The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor-Car

Evening; and Loches.

"Here I am again!" as Jack-in-the-Box says. And we've done all the things I said we were going to. But I'm too full of Loches and too excited about Loches to tell you anything of yesterday's three castles, except to fling them an adjective or two, and pass on. Let me see, what adjective, since I've confined myself to one, shall I give Ussé? "Splendid," I think. "Interesting" is all I can afford for Luynes, though it deserves a lot more, if only for its history. And well-"magnificent" must do for Chinon. Perhaps it has the most beautiful view of all. But Loches-Loches! I had forgotten its existence till I dug it up for myself in Quentin Durward, and the guide-books, to which Aunt Mary is so faithful, don't do it any sort of justice. They don't tell you to go to see it, whatever else you must make up your mind to miss. Why, Aunt M.'s particular pet devoted almost as much space to the queer little rock village of Rochecorbon, whose lighted windows glared at us like cat's eyes away high up above the road, one dark evening (when we'd been belated after an excursion) getting back to Tours.

Luckily the Lightning Conductor appreciated Loches at its true value, and told me it was well worth making a short détour-as we must-to see. We had to go out of our way as far as a place called Cormery, but that was nothing, and yesterday morning early we started. It was the first sparkling blue-and-gold day we have had for a while; it seemed as if it must have come across to us from Provence, as a sample, to show what we might expect if we hurried on there. The air was like champagne-or Vouvray-and we spun along at our very best on the smooth, wide Route Nationale, our faces turned towards Provence as a graceful compliment for the gift of the weather.

We have a neat little trick of getting to places just in time for lunch, and we managed it at Loches, as usual. We'd hardly driven into the town before I fell in love with its quaintness; but I didn't fall in love with the hotel until I'd been surprised with a perfectly delicious déjeuner. Then I let myself go; and when I'd seen how pretty the old-fashioned bedrooms were, I begged to stay all night instead of going on. Brown seems to regard my requests as if they were those of royalty-commands; and he rearranged our programme accordingly. I'm writing in a green-and-pink damask bedroom now, but when I shut my eyes I can see the castle and the dungeons and-Madame César. Yes, I think I can find my way back for your benefit, and return on our own tracks.

First, like a promising preface to the ruined stronghold of the terrible Louis, we went through a massive gateway, flanked with towers, and climbed up a winding street of ancient, but not decrepit houses, to come out at last upon a plateau with the gigantic walls of the castle on our left. When I remembered who caused those outworks and walls to be put up, so high and grim and strong, and why, I felt a little "creep" run up my spine at sight of the enormous mass of stonework. "Who enters here leaves hope behind" might have been written over the gateway in the dreadful days when Loches was in its wicked prime. Those walls are colossal, like perpendicular cliffs. At a door in one of them we tinkled a bell, and presently, with loud unlocking of double doors, quite a pretty young girl appeared and invited us in. She was the daughter of the gardien, she told us. It was almost a shock to see something so fresh and young living in such a forbidding, torture-haunted den as Louis' Château of Loches. She was like one of the little bright-coloured winter blossoms springing out from a cranny of the grey walls. When she had lighted rather a smelly lantern, we prepared to follow into the "fastnesses" of the castle. If ever that good old double-dyed word could be appropriate, it is to Loches. I never thoroughly realised before the awful might of kings in feudal and mediæval days. To think that Louis XI. had the power to build such a place, and to hustle his enemies away for ever out of the sunshine, behind those tremendous walls, and bury them in the yard-square cells hollowed in the thickness of the stone! I used to wish I'd lived in those stirring times, but I changed my mind to-day-temporarily.

In the middle of the fortress is an enormous square, white keep, so heavy, solid, and imposing that it seems more like the slow work of Nature than of man. Down steep, winding steps in a tower, we followed our guide into the dungeons where that unspeakable Louis shut up the people he was afraid to leave in the world. Waving her lantern in the dusk, the girl showed us where the wretched prisoners had tried to keep themselves from madness by painting on the roof and walls. In one cell a bishop had cut into the solid wall a little altar, just where a slanting ray of sunshine stole through a grating and occasionally laid a small patch of light for a few minutes, only to snatch it away again. Several of the cells were just black holes scooped out of the rock, and there it seemed to have been Louis' delight to put some of the most important prisoners-men who had lived like princes, and had power over life and death in their own countries.

