So these two untravelled travellers saw it, and so they would see it never again, because first things come only once. But a deep strong certainty that after all some things are real and abidingly good even in this stained world of shifting shadows, took hold of these women at sight of this deep, sweet purity of colour.
"I judge that's Hyères," they heard, as not hearing, from a nasal voice passing along the corridor.
"Rotten place, Ea," came in another, more familiar accent, from between teeth gripping a cigarette. "Nothing to do."
Presently, with abrupt transition as in a dream, Ermengarde found herself cosily tucked up in her sofa corner, all eye, lost and absorbed in the novel loveliness through which the train flew in the clear fresh morning, aches, nausea, weariness, all clean forgotten. Forgotten also the undesirable and suspicious characters who were to have robbed and assassinated and otherwise afflicted her during the night. As for the unconscious object of so many dire imaginings, her fellow-traveller, she kept her place by the window in the corridor, statue-still, and intent on the landscape rushing by, as if she had veritably "forgotten herself to marble" with much looking.
Never had either seen such brilliant transparence of atmosphere, such glowing depth of colour. The sunny air had still a keen frost sparkle; here and there snow crystals glittered among rich greens and warm greys of foliage; every little pool was glazed with ice. Russet-clad peasant women in broad straw hats, men jolting along in picturesque country carts drawn by horses in quaint, brass-studded harness with high-peaked collars; a shepherd in a long brown cloak, his flock before him; beautiful wells and fountains of strange and primitive design; tiny white, blue and pink-washed houses with green latticed shutters; brown and leafless vines on trellises or planted in rows of low, crutch-tipped stems; stone pines, olives, stiff-spiked aloes, cactus, orange and lemon trees, and everywhere the golden bloom of mimosa, suggested Italy rather than France. The dragon coursers had actually borne them in the night through realms of romance and poetry; they were even now in Provence, that land of roses and minstrelsy; was not yonder rich expanse of blue the Ligurian Sea, or very near it? and Nice, that ancient historic and much-conquered city, the birthplace of Garibaldi, was not that essentially Italian by geography and descent, as well as all the lovely mountain shore from Monaco to the frontier of authentic modern Italy?
What an oriental touch in those glorious, dark-leaved palms of sturdy stem and spreading crown! What rich colour in the thick-bossed trunks no storm could bend, and the fruit, springing in golden plumes from stiff, wing-like leaves!
Ermengarde had always thought of palms as slender, waving things; the massy strength, the architectural splendour, the suggestion of carved pillar and arched roof of majestic span in the date-palm on this Saracen-raided shore was a revelation. Only to repeat to himself the words, Palm Sunday, filled the inspired Opium-Eater with solemn awe; but not its great associations alone make the simple word, palm, impressive to those who have seen this variety.
The winged steeds were no longer yoked to the cars; they must have vanished long since with the darkness; the train moved more and more slowly. That it should gradually slacken speed to a crawl through all this magical beauty was natural; but that it should actually stop, like common trains in regions of prose, for people to get out, claim luggage and pay porters, was amazing, especially as that first superb colonnade of date-palms was seen to rise behind one of these stations—perhaps Cannes? True, they were not stations in the ordinary sense, but rather pleasant places of pause, where leisurely persons of distinguished bearing and immaculate attire, gold-braided, button-booted, and black-kid-gloved, enjoyed the amenities of a life devoid of care, incidentally remembering from time to time to bestow a kindly and condescending courtesy upon wanderers descending casually from the train of luxury, that was now enjoying a beautiful calm in singular contrast to its wild stir at starting and headlong rush through the night.
Sometimes, after a long and apparently purposeless pause at one of these clean and sunny spots, an idea seemed to occur to an immaculately dressed lounger and interrupt the gentle current of his chat, if his roving glance happened to be caught by the cars. "There is a train," he seemed to say to himself; "perhaps something might as well be done with it."
Then, after a little silent meditation and some smiling interchange of thoughts with an acquaintance, he would move leisurely towards the cars, and indicate by a slight, but graceful, gesture that the pause was at an end. Then the journey would be gently resumed, through a land of rich-hued blossom and glowing green, with solemn mountain steeps rising on the one hand, and the vast blue radiance of a dark blue sea breaking in soft and soundless foam on many a purple, enchanted headland, and in many a sunny bay, on the other.