The Azure Shore
Was it a dream, or had she really seen the Anarchist's bearded,
goggled face bending over her in close proximity to her
fellow-traveller's? Who could say? These two were shrouded in
mystery, and permeated with intrigue, phantasmic, unreal. The woman
professed not to have observed the man, and when asked to notice him
as he passed their door in the corridor, had stared blankly in every
other direction, looked at the conductor, attendants, other
passengers, but always failed to perceive a man with beard and
goggles.
Yet, when sitting on the jolting little seat in the corridor, while
the attendant made up the beds, at her fellow-traveller's kind
suggestion, so that she might lie facing the engine, Ermengarde, now
wide awake and sensible, could have taken her oath that she saw these
intriguers talking together, in the little lobby at the entrance end
of the corridor.
"Talking to whom?" the woman of mystery replied, with that baffling,
stony-blank look that she put on like a mask at times. "Yes, I asked
the man to make up the beds at once, that you might face the engine.
See what nice bedding they give us; sheets, pillow-cases, all
complete, and snowy white--so different from London-washed linen. I
shall be glad to go to bed myself, after all the shaking and
rattling. Which man did you say? I see nobody with a beard. Let us
smile at the bed-maker as if we meant tips--five-franc smiles. He's
very civil. No; he's clean-shaven. So sorry going backwards upsets
you."
That was all to be got out of this woman of mystery, who seemed so
impersonal and so much above all feminine, not to say human,
infirmity. Yet there was a curious attractiveness about her. The
eyes, that were at times so blankly impervious to expression from
within or impression from without, were beautiful in shape and
colour, of the dark blue that varies from grey to purple, and shaded
by long sweeping lashes on finely curved lids. Her mouth shut firmly
in the true bow shape, with full lips, that, in repose, had a sort of
voluptuous sadness. She was slender and rather tall, moved well, and
had in her figure and bearing a sort of melancholy distinction. A
woman with a past, undoubtedly, and, by all appearances, with a
present of precarious tenure and painful interest as well. The kind
of woman men can never pass without taking note of, though nothing in
her bearing, look, or dress challenges observation, unless it be an
accentuated quietness and reserve. Such women, it occurred to
Ermengarde, when not absolute saints, are eminently fit for
"treasons, stratagems, and spoils." What if she were in league with
the Anarchist, whose anarchism might be, after all, of the
common-place type that indiscriminately relieves fellow-creatures of
the burden of personal property? A distinctly unpleasant idea to
entertain of one who shared sleeping-quarters and was so ready to
have beds made up and lights covered.
In cases like this, the only comfort is to carry nothing worth
stealing. But few travellers are without a watch and at least some
little money. Ermengarde's was safely sewn up in some inaccessible
portion of her attire, and when her companion plausibly suggested the
comfort of undressing before going to bed, and volunteered to help
her out of her clothes, she was glad to be able to point out that
there was not room enough to undress oneself in, much less anyone
else. Then she wondered, did she look rich? and when they found her
so little worth robbing, would they murder her in revenge
afterwards?--or beforehand to prevent a disturbance--charming
reflections to sleep upon. Of course, Arthur had been right--the man
had an exasperating way of always being right, especially about
unpleasant contingencies--in saying that she ought not to travel
alone. How many tales and newspaper records there had been lately of
passengers robbed and murdered by unknown hands, especially in
Southern France and Italy! It would be a judgment on her for taking
things into her own hands, and flaunting in her husband's face a
certain small hoard they both knew of--to be used only in great
emergency, such as conjugal desertion, or personal violence, or
bankruptcy, their jest had been. That had been coarsely done, she
owned now with flaming cheeks; he had felt, perhaps resented, the
indelicacy of the revolt. Let them rob her, then, but let them spare
her life. The thought of a motherless Charlie, screwing his precious
fists into his darling eyes, was too moving.
It was his bedtime; perhaps he was just saying his little prayers for
"fahver and muvver," or nestling his curly head contentedly into his
pillow, and falling into that instant, happy sleep that made him look
like a little angel, at the very moment when she laid her own head,
uncomfortably full of hairpins--perilous to remove with no chance of
replacing them in that jolting, swinging little bunk--upon the
train-pillow, expectant of midnight robbery and assassination, but
too glad to lay it anywhere to care much about anything.
"Won't you at least let me take off your boots?" the woman of mystery
murmured drowsily from the top berth; and Ermengarde would have given
all she possessed to do so, had she discerned the remotest
possibility of ever being able to put them on again, having now
reached that stage of anguish when one seems to have somebody else's
feet on, and those several sizes too large.