Oh, do you remember wily Cardinal Balue? I've been refreshing my memory of him in Quentin Durward, hating him dreadfully; but I did have a spasm of pity when I saw the big, well-like place where he was suspended for so many years, like an imprisoned canary, in a wooden cage, because he betrayed Louis' secrets to the Duke of Burgundy. Henry James says, in a fascinating Tauchnitz volume I bought in Tours (A Little Tour in France), that Cardinal Balue "survived much longer than might have been expected this extraordinary mixture of seclusion and exposure." Isn't that just the cunningest way of expressing it?

Last of all we went up to the top of a high tower in the midst of the Château, and there, as if we'd been on the mast-head of a ship, we had a bird's-eye view of the pretty white town, with the Indre murmuring by in sedgy meadows outside. There were some wonderful old cuttings in the stone, made by the soldiers who acted as sentinels and prisoners' guards; and Aunt Mary Kodaked me as I sat studying them. We could spy, across the plateau of the castle, the tomb of Agnes Sorel, and decided to go to it; but we left the poor girl till so late, finally, that we could only see her glimmering white in effigy of marble, with a sweetly resigned face, modest, folded hands, and a dear little soft sitting-down lamb to rest her pretty feet on. She had, besides, two very pretty young angels to watch over her and wake her up when it should be time.

I'm sure it would have taken at least three such angels to wake me up, until I had "slept out," after our long afternoon in the castle, and later in the town. I went to bed early and slept ten hours. We hadn't to start immediately, as our drive for the day wasn't long, so I proposed to Aunt Mary that we should breakfast in our rooms and then go out for a morning walk. The breakfast idea appealed to her; not so the walk, and accordingly I had to go alone. I had no plan except perhaps to buy a souvenir or two; but in the crooked street leading up to the castle I met Brown. He was reading a notice on the great gateway, directing strangers to some excavations lately made. He took off his cap at sight of me, and I asked him if he thought the excavations would be worth seeing. He had heard that they were, and I said that I should be glad if he would show me how to go to the place. I didn't like wandering about by myself. Everything is so horrid that one does by oneself in a strange country, and then if Brown isn't useful in one way he always proves to be in another. So he obeyed, of course, walking not too close, as if to let me see that he recognized the distance between us. I've often noticed him do that if we have to go anywhere together on foot, and I think it's rather nice of him, don't you? Just a little pathetic too, maybe. Anyhow, it seems that way to me, for he really ought to have been a gentleman. It's such a waste of good material, the Lord using him up for a chauffeur when any common stuff would have done for that.

Well, we went on a short distance until we saw a tiny cottage in a wild-looking garden at the foot of the huge fortress walls. We rang a gate-bell, when another notice told us we'd got to the right place, and a little, smiling woman came out to welcome us. "Oh, yes!" said she volubly. She would show us the excavations, and we would find them as interesting as anything we could see in Loches. Already it was easy to see that in her, at least, we had found something interesting. She had the nicest, brightest old face, and she poured out upon us a kind of benign dew of conversation. She introduced herself as Madame César; always talking and explaining, she lighted a candle, led us to the mouth of an egg-shaped subterranean path, and bowed us down. She went, too, down the steep steps, telling how this passage and many ramifications of it had been discovered only recently, most of the excavations having been the work of her husband. It was supposed that an underground gallery led a long way from Loches to some distant spot, so that people could come and go to the castle unseen, and so that the fortress could secretly receive provisions if it were besieged. All sorts of things had been found in the passages-rosaries, and old, old books, and coins, and queer playing-cards; and some of the best of the relics she had in her own cottage. We stopped to see them afterwards, and she reeled forth yards of history in the most fascinating and vivacious manner, accompanied by dramatic gestures, almost worthy of Sara Bernhardt. I suppose she must have been down in the excavations oftener than she could remember, but you would have thought it was perfectly new to her, and she was seeing it for the first time. She gave us a rose each to remember her by, and oh! – wasn't it comic, or tragic? which you will-she quite misunderstood things, and suggested that I should put Brown's rose in his leathery buttonhole. He and I both pretended not to hear, but I felt embarrassed for a minute. Nevertheless, I wouldn't have missed Madame César and her excavations for a good deal.

