The Lightning Conductor/Chapter 12
JACK WINSTON TO LORD LANE
Hotel du Louvre, Marseilles,
December 18.
My dear Montie,
We have just been passing through some of the most interesting parts of France, therefore in the world, and I have derived a certain rarefied enjoyment from it all, as I should have been only half a man not to do. But Brown stock has gone down a little since Carcassonne, why, I know not, though I suspect; and there is depression, if not panic in the market. Jimmy, having made his peace and promised caution, has again been promoted to the post of driver, and from the Jehu point of view I must confess that during a large part of the journey he has covered himself with as much credit as dust. This is saying a good deal, for, owing to the slight rainfalls in these southern departments, the roads are often buried inches deep under a coating of grey, pungent dust, enveloping all passing vehicles in a noisome cloud. They have also, set in their surface at irregular intervals, large pans or dishes with perpendicular walls from an inch to three inches in depth. These dishes being concealed by the all-pervading dust, it is impossible at—least for a Jimmy Payne—to know where they are until the wheels bump into them. Sometimes one of our wheels would drop in, sometimes all four. You may imagine the strain of this sort of work upon the tyres, frame, and springs. But in a whole day's run of a hundred and thirty miles we punctured only one tyre, which I mended in fifteen minutes.
Béziers, seen from a distance, set strikingly upon a hill, looked an imposing town, but turned out to be an ordinary and dirty place when we came to ascend its long, winding streets. Beyond, we ran for a while along the edge of a great lagoon, and knew, though we could not see it, that the Mediterranean lay close at our right hand.
At Montpellier we did not stop, and I delivered no lecture on the subject of the gorgeous, all-conquering Duchess, as I might have been tempted to do if we'd had no addition to our party. It's a large, bright, and stately town, very liveable-looking; but nothing was said about lingering, though there are some things worth seeing. We had an impressive entrance into the ancient city of Nîmes, running in by early moonlight, across a great, open plain, under a spacious, purpling dome of sky, the sun dying in carmine behind us, the evening star a big, flashing diamond in the moon-paled east. The old Roman amphitheatre stood up darkly and nobly in the silver twilight; but we passed on to our hotel, the programme evidently being to satisfy the senses at the expense of the soul. They do one very well at the hotel in Nîmes, but I looked forward hopefully to a request to play courier among the sights of the dear old town next morning. It did not come, however. The two ladies went forth with Jimmy, and as I saw them go I could but acknowledge my rival to be a personable fellow. Sherlock Holmes and Little Lord Fauntleroy were both personable fellows in their way, and it is useless to deny Jimmy's possession of the picked attributes of each.
For some reason the word seems to have gone forth that we are to hurry on to Cannes. In the circumstances I am inclined to change my mind, and instead of wishing my dear mother to have departed before our arrival, I'm not sure it wouldn't be wiser to hope that she'll still be there. Miss Randolph "hasn't decided what she'll do after reaching the Riviera." I can't help feeling that Jimmy Sherlock has succeeded in getting in some deadly work of a mysterious nature. It's on the cards that I may find at Cannes or Nice that the trip is finished, and Brown is finished too. Then, as I can't and won't part from my Goddess without a Titanic struggle, I might find it convenient to tell my mother all, throw myself on her mercy, and get her to intercede with Miss Randolph for me. You may argue that her views regarding the fair Barrow are likely to militate against co-operation in this new direction; but I can be eloquent on occasion, and even a mother must see that a Barrow is nothing beside a Goddess.
Altogether, I am nervous. The future looks wobbly, and it is not a pleasant sensation to feel that one is being secretly undermined. Jimmy had better look out, though. The first shadow of proof I get that he's breaking his half of the bargain he shall learn that even a chauffeur will turn. And I look upon Cannes, somehow, as the turning-point in more senses of the word than one.