As she lay face forward on a wide, springy bed, the swaying train
soon became a cradle of rest, and the rhythmic rattle and crash of
its wheels and engine a soft lullaby, or the gallop of giant steeds,
bearing one swiftly away to regions of elysian slumber and soothing
dreams. Let the Anarchist rob or murder her, or both, if he would;
but let him do it gently, so as not to disturb that exquisite
combination of motion and repose, or break the rhythm of that musical
gallop of winged steeds, yoked to flying cars, flashing swifter and
ever swifter across France, across Europe, across the night, from
North to South, from sea to sea, from evening to morning, from
darkness to dawn, from earth to fairyland, when---- Bang! crash!
jolt! rumble! and everything falling together and coming to a dead
stop, at the weird repeated cry of some lost spirit, that pierced the
startled night in prolonged reverberations.
No, not a lost spirit, after all; only a sleepy man in a blouse,
crying the name of some town--was it Dijon?--through the echoing
emptiness of a dimly lighted station, and through the window a
glimpse of sky full of stars looking down in peace. They had come to
_somewhere else_, whither they had flown during the delicious sleep
into which she had fallen. There is nothing more delightful than
that feeling of having come to somewhere else without effort and
without thought, in the stillness of night and sleep.
If only one had on one's own legs and feet, and no hairpins and no
close-fitting day clothes, pinching in wrong places, or if only one
could find a pocket-handkerchief or a smelling-bottle, or look at
one's watch, without fear of waking the woman of mystery, and so
hastening the hour of assassination by turning on the light; the
presence of which, the latter had averred, was absolutely destructive
of her chances of sleep.
But the winged steeds begin to snort and pant, stamping, and clashing
their harness, and, with a sudden clatter of trampling hoofs, are off
again into the waste places of midnight, through which a star glances
intermittently and kindly, and Ermengarde remembers that she has not
yet been murdered, but is almost too drowsy to hope she has not been
robbed, feeling blindly for the gold sewn into her clothes and not
finding it, and not knowing that an excruciating pain under the ribs
is what she vainly seeks and is lying upon, or that acute discomfort
in other regions means that her hat, a really becoming one, has
tumbled off its hook and constituted itself a portion of her couch,
which is no longer a bed of roses.
Surely the winged steeds are now tearing away at increasing, headlong
speed, and their way is rougher, up hill and down dale, over crag and
boulder and chasm; the cradle is rocked less gently, and the rhythm
of the rapid gallop is not so smooth, else it would be heavenly to
fly thus between the pinions of the fiery coursers through centuries
of calm content, unvexed by thought or care; and surely the cadence
that seemed, now music, now the burden of some sweet, old ballad of
forgotten days, had declined to the double knock of civilization and
hourly postal deliveries; to file-firing, to the racket of the
housemaid's morning broom and furniture destruction, to summer
thunder, to Portsmouth guns? No; silence on a sudden, and stillness,
and once more the drowsy cry of some place-name through the echoing
emptiness of a dim-lighted building. Again she had arrived somewhere
else in sleep--could it be Valence, or Vence, enchanted names? Or
rather some city of faery, beleaguered by visions, or dumbed by
spells of sweet strong magic; it could be no earthly town; it must be
the place of all men's longing, the land of Somewhere Else, of
somewhere
"afar
From the sphere of our sorrow--"
Oddly enough, Arthur was there and Charlie; the woman of mystery had
disappeared, and the man with her, and the wild, winged horses were
galloping faster and faster through the night, which was no longer
black, but pale grey, shot with faint lemon; and there, through the
window, glanced and quivered one large, lustrous white star--and--of
course, it was fairyland again or some region of old romance,
because, where the star had been faintly traced upon the luminous
twilight sky, was strange oriental foliage, palm-tops, olive-boughs,
fading and passing.
"Shall we switch off the light?" asked a clear cold voice from above;
and Ermengarde, springing up with a start, realized that day was
breaking and the fear of assassination past.
"Where is Marseilles?" she murmured drowsily, wondering if it were
hairpins, or only headache, piercing her skull and brain, and heard
that Marseilles was past and the present combination of dock, arsenal
and dwelling, was Toulon, and marvelled at the clear pale light and
the serene beauty and freshness of the morning.
