I was afraid, from your face, that there was something wrong."
"So far as I can see, there's nothing wrong," said he, calmly, and broke a piece of bread. "Very good butter, this, that they give to nous autres," he went on, in the same tone of voice, and my respect for him increased.
(Men are really rather nice creatures, take them all in all!)
As he had sacrificed his duty to the car for me, I sacrificed my duty to my digestion for him, and bolted my luncheon. Then, when released from guard duty, he returned to his true allegiance, and I ventured to walk on the terrace to admire the view.
Far away it stretched, over garden, and pineland, and flowery meadow-spaces, to the blue, silver-sewn sea, which to my fancy looked Homeric. Nothing modern caught the eye to break the romance of the illusion. All was as it might have been twenty or thirty centuries ago, when on the Mediterranean sailed "Phoenicians, mariners renowned, greedy merchantmen with countless gauds in a black ship."
I had just begun to play that I was a young woman of Tyre, taken on an adventurous excursion by an indulgent father, when presto! Lady Turnour's voice brought me back to the present with a jump. There's nothing Homeric about her!
She and Sir Samuel had finished their luncheon, and so had several other people. There was an exodus of well-dressed, nice-looking women from dining-room to terrace, and conscious that I ought to have been herding among their maids, I fled with haste and humility. What right had I, in this sweet place divinely fit to be a rest-cure for goddesses tired of the social diversions of Olympus?
I scuttled off to the car, and stood ready to serve my mistress when it should please her to be tucked under her rugs.
Despite delays, the chauffeur had finished whatever had to be done, and soon we were spinning away from Valescure, far away, into a world of flowers.
Black cypresses soared skyward, so clean cut, so definite, that I seemed to hear them, crystal-shrill, like the sharp notes in music, as they leaped darkly out from a silver monotone of olives and a delicate ripple of pearly plum or pear blossom. Mimosas poured floods of gold over the spring landscape, blazing violently against the cloudless blue. Bloom of peach and apple tree garlanded our road on either side; the way was jewelled with roses; and acres of hyacinths stretched into the distance, their perfume softening the keenness of the breeze.
"Are they going to let you pass Fréjus without pausing for a single look?" I asked mournfully. But at that instant there came a peal of the electric bell which is one of the luxurious fittings of the car. It meant "stop!" and we stopped.
"Aren't there some ruins here—something middle-aged?" asked Sir Samuel, meaning mediæval.
"Roman ruins, sir," replied his chauffeur, without changing countenance.
"Are they the sort of things you ought to say you've seen?"
"I think most people do stop and see them, sir."
"What is your wish, my dear?" Sir Samuel gallantly deferred to his bride. "I know you don't like out-of-door sightseeing when it's windy, and blows your hair about, but—"
"We might try, and if I don't like it, we can go on," replied Lady Turnour, patronizing the remains of Roman greatness, since it appeared to be the "thing" for the nobility and gentry to do.
The chauffeur obediently turned the big blue Aigle, and let her sail into the very centre of the vast arena where Cæsar saw gladiators fight and die.
It was very noble, very inspiring, and from some shady corner promptly emerged a quaintly picturesque old guardian, ready to pour forth floods of historic information. He introduced himself as a soldier who had seen fighting in Mexico under Maximilian, therefore the better able to appreciate and fulfil his present task. But her ladyship listened for awhile with lack-lustre eyes, and finally, when dates were flying about her ears like hail, calmly interrupted to say that she was "glad she hadn't lived in the days when you had to go to the theatre out of doors."
"I can't understand more than one word in twelve that the old thing says, anyhow," she went on. "Elise must give me French lessons every day while she does my hair. I hope she has the right accent."
"He's saying that this amphitheatre was once almost as large as the one at Nîmes, but that it would only hold about ten thousand spectators," explained the chauffeur, who was engaged partly for his French and knowledge of France.
"It's nonsense bothering to know that now, when the place is tumbling to pieces," sneered her ladyship.
"I beg your pardon, my lady; I only thought that, as a rule, the best people do feel bound to know these things. But of course—" He paused deferentially, without a twinkle in his eye, though I was pressing my lips tightly together, and trying not to shake spasmodically.
"Oh, well, go on. What else does the old boy say, then?" groaned Lady Turnour, martyrisée.
Mr. Bane or Dane didn't dare to glance at me. With perfect gravity he translated the guide's best bits, enlarging upon them here and there in a way which showed that he had independent knowledge of his own. And it was a feather in his cap that his eloquence eventually interested Lady Turnour. She made him tell her again how Fréjus was Claustra Gallæ to Cæsar, and how it was the "Caput" for this part of the wonderful Via Aurelia, which started at Rome, never ending until it came to Arles.
"Why, we've been to Rome, and we're going to Arles," she exclaimed. "We can tell people we've been over the whole of the Via Aurelia, can't we? We needn't mention that the automobile didn't arrive till after we got to Cannes. And anyway, you say there were once theatres there, and at Antibes, like the one at Fréjus, so we've been making a kind of Roman pilgrimage all along, if we'd only known it."
"It is considered quite the thing to do, in Roman amphitheatres, to make a tour of the prisoners' cells and gladiators' dressing-rooms, the guide says," insinuated the chauffeur. And then, when the bride and bridegroom, reluctant but conscientious, were swimming round the vast bowl of masonry, like tea-leaves floating in a great cup, he turned to me.
"Why don't you thank me?" he inquired. "I was doing it for you. I knew you hated to miss all this, and I saw she meant to go on, so I intervened, in the only way I could think of, to touch her."
"If you're always as clever as that, I don't see why this shouldn't be our trip," I said. "That will be a consolation."
"I'm afraid you'll often need more consolation than that," he answered. "Lady Turnour is—as the Americans say—a pretty 'stiff proposition.'"
"Still, if you can hypnotize her into going to all the places, and stopping to look at all the nicest things, this will at least be a cheap automobile tour for us both."
I laughed, but he didn't; and I was sorry, for I thought I deserved a smile. And he has a nice one, with even white teeth in it, and a wistful sort of look in his eyes at the same time: a really interesting smile.
I wondered what he was thinking about that made him look so grave; but I conceitedly felt that it was something concerning me—or the situation of us both.
Chapter VIII