But to our muttons. No pleasant dallying for me in beautiful old Nîmes or Aries, either one of which would repay weeks of lingering. What dallying there was, Jimmy got—confound him!—and my only joy was in his hatred of early rising. They had him up at an unearthly hour for a glimpse of the amphitheatre and the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, and by nine we were on the road to Arles, Payne driving with creditable caution. We crossed the Rhone and completed the eighteen flat miles in little more than thirty minutes. When we arrived at the end of this time in the astonishing little town of Arles, halting in a diminutive square with two great pillars of granite and a superb Corinthian pediment (dating from Roman occupation) built into the walls of modern houses, Miss Randolph announced that they would walk about for half an hour and look at the antiquities. "Half an hour!" I couldn't help echoing; "why, Arles is one of the most interesting places in France. It is an open-air museum."
"I know," said she, looking up at me with an odd expression which I would have given many a bright sovereign for the skill to read. "But maybe I shall have a chance to see it some other time, and the others don't care much for antiquities or architecture. We really must hurry as fast as possible to Cannes."
Now, why—why? What is to happen at Cannes? Is Jimmy's loathly hand in this? Or—blessed thought!—is all sight-seeing for her, as well as for me, poisoned by his society? Is she regretting her rash generosity in promising to carry him to the Riviera (to say nothing of Lord Lane!) and is she panting to rid herself of him? I daren't hope it. But write me your deduction. Perhaps in your enforced inaction at Davos it may amuse you to piece together a theory and account for the actions of certain persons in France, whom possibly you know better than if you had ever met them.
While the three went off to bolt in one bite such delicate morsels as the sculptured porch of the cathedral of St. Trophinus and the Roman theatre I gloomily played Casabianca by the car, Ixion at the wheel, or what you will. I waited their return before the hotel, and no sooner did they come back, at the end of their stingy half-hour, than we started, taking the road across the great plain of La Crau towards Salon.
A most extraordinary region that plain of La Crau. It is as flat as a pancake, only far away to the north one sees a range of brown, stony mountains. Formerly it was a forbidding, stony desert, the dumping-place for every pebble and boulder brought down by the Rhone and the Durance. But all over the vast wilderness there has been carried out a wonderful system of irrigation, and now it yields sweet herbage for sheep, while figs, mulberries, and cypresses are dotted in green oases. The surface of the land is thickly veined with the beneficent little canals, carrying life-giving water from the Canal de Craponne, which has its origin at La Roque, on the Durance.
Across this vast plain we raced towards Salon, along a road straight as if drawn by a ruler, and bordered by small poplars standing shoulder to shoulder like trees in a child's box of toys. We met no other vehicles; we seemed to have the world to ourselves; but once, far along the road, we spied a black dot which seemed to come towards us with incredible speed, growing larger as it came. In less time than it takes to write we saw that it was an enormous racing automobile, probably undergoing a test of speed. We were running at our own highest pace, perhaps forty-five miles an hour; the thing approaching us was coming at seventy or more. You may imagine the rush of air as we passed each other. One glimpse we had of a masked automobilist like a figure of death in an Albert Dürer cartoon, or the familiar of a Vehmgericht, and then we were gasping in the vortex of air caused by the speed of the gigantic car. Almost before we could turn our heads it was a black dot again on the horizon. Perhaps it was the great Fournier himself.
Beyond Salon the road becomes interestingly accidentée. One climbs among the mountains which fold Marseilles in their encircling arms, and has spacious views over the great Etang de Berre to the glittering Mediterranean. The Napier crested the hills without faltering, and from the top we had a long run down (over bad pavé at the last) into the lively, noisy streets of gay Marseilles, Payne guiding the car very decently over intricate tram lines, finally turning across the pavement to circle into the white, airy court of a large hotel. When my passengers had got down I drove the car to a garage and went quietly off to another hotel, where, warned by past experience at Pau, I entered myself in the register modestly as James Brown.
Now I shall hurl at your devoted and friendly head this enormous letter, and presently shall begin another to tell of the Further Adventures on the Riviera of
Your much-enduring Friend,
The Amateur Chauffeur.