might have done. First, there was the port, with the white ships riding
at their moorings in the blue sea. Then grayish white Marseilles, with
its two immense ribbons, the Cannebière running northward, and the Rue
de Rome and the Prado intersecting it. The great wooded amphitheater
rising like a wave and little Notre Dame de la Garde peeking like a
sentry out to sea. And eastward from the quays were the little jagged
islands the Phenicians knew, If, and Rion, Jaros, strange un-French
names ... the sunshine yellow as a lamp, and the sea blue as flax, and
the green woods, and the ancient grayish white city--all a picture some
unimaginative painter would have loved. Next to Belfast, Marseilles was
to Shane Campbell a second home. There it was, like your own house!
Obvious and drowsy it might seem, but once he went ashore, the swarming,
teeming life of it struck Shane like a current of air. Along the quays,
along the Cannebière, was a riot of color and nationality unbelievable
from on board ship. Here were Turks dignified and shy. Here were Greeks,
wary, furtive. Here were Italians, Genoese, Neapolitans, Livonians,
droll, vivacious, vindictive. Here were Moors, here were Algerians,
black African folk, sneering, inimical. Here were Spaniards, with their
walk like a horse's lope. Here were French business men, very important.
Here were Provençals, cheery, short, tubby, excitable, olive-colored,
black-bearded, calling to one another in the _langue d'oc_ of the
troubadours, _"Té, mon bon! Commoun as? Quézaco?"_
And the bustle of the shops and the bustle of cafés, until Shane was
forced to go out to the olive-lined roads to the rocky summit of La
Garde, and once there, as if drawn by a magnet, Shane would enter the
chapel in the fort, where the most renowned Notre Dame of the
Mediterranean smiles mawkishly in white olive-wood. After the blinding
sun of the Midi, the cool dark chapel was like a dungeon to him, so
little could he see anything; but in a while the strange furniture of
the place would take form before his eyes: the white statue of the
Virgin, the silver tunny-fish, the daubs of sea hazards whence the
Virgin had rescued grateful mariners, the rope-ends, the crutches....
And though none might be in the chapel, yet it was full of life, so much
did the pathetic ex-votos tell.... And he would come out of the chapel,
and again the Midi sun would flash in a shower of gold, and he could see
the blue Mediterranean, pricked with minute lateen-sails, and the
grayish town beneath him, so old and yet so vital, and the calm harbor,
with the forest of spars, and Monte Cristo, white as an egg....
A queer town that, as familiar as a channel marking, teeming as an
ant-hill, and when darkness came over it, and he viewed it from the
after deck, mystery came, too.... For a while there was a hush, and
around the hills gigantic ghosts walked.... One thought of the Phocæans
who had founded it, and to whom the Cannebière was a rope-walk, where
they made the sheets for their ships.... And one thought of Lazarus, who
had been raised from among the silent dead and who had come there, so
legend read, a gray figure in ceramic garments, standing in the prow of
a boat....
One thing Robin More had told him remained in his mind and captured his
fancy, and that was that Pontius Pilate had been governor of Marseilles
after his office in Judea. And of him Shane would think when the
mysterious dusk came on the Midi hills ... Pilate, who had smiled, "What
is truth?" and who had turned Christ over to the mob.... A big man, he
imagined the Roman to have been, with clever eyes, and a great black
beard covering a weak chin.... A man who knew all the subtleties of
mind, and had no backbone.... And he could see the Roman, sitting on his
villa porch in the dusk with tortured eyes, and fingering his beard with
fingers that shook.... Paul was going through Greece and Rome like a
flame, and the Pilate wondered.... Could it have been possible?...
Ridiculous! a Jewish carpenter! A crazy man!.... And yet.... Could it
have been possible.... No! no! no! And yet.... People had seen Him walk
on the waves.... But people never knew what they saw, exactly.... No!
How foolish!... He raised a man from the dead they said.... And that
centurion--what was his name?--his daughter!... No, a stupid Jewish
legend.... And yet.... Could it be possible? Could it? Could it?
"Lights! Lights! Do you hear me! Bring lights! Lights!" Pilate would all
but scream, panic-stricken in the Midi dusk....
To Shane Campbell Marseilles had been all this for two years while he
journeyed from Liverpool for silk and scented soaps--a landmark
familiar as the Giant's Causeway, a strange, motley human circus, a veil
behind which hid gigantic ghosts.... Until he met _La Mielleuse_ on the
road to Aix.
