"I know," said she, looking up at me with an odd expression which I would have given many a bright sovereign for the skill to read. "But maybe I shall have a chance to see it some other time, and the others don't care much for antiquities or architecture. We really must hurry as fast as possible to Cannes."
Now, why-why? What is to happen at Cannes? Is Jimmy's loathly hand in this? Or-blessed thought!-is all sight-seeing for her, as well as for me, poisoned by his society? Is she regretting her rash generosity in promising to carry him to the Riviera (to say nothing of Lord Lane!) and is she panting to rid herself of him? I daren't hope it. But write me your deduction. Perhaps in your enforced inaction at Davos it may amuse you to piece together a theory and account for the actions of certain persons in France, whom possibly you know better than if you had ever met them.
While the three went off to bolt in one bite such delicate morsels as the sculptured porch of the cathedral of St. Trophinus and the Roman theatre I gloomily played Casabianca by the car, Ixion at the wheel, or what you will. I waited their return before the hotel, and no sooner did they come back, at the end of their stingy half-hour, than we started, taking the road across the great plain of La Crau towards Salon.
A most extraordinary region that plain of La Crau. It is as flat as a pancake, only far away to the north one sees a range of brown, stony mountains. Formerly it was a forbidding, stony desert, the dumping-place for every pebble and boulder brought down by the Rhone and the Durance. But all over the vast wilderness there has been carried out a wonderful system of irrigation, and now it yields sweet herbage for sheep, while figs, mulberries, and cypresses are dotted in green oases. The surface of the land is thickly veined with the beneficent little canals, carrying life-giving water from the Canal de Craponne, which has its origin at La Roque, on the Durance.
Across this vast plain we raced towards Salon, along a road straight as if drawn by a ruler, and bordered by small poplars standing shoulder to shoulder like trees in a child's box of toys. We met no other vehicles; we seemed to have the world to ourselves; but once, far along the road, we spied a black dot which seemed to come towards us with incredible speed, growing larger as it came. In less time than it takes to write we saw that it was an enormous racing automobile, probably undergoing a test of speed. We were running at our own highest pace, perhaps forty-five miles an hour; the thing approaching us was coming at seventy or more. You may imagine the rush of air as we passed each other. One glimpse we had of a masked automobilist like a figure of death in an Albert Dürer cartoon, or the familiar of a Vehmgericht, and then we were gasping in the vortex of air caused by the speed of the gigantic car. Almost before we could turn our heads it was a black dot again on the horizon. Perhaps it was the great Fournier himself.
Beyond Salon the road becomes interestingly accidentée. One climbs among the mountains which fold Marseilles in their encircling arms, and has spacious views over the great Etang de Berre to the glittering Mediterranean. The Napier crested the hills without faltering, and from the top we had a long run down (over bad pavé at the last) into the lively, noisy streets of gay Marseilles, Payne guiding the car very decently over intricate tram lines, finally turning across the pavement to circle into the white, airy court of a large hotel. When my passengers had got down I drove the car to a garage and went quietly off to another hotel, where, warned by past experience at Pau, I entered myself in the register modestly as James Brown.
Now I shall hurl at your devoted and friendly head this enormous letter, and presently shall begin another to tell of the Further Adventures on the Riviera of
Your much-enduring Friend,
The Amateur Chauffeur.