There, déjeuner is ready, and you'll be glad, maybe, dear, faraway Dad, because it will spare you further descriptions. After déjeuner we shall proceed to be lightning-conducted again, and I shall duly collect a few more adventures to recount. Good-bye, dear. How I wish you were with me instead of Aunt Mary!

Your everlastingMolly.

JACK WINSTON TO LORD LANE

Biarritz, December 11.

My dear Montie,

I have let you rest a good long time without a letter (not that I've been taking a rest myself), and now I should think you are opening your eyes with astonishment at the picture on my paper of a hotel at beautiful, blowy Biarritz. Thereby hangs a tale of adventure and misadventure.

No doubt my fair employer believes me at this moment to be consorting with couriers in the servants hall (if there be one) of her hotel. But, as usual, I know a trick worth two of that; and having washed his hands of Brown for the time being, your friend Jack sits smoking his pipe and writing to you in what is known as the "monkey-house" of this hotel. As you don't know Biarritz, you'll think that in exchanging all the comforts of a servants' hall for a monkey-house I am not doing myself as well as I might. But there are monkey-houses and monkey-houses. This one is a delightful glass room built on to the front of the hotel, facing a garden and tennis courts, commanding a glorious view of the sea and also of every creature, human and inhuman, who goes by. One has tea in the monkey-house; one writes letters, reads novels, smokes or gossips, according to sex and inclination; one can also be seen at one's private avocations by the madding crowd outside the glass house, hence the name.

The air is luminous with sunshine and pungent with ozone. Great green rollers are marching in, to break in thunder on the beach, and fling rainbow spouts of spray over tumbled brown rocks. In the distance the sea has all the colours of a peacock's tail; the world is at its best, and I ought to be rejoicing in its hospitality; but I'm not. The fact is, I'm upset in my mind. I'm over head and ears in love, and as there's no hope of scrambling out again (I'm hanged if I would, even if I could) or of getting my feet on solid ground, mere beauty of landscape and seascape appear slightly irrelevant.

I wouldn't bother you with my difficulties, which, I admit, are mostly my own fault, and serve me right for beginning wrong, but you asked in your letter if you could help me in any way; and it does help to let off steam. You are my safety-valve, old man.

You will have had my hasty line from Angoulême (birthplace of witch-stories and of Miss Randolph's beloved Francis the First) telling you how we got rid of Eyelashes. I don't think we shall ever encounter that beautiful young vision again, and I sincerely hope that we shall be spared others of his kind, but one never knows what will happen with an American girl at the helm. I told you also of our doings among the châteaux. Altogether, that was an idyllic time; and still, though I have been grumbling to you just now, when I can shut my eyes to to-morrow, I haven't much fault to find with Fate. You remember that weird story of Hawthorne's, about the man who walked out of his own house one morning, took lodgings in a neighbouring street, disguised himself, and watched for years the agony of his wife, who gave him up for dead? At last the desire for home came over him again; he knocked at his own door and went in; there the story ends.

My position is like that of Hawthorne's hero, without the tragedy. When shall I return to my own home? I cannot tell. I have stepped out of my own sphere into another, and sometimes I have an odd sense of detachment, as if I were floating in a void. It is only when I am writing to you or when I get letters from the world I have left that I feel the link which unites me with the past. Since I left Paris I have had only four letters from my world, which have fallen into Brown's world like strange reminders of another existence. I have had your own welcome words, and a letter from my mother at Cannes (I gave her my address at Poitiers) telling me of the arrival there of Jabez Barrow with his "one fair daughter," and urging me to haste. As if I should rush from the society of the Goddess in the car to the opulent charms (in both senses) of Miss Barrow! It appears that Jabez the Rich does not care for Cannes, but sighs for Italy, and that my mother has promised to "personally conduct" them to Rome. She wants me to reach Cannes before they leave, or if that's impossible, to abandon my car and follow by rail to Rome, lest I "miss this great chance." I am not surprised at this move. My dear mother, when the travelling fit is upon her, is nothing if not erratic. She is here to-day, and, having seen the charms of another place advertised on a poster, is gone to-morrow.

