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

Angoulême is, like Poitiers, a town set upon a hill, a quaint old town, worth seeing, but we were eager now to get to the true South, and merely gave ourselves time to lunch (the waiter producing, with a flourish, enticing but indigestible pâtés de perdrix aux truffes) and to drive slowly along some of the famous terraced boulevards that form the distinction and the charm of Angoulême. Certainly the place stands romantically on its high and lonely hill, almost surrounded by the clear waters of the Charante. At Angoulême we saw, I may say, the first professional beggars we had met on the tour. A warm sun seems to breed beggars as it breeds mosquitoes, or is it that Southern peoples have less self-respect than the Northern?

A drawback to automobilism in France is the fact that many of the great direct main roads are pavé I believe that this is a remnant of the old days of road-making, when these heavy cobbles formed the one surface that would stand artillery. For ordinary traffic the pavé roads are impossible, and their existence must be a drawback to trade and intercourse. In France they sell special bicycling maps showing with dotted lines all the pavé roads, and these I have carefully studied, as it is worth making any détour to avoid the awful jolting of the pavé. But somehow, between Angoulême and Bordeaux, I took a wrong turning, and suddenly on ahead of us the good road ceased abruptly as if a straight line had been ruled across it, and the detestable pavé began.

"Oh, let's try it as an experience," commanded my Goddess. "I hate going back, and perhaps it doesn't last long." I trusted to this hope, for I knew that in many places the pavé is being dug up, here and there only short stretches of it being left, and I gingerly drove the Napier on to the execrable surface of uneven stones. We rattled and tossed, and steering became a matter of difficulty. The irritating thing was that each side of this detestable road were wide belts of inviting grass, but with malignant ingenuity these are cut up at frequent intervals by oblique drainage gutters, which forbid the passage of anything wider than a bicycle. For bicycles there are indeed special tracks kept in order by the Touring Club de France, but all four-wheeled vehicles must jolt and bump along the rough, uneven stones. By the time we reached the first cross-road Aunt Mary begged for mercy, and I was glad to have the order to get off the pavé at any cost. Soundly as the Napier is built, it was a tremendous and unfair strain upon springs and tyres, and all the while I was dreading that something would go. Threading our way through endless vineyards by a labyrinth of by-ways, we ran through Barbezieux and Libourne, and as day was falling crossed the noble bridge over the Garonne into bustling Bordeaux.

Next day we took a run on the car along the Quai des Chartrons and through some of the chief streets and squares of Bordeaux, just to get a glimpse of the handsome town, at which Miss Randolph turned up her pretty nose because it was "new and prosperous"; then, guided by a porter from the hotel who went before us on his bicycle, we threaded the city on our way out to Arcachon. There was some unavoidable pavé and many odious tramlines; but at last our guide left us on the outskirts of the town, and we sped on to a curious little toy suburb called St. Martin, studded with neat, one-storied, red-roofed cottages, like houses in a child's box of bricks, and all with romantic names, such as Belle Idée, Mon Repos, Augustine, Mon Cœur, and so on. The whole place seemed like an assemblage of dove cotes specially planned for honeymoon couples, and gave the oddest effect of unreality. Then we passed into the green twilight of the great pine forest which extends all the way to the sea.

A romantically beautiful road lay before us. For more than thirty miles it runs straight and smooth through high aromatic pines, springing from a carpet of bracken. Miss Randolph, I must tell you, has become an expert driver, and at sight of the long, straight road said she would take the wheel. So I stopped a moment, and we changed places. She put the car at its highest speed, and we flew along the infinite perspective of the never-ending avenue. This vast pine forest is a desert, and we passed only through small and scattered villages. That flight through the pine forest of the Landes will always be to me an ineffaceable memory. None of us spoke; two of us felt, I think, that we were close to Nature's heart. The heady, balsamic odour of the pines exhilarated us, and the wind, playing melancholy music on the Eolian harps of their branches, seemed like a deep accompaniment to the humming throb of the tireless motor. As often as I dared I stole a look sideways at Miss Randolph's profile. She sat erect, her little gauntletted hands resting light as thistledown upon the wheel, but her fingers and her wrist nervous and alert as a jockey riding a thoroughbred, her eyes intent on the long, straight road before her, and a look almost of rapture upon her face.

