Part 41 (1/2)
”It's easy enough when you've got the knack,” replied the ”Lightning Conductor.”
”So, no doubt, is reeling, writhing, and fainting in coils. Motoring down these serpentine hills is like hurling yourself into s.p.a.ce, and trusting to Providence.”
”So is all of life,” said Jack. ”A timid man might say the same of getting out of bed in the morning.”
”Even I can do the trick,” cut in Molly, who was taking a temporary interest in our affairs again. ”At least, I can this year, now that chickens are better than they used to be.”
”They _are_ looking nice and fat this summer” I judicially remarked.
”I don't mean that,” explained Molly. ”But they are more sensible.
Last year, before Jack and I were married, chickens were so bad that I used to dream of nothing else in my sleep. I had chicken nightmares.
The absurd creatures never would realise when they were well off, but even in the midst of laying a most important egg on one side of the road, our automobile had only to come whizzing along to convince them that salvation depended on getting across to the other. This year they seem to have formed a sort of Chicken Club, a league of defence against motors, and to have started a propaganda.”
My imagination tricked me, or this theory of Molly's evoked a faint sound of stifled mirth in the heart of the mysterious mushroom. In haste I turned away, lest I should be suspected of regarding it, and Jack began to pump my memory mercilessly for what it might retain of his driving lessons. Luckily, I had forgotten nothing, and I was able to demonstrate my knowledge by pointing to the various parts of the machine with each glib reference I made.
By-and-bye, we came to a place where a grotto was ”much recommended”; but swallows, southward bound, do not stop in their flight for grottos. We darted by, thundered through the humming darkness of Napoleon's tunnel, and flashed out into a startling landscape, as sensational as the country of the ”Delectable Mountains” in ”Pilgrim's Progress.” The cup-like valley was ringed in by mountains of astonis.h.i.+ng shapes; it was nature posing for a picture by John Martin.
In the fields were dotted characteristic Dauphine houses, little elfin things with overhanging roofs like caps tied under their chins.
Soon, we raced into the main street of tiny Les Ech.e.l.les, whence, in the good old days, fair Princess Beatrice of Savoie went away to wed with the famed Raymond of Provence. We whisked through the village, and down the valley to St. Laurens du Pont, and the entrance to that great rift between mountains which leads to the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse.
As we plunged into the narrow jaws of the superb ravine, a wave of regret for the Boy swept over me. He and I had talked of this day--the day we should see the deserted monastery hidden among its mountains; now it had come, and we were parted.
The society of Jack and Molly and the motor car could make up for many things, but it could not stifle longings for the Little Pal. Besides, magnificent as was Mercedes (the Dragon, not the Mushroom) I felt that Finois and f.a.n.n.y-anny would have been more in keeping with the place.
I was too dispirited to care whether or no my eyes were filled with dust; therefore I had not goggled myself, and I think that Jack must have gathered something of my thoughts from my long face.
”How would you like to get out and walk here, like pilgrims of old?”
he asked. ”It will be too much for the girls, but Gotteland will drive them up slowly, not to be too far in advance. American girls, you'll find, if you ever make a study of one or more of them, can do everything in the world except--walk. There they have to bow to English girls.”
”That's because we've got smaller feet,” retorted Molly. ”Where an English girl can walk ten miles we can do only five, but it's quite enough. And we have such imaginations that we can sit in this automobile and fancy ourselves princesses on ambling palfreys.”
It was close to the deserted distillery of the famous liqueur that we parted company, the car, piled with our discarded great-coats, forging ahead up the historic path. The little tramway that used to carry the cases of liqueur to the station at Fourvoirie was nearly obliterated by new-grown gra.s.s; the vast buildings stood empty. Never again would the mellow Chartreuse verte and Chartreuse jaune he fragrantly distilled behind the high grey walls, for the makers were banished and scattered far abroad.
We lingered for a moment at the narrow entrance to Le Desert, where the rus.h.i.+ng river Guiers foams through the throttled gorge, giving barely room for the road scored along the lace of the cliff. It was like a doorway to the lost domain of the monks, and Jack and I agreed that St. Bruno was a man of genius to find such a retreat. A retreat it was literally. St. Bernard had taken his followers to a place where, suffering great hards.h.i.+ps, they could best devote their lives to succouring others; but St. Bruno's theory had evidently been that holy men can do more good to their kind by prayer in peaceful sanctuaries than by offering more material aid.
Here,--at the doorway of St. Bruno's long corridor,--the ravine, the old forge, the single-arched bridge flung high across the deep bed of the roaring torrent, had all grouped themselves as if after a consultation upon artistic effect. Once, there had been an actual gate, built alike for defence and for limitation, but there were no traces of it left for the eye of the amateur.
We pa.s.sed into the defile, and the motor car was out of sight long ago. Higher and higher the brown road climbed. The mountains towered close and tall. Great pillared palaces of rock loomed against the sky like castles in the air, incalculably far above the green heads and sloping shoulders of the nearer mountain slopes.
I had thought that green was never so green as in the Valley of Aosta, but here in St. Bruno's corridor there was a new richness of emerald in the green carpet and wall hangings, such as I had not yet known. It was green stamped with living gold, in delicate fleur-de-lis patterns where the sun wove bright threads; and high above was the ceiling of lapis lazuli, in pure unclouded blue.
We heard no sound save the voices of unseen woodcutters crying to each other from mountain slope to mountain slope, the resonant ring of their axes, striking out wild, echoing notes with a fleeting clang of steel on pine, and now and again the sudden thunder-crash of a falling tree, like the roar of a distant avalanche.
By-and-bye we came to the aerial bridge which spans the Guiers Mort, slender and graceful as the arch of a rainbow, and as we gazed down at the far, white water hurling itself in sheets of foam past the detaining rocks, the sharp toot of a horn broke discordantly into the deep-toned music. A motor car sprang round an abrupt curve and flashed by, but not so quickly that I did not recognise among the six occupants the two young Americans of Mont Revard. They pa.s.sed me as unseeingly as they did the scenery: for they were talking as fast to two pretty girls opposite them in the tonneau, as if the girls had not been talking equally fast to them at the same time. I bore the pair a grudge, and the sight of them brought back the consciousness of my injury.
St. Bruno, fortunate in many ways, was a lucky saint to have so beautiful a bridge named after him. And as we climbed the brown road--moist with tears wept by the mountains for the banished monks--it seemed to us that the scenery was always leading up to him, as a preface leads up to the first chapter of a book. We went through tunnels as a thread goes through the eye of a needle; we wound round intricate turns of the road; we came upon pinnacle rocks; and then, at last, when we least expected the climax of our journey, we dropped into a great green basin, rimmed with soaring crags. In the midst stood an enormous building, a vast conglomeration of pointed, dove-grey roofs and dun-coloured walls, a city of slate and stone spread over acres of ground and seeming a part of the impressive yet strangely peaceful wilderness.
Looking at the vast structure, I was ready to believe that St. Bruno had waved his staff in the shadow of a rough-hewn mountain, saying: ”Let there be a monastery,” and suddenly, there was a monastery; but our motor, quivering with nervous energy before a door in the high wall, s.n.a.t.c.hed me back to practicalities.