On getting this letter a happy inspiration came into my mind. It had been the more or less vague intention of the Goddess, after inspecting the castles of the Loire, to steer for Lyons, arriving at Nice by way of Grenoble. I offered the wily suggestion, however, that it would make a more varied and less "obvious" tour if we went down by Bordeaux and Biarritz, snatched a glimpse of Spain, travelled along the foot of the Pyrenees to Marseilles, and so reach the Riviera by this long détour. The word "obvious" is a black beast to an American girl, who will be original or nothing; therefore my suggestion is in the way of being carried out. I've written to my mother that I can't reach Cannes before she herself leaves for Rome; thus I gain time. Still, the day of disclosure must come at last, and the longer it's put off the less I like to think about it.

The Goddess (alias Miss Randolph) is staying with her aunt at the "Angleterre." I have slunk off here, having arranged matters with the hall porter at the other place, who will, if my mistress wants me, send a messenger post-haste. Meanwhile the car reposes in a garage, where it is kept clean and in running order without any trouble to me. As I have gradually drifted into the position of Miss Randolph's courier as well as her chauffeur, I can plan these things as I like, for she never glances at her bills, which I settle, giving an account every few days. Do you recall your own story of the conscientious Yankee from the country who failed in his efforts to eat straight through the menu at a Paris hotel dinner, and appealed to the waiter to know whether he might now "skip from thar to thar"? Well, I would skip on my menu from Loches to Biarritz; but you were to have been my companion on this trip, and you cry for details.

From Loches we took a cross-country route which brought us out in the main road from Tours to Bordeaux at Dangé. There isn't much to say about that run, except that it was through agreeable, undulating country with wide horizons, like a thousand other undulations and horizons in France. At La Haye-Descartes we struck a pretty picture when crossing a bridge over the River Creuse. The setting sun had performed the miracle of turning the water into wine, and, chattering and laughing as if that wine had gone to their pretty heads, a company of girls and young women, all on their knees, cheerfully did their washing in the stream. It was one of those homely scenes that one is constantly coming across in this "pleasant land of France" to leave a picture in one's mind. Miss Randolph would have me stop the car on the bridge to watch it.

A queer thing about France, by the way. You and I have both been entertained right royally in jolly old châteaux by delightful French people of our own class. We know that life in such country houses can be as charming as it is in England; yet if one had never seen it from the inside, one would fancy in travelling that nothing of the sort existed. Roughly, one might sum the difference up in a phrase by saying that France presents a peasant's landscape, England a landlord's. In England you see twenty good country houses for every one you pass in France-excepting only the district of the Loire; and outdoor life as we know it, on the road and on the river, doesn't seem to exist over here. Somehow I was never so much struck with this contrast before, though I know this country almost as well as I know my hat. Think of the English roads and lanes, of the pretty girls and decent men one meets on horseback or in smart dogcarts, the dowagers in victorias, the crowds of cyclists, the occasional fine motor-car, knickerbockered men walking for the pleasure of exercise! Here, though one knows there are more motors than at home, one rarely comes across them out of towns; and as for ladies and gentlemen, or, indeed, any sort of people out solely for enjoyment, they're as rare as black opals. I look in vain for pretty field paths and rural lanes, where workmen and their sweethearts wander when the day is done. I suppose they prefer to do their love-making indoors or in front of a café, or perhaps they sandwich it in with their long hours of work, and that is the reason why the whole of France seems so much more cultivated than country England-the reason why every acre is turned to account, not a square yard of earth left untilled. It's only the magnificent roads which aren't enough appreciated, apparently, by the "nobility and gentry," as the tradesmen's circulars have it. And what roads the Routes Nationales are-born for motor-cars! – varying a little from department to department, but equally good almost everywhere. You come to a stone marking the boundary of a department, for instance, and crossing an imaginary line, find yourself on a different kind of surface, each department being allowed to make it's road after the manner which pleases it best-provided only it makes it well.

