This exclamation didn"t convey much to me, but it was encouraging that he seemed pleased; and when he had adjusted the friction roller against a fly-wheel, or something queer and ticklish of that sort, we flew away from Erba at a splendid pace, as if the car had decided to let bygones be bygones.
We ran beautifully along a smooth and level road that was trying to make up for its evil past, by the side of a small but pretty lake, and it seemed as if our troubles were over at last. But the astonishment on the faces of the peasants who stared from doorways in a couple of very picturesque villages through which we drove, was ominous. Evidently they had scarcely ever seen a motor-car, for they glared at us as if we were antediluvian animals. Running out of the second village, a.s.so, we found ourselves climbing a road which was not only as steep as the side of a house, but so narrow that, if we had met anything, it couldn"t possibly have pa.s.sed us. The way was wild and eerie; we could not tell what might come beyond each corner, and we could see nothing but the roughly climbing road, with its embankments, except as we looked back and down into vast s.p.a.ces of strange beauty, like fleeting scenes in dreams.
"I"m sure we must have come wrong. This can"t be the way that the Prince meant," I said. "It"s more like a track for goats than automobiles."
"We have come right according to directions," answered Mr. Barrymore, "but I must say, I rather wonder at the directions. According to Dalmar-Kalm"s account, the road was fairly good. I can hardly think he risked this route for his own car."
"Is there another he could have taken?" inquired Sir Ralph.
"Yes. He could have driven along the lake as far as Varenna, and then sent his car across to Bellagio on one of the steamers."
"My prophetic soul, which I inherit from a long line of Scotch ancestors, tells me that"s what he did," said Sir Ralph. Then he added in a lower voice, "It would be like him." But I heard, and wondered if, after all, he were a little jealous of the Prince?
"Whether he did or not, I"m glad _we_ didn"t," remarked Beechy. "This looks like being an adventure; and none of us are old enough to have outgrown our love of adventure, are we, Mamma?"
Of course, I had to say "no," though I"d been on the point of asking whether it wouldn"t be possible for us to go back. We had just come into a ragged hamlet, and there was literally no more than room for us to sc.r.a.pe through between the poor stone houses which leaned over us on either side the steep, roughly cobbled road. Six inches less, and we would have been in danger of slicing off our mud-guards, upon which lay a lot of our luggage as if on shelves. My heart was in my mouth, and I said so to Beechy; but she only laughed, and replied pertly--even for her--that she hoped it was a good fit, or should she pat me on the back?
Instead of smoothing out to a level again, as I hoped against hope that it would, the road grew steeper with each quarter-mile, so steep that it seemed as if the car must take to running down hill backwards. But always it went forging steadily up on the strongest speed with a dependable, b.u.mbling noise, never once faltering, though the Col di Tenda wasn"t as steep a gradient as this. Certainly, after one"s faith in the car has stopped wobbling, there was a kind of wild pleasure in the experience, especially in looking over one"s shoulder at the valleys lying far below us, cut deep into the green heart of the mountain, as if they had been hollowed out of an emerald. Suddenly the road gave a twist, and instead of prancing in the air, lay down at the feet of a grim, grey town, as a dog lies down at the feet of his master.
Mr. Barrymore stopped to see if the motor had got hot or burst a blood-vessel or anything; but all was well, and when we had slipped on our thick coats, those who had got out to walk the steepest hills--Sir Ralph and Beechy--climbed in again. We had been a long time creeping up, longer than Mr. Barrymore had calculated, and the chill of evening was in the air. Besides, we were in the midst of the mountains now, and it was hard to realize that we had ever felt too hot. As we drove along the edge of ridge, a keen wind caught us. I shivered and felt as if there were no more thickness to me than a paper doll; but I shouldn"t have dared to tell Beechy that, or she would have laughed, for I haven"t got my weight down yet to less than a hundred and fifty pounds. There was a gnawing just under my new gold belt-buckle with the cat"s-eyes on it, as if the cats had claws as well as eyes, and I remembered that it was ages since lunch. Maida and Beechy never appear to be hungry when they motor, though, so _I_ wouldn"t complain, for fear it might seem old and frumpy to think of such material things. But five minutes later being cold or hungry mattered as little as it would in a shipwreck.