§ 2
For six years now, since the day they had buried his wife in the green
divots of Louth, women had been alien to him. It was not that he hated
them, not that he was uncomfortable among them; but the thought of close
mental or spiritual or physical contact with them put him in a panic, as
one might be in a panic at the thought of contact with some Chinaman, or
Eskimo. The women of the better class in ports importuned him, but he
passed with a grave humorous smile and an unexpected courtesy. His
friends' wives or acquaintances could get nothing out of him but a grave
answer to any questions they might put, so that they characterized him
as a stick. And at home in Ulster, whither he went after occasional
voyages, where Robin More still drowsed over his books; where Alan Donn
still hunted and fished and golfed, haler at five and fifty than a boy
in his early twenties; and where his mother sat and did beautiful
broidery, dumbly, inimically, cold as a fish, secretive as a badger,
there he would meet the women of the Antrim families, women who knew of
the disaster of his marriage, and they would look approvingly at his
firm face and smiling, steady eyes, and they would say: "A man, thon! He
could be a good friend. You could trust him, a woman could." They were
unco good folk, Antrim folk.
For the peasant girls around he had always a laugh and a joke. And for
the young girls from school he had always a soft spot in his heart
somehow, appreciating them as one appreciates the first primrose or a
puppy dog playing on the lawn or the lark in the clear air. There came
such a current of beauty and freshness from them.... New from the hand
of the Maker.... They were pausing now, as the wind pauses on the
tide.... And in a little while the world, the damned world!... And so he
treated them with a great gravity, answering their questions on
geography, telling them what an estuary was, and what the trade-winds,
and how a typhoon came and paused and passed: and how jute and grain and
indigo were taken from Calcutta, and of the Hooghly, the most difficult
river in the world to navigate, and of the shoal called "James and
Mary".... And they listened to him with wide-open, violet eyes....
And there were two women, Leah Fraser, a slight woman with hair smooth
and reddish like a gold coin, and eyes that thought and saw back of
things, and slender, beautiful hands, and she moved with the dignity of
a swan.... And there was Anne MacNeill, who handled a horse as a man
would, and was a great archer--she could shoot as far as Alan could
drive a golf-ball with a spoon.... Shane could always see her, a Diana
on the greensward, leaning forward, listening to hear the smack of the
arrow on the target.... And both these women were his good friends, the
thought of them filling his mind like sweet lavender.... But when they
were each alone with him, and a little silence would come, then panic
would fall on him, and he would make an undignified escape from their
company proffering any old excuse.... And they would watch him go, with
little twisted smiles.... Poor Leah! Poor Anne!
All the love in him, that some sweet, gracious woman should have had,
was anesthetized, or it was deflected, perhaps, to the great
three-masted schooner he was now owner and master of, a beautiful boat
that had been christened the _Ulster Lady_, and came from the yards at
Belfast, taking the water as nobly as a swan. From truck to keelson
there was no part of her imperfect; from stem to stern. Barring a little
tendency to be cranky before the wind in a seaway, nothing better
sailed. Jammed, or on the wind, she was like a hare before the hounds,
so quickly did she go. Her slim black body, her white, beautifully set
sails--not a strake or an inch of canvas on her that he did not know and
love. And more thought was given by him to the proper peaking of a spar
and the exact setting of a leech than to the profits of the cargo. It
was like having one's own country, and his cabin aboard was like his own
castle--the little stateroom with the swinging-lamps, and the compass
above the fastened bed, the row of books, the Aberdeen terrier, _Duine
Uasal_, who slept peacefully on the rug, and who would go on deck and
sniff the wind like a connoisseur.... And there was a manuscript poem of
his father's in the Irish letter, _Leaba Luachra_, "The Bed of Rushes,"
which he had discovered and had framed. And there was a prized thing of
his boyhood there, a dagger the Young Pretender wore in his stocking,
and he in Highland dress, as he swung toward London with pipe and drum.
Alan Donn had given it to him, and he after getting it on a visit to
Argyll. "Not only is it Charlie's, but it's a nice handy thing, thon!"
... A beautiful piece of work it was, perfectly balanced, keen as a
razor, with a handle of the stag's horn.... It was the only weapon Shane
had, and about it curled romance and the smoke of dead, royal hopes....
