite."

"Doubtless he would have been more polite, but he isn't as young, and might have had trouble in getting you out. There! that's my last match, and you mustn't waste any more time looking for treasure which you won't find."

"Which I have found!" I announced. "I've got something more—away at the back of the hole. Not that you deserve to see it!"

However, I held up my hand in its torn, bloodstained glove, with two silver pieces displayed on the palm.

"A child's hidey-hole, I suppose," he said without showing as much interest as the occasion warranted. "Otherwise there would be something more valuable. A young servant of the Grimaldis, perhaps; these coins are all of the same period—of no great value as antiques, I'm afraid."

"They're of value to me," I retorted. "They'll bring me luck." I would of course have given him one, if he hadn't been so disagreeable; but now I felt that he shouldn't have anything of mine if he were starving.

"You are very superstitious, among other childlike qualities," he replied, laughing. So that was what he thought of me, and that was why he had called me "child"! It was all spoiled now, from the beginning; and the guide might as well have found me, as I had said, without quite meaning it at the time.

"If you don't like lucky things, you can throw away my St. Christopher," I said, coldly. "You must have thought it very silly."

"I thought it extremely kind of you to give it, and I've no intention of throwing it away, or parting with it," said he. "Now, are you ready?"

"Yes," I snapped.

In an instant he had me by the waist between two hands which felt strong as steel buckles, and swung me up like a feather on to the first step of the broken stairs. Then, in another second, he was at my side, supporting me to the top without a word, except a muttered "Don't be childish!" when I would have pushed away his arm.

Strange to say, I forgot Lady Turnour and Sir Samuel until we saw the guide, to whom long ago Mr. Dane had called up a reassuring "Tout va bien!" Then, suddenly, the awful truth sprang into my mind. All this time they had been waiting for me! What would they say? What would they do?

In my horror, I even forgot my righteous anger with the chauffeur. "Oh!" I gasped. "The Turnours!"

Then Mr. Dane spoke kindly again. "Don't worry," he said. "It's all right. They've gone on."

"In the car?" I cried.

"No. Sir Samuel can't drive the car. And as Lady Turnour thought she had a chill, rather than wait for me to find you they took a carriage which was here, and drove down to St. Remy. They'll go on by rail to Avignon, and—"

"There must have been a dreadful row!" I groaned.

"Not at all. You're not to worry. Lady Turnour behaved like a cad, as usual, but what can you expect? Sir Samuel did the best he could. He would have liked to wait, but if he'd insisted she would have had hysterics."

"How came there to be a carriage here?" I asked the guide.

"The gentleman paid three young men who had driven up in it a good sum to get it for himself," he explained, "and they are walking down. They are of Germany."

"Was it a long time?" I went on. "Oh, it must have been. It's nearly dark now, except for the moonlight."

"It is perhaps an hour altogether since mademoiselle separated herself from the others," the guide admitted. "But they have been gone for more than half that time. They did not delay long, after the little dispute with monsieur about the car."

"Oh, there was a dispute!" I caught him up, wheeling upon the chauffeur. "You must tell me."

"It was nothing much," he said, still very kindly, "and it was her ladyship's fault, of course. If you were plain and elderly she'd have more patience; but as it is, you've seen how quick she is to scold; so, of course, she was angry when she'd finished her grog and you didn't turn up."

"What did she say," I asked.

He laughed. "She was quite irrelevant."

"I must know!"

"Well, she seemed to lay most of the blame on the colour of your hair and eyelashes."

"She said—"

"What could be expected of a girl that dyed her hair yellow and her eyelashes black?"

"Horrid woman! You don't believe I do, do you?"

"I must say it hadn't occurred to me to think of it."

Then I remembered how angry I was with him, and didn't pursue that subject, but turned again to the other. However, I made a mental note that there was one more thing to punish him for when I got the chance.

"What else did she say?"

