When the girls came back, they were raving about magnificent statues, aisles, columns, windows, vistas, gargoyles, and saints' bodies in gorgeous shrines of silver. Beechy had apparently forgotten that she'd been vexed with me over night, and I was relieved, for she will not agree with me about the Prince, and I don't know what I should do if she really did carry out any of her threats. If she should put on the long frock she had before Mr. Kidder died (which she says she's got with her, locked up in her portmanteau), and should fix her hair on top of her head, that would be just about the end of my fun, once and for all. But she is such a dear girl at heart, in spite of the peculiarities which she has inherited from poor Simon, I can't think (if I manage her pretty well) that she would do anything to spoil my first real good time and hurt my feelings.
We had an early lunch, and started about one with such a crowd outside the hotel to see us go away, that we made up our minds there must be precious few automobiles in Milan, big and busy city as it is.
The whole party was so taken up with the Cathedral, that for a while they could talk of nothing but Gian Galeazzo Visconti (who seemed to have spent his life either in murdering his relations or founding churches), or marble from the valley of Tosa, or German architects who had made the building differ from any other in Italy, or the impulse Napoleon had given to work on the façade, or the view from the roof all the way to Como with the Apennines and lots of other mountains whose names I'd never heard; but presently as we got out into the suburbs the road began to be so awful that no one could talk rationally on any subject.
We three Americans weren't quite so disgusted as Sir Ralph and Mr. Barrymore seemed to be, for we are used to roads being pretty bad outside large cities; but the gentlemen were very cross, and exclaimed that it was a disgrace to Milan. Our poor automobile had to go bumping and grinding along through heaps of sharp stones, more like the dry bed of a mountain torrent than a road; and my nerves were on edge when Mr. Barrymore told us not to be frightened if we heard an explosion like a shot, because it would only be one of the tyres bursting. No pretty little ladylike automobile, said he, could possibly hope to come through without breaking her bones; only fine, manly motor-cars, with noble masculine tyres, could wisely attempt the feat; but ours would be all right, even if a tyre did go, for the damage could be repaired inside half an hour.
Still, the thought of the possible explosion that might go off right under my ears at any instant kept me in a state of suspense for a long distance—about thirty kilometres, Mr. Barrymore said; and then the way improved so much that I settled down again. Even the scenery had been ugly up to that time, as if to match the road, but it began to change for the better at precisely the same moment.
The only interesting things we had seen so far were peasants playing bowls in the villages through which we passed (for it was a fête day) and the curious carts with wooden frames for awnings arched over them, which gave an effect as if the passengers were crowding inside the white ribs of some skeleton monster. Such pretty women and children were in the carts, too; the women like beautiful, dark madonnas with their soft eyes looking out from under graceful head-draperies of black cashmere, or blue or yellow silk, glorious in colour as the sun touched it.
They didn't seem to mind the bumping over the stones, though the carts were springless, but then, they had no hats lolloping over to one side, or stays to pinch in their waists and make them uncomfortable as I had, though—as Beechy says—my daytime motoring waist is inches bigger round than my evening waist.
I was glad when I could put my hat straight again, once for all, and have time to enjoy the scenery through which, as I told myself, the Prince must lately have passed on his car, perhaps thinking of me, as he had promised.
Behind us was the great plain in which Milan lies, and before us soared into the air a blue chain of mountains, looking mysterious and inaccessible in the far distance, though we were sweeping on towards them, charging down hill after hill into a more exquisite landscape than I could have imagined, enchantingly Italian, with dark old châteaux crowning eminences above fertile fields; pretty brown villages on hillsides clustering round graceful campaniles (a word I've practised lately with several other difficult ones); green-black cypresses (which Maida says seem like sharp notes in music); and wonderful, flat-topped trees that Mr. Barrymore calls umbrella pines.
We were now in a region known as the Brianza, which is, it appears, a summer resort for the Milanese, who come to escape the hot weather of the plains, and find the breezes that blow up from the lakes—breezes so celebrated for their health-giving qualities that nobody who lives in the Brianza can die under ninety. There were a great many inviting looking, quaint farmhouses, and big cottages scattered about, where the people from Milan are taken as lodgers.