A bonny, homy place that cabin, peaceful as a garden of bees, when the
water slipped past the beam. It was like a warm hearth-fire to come down
there after a strenuous time on deck while the sou'wester crashed on the
Welsh coast. Or in the roll of the Bay of Biscay, after a space watching
the swinging fields of stars, to come down there was to drop into a
welcoming circle of friends, to throw one's self down and pick up a
book, the Laureate's "In Memoriam" or Mr. Thackeray's latest--and to
glance from the pages of "Henry Esmond" to Prince Charlie's dagger lying
peacefully on the desk.... How near! how near!... And up forward the
lookout paced, or leaned over the bows, humming in Gaidhlig:
_'S tric me sealtuinn do'n chnoc is airde D'fheac a faic mi fear a bhata
An dtig tu andiu no'n dtig tu 'maireach? Is mur dtig tu eader gur truagh
mar ta mi!_
Will you come to-day or will you come to-morrow?
If you never come how piteous for me!
_Fhir a' bhata, na horo eile!_
_Hi horo, fhir a bhata--_
All the nostalgia of the Scottish isles was in the minors of that
song.... And it was like a lullaby.... And the wind hummed through the
rigging.... And underneath was the flow and throb of the immense
circulation of the sea.... And overhead the helmsman rang the ship's
bell. _Tung-tung, tung-tung, tung-tung, tung._ And all was well on board
the _Ulster Lady_. And she was his only sweetheart and delight ... until
he met _La Mielleuse_ on the road to Aix....
§ 3
The babble of the Greek merchants in the Café Turc at last began to bore
him, and hiring a horse and sort of gig he decided to drive to Aix. He
had always wished to see the old Provençal capital, but somehow the
opportunity had always passed by, or something.... But on this bright
September afternoon it seemed such a pity to go back on board ship....
He examined the old white horse with interest.
"Are you sure he'll take me there? You see his--" Shane wanted to say
suspensory ligaments, but his French didn't quite go that far--"his
legs--"
"But, Monsieur, he has won several races--"
"Well, in that event"--Shane grinned, "K-k-k-k!"
The white horse trotted steadily out the Prado, the Rue de Rome, trotted
out in the country, passed Bains de la Méditerranée. A northerdly breeze
was out rippling the gulf and giving promise of autumn, and the heavy
heat of the Midi had disappeared for the instant. Soon they would be
plucking the grapes of Provence. The olive-trees were black on the white
road. The white horse trotted on....
There were peasants on the road going into town, and townspeople going
out to the country.... And children who insulted one another shrilly....
But the white horse plodded on. On a stretch of level road he passed a
pair talking, noting casually that the woman was a lady from her
carriage, and from his threatening cringe that the man was a cad.
Italian riff-raff of some kind....
"But you are mistaken," the woman was saying. "You are making an error."
The man's reply was low, inaudible.
"But I assure you, you are mistaken."
The white horse plodded on.
"Please, please"--the woman's voice followed Shane, and there was
embarrassed fear in it--"please let me pass! You are mistaken."
And then again: "I swear to you ... please ... please!"
The white horse was surprised at a firm pull on his mouth, a crack of
the whip, and a turn.... He broke in a lolloping canter.... Shane jumped
down....
"Madame, is this man annoying you?"
"_Sirvase, Signor_--"
But one look at the woman's face was sufficient. Shane turned on the
fawning Sicilian with a snarl.
"Get to hell out of here, quick!" The man shuffled off, walked quickly,
ran, disappeared....
The great dark eyes had agony in them. Her mouth quivered. Shane knew
her knees were shaking as she stood.
"Better get in here. I'll drive you home." He helped her into the trap.
"I ought to have held that fellow," he grumbled. "Marseilles? No! Oh,
Les Bains! We'll be there in a minute. You're all right now, Madame."
"He mistook me--for--somebody else--" She had a voice deep and sweet as
a bell, but there was a tremor in it now--a marked accent of fear,
past, but not recovered from.
He was aware of a great vibrant womanhood beside him, as some people are
aware of spirits in a room, or a mother is aware of a child. He was
aware, though he hardly saw them, though he didn't know he saw them, of
the proud Greek beauty of her face, so decisively, so finely chiseled,
so that it seemed to soar forward, as a bird soars into the wind; of the
firm, dark ellipsis of the eyebrows; of the mouth that quivered, and yet
in repose would be something for a master of line and color to draw; the
little hands that plucked nervously at the dark silk gown, unquiet as
butterflies. Her eyes, he knew, were wide with fear, great black pupils,
deep, immensely deep. And he was aware, too, of something within her
that vibrated, as a stay aboard ship vibrates in a gusty, angry wind, or
as an ill-plucked harpstring will vibrate to and fro, unable to stop.
