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

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

The morning was still young and fair when we rushed away along the Riviera di Levante; and even Aunt Mary was congratulating herself that we were on an automobile and not a train. For a while our road ran side by side with the rail; and whenever the coast was at its most exquisite, with some jutting headland over which we could skim like a bird, the wretched train had to go burrowing through the earth like a mole, all the glory and beauty shut out in murky darkness. I counted about fifty tunnels between Genoa and Spezzia. When we'd escaped from the suburbs of Genoa, and the last tall houses which made you afraid it might be their day to fall, we came upon visions as lovely as any we had seen in the French Riviera. Those gleaming towns set on curving bays of sapphire will always seem like dream-towns to me, unless I go back and prove their reality; especially Rapallo, which was the most beautiful of all. Jennie Harborough and her mother spent all one winter there, I remember their telling me, and were sorry to go at the end. They went because it was rather cheap, but stayed because it was more lovely than the expensive places. From Rapallo, through Zoagli to Chiavari, we were high above the sea, winding through ravine after ravine, but at Chiavari the best of the coast was behind us; and at Sestri, much to our disgust, we had to turn our backs on the sea. Still, it was delicious mounting up among the foothills of the Apennines by the Col di Baracca, and running down to Spezzia, lying like a pretty, lazy woman, looking out upon the green gulf named after it. We had lunch in a cool, agreeable hotel to which I felt grateful because of its pretty name-the Croce di Malta. I did want to go and see Shelley's house at Lerici, but-well, I saw its photograph instead; for there was our Napier "sleeping with one valve open," luring us on, on under the shadow of the Apennines. One does feel a wretch always "going on" instead of lingering, but that microbe I told you about gives one a fever. Think of running through Lucca! But, if we did what we planned in the day we must sacrifice something, so we sacrificed Lucca to Pisa. The very name, before our arrival, made me a child again, looking through the big stereoscope in your study at the Leaning Tower, or at the steel engraving in Finden's Landscape Annual But from the moment I saw it, like a carving in ivory, reclining gracefully on the bosom of a golden cloud, I forgot the stereoscope and the Annual. In future I shall always see it against that cloud of rosy sunset-gold.

I never knew how beautiful marble could be until I came to Pisa and Rome. Somehow I had associated Pisa with the Leaning Tower, and not with the Baptistry. I knew it existed, and, vaguely, that it was worth seeing; but Pisa meant the Leaning Tower to me. Now I couldn't tell you which has left the deeper impression. I'm not at all the same girl that I was before I put Pisa and Rome into the gallery of my mind. I must make myself a worthy frame for such pictures as I am storing up now. I have the feeling not only that I want to read better books, hear more splendid music, and do more noble things, but that I shall know how to appreciate more clearly everything that is exalted or exalting. I hope you won't think me sentimental to say that.

We stayed all night at a real Italian hotel on the Lung Arno. Brown suggested it, thinking that we might enjoy an experience thoroughly characteristic of the country through which we were flying so fast. Aunt Mary wasn't pleased with the idea at all, said it would be horrid, and prophesied unspeakable things; but, as usual, Brown proved to be right, and she consented to admit it if I would promise not to punish her with her own stock phrase-"I told you so!" You would have laughed to see me conscientiously trying to eat maccaroni in the true Italian way. I curled it round my fork beautifully, but the hateful thing would uncurl again before I could get it up to my mouth, and accidents happened.

I watched the Italians, too, pouring their wine from the fat glass flasks swung in pivoted cradles. They did it all with one hand, holding a goblet between the thumb and second finger, and twisting the index finger round the neck of the bottle to pull it forward. It looked such a neat and simple trick that I thought I could do likewise; but-well, it was the reverse of neat when I did it, and the spotless tablecloth was spotless no longer. Instead of glaring at me for the mischief I had done, the head waiter was all sympathy. How nice and Italian of him!

That night, lying between sheets that smelt of lavender-only better than American or English lavender-I lived through the day once more, seeing ruined watch-towers set on hills, old grey monasteries falling into beautiful decay, or apparitions of white marble cathedrals. Then, over and over again, that wonderful carved-ivory tower leaning against the golden sky came back to me-so clean, so uninjured by the reverent centuries, and the sound of the angel-voiced echo in the Baptistry, and the strange shapes of the dear beasts supporting the pulpit, just like I used to picture the beasts in Revelations when I was a little girl. Next morning I had another look at the Leaning Tower before we started, and in a shop I came across a delicious and beautifully written book called In Tuscany, by the English Consul at Leghorn, so I bought it, and now I know as much as Brown does about the country through which we passed during several perfect days.

