I shall always feel that I dreamed Aigues Mortes: that I fell asleep at
night--oh, but fell very far, so much farther than one usually falls
even when one wakes with the sensation of dropping from a great height,
that I went bumping down, down from century to century, until I touched
earth in a strange, drear land, to find I had gone back in time about
seven hundred years.
Not that there is a conspicuous amount either of land or earth at Aigues
Mortes, City of Dead Waters--if the place really does exist, which I
begin to doubt already; but I have only to shut my eyes to call it up;
and in my memory I shall often use it as a background for some mediæval
picture painted with my mind. For with my mind I can rival Raphael. It
is only when I try to execute my fancies that I fail, and then they "all
come different," which is heart breaking. But it will be something to
have the background always ready.
The dream did not begin while we spun gaily from Arles to Aigues Mortes,
through pleasant if sometimes puerile-seeming country (puerile only
because we hadn't its history dropping from our fingers' ends); but
there was time, between coming in sight of the huge, gray-brown towers
and driving in through the fortified gateway, for me to take that great
leap from the present far down into the past.
To my own surprise, I didn't want to think of the motor-car. It had
brought us to older places, but within this walled quadrangle it was as
if we had come full tilt into a picture; and the automobile was not an
artistic touch. Ingrate that I was, I turned my back upon the Aigle, and
was thankful when Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour walked out of my sight
around the corner of the picture. I pretended, when they had
disappeared, that I had painted them out, and that they would cease to
exist unless I relented and painted them in again, as eventually I
should have to do. But I had no wish to paint the driver of the car out
of my picture, for in spite of his chauffeur's dress he is of a type
which suits any century, any country--that clear-cut, slightly stern,
aquiline type which you find alike on Roman coins and in modern
drawing-rooms. He would have done very well for one of St. Louis's
crusaders, waiting here at Aigues Mortes to sail for Palestine with his
king, from the sole harbour the monarch could claim as his on all the
Mediterranean coast. I decided to let him remain in the dream picture,
therefore, and told him so, which seemed to please him, for his eyes
lighted up. He always understands exactly what I mean when I say odd
things. I should never have felt _quite_ the same to him again, I think,
if he had stared and asked "What dream picture?"
I had been brought on this expedition strictly for use, not for
ornament. We were going from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles and from St.
Gilles to Nîmes, therefore Arles was already a landmark in our past. I
could walk about and amuse myself if I liked, but I must be at the inn
before the return of my master and mistress to arrange a light repast
collected at Arles, as we should have to lunch later at Nîmes, and the
resources of Aigues Mortes were not supposed to be worthy of
millionaires in search of the picturesque. There were several neat
packages, the contents of which would aid and abet such humble
refreshment as the City of Dead Waters could produce; but I had more
than an hour to play with; and much can be done in an hour by an
enthusiast with a good circulation.
I had not quite realized, however, how largely my brother's
companionship contributed to my pleasure on these excursions. We had
seen almost everything together, and suddenly it occurred to me that I
was taking his presence too much for granted. He would not go with me
now, because in so small a round we were certain to run up against the
Turnours, and her ladyship might be pleased to give me another lecture
like that of evil memory at Avignon. I would have risked future
punishment for the sake of present pleasure, and it was on my tongue to
say so; but I swallowed the words with difficulty, like an over-large
pill.
So it fell out that I wandered off alone, sustaining myself on high
thoughts of Crusaders as I gazed up at the statue of St. Louis, and
paced the sentinels' pathway round the gigantic ramparts, unchanged
since Boccanegra built them. Looking down from the ramparts the town,
enclosed in the fortress walls, was like a faded chessboard cast ashore
from the wreck of some ancient ship; and round the dark walls and towers
waves of yellow sand and wastes of dead blue waters stretched as far as
my gaze could reach, toward the tideless sea.
Louis bought this tangled desert of sand and water in the middle of the
thirteenth century from an Abbot of Psalmodi, so the guide told me, and
I liked the name of that abbot so much that I kept saying it over and
over, to myself. Abbot of Psalmodi! It was to the ear what an old,
illuminated missal is to the eye, rich with crimson lake, and gold, and
ultramarine. It was as if I heard an echo from King Arthur's day, that
dim, mysterious day when history was flushed with dawn; the Abbot of
Psalmodi!