We had raced silently through the forest for nearly an hour, when, mingling with the balsam of the pines there came a pungent odour of ozone floating from open blue spaces beyond the sombre girdle of the pines. Miss Randolph threw at me a questioning glance. "It must be the sea," I answered, and in a few moments more, after passing through the ancient town of La Teste, we came out upon the edge of a vast lagoon, semicircular, the distant shores almost lost in an indistinct blue haze. "The Bassin d'Arcachon," I said. Still, no town was visible, only the great expanse of landlocked sea, its shore dotted with the brown wooden cabins of the oyster fishers. It seemed like coming to the end of the world.

Slowing down a little, we followed a raised causeway that skirted the edge of the Bassin, and presently entered upon a long, straight street-one of the oddest streets you have ever seen, one whole side of it (that next the sea) being composed of fantastic bungalows and pleasure-houses of all imaginable styles, each set in its own garden, and the whole town drowned in an ocean of pines. At the outskirts I took the helm again, for Miss Randolph scarcely trusts her skill in traffic. Not that there was enough to be alarming in Arcachon, for the place seemed under a spell of silence. We drove through the long main street, past an imposing white château and a good many quite charming houses, until we came to a hotel which the Goddess fancied, and turned into a garden. I'd never been to Arcachon before, and supposed from the guide-books that this was the place for "my ladies" (as the couriers say) to stop. But the landlady came out, and welcoming us with one breath, recommended us with the next to their winter house in the forest. This place, looking over the sea, was for summer; the other was now more agreeably sheltered.

The "house in the forest" sounded well in the ears of the Goddess, so we drove off to find it, according to the directions of Madame Feras. The Napier spun us up a steep, winding road into a charming garden surrounding an Alhambra sort of place, which Aunt Mary thought "real gay," being bitterly disappointed to find it was not our hotel, but Arcachon's casino. The garden proved to be, however, practically the beginning of the Ville d'Hiver, a quaint and delightful collection of villas which look as if they had been scattered like ornate seeds among the crowding pine of the Landes. Of these seeds the "Continental" is the most imposing, and, by-the-way, this climate would suit you, I should think; it's an extraordinary combination of pine and sea air, which would make a doctor's fortune as a tonic, if he could cork it up in bottles.

As both hotels are run by the same management, I feared gossip if I went down to the "Grand" and did the Doctor Jekyll act; so I cautiously remained Mr. Hyde, alias Brown, and was a serf among other serfs. After dining in the society of maids and valets (whose manners and conversation would have given me ripping "copy" if I were a journalist) I stole out to cleanse my mind with a draught of pure air and a look at the sky. A cat may look at a king, and a chauffeur may walk on a terrace built for his betters, especially if the betters elect to shut themselves up in stuffy drawing-rooms, with every window anxiously closed. I availed myself of this privilege, for the hotel has a fine terrace. As it was apparently empty, I sauntered along with my nose in the air and my eyes on the stars, letting my footsteps take care of themselves. Suddenly there was a startled "Oh!" in a familiar voice, and I became aware that I had collided with the Goddess, who had also been thinking of the stars and not of her feet-which, by-the-by, I very often think of, as they are the prettiest I ever saw.

I instantly clapped my pipe in my pocket, where it revenged itself on me for neglecting to put it out by burning a hole through to my skin. I apologised, and would have taken my humble chauffeury self away, but my mistress detained me. "What is that wonderful, faraway sound, Brown?" she asked in the delicious way she has of expecting me to know everything, as if I were an encyclopædia and she'd only to turn over my leaves to come to a new fact.