"She began to turn purple when Sir Samuel would have defended you, and said she wouldn't stand your taking such liberties. That it was monstrous, and a few other things, to be kept freezing on mountains by one's domestics, and that she should be ill if she waited. Sir Samuel persuaded her to give you fifteen minutes' grace, but after that she was determined to start. Of course, she didn't know that an accident had happened. She thought you were simply dawdling, and wanted Sir Samuel to arrange for you to drive down with the newly arrived German tourists. Sir Samuel and I objected to this, and later it was settled for the Turnours to do what her ladyship planned for you, without the company of the tourists. Lady Turnour resents lese-majeste."

"It's a miracle she consented to leave the car," I said.

"She couldn't use it without a chauffeur, and naturally I refused to go without knowing what had happened to you."

"You refused!" I stammered.

"Of course. That was where the row came in. We had a few words, and eventually I was deputed to look you up."

"Deputed!" I echoed, desperately. "They never 'deputed' you to do it, I'm sure."

"They jolly well couldn't help themselves. You can't make a man drive a car if he won't. So they went off in the Germans' carriage, and the Germans were enchanted."

"Oh!" I exclaimed, so miserable now that anger leaked out of my heart like water through a sieve. "It's all my fault. Did they discharge you?"

"I didn't give them the chance. After a few little things her ladyship said, I felt rather hot in the collar, and discharged myself. That is, I gave them notice that I would go as soon as they could get another chauffeur. It would have been bad form to leave them in the lurch, without anyone, on tour."

The tears came to my eyes, and I was thinking so little about myself that I let them roll down without bothering to wipe them away. "Do, do forgive me," I implored. "But you never can, of course. All through my foolishness you're out of an engagement. And you depended upon it, I know, from what you said."

"There's nothing to forgive, my dear little sister," he said. "It's you who must forgive me, if I've distressed you by telling the story in a clumsy way. It wasn't your fault. I couldn't stand that bounderess's cruel tongue, so I have myself to blame, if anyone. And it's sure to turn out right in the end."

"You refused to drive their car because you would stay behind and find me—"

"Any decent chap would do that—even a chauffeur." He spoke lightly to comfort me. "Besides, I wanted to stop. You're the only sister I ever had."

"You must hate me," I moaned.

"I don't. Please don't cry. I shall faint if you do."

I was obliged to laugh a little through my tears.

"Come," he said, gently. "Let me take you down. Just a word with the guide about those gipsies, and—"

"Oh, leave the wretched gipsies alone!" I begged. "Who cares, now? If you say anything, they may call us as witnesses at St. Remy or some town where we don't want to stop. Let them go."

"I suppose we might as well," he said, "for we can't prove anything worth proving. Come, then." He slipped some money into the guide's hand, and thanked him for his courtesy and kindness. But another pang shot through my remorseful heart. More money spent by this man for me, when he had so little, and had lost the engagement which, though unworthy his rank in life, was the only present means he had of earning a livelihood. I came, obeying in forlorn silence, and could not answer when he tried to cheer me up as we walked down to the Hotel Monte Carlo. There stood the Aigle in charge of a youth from the inn, and there was more money to be paid to him. I wanted to give it, but saw that if I insisted Mr. Dane would be vexed.

He suggested putting me inside, as the air was now very cold, with the chill that falls after sunset; but I refused. "I want to sit by you!" I implored, and he said no more. With the glass cage behind us empty, and the great acetylene lamps alight, the Aigle turned and flew down the hill.



CHAPTER XVI

For some time we did not speak, but my thoughts moved more quickly than the beating of the engine. At last I said meekly, "Of course, I may as well consider myself discharged, too. And even if I weren't, I should go."

"I've been thinking about that," Mr. Dane answered. "It was the first thought that came into my head when the row began. It isn't likely she'll want you to leave, because she won't like getting on without a maid. I think, in the circumstances, unless she is brutal, you'd better stay with her till your friends can receive you. Someone must come forward and help you now."