"I live here, Monsieur."
It was a little white villa, with green jalousies such as the Midi has
in thousands. He pulled up, and she was down before he could help her.
Her face was quiet now but for the tremor of her eyes.
"Thank you ever so much," she said.
"But this man, Madame. Are you safe? Ought not one to--the police?"
"It was nothing, Monsieur." She laughed, but her voice still quivered.
"Some good-for-nothing who took me for some one else, whom he had seen
somewhere else, and knew--something--about. Nothing at all, a bagatelle,
that might happen to any one. But I thank you so much! You were going
somewhere?"
"To Aix, Madame."
"But your horse is lame!"
"So he is, poor old boy! I hadn't noticed."
"Then--_adieu, Monsieur_. And thanks again."
He drove back to town. "I shall never get to Aix," he thought. "Perhaps
I shouldn't go.... Some fate...." At the livery post he got down and
examined the horse's fetlock.
"So you won several races, eh?" But the white horse seemed to shake its
head. "No! Oh, well, no matter, old codger!" And he stroked the long
lugubrious muzzle....
And thus, casually as he would light a match for his cigarette, casually
as he would stumble over something, casually as he would pick up a book,
he met _La Mielleuse_ on the road to Aix....
§ 4
For days now he had been aware of her presence in Marseilles without
thinking of her--aware of her as he was aware of the Hôtel de Ville, or
of the Consigne, as of the obelisk in the Place Castellane. These things
were facts, had their place, and she was a fact. She had become
imprinted on his memory as on a sensitive plate. So one dusk on the
Prado, as he met her, he was no more surprised than if, in their
appointed places he had come across the obelisk or the Consigne or the
Hôtel de Ville.
She was standing looking out to sea, and the little wind from Africa
blew against her, and made her seem poised for flight, like a bird.
And because he saw no reason why he shouldn't and because he was direct
and simple as the sea itself, he went to her.
"Are you a sea-captain's wife?"
"No, Monsieur." She seemed to know him without turning. Perhaps she
recognized his voice.
"I saw you looking out toward the Pharo. I thought perhaps you were
waiting for some one to come home on a ship."
"No," she said slowly. "No. I--I come here some dusks, and look out to
sea. There is something. It seems to pull me. The great waters and the
blinking lighthouse--I seem to stand out of myself. And miles and miles
and miles away there is a new land with a new life where one might go
... and begin.... What is in me seems to struggle to go out there, but
it never gets more than an inch or so outside. But even that.... And the
wind ... so clean. Are you a sailor?"
"Yes, I am a sailor."
"It is very beautiful and very pure, the sea?"
"Yes, sometimes it is very beautiful. I think it is always beautiful.
And it must be pure--I never thought.... It is strong, and sometimes
cruel. It heals, and sometimes it is very lonely. One never quite
understands. It is so big."
"Yes, so big and strong ... and it heals. One seems, one's self, one's
little cares, to be so little."
And they were silent for a while.
"But perhaps I intrude, Madame. Your husband----"
"My husband is dead in Algiers these six years."
"I am sorry."
Everything was hushed, the tideless sea, the silent wind. Behind them,
and still about them, hung the strange dusk of Pontius Pilate. Before
them blazed Marseilles.
"You are married?"
"I was married."
"Then your wife is--dead?"
"Yes, Madame, she is dead."
"You grieve?"
"No, I do not grieve."
"Did you not love her?"
"I loved some one I thought was she. It wasn't she."
There was another instant's silence as they walked.
"Ah, I think I understand," she said. And they walked into the blaze of
the city. She paused for a moment.
"Will you pardon me for asking things like that? I don't usually.... But
in the dusk I seem to be another person...."
"No. In the light we are other persons."
"Ah," she smiled understandingly. "You are going to your ship now?"
There was a finality in her voice. It was more an affirmation than a
question.
"Madame," Shane said, "will you please let me see you to your door?"
She looked at him for an intense second, and a little cloud of--was it
fear?--flitted across her face.
"Madame, there are thieves and villains of all kinds abroad. You have
had one experience. Please let me protect you from a possible second."
"If you wish." She smiled. He called a carriage.
In the light she was a different person. Along the sea-shore walking in
the dusk, she was a troubled phantom, a thing of beauty, but without
flesh, without the trappings of clothes--as if a spirit had been
imprisoned in cold white statuary. But now she was a beautiful woman,
gravely gay, a woman of the world, not of the great world, perhaps, and
not of the half-world--just a woman aware of and experienced in life.