The heart of Aigues Mortes for me was the great tower of Constance, but
a very wicked heart, full of clever and murderous devices, which was at
its wickedest, not in the dark ages, but in the glittering times of
Louis XIV. and of other Louis after him. That tower is the bad part of
the dream where horrors accumulate and you struggle to cry out, while a
spell holds you silent. In the days when Aigues Mortes was not a dream,
but a terrible reality to the prisoners of that cruel tower, how many
anguished cries must have broken the spell; cries from hideous little
dungeons like rat-holes, cries from the far heights of the tower where
women and children starved and were forgotten!
I was almost glad to get away; yet now that I am away I shall often go
back--in my dream.
Alexander Dumas the elder went from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles, driving
along the Beaucaire Canal, on that famous tour of his which took him
also to Les Baux; and we too went from Aigues Mortes to St. Gilles,
though I'm sure the Turnours had no idea that it was a pilgrimage in
famous footprints. Only the humble maid and chauffeur had the joy of
knowing that. We had both read Dumas' account of his journey, and we
laughed over the story of the little saint he stole at Les Baux.
It was a pleasant run to St. Gilles, though there was a shrewish nip in
the wind which made me hope that Lady Turnour's mind was not running
ahead to the mountains and gorges in front of her, not far away by days
or miles now. I wanted her to get tangled up in them before she had time
to think of the cold, and then it would be too late to turn tail.
I had just begun to call the little town of St. Gilles an "ugly hole,"
and wonder what St. Louis saw to love in it, when, coming out of a
squalid, hilly street through which I had tried to pick my way on foot,
alone, suddenly the façade of the wonderful old church burst upon my
sight, a vision of beauty.
No self-respecting motor-car would have condescended to trust itself in
such a street, and as a rabble of small male St. Gillesites swarmed
round the Aigle when she stopped at the beginning of the ascent, Mr.
Dane had to play guardian angel. "I've been here before," he said, as
usual, for this whole tour seems to be a twice-told tale for him. A few
days ago I should have pitied him aloud for not being able to blow the
dust off his old impressions; but now, when he speaks of past
experiences, I think: "Oh, I wonder if this is another place associated
in his mind with that _horrid_ woman?" For on mature deliberation I have
definitely niched her among the Horrors in my mental museum. In front of
me walked Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour, whose very backs cried out their
loathing of St. Gilles; but abruptly the expression of their shoulders
changed; they had seen the façade, and even they could not help feeling
vaguely that it must be unique in the world, that of its kind nothing
could be more beautiful.
That was before I saw it, for a respectful distance must be maintained
between Those Who Pay and Those Who Work; but I guessed from the backs
that something extraordinary was about to be revealed. Then it was
revealed, and I would have given a good deal to have some one to whom I
could exclaim "Isn't it glorious!"
Still, I am luckily very good chums with myself, and it is never too
much trouble to think out new adjectives for my own benefit, or to
indicate quaint points of view. I was soon making the best of my own
society in the way of intelligent companionship, shaking crumbs of
half-forgotten history out of my memory, and finding a dried currant of
fact here and there. In convent days there was hardly a saint or
saintess with whom I hadn't a bowing acquaintance, and although a good
many have cut me since, I can generally recall something about them, if
necessary, as title worshippers can about the aristocracy. I thought
hard for a minute, and suddenly up rolled a curtain in my mind, and
there in his niche stood St. Gilles. He was born in Athens, and was a
most highly connected saint, with the blood of Greek kings in his veins,
all of which was eventually spilled like water in the name of religion.
It seemed very suitable that such perfection of carving and proportion
as was shown in steps, towers, façade, and frieze should be dedicated to
a Greek saint, who must have adored and understood true beauty as few of
his brother saints could.
Mr. Dane had said, just before I started, that there was a gem of a
spiral staircase, called the Vis de St. Gilles, which I ought to see,
and a house, unspoiled since mediæval days; but the question of these
sights was settled adversely for me by my master and mistress. The
frieze they did admire, but it sufficed. Their inner man and woman
clamoured for a feast, and the eyes must be sacrificed.
As for me, I did not count even as a sacrifice, of course, but I
followed them back to the car as I'd followed them from it, and the car
flew toward Nîmes.