I stopped breathing to listen; I'd do it permanently to please her. And there was a sound-a wonderful sound. If I hadn't been thinking about her and the stars, I should have been conscious of it before. Out of the night-silence the sound seemed to grow, and yet be a part of the silence, or rather, to intensify the near silence by its distant booming, deep and ominous, like the far-off roaring of angry lions never pacified. At first I thought it must be a rush of wind surging through the mighty pine forest; but not a dark branch moved against the spangled embroidery of stars, though the air seemed faintly to vibrate with the continuous, solemn note. Suddenly the meaning of the sound came to me; it was the majestic music of the Atlantic surf beating on the bar ten miles away. But it was too divine standing there in the night with Her in silence. For a moment I had not the heart to speak and tell her of my discovery. A faint light came to us from the stars and from the curtained windows of the hotel. I could just see her face and her lovely great eyes looking up questioningly in absolute confidence at me. Jove, what wouldn't I have given just then to be Jack Winston and not Brown! If I had been, that girl wouldn't have got back into the house without being proposed to, and having another "scalp" to count, as they say American beauties do. Not that I think she'd be that kind. I don't know how long I shouldn't have tried to make the magic of the moment last, if Aunt Mary hadn't bounced out of the hotel (done up in a shawl, like a large parcel) to call "Molly! Molly, it's time you came in!"

Molly didn't move, but Aunt Mary descended the steps, relentless as fate; so I made the most of my information, and added a short disquisition on Arcachon oysters and oyster fishing, for the sake of retaining the Goddess's society. Unfortunately, however, I happened to remark that the oyster women wore trousers exactly like the men, and this so disgusted Miss Kedison that she incontinently dragged her niece from the contamination of the chauffeur's presence.

Next day was Sunday. Miss Randolph went to the English church, which is the prettiest I've ever seen in France, and afterwards, escorted by the chaplain with whom she'd made friends, went forth to see the sights, while I inquired as to how we might best proceed upon our way. While Miss Randolph and Miss Kedison read their prayer-books, I studied that useful volume, Les Routes de France, and was duly warned against the impracticable roads of the Landes. The one thing to do, according to the oracle, was to return to Bordeaux and make a long détour to Bayonne by Mont de Marsan. I knew Miss Randolph would dislike this plan, for she hates going back, and so do I. If I had been alone, or with you, I would have chanced it without a moment's hesitation, making straight for Bayonne by way of the forbidden Landes, with all its pitfalls. But I funked the idea of perhaps getting Her into a mess-and hearing Aunt Mary say "I told you so," as she invariably does when there's any trouble.

To my joy, however, plucky Parson Radcliff had actually advanced the idea of the Landes, during their excursion, and the Goddess sent for me on Sunday evening, full of enthusiasm. Far be it from me to dampen the ardour of youth; and early on Monday morning we started to follow the route La Teste, Sanguinet, Parentis, Yehoux, Liposthey, which names reminded Miss Randolph of Gulliver's Travels.

She and I were in fine spirits, expecting the unexpected, and bracing ourselves to encounter difficulties. There was mystery in the very thought of the Landes-that strange waste of forest and sand so little known outside its own people. I felt it, and so did Miss Randolph, I knew. How I knew I couldn't explain to you; but some electric current usually communicates her mood to me, and I should almost believe from various signs that it was so with her in regard to me, if I weren't a mere chauffeur in the lady's pay.

For some distance the going was good, but we were only reading the preface to the true Landes as yet; and when we reached the boundary post between the department of the Gironde and the real Landes, there was one of those sudden, complete changes I've mentioned in the quality of the road. To drive into this dim, pine-clad region was like driving back into the years a century or two. A motor-car was an anachronism, and if we came to grief our blood was upon our own heads. The way became grass-grown and rutty, and I was obliged to drive slowly. Deeper and deeper we penetrated into the forest, and deeper and deeper also we sank into the soft earth. Aunt Mary groaned and prophesied disaster as we crawled along in ruts up to our axles; but I think Miss Randolph and I would have perished sooner than retreat. I trusted in the Napier and she trusted in me. In one place the road had been mended with a covering of loose rocks rather than stones; we panted and crunched our way over them, enormously to the astonishment of the road-menders and one or two dark-faced peasants, perched like cranes on the old-fashioned stilts not yet utterly abandoned as a means of navigating this sea of sand and pines. Still, on we went, the engine labouring a little, like an overworked heart; but it was a loyal heart, and the tyres were trumps.

Miss Randolph said that if she were a tyre and condemned to such hard labour, she would burst out of sheer spite. I think Miss Kedison nearly did so as it was; but as for us (I suppose you can't conceive the satisfaction to a poor chauffeur of bracketing his lady and himself familiarly as "us"), we were intoxicated by the heavy balsam of the turpentine, for which every tree we passed was being sliced. On each a great flake of the trunk had been struck off with an axe, and a small earthen cup affixed to catch the resin, which is the heart's blood of the wounded tree. There was something Dante-esque in the effect of these bleeding wounds, among old, scarcely healed scars; and that effect was intensified by the shadowy gloom of the dense forest, and the never-ceasing sound of the wind among the high, dark branches, like the beating of surf upon an unseen shore.

