CHAPTER VII

E had intended the night before to leave Rome early in the morning, and might have done so but for our guest, who was to decorate the trunk. We had enriched the servants, put on our goggles, cranked the car and attracted a goodly crowd before we discovered that the artist was missing. Then Paola remembered that he had gone out to buy a cap, so there was nothing to do but wait, a performance which dampens the enthusiasm of departure, is lacking in all dramatic details and uses up gasoline. When he finally came he had to be reintroduced to us, for there was very little of our original guest remaining. The cap seemed to do it.

The artist said it was a very good cap, particularly as it could be turned into a number of different things, not rabbits or scrambled eggs or anything that savoured of the conjurer's art, but it could vary with the weather, having a number of flapping effects at the side, to be used in case of hail, snow, sun and wind. He had not just got the hang of the thing, he said, and upon consulting the printed directions, he found that he was starting out with the ear muffs on, but he was so pleased when John tied them into a Psyche knot in the back that we hadn't the heart to be cross. One of the remarkable traits of the genus painter is his simple confidence. It appeals to one's vanity, at the same time that it irritates one to rebellion when we see him getting the best of it.

John had been mildly surprised at my inviting the artist for this trunk ride, and of course I didn't say a word to him about Mrs. Baring's muscle. Now that the morning had come, it didn't seem so

serious a thing, and here I was cutting off my nose to spite my face, and delaying the gathering of material for my divorce in the most petty manner; for even a painter with his mind only on purple cows and thick blue atmosphere would observe from the trunk if John hit me or used cruel and abusive language.

In the midst of the muscular episode at the picnic it flashed across me that this was the true beginning to my diary, but on maturer reflection I decided to make no entry. We had agreed that the grounds were to be my husband's extreme cruelty, and it was fair to him that I should not enlarge my territory, divorcely speaking; besides, I would never let that Minerva Club know that John could possibly care for any other woman. No, not if he kissed her in my very teeth.

Still, I felt quite businesslike when we started; the green diary was sticking out, and everything was conducive to a good record before the day was over. I said that to John, meaningly, and he agreed with me, only he meant the run-that is, I think he meant the run.

"Yes, it will be a record to be proud of," enthused John.

"I mean a record for the green book." I dwelt upon the words.

"Well, so do I," he asserted. Sometimes I can't make John out.

However, I determined that I would not let the artist know how perfectly unwelcome he was, and I stepped on John's toe as he was telling our guest that we had taken out the tonneau just to avoid the possibility of lugging any one along. After we passed beyond the Porto del Popolo, with no one to see him sitting up there like a drooping tiger, he was rather a useful companion-kept the dust off us splendidly, and displayed an ignorance about the machine that gave my own knowledge a peculiar lustre,

Our road for the next two hundred miles lay over the famous Via Flaminia. We had chosen it with care, not only because it was a wonderful road, but because it carried us through a country not greatly travelled, yet comprising all the various characteristics of an Italian landscape, and we had never been into Etruria, Umbria or the Marche that lay along the Adriatic Sea. Historically it was most interesting, and, as John told Douglas Warwick, very good "going" besides. The Douglas Warwick thought it ought to be just as good coming, and then his hat blew off.

After that it is not necessary to say that we were going down hill and getting the power to fly up the next rather steep grade on the high speed. Hats always blow off going down hill with an ascent ahead of one, and if there are no hats to blow off there is a team of oxen blocking the path at the foot, although should they by any chance fail to greet one at the foot of the hill, then they will be waiting near the summit of the next one, so that he has to go into the low speed or run the chance of being ditched.

There is one difference between the cart in the middle of the road in America and the cart over here. In Italy it is blocking the road because the driver doesn't think, and in our country it is blocking the road because he does think. Either way it makes our angry passions rise, and since John couldn't say anything to Douglas Warwick when he came back with his cap, he said some perfectly shocking things to the next driver of an ox team, and though it was in English, the man understood perfectly. Swearing need never be in Volapük.

