They left Volterra behind them. The hellish landscape was gradually tempered with mundane greenness and amenity. They descended the headlong street of Colle. The landscape became once more completely earthly. The soil of the hills was red, like that from which God made Adam. In the steep fields grew rows of little pollard trees, from whose twisted black arms hung the festooned vines. Here and there between the trees shuffled a pair of white oxen, dragging a plough.
‘Excellent roads, for a change,’ said Lord Hovenden. On one straight stretch he managed to touch eighty-eight. Mr. Falx’s beard writhed and fluttered with the agonized motions of some captive animal. He was enormously thankful when they drew up in front of the hotel at Siena.
‘Wonderful machine, don’t you fink?’ Lord Hovenden asked him, when they had come to a standstill.
‘You go much too fast,’ said Mr. Falx severely.
Lord Hovenden’s face fell. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he apologized. The young giant in him was already giving place to the meek pedestrian. He looked at his watch. ‘The others won’t be here for another three-quarters of an hour, I should fink,’ he added, in the hope that Mr. Falx would be mollified by the information.
Mr. Falx was not mollified, and when the time came, after lunch, for setting out on the Perugia road, he expressed a decided preference for a seat in Mrs. Aldwinkle’s limousine. It was decided that he should change places with Miss Elver.
Miss Elver had no objection to speed; indeed, it excited her. The faster they went, the more piercing became her cries of greeting and farewell, the more wildly she waved her handkerchief at the passing dogs and children. The only trouble about going so fast was that the mighty wind was always tearing the handkerchiefs from between her fingers and whirling them irretrievably into receding space. When all the four handkerchiefs in her reticule had been blown away, Miss Elver burst into tears. Lord Hovenden had to stop and lend her his coloured silk bandana. Miss Elver was enchanted by its gaudy beauty; to secure it against the assaults of the thievish wind, she made Irene tie one corner of it round her wrist.
‘Now it’ll be all right,’ she said triumphantly; lifting her goggles, she wiped away the last traces of her recent grief.
Lord Hovenden set off again. On the sky-line, lifted high above the rolling table-land over which they were travelling, the solitary blue shape of Monte Amiata beckoned from far away. With every mile to southward the horns of the white oxen that dragged the carts became longer and longer. A sneeze—one ran the risk of a puncture; a sideways toss of the head—one might have been impaled on the hard and polished points. They passed through San Quirico; from that secret and melancholy garden within the walls of the ruined citadel came a whiff of sun-warmed box. In Pienza they found the Platonic idea of a city, the town with a capital T; walls with a gate in them, a short street, a piazza with a cathedral and palaces round the other three sides, another short street, another gate and then the fields, rich with corn, wine and oil; and the tall blue peak of Monte Amiata looking down across the fertile land. At Montepulciano there were more palaces and more churches; but the intellectual beauty of symmetry was replaced by a picturesque and precipitous confusion.
‘Gosh!’ said Lord Hovenden expressively, as they slid with locked wheels down a high street that had been planned for pack-asses and mules. From pedimented windows between the pilasters of the palaces, curious faces peered out at them. They tobogganed down, through the high renaissance, out of an arch of the Middle Ages, into the dateless and eternal fields. From Montepulciano they descended on to Lake Trasimene.
‘Wasn’t there a battle here, or something?’ asked Irene, when she saw the name on the map.
Lord Hovenden seemed to remember that there had indeed been something of the kind in this neighbourhood. ‘But it doesn’t make much difference, does it?’
Irene nodded; it certainly didn’t seem to make much difference.
‘Nofing makes any difference,’ said Lord Hovenden, making himself heard with difficulty in the teeth of a wind which his speedometer registered as blowing at forty-five miles an hour. ‘Except’—the wind made him bold—‘except you.’ And he added hastily, in case Irene might try to be severe. ‘Such a bore going down-hill on a twiddly road like vis. One can’t risk ve slightest speed.’
But when they turned into the flat highway along the western shore of the lake, his face brightened. ‘Vis is more like it,’ he said. The wind in their faces increased from a capful to half a gale, from half a gale to a full gale, from a full gale very nearly to a hurricane. Lord Hovenden’s spirits rose with the mounting speed. His lips curved themselves into a smile of fixed and permanent rapture. Behind the glass of his goggles his eyes were very bright. ‘Pretty good going,’ he said.