I'm not sure, but I am being both brutal and banal in saying that the rest of our journey to Rome was comparatively uninteresting. Of course, nothing can be really uninteresting in Italy, but I suppose those first days had spoiled me. We drove for mile after mile through marshy land, where tall, melancholy eucalyptus trees told their tale of a brave struggle against malaria. All the windows and doors of the signal cabins by the railway stations were protected by wire gauze against mosquitoes, and we who have spent summers on Staten Island know what that means, don't we?

I think, if I were not in Rome, I could have written you a better account of our flight through Italy; but the Eternal City has blurred all other impressions for me now, though I think afterwards they will come back as clear and bright as ever. Nevertheless, I'm not going to write you much about Rome. It's too big for my pen, too mighty and too marvellous. I can only feel. You have been here, and Rome doesn't change. Only I wonder what you felt when you first saw the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere? I used to think I didn't quite appreciate sculpture, but now I know it was because something in me was waiting for the best, and refusing to be satisfied with what was less than the best. Why, I didn't even know what marble could be till I saw the Laocoön. I had meant to do a good deal of sight-seeing that day when I began with the Vatican; but I sat for hours in front of those writhing figures in their eternal torture. I couldn't go away. The statue seemed to belong to me, and I had found it again, after searching hundreds and hundreds of years. I wonder if I was once a princess in the palace of the Cæsars, in another state of existence, and if in those days I used to stand and worship the Laocoön? I shouldn't wonder a bit. And the Apollo Belvedere! What a gentleman-what a perfect gentleman he is! You will laugh at me for such a thought. It seems commonplace, but it isn't. Nobody's ever said it before. He's such a gentleman and so graciously beautiful that you know he must be a god. I shouldn't have minded worshipping him a bit. Paganism had its points.

I should love to come back to Rome on my wedding trip if I were married to exactly the right man; but if he were not exactly right I should kill him; whereas in ordinary places I might be able to stand him well enough, as well as most women stand their husbands. Speaking of men who aren't exactly right reminds me of Jimmy Payne. He is here. He seems to have a sort of instinct to tell him when one is about to drive up to a hotel, and then he stations himself in the door, expecting the blessing which is for those who stand and wait. We made a sensation driving down the narrow Corso at the fashionable hour, and Jimmy got some of the credit of it when he stepped forward to welcome us. He had heard me say that we would stop here, because I'd been told it was the only hotel in Rome with a garden, and was close to the Pincian; and Jimmy has such a way of remembering things you say, if he thinks it's to his advantage. His first appearance was slightly marred, however, by a sneeze which, like Lady Macbeth's etcetera spot, would "out" at the precise moment of shaking hands. He says he got influenza from the Duchessa di Something-or-Other, upon whom he was obliged to call the instant he arrived, or she would never have forgiven him; so of course it's not quite so hard to bear as common, second-class influenza. It appears that he was so anxious to see "dear Lady Brighthelmston before she could get away" that he shed his automobile at Genoa, and hurried on by train, though whether on receipt of a telegraphic bidding from her ladyship or not I don't know. Anyway, she didn't wait for him, or else the influenza frightened her; for she has gone, and apparently without leaving word for poor disconsolate Jimmy. She was at his hotel, and left word with the manager that she would wire when she was settled in "some place where there was a little sunshine" for her letters to be forwarded. He is waiting till that wire arrives.

Jimmy is "thick as thieves" with Aunt Mary, but as frigid as a whole iceberg to poor Brown, if they happen to run across each other. I do think, don't you, Dad, that it shows shocking bad breeding to be nasty to a person who, from the very nature of the case, can't answer back? When I hear people speaking rudely to servants I always set them down as cads. Imagine marrying a man and then finding out that he was a cad! One ought to be able to get a divorce. The weather has, I suppose, been terrible since we came to Rome; at least, I hear everyone in our hotel grumbling, and certainly gardens haven't been of much use to us. But I am in a mood not to mind weather. I am in Rome. I say that over to myself, and I read Lanciani and Hare, and then I don't know whether it rains or not. Besides, yesterday was clear on purpose for me to walk in the Pincian and Borghese Gardens. Brown had to go with me because Aunt Mary was afraid there would be another storm; and besides, some little English ladies she has met in our hotel had invited her to have tea with them in their bedroom. They make it themselves with their own things, because then you don't have to pay; and if there aren't enough cups to go round among the ladies they've asked, they take their tooth-brush glasses for themselves. And they bring in custardy cakes in paper-bags and cream in tiny pails which they hide in their muffs, and try to look unconscious. There are a lot here like that, and they stay all winter. None of them are married, and they all do and say exactly the things you know they will beforehand. Why, just to look at them you feel sure they'd have tatting on their stays, and make their own garters. But some of them are titled, or if they're not they talk a great deal about being "well connected"; and they do nothing on weekdays but read novels, work in worsteds, and play bridge with the windows hermetically sealed; or on Sundays but go to the English church. Only think, and they're in Rome!