C. N. Williamson & A. N. Williamson: 30+ Murder Mysteries & Adventure Novels (Illustrated). Charles Norris Williamson
stands of food through the crowd, piled oranges and mandarines, and white grapes, decorated with leaves and a few flowers; soldiers arriving or saying goodbye, jolly dark youths in red and blue; an Arab trying to sell scarfs from Algiers; a Turkish family travelling; English men and women newly landed, with P. & O. labels large on their hand-bags; French bonnes wearing quaint stiff caps and large floating ribbons; Indian ayahs wrapped in shawls. Mary gazed at the scene as if it were a panorama, and scarcely dwelt upon individuals until her eyes were drawn by the eyes of a man.
It was when she had mounted the steps of her own car, and turned once more before going in. So she looked down at the man looking up.
She blushed under the eyes, for there was something like adoration in them, romantic admiration such as a man may feel for the picture of a lovely saint against a golden background, or the poetic heroine of a classic legend. They were extraordinarily handsome eyes, dark and mysterious as only Italian eyes can be, though Mary Grant did not know this, having gazed into few men's eyes, and none that were Italian.
"Looking up so, his face is like what Romeo's must have been," she said to herself with an answering romantic impulse. "Surely he is Italian!"
And he, looking up at her, said, "What a picture of Giulietta on the balcony! Is she French, Italian, Russian?"
The man was a Roman, whose American mother had not robbed him of an ardent temperament that leaned toward romance; and he had just come back to the west across the sea, from a romantic mission in the east. He had not exchanged words with a woman for months, in the desert where he had been living. For this reason, perhaps, he was the readier to find romance in any lovely pair of eyes; but it seemed to him that there never had been such eyes as these. For always, in a man's life, there must be one pair of eyes which are transcendent stars, even if they are seen but once, then lost forever.
This was not his train, for the luxe does not take local passengers, in the season when every place is filled between Paris and Nice; but because of Mary's face, he wished to travel with her, and look into her eyes again, in order to make sure if they really held the magic of that first glance.
He found a train-attendant and spoke with him rapidly, in a low voice, making at the same time a suggestive chinking of gold and silver with one hand in his pocket.
Chapter IV
Under the golden sunshine, the luxe steamed on: after Toulon no longer tearing through the country with few pauses, but stopping at many stations. For the first time Mary saw olive trees, spouting silver like great fountains, and palms stretching out dark green hands of Fatma against blue sky and bluer sea. For the first time she saw the Mediterranean that she had dreamed of in her cold, dim room at the convent. This was like the dreams and the stories told by Peter, only better; for nothing could give a true idea of the glimmering olive groves. Under the silvery branches delicate as smoke-wreaths, and among the gnarled gray trunks, it seemed that at any moment a band of nymphs or dryads might pass, streaming away in fear from the noises of civilization.
At St. Raphael and Fréjus colossal legs of masonry strode across the green meadows, and Mary knew that they had been built by Romans. Pine trees like big, open umbrellas were black against a curtain of azure. Acres of terraces were planted with rows of flowers like straightened rainbows: young roses, carnations, pinky white stock and blue and purple hyacinths; and over the coral or gamboge painted walls of little railway stations bougainvillea poured cataracts of crimson. By and by, the train ran close to the sea, and miniature waves blue as melted turquoise curled on amber sands, shafts of gilded light glinting through the crest of each roller where the crystal arch was shattered into foam.
Then came the wonderful red rocks which Peter had described; ruddy monsters of incredible shapes which had crawled down to drink, and lay basking in the clear water, their huge rounded backs bright as copper where the westerly sun smote them; for by this time it was afternoon. At Cannes, yachts sat high in the quaint harbour like proud white swans: mysterious islands slept on the calm surface of the sea, dreaming of their own reflections; and a company of blue-clad mountains, strangely crowned, were veiled below their foreheads like harem women with delicate fabric of cloud, thin as fine muslin.
After Cannes, appeared Antibes, with its peninsula of palms and pines, its old harbour, town, and white lighthouse; and at last, Nice.
Many people whose faces Mary had seen at dinner the night before, and again at luncheon, left the train at Nice; and on the platforms, waiting for local trains, she saw girls in flowery hats, and white or pale tinted serge dresses, such as they might wear on a cool day of an English summer. They could not be travelling far, in such frocks and hats, and Mary wondered where they were going, with their little plump hand-bags of netted gold or embroidered velvet.
By and by a train moved in, also on its way to Monte Carlo. Women and men suddenly surged together in a compact wave, and struggled with each other at the doors of the corridor carriages. Fat men had no hesitation in pushing themselves in front of thin women; robust females dashed little men aside, and mounted triumphantly. All were eager, and bent upon some object in which they refused to be thwarted.
The beauty of the coast was dreamlike to Mary, who had lived ever since she could remember in the north of Scotland, among moorland and hills whose only intrinsic brilliance of colour came at the time of heather. She had loved the browns and cloudy grays, and the deep blue of the lake and the pensive violet shadows; but this was like a burst of gorgeous day after an existence in sweet, pale twilight. She rejoiced that she had persisted in seeing the Riviera before passing into Italy.
It seemed that, after Nice, each stopping-place was prettier and more flowery than the one before. She had no one to admire them with her, for since luncheon, which Mary had taken early, Miss Wardropp had been in another compartment playing the game with the little wheel and spinning ivory ball. But after passing Villefranche harbour, Beaulieu drowned in olives, and Eze under its old hill-village on a horn of rock, the Australian girl came back, to exchange a cap of purple suède for her cartwheel of a hat.
"The next station where the train stops will be Monaco," she announced.
"Oh, then you'll be getting out almost at once?" And Mary prepared to say goodbye.
"Not yet. The station after Monaco: Monte Carlo—darling place! But the principality begins at Monaco of course. I told you how I stayed three days before I went to England. Almost everybody who lands at Marseilles wants to run on to Monte for a flutter, in season or out."
Miss Wardropp put away a novel, and dusted a little powder over her face, with the aid of a gold vanity-box. The train plunged through a tunnel or two, and flashed out, giving a glimpse of Monaco's high red rock with the Prince's palace half girdled by ruinous gray walls and towers of ancient feudal days. Dodo was ready to go. She bade her companion goodbye, and good luck in Florence. "Too bad you're not getting out here!" she said, as they shook hands. And then Mary forgot her in gazing at the Rock of Hercules, the red rock crowned with walls as old as history, and jewelled with flowers. Close to shore the water was green and clear as beryl, and iridescent blue as a peacock's breast where the sea flowed past the breakwater. In the harbour were yachts large and small, a trading ship or two, and fishing boats drawn up on a narrow strip of beach. Across from the Rock, and joined to it by the low-lying Condamine, was Monte Carlo, with the white Casino towers pointing high above roofs and feathery banks of trees, like the horns of a great animal crouched basking in the gay sunlight.
Mary remembered how Peter had told her the tale of Hercules landing here: how he had come in a small boat, and claimed the rock and the lovely semi-circle of coast for his own. "The guests of Hercules, going to pay him a visit," she said to herself now, as passengers began to push their way along the corridor, in order to be the first ones down. The girl's heart began suddenly to beat very fast, she did not know why.
"What is there to be excited about?" she asked herself. No answer came. Yet the fact remained. She was intensely excited.
"If I