Speaking of magic carpets recalls the Arabian Nights, and gives me a simile. For a whole week I've been realising what Aladdin must have felt when the Genie took him into the wonderful Cave of Jewels. Oh, the Riviera! But you know it, dear. You spent your honeymoon with the beautiful little mother whom I never knew in the Riviera and in Italy. That is one reason why I want to see Italy-why I sent that question to you by cable the other day. Your one journey abroad, dear, dear old Dad! I can guess now why you have never been keen to come again, though you have always pretended you preferred Wall Street to all Europe. Now I am seeing these fairy-like places I know how you have wished to keep the memory unspoiled; for they would never, never be the same if you saw them for the second time, even with me, though you do love me dearly, don't you? It's first times that are so thrilling; and I'm having my first times now, though they're different from yours. I don't suppose I shall ever have such a love in my life as you had, or if I do, it will be sad and broken. Either the man I could care for would be divided from me by an impassable barrier, or something else horrid will happen. I feel that. I shall never write like this again, but I can't help it to-night. There! I won't go on about your past and my future any more; but just about the "winged present." And, oh, its wings are of rainbows!
Elderly people I've talked to at hotels during the last few days tell me the "Riviera is being ruined." You would say so too perhaps; but it seems heaven to me, from Hyères to Bordighera-as far as we've gone. Just here I must stop and thank you for your answer to my cable and saying "Italy by all means." If it hadn't been for that, we shouldn't be here.
I thought that we couldn't see anything more beautiful than on the other side of Marseilles; but the Riviera is a thing apart. I'm gratefully glad to have come into such an enchanted land of sunshine and flowers on an automobile instead of a stuffy train. There's nothing in the world to equal travelling on a motor-car. You can go fast or slow; you can stop where you like and as long as you like; with a little luggage on your car you're as independent as a bird; and like a bird you float through the open air, with no thought for time-tables. When will the poet come who will sing the song of the motor-car? Maeterlinck has sung it in prose, but the song was too short.
Of course, after that horrid affair the other side of Toulon I couldn't let Jimmy drive any more. He realised that I distrusted him and rather sulkily resigned the wheel, blaming the car for the accident and declaring that it could not have happened to his Panhard, which, of course, is silly. So Brown took the helm again, and Jimmy sat in the tonneau with Aunt Mary, where they whispered and chuckled a good deal together, appearing to have a real live mystery up their sleeves, which I suppose had something to do with the promised surprise at Cannes.
It was quite late in the day before the steering-gear was mended and we could take the road again, and then we all thought it a pity to run through the dark to Cannes, so we decided to stay a second night in Toulon, at the same hotel where I had dinner with Brown; he, poor fellow, being this time banished to some invisible lower region, or another hotel, for Aunt Mary and Jimmy would have had fits if I had proposed that he should make a fourth at our table. I thought the people of the hotel and the head waiter looked curiously at me; for one night they saw me dine with a gentleman who the next night drives to the door as my chauffeur (I assure you, Dad, it's no stretch of language to speak of Brown as a "gentleman," and you really must get him a gentleman's berth, even if it's way off in Klondyke).
Early next morning we started for what proved to be the most beautiful drive we have yet had, as warm as summer, and sparkling with sunshine. We bowled along at a gentle pace through a fairyland of flowers and rivers, with billowy blue mountains rising into the sky, and showing here and there a distant ethereal peak of snow. Very soon we passed through Hyères, which Brown called the gate of the Riviera, and I should have liked to turn aside for a peep at Costebelle, which Brown thinks one of the loveliest places of all. But Aunt Mary and Jimmy both opposed me, saying that we ought to get on as soon as possible to Cannes-"to Cannes" was their constant cry.
Beyond Hyères the road became more and more superb. We were travelling now along the mountains of the Moors, gliding through groves of oak and woods of shimmering grey-green olives, with glimpses of the glittering sea on our right hand. Presently the way dipped to the verge of the sea as far as Fréjus, from which place it rose again to wind up and up into the heart of the Esterels. Though we mounted many hundreds of feet, the road was so well engineered that gradients were not very trying. Our agreeable Napier, at any rate, made nothing of them, but simply flew up at twelve or fourteen miles an hour. And the descent on the other side! My heart comes into my mouth when I think of it. "It's quite safe," said Brown; but it looked the most breakneck thing in the world, and my very toes seemed to curl up, not with fear, but with a kind of awful joy. I think when a bird takes its great swoops through the air it must feel like we felt that day. The car bounded down the long lengths of looped road, slowed up a little at the turns (where we all had to throw our bodies sideways, like sailors hanging over the gunwale of a racing yacht), bounded forward again so that the wind rushed by our ears like a hurricane, slowed up once more, and so by a series of these magnificent bird-like swoops reached the level ground. It was a fine piece of driving on Brown's part, needing nerve, judgment, and a perfect knowledge of the capabilities of his car. I had scarcely recovered from the tingling joy of this wild mountain descent when we were in Cannes, driving up an avenue to our hotel.
It was a charming house, and I fell in love with Cannes at first sight; but would you believe it? Jimmy's wonderful surprise never came off at all!-and he wouldn't even tell me what it was. Aunt Mary wanted to; but he got quite red, and said, "No, Miss Kedison, it may make me a great deal of trouble if you say anything-at present. The whole position is changed." I think mysteries are silly.
By the way, you remember my telling you about the nice Lady Brighthelmston I met in Paris, on her way to the Riviera-the mother of the Honourable John who owns our Napier? She was going to stay at this very hotel, and I thought it would be rather nice to see her again. I meant to ask, when we arrived at the hotel, if she were there; but to my surprise Aunt Mary remembered to do it before I did, and she and Jimmy both seemed eager to find out. We had hardly got into the big, beautiful hall, when they began to ply the manager with questions, and Jimmy looked quite crestfallen when he was told that she had just gone on to Rome. He is rather fond of what he calls "swells," but I hadn't fancied from what he said before that he knew Lady Brighthelmston very well, or cared particularly about meeting her.
"Most annoying!" he exclaimed crossly, glaring at the manager as if it were his fault. "And has the Honourable John Winston, her son, been here also?"