MARSEILLES
On the day of departure Berselius was entertained at _déjeuner_ by the
Cerele Militaire. He brought Adams with him as a guest.
Nearly all the sporting members of the great club were present to speed
the man who after Schillings was reckoned on the Continent the most
adventurous big-game hunter in the world.
Despite what Stenhouse, Duthil, and Schaunard had said, Adams by this time
inclined to a half-liking for Berselius; the man seemed so far from and
unconscious of the little things of the world, so destitute of pettiness,
that the half liking which always accompanies respect could not but find a
place in Adams's mind.
Guest at a table surrounded by sixty of the wealthiest and most powerful
officers of a military nation, Berselius did not forget his companion, but
introduced him with painstaking care to the chief men present, included
him in his speech of thanks, and made him feel that though he was taking
Berselius's pay, he was his friend and on a perfect social equality with
him.
Adams felt this keenly. On qualifying first he had obtained an appointment
as travelling physician to an American, a prominent member of the New York
smart set, a man of twenty-two, a motorist, a yachtsman, clean shaved as
an actor and smug as a butler, one of those men who make the great
American nation so small in the eyes of the world--the world that cannot
see beyond the servants' hall antics of New York society to the great
plains where the Adamses hew the wood and draw the water, build the cities
and bridge the rivers, and lay the iron roads, making rail-heads of the
roar of the Atlantic and the thunder of the Pacific.
This gentleman treated Adams as a paid attendant and in such a manner that
Adams one morning lifted him from his bed by the slack of his silk pajamas
and all but drowned him in his own bath.
He could not but remember the incident as he sat watching Berselius so
calm, so courtly, so absolutely destitute of mannerism, so incontestably
the superior, in some magnetic way, of all the other men who were
present.
Maxine and M. Pinchon, the secretary, were to accompany them to
Marseilles.
A cold, white Paris fog covered the city that night as they drove to the
station, and the fog detonators and horns followed them as they glided out
slowly from beneath the great glass roof. Slowly at first, then more
swiftly over rumbling bridges and clicking point, more swiftly still,
breaking from the fog-banked Seine valley, through snarling tunnel and
chattering cutting, faster now and freer, by long lines of poplar trees,
mist-strewn, and moonlit ponds and fields, spectral white roads, little
winking towns; and now, as if drawn by the magnetic south, swaying to the
rock-a-bye of speed, aiming for the lights of Dijon far away south, to the
tune of the wheels, "seventy-miles-an-hour--seventy-miles-an-hour."
Civilization, whatever else she has done, has written one poem, the
"Rapide." True to herself, she makes it pay a dividend, and prostitutes it
to the service of stockbrokers, society folk, and gamblers bound for
Monaco--but what a poem it is that we snore through between a day in Paris
and a day in Marseilles. A poem, swiftly moving, musical with speed, a
song built up of songs, telling of Paris, its chill and winter fog, of the
winter fields, the poplar trees and mist; vineyards of the Côte d'Or;
Provence with the dawn upon it, Tarascon blowing its morning bugle to the
sun; the Rhone, and the vineyards, and the olives, and the white, white
roads; ending at last in that triumphant blast of music, light and colour,
Marseilles.
_La Joconde_, Berselius's yacht, was berthed at the Messagerie wharf, and
after _déjeuner_ at the Hotel Noailles, they took their way there on
foot.
Adams had never seen the south before as Marseilles shows it. The vivid
light and the black shadows, the variegated crowd of the Canabier
Prolongue had for him an "Arabian Nights" fascination, but the wharves
held a deeper fascination still.
Marseilles draws its most subtle charm from far away in the past. Beaked
triremes have rubbed their girding cables against the wharves of the old
Phocée; the sunshine of a thousand years has left some trace of its gold,
a mirage in the air chilled by the mistral and perfumed by the ocean.
At Marseilles took place the meeting between Mary Magdalen and Laeta
Acilia, so delightfully fabled by Anatole France. The Count of Monte
Cristo landed here after he had discovered his treasure, and here
Caderouse after the infamy at "La Reservée" watched old Dantès starving to
death. Multitudes of ships, fabled and real, have passed from the harbour
to countries curious and strange, but never one of them to a stranger
country than that to which _La Joconde_ was to bear Berselius and his
companion.
Gay as Naples with colour, piercing the blue sky with a thousand spars,
fluttering the flags of all nations to the wind, shot through with the
sharp rattle of winch-chains, and perfumed with garlic, vanilla, fumes of
coal tar, and the tang of the sea, the wharves of Marseilles lay before
the travellers, a great counter eternally vibrating to the thunder of
trade; bales of carpets from the Levant, tons of cheeses from Holland,
wood from Norway, copra, rice, tobacco, corn, silks from China and Japan,
cotton from Lancashire; all pouring in to the tune of the winch-pauls, the
cry of the stevedores, and the bugles of Port Saint Jean, shrill beneath
the blue sky and triumphant as the crowing of the Gallic cock.
Between the breaks in the shipping one could see the sea-gulls fishing and
the harbour flashing, here spangled with coal tar, here whipped to deepest
sapphire by the mistral; the junk shops, grog shops, parrot shops,
rope-walks, ships' stores and factories lining the quays, each lending a
perfume, a voice, or a scrap of colour to the air vibrating with light,
vibrating with sound, shot through with voices; hammer blows from the
copper sheathers in the dry docks, the rolling of drums from Port St.
Nicholas, the roaring of grain elevators, rattling of winch-chains,
trumpeting of ship sirens, mewing of gulls, the bells of Notre Dame and
the bells of St. Victor, all fused, orchestrated, into one triumphant
symphony beneath the clear blue sky and the trade flags of the world.
_La Joconde_ was berthed beside a Messagerie boat which they had to cross
to reach her.
She was a palatial cruising yacht of twelve hundred tons' burden, built
somewhat on the lines of Drexel's _La Margharita_, but with less width of
funnel.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon when they went on board; all the
luggage had arrived, steam was up, the port arrangements had been made,
and Berselius determined to start at once.
Maxine kissed him, then she turned to Adams.
"_Bon voyage._"
"Good-bye," said Adams.
He held her hand for a fraction of a second after his grasp had relaxed.
Then she was standing on the deck of the Messagerie boat, waving good-bye
across the lane of blue water widening between _La Joconde_ and her berth
mate.
At the harbour mouth, looking back across the blue wind-swept water, he
fancied he could still see her, a microscopic speck in the great picture
of terraced Marseilles, with its windows, houses, flags, and domes
glittering and burning in the sun.
Then the swell of the Gulf of Lyons took _La Joconde_ as a nurse takes an
infant and rocks it on her knee, and France and civilization were slowly
wrapped from sight under the veils of distance.
PART TWO