Just at first, for a few moments which I hate to confess to myself now,
I was disappointed in Nîmes. The town looked cold, and modern, and
conceited after the melancholy charm of Arles and the mediæval aspect of
Avignon; but that was only as we drove to our stately hotel in its
large, dignified square. Afterward--after the inevitable lunching and
unpacking--when I started out once again in the society of my adopted
relative, I prayed to be forgiven.
A gale was blowing, but little cared we. A toque or a picture-hat make
all the difference in the world to a woman's impressions, even of
Paradise--if the wind be ever more than a lovely zephyr there. Lady
Turnour had insisted on changing her motoring hat for a Gainsborough
confection which would, I was deadly certain, cause her to loathe Nîmes
while memory should last; but the better part was mine. Toqued and
veiled, the mistral could crack its cheeks if it liked; it couldn't hurt
mine, or do unseemly things to my hair.
In the gardens of Louis XIV. I gave myself to Nîmes as devotee forever;
and as the glories of the past slowly dawned upon me, that Past round
which the King had planted his flowers and formal trees, and placed
vases and statues, I wished I were a worthier worshipper at the shrine.
I think that there can be no more beautiful town in the world than Nîmes
in springtime. The wind brought fairy perfumes, and lovely little green
and golden puff-balls fell from the budding trees at our feet, as if
they wanted to surprise us. The fish in the crystal clear water of the
old Roman baths, which King Louis tried to spoil but couldn't, swam back
and forth in a golden net of sunshine. We two children of the twentieth
century amused ourselves in attempting to reconstruct the baths as they
must have looked in the first century; and the glimmering columns under
the green water, now lost to the eye, now seen again, white and elusive
as mermaids playing hide and seek, helped our imagination.
Far easier was it to go back to Rome in the Temple of Diana, so
beautiful in ruin and so little changed except by time, as to bring to
the heart a pang of mingled joy and pain, of sadness which women love
and men resent--unless they are poets. Doves were cooing softly there,
the only oracles of the temple in these days; and what they said to each
other and to us seemed more mysterious than the sayings of common doves,
because their ancestors had no doubt handed down much wisdom to them,
from generation to generation, ever since Diana was taken seriously as a
goddess, or perhaps even since the dim days when Celtic gods were
reigning powers.
From the gardens we went slowly to that other temple which unthinking
people and guide-books have named the Maison Carrée, the most lovely
temple out of Greece, and the one which has suffered most from sheer,
uncompromising stupidity in modern days. Now it rests from persecution,
though it shows its scars; and I wondered dully, as I stood gazing at
the Corinthian columns--strong, yet graceful--how so dull a copy as the
Madeleine could possibly have been evolved from such perfection.
Inside in the museum was the dearest old gentleman in a tall hat, who
explained to us with ingenuous pride and dignity the splendid collection
of coins which he himself had given to the town. It was easy to see that
they were the immediate jewels of his soul; there was not one piece
which he did not know and love as if it had been his child, though there
were so many thousands that he alone could keep strict count of them. He
insisted gravely upon the superlative value of the least significant in
appearance, but he could joke a little about other things than coins.
There was an old mosaic which we admired, with a faded God of Love
riding a winged steed.
"_L'Amour s'en va_," he chuckled, pointing to the half-obliterated
figure. "_N'est pas?_" and he turned to me for confirmation. "I don't
know yet," I answered.
"Mademoiselle is very fortunate--but very young," said the dear old
gentleman, looking like a late eighteenth-century portrait as he smiled
under his high hat. "And what thinks monsieur?"
"That it is better not to give him a chance to fly away, by keeping the
door shut against him in the beginning," replied Mr. Dane, as coldly as
if he kept his heart on ice.
Sunset was fading, like Love on the mosaic, when we came to the
amphitheatre; but the sky was still stained red, and each great arch of
stone framed a separate ruby. It was a strange effect, almost sinister
in its splendour, and all the air was rose-coloured.
"Is it a good omen or an evil one for our future?" I asked.
"Means storms, I think," the chauffeur answered in the laconic way he
affects sometimes, but there was an odd smile in his eyes, almost like
defiance--of me, or of Fate. I didn't know which but I should have liked
to know.