At last, when the feeling was strong upon us that the ocean of pines had engulphed us, like Pharaoh's chariot in the Red Sea, we came upon a rambling village, called Parentis. As if to announce the arrival of the first motor car ever seen in the dim, forgotten Landes, the off front tire began to hiss. "I told you so!" said Aunt Mary. My eyes and Miss Randolph's met, and we both burst out laughing. It was a great liberty in me, and though I couldn't have helped it to save my neck, and became preternaturally solemn afterwards as a penance, I don't believe that the lady I should like to have for an aunt-in-law will ever forgive me. She ought, however, as this was our first accident with the Napier, while with poor little Miss Randolph's late esteemed Dragon, one breakfasted, lunched, dined, and supped on horrors. Besides, the Dragon invariably schemed to do its worst, far from human aid, while my long-suffering Napier had brought us to the very courtyard of the village inn before (as Miss Randolph expressed it) "sitting down to rest."

Inside this convenient courtyard I set about doing the repairs, jacking up the car, taking off the tyre, patching it, and getting it on again in twenty minutes; not bad for an amateur mécanicien All the people of the inn and many of the villagers gathered round to see the great sight, and Aunt Mary consoled herself by showing off her somewhat eccentric French to the landlady and her family.

There were three generations in this group, I took time to notice. A bowed and wrinkled old dame; her daughter, a strong, sad-faced woman in black; and a golden-haired granddaughter, about the prettiest creature I ever saw-bar one. And it was charming to see my Goddess laying herself out to be nice to the trio. Her personality (which is the last word in well-groomed, high-strung, vivacious American girlhood) contrasted strikingly with these countrywomen, who had perhaps never been outside their own forest. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but she has the most extraordinary way of always hitting on the right thing to please and interest people, without departing from truth or descending to flattery. All three gazed at her with delight and admiration, the little beauty of the Landes with deepening colour and wistful eyes. No Frenchwoman, no Englishwoman, no woman save an American of the best type, could have exactly that manner, which is indescribable to one who doesn't know. Strange for a vision like that to flash into these quiet lives, then flash away, never to be seen again-only remembered.

It was too early for luncheon, but as we had had the shelter of the inn I wanted to order something for "the good of the house." I accordingly asked for Bordeaux and biscuits, and the pretty rose of a granddaughter brought a bottle of-what do you think? Pontet Canet! It was nectar, and cost-three francs a bottle!

When we drove away Miss Randolph was reflective. I would have liked to offer a penny for her thoughts, but that sort of indulgence is not in the sphere of a chauffeur. Presently she broke out, however. "Did you ever see anything so lovely as that girl?" she exclaimed. "She's all white and gold and rose. Her presence in that sombre place reminds me of a shaft of warm, golden light breaking through the dark canopy of pines. She's like a maiden in Hans Christian Andersen. And her name's Angèle. Isn't that perfect? It seems cruel that such a creature, who would make a sensation in Paris or London or New York, must bloom and ripen and wither at last, unknown, in that wilderness. Oh, how I should love to snatch her away?"

"What would you do with her, miss, if you could?" I ventured to ask, at my humblest-which in Aunt Mary's eyes, is my best. "Would you take her for your maid?"

"A maid?" echoed my Goddess scornfully. "Why, if I meant such a crime as that, I should expect white bears to come out of these woods and devour me. No; I would give her pretty dresses, and arrange a good marriage for her."

"Is that what young girls in America like, miss," I meekly inquired, "to have marriages arranged for them?"

"No; they hate it, and go away from America to show that they hate it-sometimes; but this would be different," said she. And I wondered if she had accidentally betrayed anything.