The first thing that happened was a view--a view so unexpected and so superb that I gaped at it with my mouth open. So far away, so far below, that it was as if we looked down from a balloon sailing among the clouds, two lakes were set like sapphires in a double ring of mountains, whose greens and blues and purples were dimmed by a falling veil of twilight. But through the veil, white villas gleamed on the dark hillsides, like pearls that had fallen down the mountain-side, scattering as they fell; and above, in the great pale dome of the sky, a faint silver light pulsed and quivered, like the water-lights that one sees on the wall of a room near the river. It was a search-light sent out by the moon, which was _en panne_ somewhere on its way up the horizon, Maida said; and it was she who put some of those other thoughts into my mind; but my head didn"t hold any of them long at that time, because of the next thing that happened.
It was not a view; it was a plunge that we took down into the view.
We had come up one side of a house to get to this place on the roof, and now we began to slither down the other side, which was worse, a hundred times worse.
Who was it who said, "A horse, my kingdom for a horse?" I think it must have been Richard the Third in Shakspere"s play, which I went to see once in Denver, at a matinee, and Mr. Kidder scolded me afterwards for wasting my time and his money. Well, I never sympathized with any one so much in life as I sympathized with that poor man (I mean Richard, not Mr. Kidder) at this moment. I knew just how he must have felt, though of course the circ.u.mstances were somewhat different, automobiles not having been invented in those days, and he being on the stage, with a battle going on behind the scenes, where it was cheaper to produce, I suppose.
But I would have given my money, and even my t.i.tle, for a kind, gentle horse (the older the better) instead of a motor-car. A horse, at his worst, doesn"t want to kill himself, while an automobile doesn"t care what happens to it; and in these dreadful moments the only possible comfort would have been in sitting behind a thing with an instinct of self-preservation.
As it was, I sat with every muscle tense and a feeling as if my hair was standing up so straight on my head that every hairpin must fall out. But what was a hairpin more or less, or even a "transformation" a little awry, to a woman about to become a corpse? I held my breath, as if to let it go meant to lose it forever, while that automobile walked down the mountain exactly as a fly walks down a long expanse of wall-paper, making a short turn for every flower in the pattern.
There was a flower every other second in _our_ pattern, which meant a sharp turn for the fly; and I could have slapped Mr. Barrymore for talking on, as if we weren"t in peril enough to be prayed for in church, about the Lake of Como and the Lake of Lecco, and Bellagio (where we were going) on the promontory. Where we were going, indeed! Our only hope, clearly, was in heaven; though I should have liked just to see my new estate in Dalmatia first.
I had to let my breath go at last, and while s.n.a.t.c.hing another, I managed to gasp that I would get out and walk. But that imp of a Beechy (who must, I sometimes think, be a changeling) hugged my arm and said that I wasn"t to be "an old woman, like the Prince"; that this experience was too blissful to be spoiled by anybody"s nerves, and no one was going to be hurt, not even the little dog from Airole.
"How do you know?" I panted.
"Oh, because I do. And besides, I put my faith in our Chauffeulier."
"You had better put your trust in Providence," I said severely.
"It hasn"t come to _that_ yet," was her flippant reply; and I shouldn"t have been surprised if white bears had come out to devour her, for those mountain fastnesses looked capable of bears or worse.
"Don"t forget this is the road the Prince recommended," Beechy went on.
"It would be too unflattering to our vanity to think he could have wished to hurl us to our death, so it must be all right."
"He had forgotten what it was like," I said. But the idea did enter into my mind that perhaps he had thought if our car should break down we might be induced to continue our journey in his. And the suggestion of so strong a desire on his part to monopolize a certain member of our party wasn"t wholly unpleasant. It gave me enough warmth round the heart to support life during the rest of the experience which Beechy considered so "blissful."
I will say for Mr. Barrymore that he drove carefully, keeping the brakes on all the time, and slowing down for one curve after another, so short and so sharp, that if our automobile had been much longer in the body the turn couldn"t have been managed.
We had trusted to Mr. Barrymore"s judgment about where we were to stop at Bellagio, for even Sir Ralph had never done more than pa.s.s through the place; and he had telegraphed for rooms at a hotel on a high promontory above the lake, once the chateau of a famous old Italian family. It is still called the villa Serbelloni, and Mr. Barrymore had described the view and the garden as being so exquisite, that he had excited our curiosity and interest. I always think, too, there is something fascinating, if you aren"t very grand yourself (or haven"t been till lately), about living in the same rooms where grand people have lived. You can say to yourself, "Here the d.u.c.h.ess ate her Dinner, here she danced, here she wrote her letters. In this garden she walked; her eyes looked upon this view," and so I was particularly attracted towards the Villa Serbelloni, even though Prince Dalmar-Kalm had suggested several reasons for our going to one of the hotels on the level of the lake. Of course I"d not confided these reflections either to Maida or Beechy, for even Maida is unsympathetic about some things, and thinks, or says that she thinks, it is horridly sn.o.bbish to care about t.i.tles. She told Beechy, in an argument they were having together, that she would just as soon as not snub an English duke or marquise, just to show that there were _some_ American girls who didn"t come abroad to spend their money on buying a husband from the British aristocracy. She hasn"t had a chance to prove her strength of mind in this way yet, for so far we have met only an English baronet; though I must admit that she"s much nicer to Mr. Barrymore, who is n.o.body at all, than she is either to Sir Ralph Moray or the Prince.