The hat and cap game of the small boy with one parent is not known beyond Rome, evidently a growth of the Appian Way, but the lizards are most daring; whole parties lie in wait and dash directly under the wheels, and they all scream with laughter (lizard laughter) if one of them is run over, which makes no difference to the lizard at all, only he is called "It" for the rest of the day, and has to buy flies all around. I never felt the true significance of the riddle, "Why does the hen cross the road?" as I have in this country, and it is the greatest riddle

in the world, since it will be forever unsolved. I can understand the whimsy of lame ducks recklessly spending their time on the highway. It is a perverted passion akin to that of the deaf man who walks upon the railroad track, but the intuition that sends a mother of eighteen across the path of a speeding devil-engine is a thing for philosophers who sit in tubs to settle.

Our

We had intended to stop at Castelnuovo en route to Civita Castellana, where we would lunch, and we thought we had done so until leaving the farmhouse, which we took for the outskirts of the town. Then we saw the city on the side of a hill, and so far out of our way that we decided to continue on straight path. We had some difficulty leaving the farmhouse, as Douglas Warwick decided to sketch it, and it was then that his true nature asserted itself. Although he was a guest, although the food at the next place was starred in the Baedeker, although we were ready for it, and had reached the peevish stage which is Delsarte for hunger, still that artist would not stir. The truth was nothing to him. "Directly," he would cry cheerily; "one more shadow," lying like fury. "It's going to be very nice-you'll like it yourself, Ward."

"Not unless I can eat it," snapped back the host.

"It represents food eventually, you know," returned the worker. And John got under the car and told the driving shaft if he ever gave an ice cream soda for hen scratches like that, may he eat his hat. John always wants to eat his hat when he gets savage. He was probably a goat in some past state, but had we stayed away from food much longer we would both have eaten the artist's, ear muffs and all.

It was good spaghetti at Civita Castellana, quite the best we had ever devoured, and we watched eagerly to see if the painter enjoyed it also. We knew if this was an eating day we might reach Narni by early afternoon, but should he be lost in reflection, then the divine afflatus was upon him and he would sketch where he listeth if he had to puncture a tire to stay us. He ate little and called the string-beans turnips, which we observed with a sink

John glared at me.

"I think it has been quite modernised," I gasped, sitting on the guide book.

"Fact," hurries in John. "Colonial porches, Queen Anne windows and all that sort of thing, you know.

"Well, only one way to settle it," said our smiling guest. "Coming too, Mrs. Ward?" And I did, and kept off the children, that he might work in peace. Wonderful drawing power, these artists!

"Possibly Lucretia Borgia herself has stopped in this old fortress," he imparted, after we had seated ourselves on the northern rampart. "Her father, the Pope, married her to Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro, and she must have passed over this road many times in going to Rome. Then, later, she followed the Via Flaminia to Ferrara escorted by a splendid cavalcade to meet her third husband, one of the Este family."

I was a little shocked, because even the Minerva Club, with its broad policy, never alludes to Alexander VI. and his daughter. I intimated as much, delicately, of course.

"There never has been any proof that Lucretia was a monster," retorted the Douglas Warwick quite warmly, as though he knew the lady and had taken tea with her. "From all I can learn, she was simply a weak, passive woman. Her brother, Cæsar Borgia, was a horrible fiend. Aided by his father, he deposed all the petty rulers of the Umbrian cities, through which you will pass, and reigned fiercely in their places. The old Pope was a beast with but two traits worthy of a human creature. He was gentleness itself with his children and, crowning virtue, he built fine strongholds."

"Oh, well," I replied stiffly, "if you

judge a man's moral worth by his architectural ability-No," I added hastily, as he was about to interrupt, "the Borgia are not a family I think it proper to discuss."

He quite snorted with anger, but I felt it was time to stop him. One can never tell what an artist is going to say, painting from the nude so much. Besides, he was extremely well posted, and, on the whole, I preferred him in the motor car, ignorantly asking me about carbureters.

There were hills from that time on— the foothills of the Apennines-and there was a beautiful landscape of well-farmed valleys and dark-scarred rock showing many traces of Etrurian tombs, bits of Roman ruins and frequent columns bearing the crossed keys and mitre of past Popes. The artist said it was a mute story of the Invaders-rude heathen, great warriors, and Holy Church; but it was the crossed keys and papal mitre that turned me cold.

By the time we had reached Ortricoli the sky was clouded, which for lack of shadow rescued us from any attempt to have it immortalised on paper, but gave our companion an opportunity of arranging his cap for rain, although John assured him that, lacking a canopy, such a thing was impossible.