The Route Nationale from Paris to Bayonne, along part of which we've lately travelled, is good nearly all the way. From Dangé to Poitiers is a splendid bit, and up to Poitiers one climbs a considerable hill. It's a cheerful town, with a fine cathedral, and lively streets full of red-legged soldiers, rather weedy and shambling fellows, like most French conscripts. Beyond Poitiers the road is one long, exhilarating switchback-you rush down one hill, climb another, swoop again into a hollow, and so on, the road unrolling itself like a great white tape. You try to drive faster than the tape unrolls, but somehow you can never beat it.

That we were getting into the south was shown by the fact that the road was bordered by endless rows of walnut trees. Under a tumbled sky, and with an occasional spatter of rain, we passed that day through a vast stretch of rolling, cultivated land, with obscure villages at long intervals. In a little town called Couhé-Verac we lunched rather late. The regular déjeuner was over, as it was nearly three in the afternoon; but in ten minutes after we got into the house we sat down to this luncheon: boiled eggs, roast veal, bœuf à la mode, purée of potatoes, pheasant, a delicious pâté, grapes, peaches, pears, sweet biscuits, cream cheese, red and white wine, and bread ad libitum; all for two francs fifty per head. Think of it! This was a homely village inn, with no pretensions. What would have happened if we had turned up unexpectedly at such a house in England? We should have been offered cold beef and pickles, with the alternative of ham and eggs, or possibly "chop or steak, sir; take twenty minutes." Truly in cooking we are barbarians. The French dine; we feed.

The landlord was a man of character. He had delightful manners, and though he was young his hair was greyish, and cut low and straight across a broad forehead. Through gold-rimmed glasses gleamed the blue eyes of an enthusiast. He went with me to look at the car, and explained that he was an inventor-that he had designed a new system of marine propulsion more powerful than the screw. It followed the action of a man in swimming, "regular in irregularity," and standing on his toes, he flung out his arms, and beat them rhythmically in the air to illustrate his theory. It was hard, he confided in me, to have to keep an inn in a small town, when he ought to be in Paris, among engineers, perfecting his invention. Did I, by any chance, know of a capitalist who would back him? I sympathised and regretted; but who knows if he has not got hold of an idea? At Blois they have a statue of Denis Papin, who, the French say, invented the steam engine. Perhaps, years hence, if my grandchildren pass through Couhé-Verac, they may see a statue to the blue-eyed landlord of its little inn.

Beyond Couhé-Verac we had our first dog accident. Dogs, you know, are as great a nuisance to automobiles as they are to cycles, and they charge at one's car with such vehemence that their impetus almost carries them under the wheels. Sometimes they show their strength by galloping alongside the car for a couple of hundred yards, barking so furiously the while that their bodies are contorted by the violence of the effort. I was driving at a moderate pace (something under thirty miles an hour) when a beautiful collie which had been standing by the roadside walked quietly out and planted himself with his back to me in front of the car. The fact was that he saw his master coming along the road, and had gone forward to greet him. The whole thing happened in an instant, so that I had no time to stop. I think the dog must have been deaf not to hear the noise of the car. I shouted, but he took no notice. To swerve violently to one side was to risk upsetting the car; besides, there was no room to do this as another vehicle happened to be passing. If there had been only the car to sacrifice, I would have sacrificed it to save that collie; but I couldn't sacrifice Miss Randolph. There was nothing for it but to drive over the dog. With a sickening wrench of the heart, I saw the nice beast disappear under the front of the car. Instantly slowing down, I looked behind me expecting to see a mangled corpse. But there was the dog rolling over and over on the road. Clearly some under part of the car had struck him and sent him spinning. The noise, the unexpected blow, the fierce, hot blast of the poisonous exhaust pouring into his face, must have made the poor fellow think that he had struck a travelling earthquake. But happily he was unhurt. As I looked he got on to his feet, and with his tail between his legs, ran to his master for consolation. Our last glimpse showed us that comedy had followed tragedy, for the master was beating the dog with a cane for getting in our way. I was afraid Miss Randolph would scream or faint, but she did neither, only turned white as marble, and never looked prettier in her life. Aunt Mary yelled, of course, but more in fear for ourselves than for the collie, I think. She says she would like dogs better "if their bark could be extracted."