The train had stopped and turned; the orange glow in the cloudy sky
had paled; the sea was visible; pale blue like English sea, but
marvellously clear and pure and free of mist, and its breath so
sweet. And this was the Mediterranean? And those bushy bluish
evergreens in the gardens among aloes, pines and palms, why--they
must be olives! Well!----
Still, in spite of splitting headache, sealike qualms, and racked
limbs, and the probability of being lamed for life in consequence of
sleeping in boots of elegance pointed in the latest mode; in spite of
squalid horrors of waiting in a queue of either sex for the chance of
even the most hurried sponging of face and hands; in spite of the
rift in the home lute, which had seemed to narrow with every mile
from home--in spite of all, it was solid invincible joy to glide
through this new, strange country in the rich, romantic South, this
country of clear and vivid light and colour, of semi-oriental
foliage, and foreign buildings, sun-shuttered, square and white.
There is nothing to equal the charm of these first wakings at dawn in
foreign lands, full of the mysterious enchantment of the unknown.
And this unknown was so very lovely, and this traveller so utterly
untravelled, so happily open to impressions. So even the woman of
mystery seemed to think, as she leant against a window in the
couloir, with wide eyes and parted lips, absorbed in the pageant of
sunlit sea and snow-sprinkled land and deep-hued foliage flashing
by--all her schemes and machinations apparently in abeyance for a
time. And yet in the dizzy and futile excursion Ermengarde had made
to the breakfast car, where the sight of the simple but expensive
déjeuner of coffee and roll and the fresh morning faces enjoying it,
did but increase her physical misery and make it impossible to eat or
drink, she had observed that this mysterious woman, breakfasting like
others with amazing calm and even content, had exchanged significant
glances with the Nihilist, whose shifty, sinister gaze had been, as
usual, quite unable to meet the straightforward innocence of
Ermengarde's--though she rarely looked in his direction, she
perpetually felt his sinister gaze upon her, piercing even the
dishevelled masses of back hair of which she was acutely and
shamefastly conscious. And once when she had staggered and nearly
fallen, in making a hasty exit from the coffee-scented car, this
woman had sprung to her rescue with a cry of "Mrs. Allonby," and so
supported her back to their corner-cupboard--misnamed
state-room--without, it must be owned, inflicting any serious or even
perceptible injury upon her.
"But how," Ermengarde asked in annihilating accents on recovery; "how
did you know my name?"
It is not easy to disconcert that kind of person, she thought,
observing the quickness with which the woman recovered her equanimity
and the admirable calm with which she replied, while affecting to
suppress a smile, "My dear lady, naturally by the label on your bag.
Besides," she added, with the serpentine guile that affects
simplicity, "you asked me last night if I had read any of your
husband's books?"
"If I did, it must have been in my sleep," Ermengarde reflected with
unspoken sarcasm. "And had you?" she asked grimly.
"Surely you remember that I am among Mr. Allonby's most assiduous
readers, and predict a future for him."
"Poor old Arthur! She made a wrong shot that time," thought
Ermengarde, who was inclined to consider her husband's essays in
literature as so much waste of hours more legitimately and profitably
given to journalism. Had she not been overcome by train nausea, she
would have asked what was the woman of mystery's favourite among her
husband's works, which she believed she had never read. Few people
had.
As it was, she could only cling miserably on to the little hinged
seat in the couloir, whither the ladies had been compelled to take
refuge while their two sleeping-bunks were being transformed into one
sofa. There she clung, jostled by fellow-passengers staggering past
in various stages of disarray and dishevelment--where, by the way,
were all the smart owners of huge trunks, tall flunkeys, and
reluctantly prim maids of Victoria platform?--jolted by the swaying
of the rushing train, and dimly conscious that this young woman never
ceased to keep an eye upon her lightest motion, under pretence of
sympathy with her discomfort, even when apparently absorbed in
thought--sad thought, to judge by her drooping mouth and wistful
gaze, clouded more than once by tears, furtively dashed away. Had
Ermengarde dreamed of suppressed sobs above her once or twice during
the night? Was the Anarchist her husband, and did he beat her? But
there was no wedding-ring on the slender hand, that had more than
once ministered to ungrateful Ermengarde's needs. For this absence
there might be reason good.
Suddenly as they flew along the woman's face was transfigured by a
flash of irradiating rapture; she caught her breath, put out her
hand, and gasped in a quick, eager whisper: "Mrs. Allonby; look!"
