Olga only smiled.
CHAPTER XI
THE GATES OF CHANCE
Markham had finished the portrait of his antiquated countess in Havre and abandoning the luxuries of the Hotel Frascati had taken to the road with his knapsack and painting kit for a two months' jaunt along unfrequented Norman byways. This had been his custom since his first year in Paris, when his means were small and the wanderlust drove him forth from the streets of Paris. He had walked from the Savoie to Brittany, from Belgium to Provence and the vagabond instinct in him had grown no less with advancing years. He liked the long days in the open. The slowly moving panorama of hill and dell, which was lost upon the touring motorists who continually passed him, filling the air with their evil smells and clouds of dust. He liked the odor of the loam in the early morning, the clean air washed by the dew and redolent of burning wood, the drowsy hour of noon with its meal of cheese and bread eaten at the shady brink of some musical stream and the day-dream or doze that followed it; the long mellow afternoons under the blue arch of sky where the pink clouds moved as lazily as he, in vagabond procession, across the zenith. His aimlessness and theirs made them brothers of the air, and he followed them under the trackless sky, aware that his destination for the night lay somewhere ahead of him, leaving the rest to chance and the patron saint of Nomads. He liked the rugged faces he saw on the road, the Norman welcome of his host and the deep sleep of utter weariness and content which defied the tooth of time and discomfort.
After a few days in Rouen, where he always lingered longer than he intended to, he had crossed the river at Sotteville an had followed main roads which led him to the south and east through the heart of the historic Eure.
He had given Trouville a wide berth; for he knew some people there, friends of Olga Tcherny's, people of fashion who would have looked askance at his dusty clothes and general air of disrepute. He was not in the humor for Olga's kind of friends or indeed for Olga, if as the last note from her had indicated she, too, had arrived on this side of the water. He was sufficient unto himself and gloried in his selfishness. Song he would have and did often have at night with his chance companions of the road, and wine or the sound Norman cider which was better—but no women—no women for him!
It was on the road beyond Evreux that he thus congratulated himself for the twentieth time. His path passed near the brink of a river fringed with trees and to the right the hills mounted abruptly to a rocky eminence, crowned with an ancient castle which stolidly sat as it had done for a thousand years and guarded the peaceful valley beneath. It had looked down upon the pageantry of an earlier day when knights in armor had ridden forth of its portals for the honor of their ladies, had listened to the hoof-beats of more than one army, and had heard in the distance the clash of Ivry. To-day a railroad wound around the base of its pedestal, reminding it of the new order of things and of its own antiquity.
As Markham approached the railroad crossing, from the opposite direction, in a cloud of dust, came an automobile. But as it neared the track a woman waving a red flag and blowing a horn came running from a small house by the roadside and pulled the gates across the road. The automobile, which had only one occupant, came to a sudden stop and an argument followed. Markham was too far away to hear what was said, but the gestures of the disputants could be easily understood. There was no train in sight and plenty of time to cross, said the motorist. The peasant waved her flag and pointed down the track. More words, more gesticulations, but the gate-keeper was obdurate. The motorist looked up the track and at the gate and road, and then followed explosives, smoke and dust from the impatient machine, which slowly moved backward a short distance up the road again. Markham, slowly approaching, watched the comedy with interest. An impatient Parisian, jealous of the passing minutes, and an obstinate peasant—to whom passing minutes had no significance—could any two humans be more definitely antagonistic?
What was the person in the car about? More explosions and the blue of burning oil as the car came forward, its cutout open, turning to the left off the road over a ditch and into a field. The gate-keeper ran forward shaking her flag and screaming as she guessed the motorist's intention. But it was too late. The car was hidden for a moment from Markham's view in the declivity upon the other side of the railroad embankment, the exhaust roaring furiously, and leaped into sight, the front wheels high in the air as it took the near rail and then fell heavily with a complaining groan across the track and moved no more, its rear axle snapped in two.
Of all the fool performances! Markham ran forward crying in French to the chauffeur to jump, for around the profile of the hill the locomotive of the oncoming train was emerging. The motorist looked at Markham and then at the advancing train in bewilderment; then jumped clear of the track beside Markham as the freight train, its brakes creaking, its steam shrieking, crashed into the unfortunate machine, turning it over and then crumpling it into a shapeless mass, through which it tore, its impetus carrying it well down the road and scattering the torn fragments of nickel and steel on both sides of the tracks.