‘Pretty good,’ echoed Irene. Under her mask, she too was smiling. Between her ears and the flaps of her leather cap the wind made a glorious roaring. She was happy.
The road swung round to the left following the southern shore of the lake.
‘We shall soon be at Perugia,’ said Hovenden regretfully. ‘What a bore!’
And Irene, though she said nothing, inwardly agreed with him.
They rushed on, the gale blew steadily in their faces. The road forked; Lord Hovenden turned the nose of his machine along the leftward branch. They lost sight of the blue water.
‘Good-bye, Trasimene,’ said Irene regretfully. It was a lovely lake; she wished she could remember what had happened there.
The road began to climb and twist; the wind abated to a mere half-gale. From the top of the hill, Irene was surprised to see the blue waters, which she had just taken leave of for ever, sparkling two or three hundred feet below on the left. At the joyous sight Miss Elver clapped her hands and shouted.
‘Hullo,’ Irene said, surprised. ‘That’s odd, isn’t it?’
‘Taken ve wrong road,’ Hovenden explained. ‘We’re going norf again up ve east side of ve lake. We’ll go right round. It’s too much bore to stop and turn.’
They rushed on. For a long time neither of them spoke. Behind them Miss Elver hooted her greetings to every living creature on the road.
They were filled with happiness and joy; they would have liked to go on like this for ever. They rushed on. On the north shore of the lake the road straightened itself out and became flat again. The wind freshened. Far off on their respective hills Cortona and Montepulciano moved slowly, as they rushed along, like fixed stars. And now they were on the west shore once more. Perched on its jutting peninsula Castiglione del Lago reflected itself complacently in the water. ‘Pretty good,’ shouted Lord Hovenden in the teeth of the hurricane. ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘wasn’t it Hannibal or somebody who had a battle here? Wiv elephants, or somefing.’
‘Perhaps it was,’ said Irene.
‘Not vat it matters in ve least.’
‘Not in the least.’ She laughed under her mask.
Hovenden laughed too. He was happy, he was joyful, he was daring.
‘Would you marry me if I asked you?’ he said. The question followed naturally and by a kind of logic from what they had been saying about Hannibal and his elephants. He did not look at her as he asked the question; when one is doing sixty-seven one must keep one’s eyes on the road.
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said Irene.
‘I’m not talking nonsense,’ Lord Hovenden protested. ‘I’m asking a straightforward question. Would you marry me?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Irene.
They had passed Castiglione. The fixed stars of Montepulciano and Cortona had set behind them.
‘Don’t you like me?’ shouted Lord Hovenden. The wind had swelled into a hurricane.
‘You know I do.’
‘Ven why not?’
‘Because, because . . . Oh, I don’t know. I wish you’d stop talking about it.’
The machine rushed on. Once more they were running along the southern shore. A hundred yards before the forking of the roads, Lord Hovenden broke silence. ‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Irene.
Lord Hovenden turned the nose of his machine to the left. The road climbed and twisted, the wind of their speed abated.
‘Stop,’ said Irene. ‘You’ve taken the wrong turn again.’
But Hovenden did not stop. Instead, he pressed down the accelerator. If the car got round the corners it was more by a miracle than in obedience to the laws of Newton or of nature.
‘Stop!’ cried Irene again. But the car went on.
From the hill-top they looked down once more upon the lake.
‘Will you marry me?’ Lord Hovenden asked again. His eyes were fixed on the road in front of him. Rapturously, triumphantly he smiled. He had never felt happier, never more daring, more overflowing with strength and power. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘No,’ said Irene. She felt annoyed; how stupidly he was behaving!
They were silent for several minutes. At Castiglione del Lago he asked again. Irene repeated her answer.
‘You’re not going to do this clown’s trick again, are you?’ she asked as they approached the bifurcation of the roads.
‘It depends if you’re going to marry me,’ he answered. This time he laughed aloud; so infectiously that Irene, whose irritation was something laid on superficially over her happiness, could not help laughing too. ‘Are you going to?’ he asked.
‘No.’
Lord Hovenden turned to the left. ‘It’ll be late before we get to Perugia,’ he said.
‘Oo-ooh!’ cried Miss Elver, as they topped the