"Still, if you had a canopy and it did rain you would use it, wouldn't you?" persisted Douglas Warwick.

John begrudgingly admitted the possibility.

"Well, that's the way I feel about the cap. I paid extra for this waterproof attachment, and I ought to use it."

John kicked his beloved machine in the front hub and we went at the cap. The directions said "with a few deft twists" the inside of the headgear, which was lined. with rubber, could be transposed into a most satisfactory protection for the heaviest storms, but the very suggestion that we must work deftly seemed to turn our fingers into thumbs, and the results were various. It seemed to please the artist, who likened it to modelling in clay, and was most enthusiastic over the prairie dog I evolved. John suggested that we leave it as a prairie dog, since it was certainly at its best in that form, but our guest stuck to his task, and finally got

Our road for the next two hundred miles lay over the famous Via Flaminia. We had chosen it with care, not only because it was a wonderful road, but because it carried us through a country not greatly travelled, yet comprising all the various characteristics of an Italian landscape, and we had never been into Etruria, Umbria or the Marche that lay along the Adriatic Sea. Historically it was most interesting, and, as John told Douglas Warwick, very good "going" besides. The Douglas Warwick thought it ought to be just as good coming, and then his hat blew off.

After that it is not necessary to say that we were going down hill and getting the power to fly up the next rather steep grade on the high speed. Hats always blow off going down hill with an ascent ahead of one, and if there are no hats to blow off there is a team of oxen blocking the path at the foot, although should they by any chance fail to greet one at the foot of the hill, then they will be waiting near the summit of the next one, so that he has to go into the low speed or run the chance of being ditched.

There is one difference between the cart in the middle of the road in America and the cart over here. In Italy it is blocking the road because the driver doesn't think, and in our country it is blocking the road because he does think. Either way it makes our angry passions rise, and since John couldn't say anything to Douglas Warwick when he came back with his cap, he said some perfectly shocking things to the next driver of an ox team, and though it was in English, the man understood perfectly. Swearing need never be in Volapük.

The hat and cap game of the small boy with one parent is not known beyond Rome, evidently a growth of the Appian Way, but the lizards are most daring; whole parties lie in wait and dash directly under the wheels, and they all scream with laughter (lizard laughter) if one of them is run over, which makes no difference to the lizard at all, only he is called "It" for the rest of the day, and has to buy flies all around. I never felt the true significance of the riddle, "Why does the hen cross the road?" as I have in this country, and it is the greatest riddle

in the world, since it will be forever unsolved. I can understand the whimsy of lame ducks recklessly spending their time on the highway. It is a perverted passion akin to that of the deaf man who walks upon the railroad track, but the intuition that sends a mother of eighteen across the path of a speeding devil-engine is a thing for philosophers who sit in tubs to settle.

We had intended to stop at Castelnuovo en route to Civita Castellana, where we would lunch, and we thought we had done so until leaving the farmhouse, which we took for the outskirts of the town. Then we saw the city on the side of a hill, and so far out of our way that we decided to continue on Our straight path. We had some difficulty leaving the farmhouse, as Douglas Warwick decided to sketch it, and it was then that his true nature asserted itself. Although he was a guest, although the food at the next place was starred in the Baedeker, although we were ready for it, and had reached the peevish stage which is Delsarte for hunger, still that artist would not stir. The truth was nothing to him. "Directly," he would cry cheerily; "one more shadow," lying like fury. "It's going to be very nice-you'll like it yourself, Ward."

"Not unless I can eat it," snapped back the host.

"It represents food eventually, you know," returned the worker. And John got under the car and told the driving shaft if he ever gave an ice cream soda for hen scratches like that, may he eat his hat. John always wants to eat his hat when he gets savage. He was probably a goat in some past state, but had we stayed away from food much longer we would both have eaten the artist's, ear muffs and all.

It was good spaghetti at Civita Castellana, quite the best we had ever devoured, and we watched eagerly to see if the painter enjoyed it also. We knew if this was an eating day we might reach Narni by early afternoon, but should he be lost in reflection, then the divine afflatus was upon him and he would sketch where he listeth if he had to puncture a tire to stay us. He ate little and called the string-beans turnips, which we observed with a sink