At Liposthey we struck the direct road, with good surface, from Bordeaux to Bayonne. Thus on through Labouheyre to Castets, still walled in with dark, balsamic forest, where we lunched. Just beyond, however, we found that we were bidding the pines farewell, and we were regretting them despite the beauty of the road-increasing every moment-when suddenly we had a great surprise. At what precise point it came I don't quite know, for I was snatched up out of the dull "flatland" of facts. Miss Randolph was driving, and I was glancing interestedly about, as an intelligent young man of the working-class may, when away to the left I saw up in the skies a long chain of blue, serrated mountains looking far too high to belong to this world. I started on my seat; then Miss Randolph saw what I saw. "Oh-h!" she breathed, with a responsive sigh of appreciation. Not an adjective; not a word. I blessed her for that. Unfortunately, Aunt Mary seized this moment to awake, and she did not spare us fireworks. She never does. She is one of those women who insist upon your knowing that they have a soul for beauty. But she went to sleep again when she had used up all her rockets, and left the Goddess and me alone with the Pyrenees. Much nearer Bayonne we had another surprise-a notice, in English, by the roadside: "To the Guards' Cemetery." An odd sign to come across in France, n'est ce pas, mon brave? And just as I was calling up the past, Miss Randolph exclaimed; "I wonder if your Napier is any relation to that Napier?" which shows that she has the Peninsular Campaign at her finger-ends; or else Aunt Mary has been cramming her out of a guide-book.

It was not late in the afternoon when we crossed the bridge over the Adour (she says the proverb, "Don't cross your bridges till you get to them," can't apply to France, as you're always getting to them), but already the sky was burnished with sunset; and if there's anything finer than a grand and ancient fortified gateway turned to copper by the sun, I don't know it. I advised Miss Randolph to come back one day from Biarritz, if we stayed long enough, to see the exquisite old glass window for which the Bayonne cathedral is famous; but it was too late to pause for such details as windows then, so we flew on along the switchback road over the remaining five miles to Biarritz. Here, in this agreeable town, we play about till I have orders from headquarters to proceed. Our programme is now to go straight along the Pyrenees to Marseilles, and so to Nice. Ah, if only I can get Her to go on to Italy! You had better address me next at the Riviera Palace, Cimiez. We are to pause at Pau, call at Carcassonne, and honour other places en route to the Riviera, so there ought to be ample time for this long screed to reach you and for you to send reproach or praise to Nice. Tell me about yourself; how you are; what you read; what girl you love.

Your sincere, but somewhat selfish friend,Jack Winston.

MOLLY RANDOLPH TO HER FATHER

Hotel Gassion, Pau,December 14.

Dear Universal Provider of Love and Cheques,

Thank you a thousand times for both, which have just been forwarded along the route of this "wild-goose chase," as you call it. Well, if it is one, I don't know who the goose is, unless Aunt Mary. She is rather like that sometimes, poor dear; but we get on splendidly. Oh, I would get on splendidly with five Aunt Marys (which Heaven forbid!), for I'm so happy, Dad! I'm having such a good time-the time of my life, or it would be if you were in it.

If you ever lose all your money and come a nice, gentlemanly cropper in the street called Wall, we might come to Biarritz to live, just you and I. We would have fun! And we could stop in our pretty little cheap villa all the year round, for one season only waits politely till another is out to step in; it's always gay and fashionable, and yet you needn't be either unless you like. And the sea and sky have more gorgeous colour in them than any other sea and sky, and the air has more ozone; and the brown rocks that go running a hippopotamus race out into the beryl-green water are queerer and finer than any other rocks. So you see everything is superlative, even the hotels, and as for a certain Confectioner; but he, or rather she, deserves a capital. There are drives and walks, and curio-shops where I spent my little all; and there's fox-hunting, which would be nice if it weren't for the poor tame fox; and golf, and petits cheveaux at the casino, where Aunt Mary gambled before she knew what she was doing, and kept on a long time after she did; and mysterious Basque persons with ancestors and costumes more wonderful than anybody else's, who dance strange dances in the streets for money, and play a game called La Pelotte, which is great sport to watch. And you walk by the sea, with its real waves, like ours at home, not little tuppenny-ha'penny ones like those I saw in the English Channel; and you look across an opal bay through a creamy haze to a mystic land made entirely of tumbled blue mountains. And then, one of the best things about Biarritz is that you're next door to Spain. Ah, that door of Spain! I've knocked and been in through it, but just across the threshold. The way of it was like this-