Ermengarde had already seen, and, as the sorrow and perplexity had
vanished from her companion's face at the sight, the weariness and
physical discomfort went out of hers, while both gazed and gazed in a
silent passion of joyous admiration, with moistened eyes and
trembling lips, absorbed, rapt, caught up and away into the very
shrine and inmost heart of beauty.
They saw, in the transparent stillness of that sunny morning, a long
headland, perhaps island, running out to sea, rising boldly from the
waves, and outlined in dark blue on a deep blue sky, above a sheet of
dark blue sea, the jewel-like surface of which was unruffled by the
faintest breeze; and they knew that they were at last beyond all
doubt seeing the Mediterranean, and that it was blue, deeply, darkly,
divinely blue, blue beyond imagination or description. The hue of a
peacock's neck in depth and velvety texture, yet with the liquid
blueness of a jewel; blue in various rich shades, all harmonious and
each deeper than the other; a blue as warm as crimson, but still, not
shifting, and never iridescent. It seemed to be the colour of
happiness; it filled them with a pure and exquisite gladness. It was
like a glorious dream of what colour might be, and never is, though
it was, then and there in their sight--for one moment of
irrecoverable splendour before the long train had rushed past.
Warmth, sweetness, freshness and life were all in the glorious,
unspeakable colour of velvety blue mountain and sea and sky.
So these two untravelled travellers saw it, and so they would see it
never again, because first things come only once. But a deep strong
certainty that after all some things are real and abidingly good even
in this stained world of shifting shadows, took hold of these women
at sight of this deep, sweet purity of colour.
"I judge that's Hyères," they heard, as not hearing, from a nasal
voice passing along the corridor.
"Rotten place, Ea," came in another, more familiar accent, from
between teeth gripping a cigarette. "Nothing to do."
Presently, with abrupt transition as in a dream, Ermengarde found
herself cosily tucked up in her sofa corner, all eye, lost and
absorbed in the novel loveliness through which the train flew in the
clear fresh morning, aches, nausea, weariness, all clean forgotten.
Forgotten also the undesirable and suspicious characters who were to
have robbed and assassinated and otherwise afflicted her during the
night. As for the unconscious object of so many dire imaginings, her
fellow-traveller, she kept her place by the window in the corridor,
statue-still, and intent on the landscape rushing by, as if she had
veritably "forgotten herself to marble" with much looking.
Never had either seen such brilliant transparence of atmosphere, such
glowing depth of colour. The sunny air had still a keen frost
sparkle; here and there snow crystals glittered among rich greens and
warm greys of foliage; every little pool was glazed with ice.
Russet-clad peasant women in broad straw hats, men jolting along in
picturesque country carts drawn by horses in quaint, brass-studded
harness with high-peaked collars; a shepherd in a long brown cloak,
his flock before him; beautiful wells and fountains of strange and
primitive design; tiny white, blue and pink-washed houses with green
latticed shutters; brown and leafless vines on trellises or planted
in rows of low, crutch-tipped stems; stone pines, olives,
stiff-spiked aloes, cactus, orange and lemon trees, and everywhere
the golden bloom of mimosa, suggested Italy rather than France. The
dragon coursers had actually borne them in the night through realms
of romance and poetry; they were even now in Provence, that land of
roses and minstrelsy; was not yonder rich expanse of blue the
Ligurian Sea, or very near it? and Nice, that ancient historic and
much-conquered city, the birthplace of Garibaldi, was not that
essentially Italian by geography and descent, as well as all the
lovely mountain shore from Monaco to the frontier of authentic modern
Italy?
What an oriental touch in those glorious, dark-leaved palms of sturdy
stem and spreading crown! What rich colour in the thick-bossed
trunks no storm could bend, and the fruit, springing in golden plumes
from stiff, wing-like leaves!
Ermengarde had always thought of palms as slender, waving things; the
massy strength, the architectural splendour, the suggestion of carved
pillar and arched roof of majestic span in the date-palm on this
Saracen-raided shore was a revelation. Only to repeat to himself the
words, Palm Sunday, filled the inspired Opium-Eater with solemn awe;
but not its great associations alone make the simple word, palm,
impressive to those who have seen this variety.
