“With nineteen days of sun, the vintage will be upon us,” he would say; or, “I have but nineteen kilometres more of road before me to-day.”
Indeed, it frequently happened that the word came in very inappropriately, as if tugged heroically to the front by a clumsy conversationalist.
There is no hazard of life so certain to discover sympathy or antagonism as travel—a fact which points to the wisdom of beginning married life with a journey. The majority of people like to know the worst at once. To travel, however, with Dormer Colville was a liberal education in the virtues. No man could be less selfish or less easily fatigued; which are the two bases upon which rest all the stumbling-blocks of travel.
Up to a certain point, Barebone and Dormer Colville became fast friends during the month that elapsed between their departure from Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s house and their arrival at the inn at Gemosac. The “White Horse,” at Gemosac, was no better and no worse than any other “White Horse” in any other small town of France. It was, however, better than the principal inn of a town of the same size in any other habitable part of the globe.
There were many reasons why the Marquis de Gemosac had yielded to Colville’s contention—that the time had not yet come for Loo Barebone to be his guest at the chateau.
“He is inclined to be indolent,” Colville had whispered. “One recognises, in many traits of character, the source from whence his blood is drawn. He will not exert himself so long as there is some one else at hand who is prepared to take trouble. He must learn that it is necessary to act for himself. He needs rousing. Let him travel through France, and see for himself that of which he has as yet only learnt at second-hand. That will rouse him.”
And the journey through the valleys of the Garonne and the Dordogne had been undertaken.
Another, greater journey, was now afoot, to end at no less a centre of political life than Paris. A start was to be made this evening, and Dormer Colville now came to report that all was ready and the horses at the gate.
“If there were scenes such as this for all of us to linger in, mademoiselle,” he said, lifting his face to the western sky and inhaling the scent of the flowers growing knee-deep all around him, “men would accomplish little in their brief lifetime.”
His eyes, dreamy and reflective, wandered over the scene and paused, just for a moment in passing, on Juliette’s face. She continued her way, with no other answer than a smile.