When we seemed to be dangling midway between heaven and earth, and the sapphires that had been the lakes had turned into burnished silver mirrors, Mr. Barrymore drew our attention to a high point of land running out into the water, its shape sharply cut like a silhouette in black against the silver. "That is where we shall be in about half an hour more," said he, "for all those twinkling yellow stars mean the Villa Serbelloni."
I thought it much more probable that we would be at the bottom of Lake Como, having been previously dashed into pieces so small that no expert could sort them. But just as the moon had painted a line of glittering gold along the irregular edges of the purple mountains we did actually arrive on level ground close to the border of the lake. Then we had to mount again to the Villa Serbelloni, for there was no more direct way to it, connecting with the road by which we had come, and after we had wound up the side of the promontory for a little while we began to drink in a fragrance as divine as if we really had been killed and had gone straight to heaven.
It was quite a different fragrance from any I had ever known before in any garden; not so richly heavy as on the Riviera, though penetrating; as delicate, Maida said, as a Beethoven symphony, and as individual. I believe if I were to go blind, and somebody should lead me into the garden of the Villa Serbelloni without telling me where I was, I should know by that wonderful perfume. I can"t imagine its being the same anywhere else.
At the sound of our motor several people came out to the door of the long, white, crescent-shaped building, and among them, to my great pleasure, was the Prince.
"How late you are!" he exclaimed, coming to help me out before Sir Ralph, or a very handsome young man who was the manager of the hotel, had time to do it. "I"ve been expecting you for the last two hours. Do you know that it"s nearly nine o"clock? I began to be afraid something had happened."
"What a pity you didn"t think of that in Milan!" snapped Beechy. "Did you get Mamma to make a will in your favour last night?"
"My dear young lady, what do you mean?" implored the poor Prince.
"I guess you"d know that without asking, if you"d come the way we have, instead of taking boats and things all over the place," giggled the impossible child, and then complained out aloud that I was pinching her.
Naturally, the Prince was too dignified to bandy words with a naughty little girl, so he didn"t pursue the subject further, but began inquiring particulars of our adventures as we went into the house together.
"Do you know why I was especially anxious to arrive ahead of you?" he asked me, in a low voice.
"I think I remember your explaining last night," said I.
"Ah, but I didn"t give my most important reasons. I kept them for your ears alone; and I hope you won"t be displeased. Do you remember telling me something about to-morrow?"
I thought for a moment. "Do you mean that it will be my birthday?" I asked.
"I mean nothing else. Did you imagine that I would forget?"
To tell the truth, I hoped he had, for I"d only mentioned it on an impulse, to regret the words as soon as they were out. A woman who is--well, I"ll say over twenty-eight--had, perhaps, better let "sleeping dogs lie" when it comes to talking about birthdays, especially if she has a daughter who doesn"t sleep, and never lies when she"s wanted to.
However, out the news had popped about the 30th of April being my birthday, and the Prince would hardly believe that I was as much as twenty-nine, though, of course, there is Beechy, and I couldn"t well have married younger than fifteen. I murmured something now about a birthday being of no consequence (I wish it weren"t), but the Prince said that mine was of a great deal to him, and he had made exertions to arrive early and arrange a little surprise for me.
"I will say no more," he went on. "You will know the rest to-morrow; but the best, not until evening."
I could think of nothing during dinner except what he had said, though it was so late, and I"d been so hungry. And afterwards, standing on the balcony outside my bedroom window looking down on a scene of fairy-like beauty, the wonderful white moonlight and thoughts of the Prince seemed to mingle together in my head, like some intoxicating draught. "Countess Dalmar, Princess Dalmar-Kalm," I kept saying over to myself, until the words wove themselves into a song in my brain, with the scent of the flowers for accompaniment.
The whole house seems to have absorbed the perfumes of the garden, as if they had soaked into the wood. The corridors, the bedrooms, the wardrobes, even the chests of drawers, have the same delicate fragrance.
It scented my dreams and told me where we were when I waked in the morning, confused with sleep.
XVI
A CHAPTER OF ENCHANTMENT