“Her father was right there,” I said, “and you ran off without saying good-bye to him.”
“If I’m successful,” he grinned, “I’ll have plenty of time to talk to him, and if I’m not it doesn’t matter. Anyway, it would have been lèse majesté to stay there any longer. Even you should have seen that.” We rushed down more corridors, and then, just outside, we found the car standing in a row of others. John greeted it with a low whoop of triumph.
“Step into it, old man, and step on it,” he urged. “Let’s get there before it’s too late to make a call on a lady.”
And so, for the third time in three days we drove rather wildly over the road between Herrovosca and the Pass. I recognised as we saw them again, a hundred unconsidered landmarks, a house of a deep pink, with white-flowering vines growing over it, a pair of light bay horses in a field, twin poplars beside a brook, long strings of mushrooms and garlics hanging at the windows of the peasants’ cottages, and always, across the wide, fertile valley, the towering, dark jagged mountains of the frontier, rocky, barren on their upper surfaces, orange where the sun fell on them.
“Don’t drive like the tortoise,” John urged. “I’ve always wanted to swashbuckle, and now is my chance. Step on it.”
I stepped, and the little familiar landmarks hurtled by. We thundered around corners, and past crossroads, and the Providence that keeps watch over fools and lovers protected us, so that presently we saw the customs house, and turned off to the right, down the long, rutty road that leads to Visichich manor.
“It’s only this morning we left here,” I reminisced. The road was worse than I remembered, but it wasn’t stopping us much.
“Honk the horn,” John ordered. “I think it is just over that hill.”
I honked the horn, loud and long, and as I came in sight of the manor wall, the gate opened to us.
“That’s an omen,” I said, and drove under the arch, and up to the door of the old house. I was pretty much excited myself, anticipating a warm welcome and all the little pleasant attentions I had missed the last three days.