"I wouldn't ask anyone but Pamela, who's gone to America," I protested. "Besides, I can't stand Lady Turnour after what's happened—with you gone."

(As I said this, I remembered again how I had dreaded to associate with the chauffeur, and planned to avoid him. It was rather funny, as it had turned out; but somehow I didn't feel like laughing.)

"Of course you won't mind," I went on. "It's different for a man. If you were left and I going, it wouldn't matter, because you'd have the car. But I've nothing—except Lady Turnour's 'transformation.' Luckily, she won't want me to stop."

"I think she will," he said, "because your only fault was in having an accident. You weren't impudent, as she thinks I was in refusing to drive the car. Also in letting her see that I thought her willingness to leave a young girl in a place like this, alone for hours (she did propose to let me drive back for you) was the most brutal thing I'd ever heard of."

"Oh, how good you were, to sacrifice yourself like that for me!" I exclaimed.

"It wasn't entirely for you," he said. "One owes some things to oneself. But when we get to Avignon, and it's settled between you and Lady Turnour, promise to let me know what you mean to do and give me a chance to advise you."

I promised. But I was so melancholy as to the future and so ashamed of myself for the trouble brought upon my only friend, that his efforts to cheer me were hopeless as an attempt to let off wet fireworks. Mine were soaked; and instead of admiring the moonlight, which soon flooded the wild landscape, it made me the more dismal.

The drive by day had seemed short, but now it was long, for I was in haste to begin the expected battle.

"Courage! and be wise," said Mr. Dane, as he helped me out of the car in front of the Hotel de l'Europe. "I shall bring up your dinner again—it's no use saying you don't want anything—and we'll exchange news."

When lions have to be faced, my theory is that the best thing is to open the cage door and walk in boldly, not crawl in on your knees, saying: "Please don't eat me."

I expected Lady Turnour to have a fine appetite for any martyrs lying about loose, but to my surprise a faint "Come in!" answered my dauntless knock, and I beheld her prostrate in bed.

She said that I had nearly killed her, and that she would probably not be able to move for a week; but the story of my adventures with the gipsy interested her somewhat, and she brightened when she heard of the old coins found in a hole in the rock. There was not a word about sending me away, and I suspected that a scene with Sir Samuel had crushed the lady. Even a worm will turn, and Sir Samuel may be one of those mild men who, when once roused, are capable of surprising those who know them best. Quite meekly she desired that I would show her the coins, and having seen them, she said that she would buy them off me. Not that they were of any intrinsic value, but they might be "lucky," and she would give me a sovereign for the three.

Then an idea came and whispered in my ear. I thanked Lady Turnour politely, but said I thought I had better keep the coins and show them to an antiquary. They might be more valuable than we supposed, and I should need all the money, as well as all the luck possible, now that I was leaving her ladyship's service.

"Leaving!" she echoed. "But as you had an accident I've made up my mind to excuse you this time, and not discharge you as I intended. You don't know your business too well, but any maid is better than no maid on a tour like this, as Sir Samuel pointed out to me."

"But, begging your ladyship's pardon," I ventured, "I understand that the chauffeur is to go because he stopped at Les Baux to look for me. As he very likely saved my life, I couldn't be so ungrateful as to stay on in my situation when he is losing his for my sake."

"What nonsense!" snapped her ladyship. "As if that had anything to do with you, and if it has, it oughtn't. Besides, if he will apologize, he can stop. Sir Samuel says so."

"He doesn't seem to think he was in the wrong, my lady," said I. "As your ladyship will probably be at Avignon some time before finding another chauffeur, it will be easy to look for a maid at the same time."

"Be here some time!" she cried. "I won't! We want to get on to a chateau where my stepson's visiting."

"I should be delighted to offer your ladyship two of the lucky coins for nothing," said I, my impertinence wrapped in honey, "if she would persuade Sir Samuel to ask the chauffeur to stay."

"Why, that's just what Sir Samuel wants to do, if I would hear of it!" The words popped out before she had stopped to think.