The old street looked never more mysterious or beautiful than by this light, brilliant, yet tinged with the suggestion of death, and snow, and dreams. Had you seen Marie standing at the door of the house where she lived, and knocking for admittance, dressed as she was in her robe, light, and graceful as the dress of some Athenian woman, you might have fancied yourself far from the world of our time, in some street of Mycenae—some moonlit street of Taormina whence the flute-players had just vanished, leaving behind them silence and the vision of Amaryllis at her door.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SAILING OF LA BELLE ARLÉSIENNE
At three o’clock on the fateful Friday morning Gaspard was awakened from sleep by a knock at his door.
It was his landlady, Man’m Faly. She had promised to wake him at three, for La Belle Arlésienne would cast her moorings and be away at four, if there was wind enough. Mistrusting herself, the old lady had not gone to bed.
When he was dressed she returned with a cup of coffee and a plate with a corrossole on it. She had known many lodgers: mates, engineers from the French steamers, men of all nationality, but she had never known one to please her better than Gaspard. He never grumbled and he had always a kind word. Besides, she knew, as half St. Pierre knew, that Marie of Morne Rouge had found her man at last, and that the man was Gaspard. The oldest woman on earth is not too old to take interest in a love-affair, and Man’m Faly was only sixty.
She stood by whilst he drank his coffee. He had paid her the night before, and his few belongings were packed in a canvas bag which she had found for him.
“Ah! well, the Bon Dié knows best, but we would none of us have you go. But you will return, that is certain.”
“Oh, yes, I will return—one does not find such a city every day, or such people. But there are storms and chances—”