And poised.
"You are English?"
"Not English. Irish."
Poised she was, but she was like a player playing a game, and the breaks
against her. He knew the smile. He had seen it often on Alan Donn's
face, playing in some of the great title matches. Four holes to go, and
he must better par. It's all right, the smile said; there's nothing
wrong. But in Alan Donn's was the glint of a naked knife, and in this
woman's eyes, down deep, veiled, but ill concealed, was appeal.
[Illustration]
They stopped at her house. He helped her out.
"_Adieu, Monsieur_. And again a thousand thanks."
"_C'était un vrai plaisir!_"
"Monsieur!"
"Madame!"
The cabman looked surprised when ordered to return. He turned and
regarded his fare with amazement.
"_Quai de la Fraternité_," I said.
"_Hup, alors!_" The cabby shrugged his shoulders. And they trotted
ploddingly through the dusk of Pontius Pilate to the burning cloud which
was Marseilles....
§ 5
He knew he should meet her again, and where he should meet her, and he
did, on the Prado. He knew when. In the Midi dusk. A touch of mistral
was out, and the wind blew seaward. She was sitting down, looking toward
Africa.
"You oughtn't to come out here alone," he said. "Marseilles is a bad
port."
"I know," she said. "I know. But it draws me, this spot. You leave
soon?" she asked.
"In a few days."
"But you will be back."
"Yes, I will be back," he told her. "I don't know why, but I think I'd
rather die than not see Marseilles again. It is a second home, and yet I
know so few people here."
"If one has the temperament, and conditions are--as they should
be--Marseilles is wonderful."
"One could be happy here."
"Yes," and she sighed.
The spell of the archaic dusk came on him again; a dusk old as the
world. About them brooded the welter of passion and romance that
Marseilles is. Once it was a Phocæan village, and hook-nosed Afric folk
had stepped through on long, thin feet. And then had come the Greeks,
with their broad, clear brows, their gray eyes. And further back the
hairy Gauls had crept, snarling like dogs. And Greece died. And came the
clash of the Roman legions, ruthless fighting hundreds, who saw, did
massive things. And Rome died. And over the sea came the Saracens, their
high heads, their hard, bronzed bodies, their scarlet mouths. And they
conquered and builded and lived.... And were hurled back.... Years
hummed by, and passion died not, or romance, and it was from Marseilles
that a battalion had come to Paris gates singing the song that Rouget de
Lisle had written in Strasburg:
_Allons, enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé._
And passed that day, and came another, when a handful of grizzled
veterans left the gates to join their brothers and meet the exiled
emperor.... Passion and romance! Their colors were in Marseilles
still.... Over in _Anse des Catalans_ weren't there the remains of the
village of the sea-Gipsies, who had come none knew whence?... And along
the gulf there were settlements of Saracen blood--_les Maures_, the
Provençals called them ... and the shadow of Pontius Pilate wild-eyed in
the dusk....
"It's strange"--her voice came gently to him,--"but I can hear you
think."
"And I can feel your silence," he said. "Just feel--you--being silent--"
The wind whipped up, grew shrill, grew cold. She shivered in her thin
frock.
"You are becoming cold."
"I am cold."
"Then hadn't you better go home--to your house?"
She rose silently. It seemed to him somehow that she had put herself
under his care. She was like some gentle little craft that had anchored
humbly under the lee of a great ship. He felt somehow that she was a
thing to be protected. He hailed a carriage, and she made no
protest--all the time under his lee, so needful of protection. It was a
shock when they came into the lights of Marseilles to find a proud,
grave woman there and not a shrinking, wide-eyed child.... Her face,
poised for flight, like a bird's wing; the beautiful, half-opened mouth,
the hands, the little feet in their shoes. She was like some beautiful
shy deer. And somewhere hovered disaster, like a familiar spirit.... And
yet she was smiling....
At the door he made to bid her good-by.
"Would you--would you care to come in?"
"Why--why, yes." He sent the carriage away.
He followed her up the path to the little villa and with her entered the
house. There were no servants to answer the door; she let herself in
with a latch-key, but so scrupulously clean was the place, so furnished
in its way, that there must have been servants somewhere. The
living-room into which she conducted him was spacious and a little bare,
though not bare for the Midi--a plain white room, high in the ceiling,
with chairs of good line. Here was a big piano, here a fireplace, here a
few paintings, colorful landscapes, on the wall. Together they lit
candles.