At the corner of Rue Revel and the Place de la Liberté we skidded as
the chauffeur turned sharply to avoid a child playing just off the
sidewalk.
We slowed down along the Boulevard de Strasbourg on account of crowded
traffic. I was shaken up as we stopped short under the Porte Nôtre Dame
to prevent collision with a truck.
We sped along through the Faubourg de Saint-Jean-du-Var between two
rows of tall narrow houses propped one against the other. Every three
quarters of a mile we passed a trolley car. Some workmen were repairing
the road under the railroad bridge. They had to jump to get out of our
way; but a train passing overhead drowned the curses they sent after us.
It had stopped raining; but the road was still wet and slippery. The
gray sky seemed to reach down and touch the roofs of dark tiling. Not
a ray of sunshine brightened the landscape, depressing under the best
conditions, but ghastly now under that mournful light.
We reached the outskirts of the settled region. One straight unbroken
line of mud, the road reached out into the foggy heath. Here now to
the left the foot-hills of the Faron were rising one above the other. I
leaned out over the running board to get a good look at the top of the
mountain. A thick bank of fog was hiding it from view. That was bad!
The Grand Cap was higher still. I might have some trouble in groping
my way along, and I might easily take the wrong trail. Yes, that was
something to think about.... Though it worried me only for an instant.
The village of Valette, the first town outside Toulon in the direction
of Nice! We were making forty miles an hour. Children scampered this
way and that to get off the road ahead of us, screaming at the top of
their voices. I looked at my watch. It was twenty-six minutes past
three. I pulled the wind shield down and nudged the chauffeur with my
elbow.
“We can speed her up, now, eh, till we get to the bad road?”
“Yes, Captain.”
The auto lunged ahead at a fifty-mile clip. The macadam lay straight
and level ahead of us. Here was the hamlet of La Garde, perched on
its hill-top around its dilapidated castle. The train of thought was
quite involuntary--but these ruins brought back to my memory a woman’s
face--the face of Madeleine, Madeleine de ... I almost betrayed her
name ... whom I had met just a year before in those self-same ruins.
The old walls stood out with their battlements cut clean against the
darkening sky. The plain below was a naked, leprous tangle of stupid
olive-trees.... But that day, I had crossed the courtyard of the
castle; and, I remembered, behind the tower I had spied the slender,
agile form of a woman. She was a sight-seer, probably, resting for a
moment on the top step of the stairway leading to the old postern. My
heels clacked on the pavement, and she looked around my way--a dazzling
vision of greenish golden hair, with eyes of emerald.
Madeleine.... How endlessly, limitlessly far away all those days now
seem! But they are so remotely past for me, alone. That woman is still
alive ... still young ... still beautiful. Indeed it were indiscreet
to give even the four syllables of her name. But there are so many
Madeleines in the world--Madeleines even with hair of greenish gold and
emerald eyes!
Still at fifty miles an hour we swept into and through the village of
Farlède. A mile or two ahead the first houses of Solliès-Pont were
coming into view.
I looked at my watch. Three thirty-nine! At three forty, to a second,
we reached the turning where a road makes off from Solliès-Pont to
Aiguiers and thence toward the Grand Cap. My orderly was waiting there,
holding my horse playfully by the nose. We stopped so short that I
struck hard against the wind-shield with my chest.
A moment later I was in the saddle.
Some women of the village sat looking at me with interest from their
door-steps. They thought the speed of my arrival and the suddenness
of my departure were a bit suspicious. I remember hearing one of them
remark in a shrill Provençal dialect:
“Anyhow it’s not the kind of weather for a dress parade ... no girls
are out!”
I believe those were the last words I heard that day ... that day,
which was the last day of my life, really....