Part 9

That new car is a treasure, and Brown drives as if there were a sort of _sympathy_ between him and it. We go at a thrilling pace sometimes, but that is only when we have a long, straight road, empty as far as the eye can see. He is very considerate to "horse drivers," as he calls them, and he says "for the sake of the sport" everyone driving an automobile should be careful of the rights of other persons on the road. He slows down at once, or even stops the car altogether, if we meet a restive horse. Once he got out and pacified a silly beast that was nervous, leading it past the car, and when it was quite quiet the old peasant who was driving exclaimed that if all automobilists were like us there would never be complaints. We managed to make up for lost time, though; and when Brown "lets her out," as he calls it, until we are going as fast as a quick train, I can tell you it is something worth living for. When the country is very beautiful we drive slowly, and save our "spurts" for the uninteresting parts.

I know you've read Balzac's _Duchesse de Langeais_, in English, for it was I who gave it to you. I don't suppose she ever lived, really, at the Chateau de Langeais or anywhere else; but the thought of her made Langeais even more interesting to me than it would have been if she'd been erased from the picture.

It's a great, grey, frowning, turreted and crenelated fortress-house, and I felt so much obliged to it for having kept its practicable drawbridge. We drove almost up to the door, through a clean, very old little town, and just opposite the entrance was a quaint house where Brown said Rabelais had lived. I don't believe Aunt Mary knew anything about Rabelais. However, she eagerly Kodaked the house, and later, when I gravely mentioned to her that Rabelais was the kind you wouldn't allow _me_ to read, but of course _she_ might, if she liked, she gave a squeak of dismay, and threatened to waste all her films rather than let a photographer see that one when they went to be developed. I do hope _I_ shan't be an old maid!

The Parisian millionaire who owns the Chateau, and lives in it part of the year, must be a wonderfully generous, public-spirited man. Only think, he has spent thousands and thousands in restoring the castle, in keeping up the lovely garden, and in having all the rooms exquisitely furnished and decorated exactly in the period of wicked Louis the Eleventh and Charles the Eighth. But instead of keeping these beautiful things for himself and his family and friends, he lets everybody have the benefit, not even making an exception of his own private rooms. Here Anne of Brittany was very much to the fore again, for she was married to Charles at Langeais, and we went into the room of the wedding. I should have liked to take the splendid, dignified, old major-domo, who showed us about, home with me; but I'm sure he'd pine away and die if torn from his beloved Chateau.

We bought quaint painted iron brooches, with Anne of Brittany's crest on them, in the town; and then we drove away through pretty, undulating country, which must be lovely in summer, to Azay-le-Rideau. Francis the First built it; and he certainly had as good taste in castles as in ladies, which is saying a great deal.

This is a fairy house. It doesn't look as if it had ever been _built_ in the ordinary sense, but as if somebody had dropped a huge, glimmering pearl down on the green meadow, and it had rolled near enough to the water to see its own reflection. Then the same somebody had carved exquisite designs all over the pearl, and finally hollowed it out and turned it into a king's house.

As usual, we came to it across a bridge, not spanning the Loire this time, but a branch of the river Indre; and it's in the Indre that the pearly Chateau bathes its pearly feet. Almost I wished that I hadn't gone inside the pearl. Not that the inside was worthless; there was a mantel or two, and a great show staircase, with a carved, vaulted roof; but it was an anti-climax after the outside and after Langeais. When we came out from "viewing the interior," as the guide-books say, I walked all round the Chateau again, looking up at the carved chimneys and the sculptured windows, the charming turrets, and the sloping roof of blue grey slate; all so light and elegant, seeming to say, "Come and live here. You will be happy." Oh, they have some lovely things in Europe, that we can never have in our new country! We've a good excuse for wanting to come over here. But it's so good to feel that the things are for us, and for everybody--not just for England, or France, or Italy, as the case may be.

To-morrow we are going to try and see three chateaux--Usse, and Luynes, and Chinon. We'll come back to Tours and our dear Hotel de l'Univers; but the day after--good-bye to both, and how-do-you-do Loches! I'll leave this open, and put in a postscript. I haven't given you a real, characteristic postscript for a long time.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

_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 Usse? "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 detour--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 _dejeuner_. 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 Cesar. 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' Chateau 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 mediaeval 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 Chateau, 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 Cesar; 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 Cesar and her excavations for a good deal.

There, _dejeuner_ is ready, and you'll be glad, maybe, dear, faraway Dad, because it will spare you further descriptions. After _dejeuner_ 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 everlasting Molly.

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 Angouleme (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 chateaux. 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 detour. 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.