The winged steeds were no longer yoked to the cars; they must have
vanished long since with the darkness; the train moved more and more
slowly. That it should gradually slacken speed to a crawl through
all this magical beauty was natural; but that it should actually
stop, like common trains in regions of prose, for people to get out,
claim luggage and pay porters, was amazing, especially as that first
superb colonnade of date-palms was seen to rise behind one of these
stations--perhaps Cannes? True, they were not stations in the
ordinary sense, but rather pleasant places of pause, where leisurely
persons of distinguished bearing and immaculate attire, gold-braided,
button-booted, and black-kid-gloved, enjoyed the amenities of a life
devoid of care, incidentally remembering from time to time to bestow
a kindly and condescending courtesy upon wanderers descending
casually from the train of luxury, that was now enjoying a beautiful
calm in singular contrast to its wild stir at starting and headlong
rush through the night.
Sometimes, after a long and apparently purposeless pause at one of
these clean and sunny spots, an idea seemed to occur to an
immaculately dressed lounger and interrupt the gentle current of his
chat, if his roving glance happened to be caught by the cars. "There
is a train," he seemed to say to himself; "perhaps something might as
well be done with it."
Then, after a little silent meditation and some smiling interchange
of thoughts with an acquaintance, he would move leisurely towards the
cars, and indicate by a slight, but graceful, gesture that the pause
was at an end. Then the journey would be gently resumed, through a
land of rich-hued blossom and glowing green, with solemn mountain
steeps rising on the one hand, and the vast blue radiance of a dark
blue sea breaking in soft and soundless foam on many a purple,
enchanted headland, and in many a sunny bay, on the other.
All the glamour of Shelley's ethereal poetry seemed to breathe and
sing from that glorious sea, which Homer compared to wine in its
depth of colour. All Shelley's seas are Mediterranean, and most of
Byron's, while Keats and Tennyson, Coleridge and Matthew Arnold, for
the most part love the paler grey-blue and more frequent foam of
Northern shores.
Vainly did the woman of mystery remind Ermengarde that she had not
breakfasted; she was feasting with gods; she needed no meaner
sustenance; even the shadow of the man of mystery passing her door,
and glaring insolently through his detestable goggles upon her rapt
face, scarcely annoyed her, except as a momentary eclipse of some
lofty headland running out into the happy morning sea. She had even
forgotten that she had slept, not only in, but upon, her hat, a
really successful creation from Bond Street.
Strange that at these charmingly named places of retired leisure,
where the train paused, as if for meditation, radiant specimens of
Parisian fashion should appear, in lemon-coloured hair and
artistically applied complexions; what business had they in
fairyland? And those children of Israel, of rubicund visage,
expansive waistcoat, and patent-leather boots? And that gay and
fresh-coloured youth, of simple but select toilet and lordly British
bearing--not aggressively lordly, like that of so many Britons
wandering in the land of the barbarous and ineffectual foreigner, not
contemptuously, but unconsciously and cheerily so, like one to whom
life offered all its best treasures as of royal right.
Bright-eyed and lazily smiling, the youth strode slowly along the
quiet platform, carelessly glancing at the windows, when a sudden
thrill of sympathy made Ermengarde turn to see the woman of mystery,
who was standing leaning against their door and looking across her at
the people passing, start with a crimson face and eyes of flame, and
crush herself suddenly far back in the corner of her seat, holding a
paper of far-off yesterday before her eyes, with a quick, deep sigh.
The youth passed on and came back again, stopping to speak to a
Parisian costume in lemon hair and bistred eyes; left her, joyously
laughing with his head thrown back, and cannoned against a brother
Briton in an agony of misunderstanding with a porter, who was
replying to impossible English-French in equally impossible
French-English.
"Riviera Palace, vite!" cried the English youth, cutting the Gordian
knot and calming the troubled waters by those simple words in three
different tongues; then, gripping the bewildered Briton by the arm,
he steered him placidly out of sight.
"So he didn't come for her," Ermengarde reflected.
The mountains soared higher, and drew back from the land with ever
greater majesty, and the headlands became more magically lovely as
they stretched into the shining sea, the villas, the gardens, and
groves ever richer; and, after having seemed to spend a brief but
happy lifetime in traversing a beautiful dream, glorious with palm
and olive and mimosa, the train again paused, and the woman of
mystery suggested to Ermengarde that she had better get out.
"You have arrived," she explained, finding her unwilling to stir.
They had done nothing but arrive at intervals during the last
twenty-four hours, and how should this mysterious creature know that
this was her final destination?
Still, the woman had been exceedingly kind, and Ermengarde thanked
her graciously as she bowed her farewell, suddenly remembering that
the dread ordeal of the Douane had once more to be faced, and her
property, unseen since somebody had taken it to be registered at
Victoria, had to be rescued from the barbarians--probably at high
ransom.