After all, perhaps everything past was a dream. All this clarity of atmosphere and bright light, steeping the fairy-like loveliness of mountain, gorge, and sea, seemed to have blotted out past trouble and pain, as if those dark, transparent waters were some celestial wine, or waters of Lethe, drunk in spirit, and giving both healing and oblivion.
The obstinate letters utterly refused to get themselves written that afternoon, but the ever-helpful M. Isidore produced picture-cards, the inscription of which was a sop to still the barkings of conscience, and had them posted.
The sun sloped away and away from the stocks and lemons, until the wooded summit topped by the convent was one mass of shadow with cross-tipped gables, cypress-flame, and eucalyptus-top, all etched in sharp outline on a sky of lucid gold. Ermengarde shivered as she drew her furs about her throat, and heard a sound like the patter of sudden rain behind her, but turning, saw that it was only the rustle of wind in the branches of a palm.
"Where are they all going?" she asked as the lotus-eating groups basking on the terrace melted away before the slanting shadow.
"They follow the sun; it is a veritable fire-worship," M. Isidore said, picking up her scattered properties. "Madame will be among the worshippers?"
Out of the shadow, and up marble steps, with "roses, roses all the way" again, to a little rock platform west of the villa, giving a prospect round the convent hill, they came upon a fresh world of wide, sunlit space, with another ravine half in purple shadow, and other villages and houses, and, high up, dark against a lucid sky, giant peaks turning pink and gold where they caught the blaze of the sun, that was sinking in a green and lilac sky, above a sea of molten gold touched with scarlet.
Here were seats under a shelter of rye-straw thatch that caught and retained the whole blaze and warmth of the shifting pageant of the sunset. Here, too, it was quiet and peaceful, the lotus-eaters having gone elsewhere, and here her guide left her to absorb the solemn hush and splendour. The little homely convent seemed to have grown naturally out of the rocks; to which it clung unevenly, as a pine-tree throws twisted roots from rock to rock to get firm hold, ending in garden terrace on the sunniest face of the rock, now bright in the westering rays. Far off the surf, breaking on the long, low headland of Cap Martin, was visible in the glow, taking rose and orange tints in its fall. The mountain flanks sent up little blue spirals of smoke from every fold and dimple, where cot and hamlet nestled; the earth breathed deepest peace. A spirit of prayer was everywhere; the smoke was like incense from many altars; sounds of common life came distinct and clear, yet hushed, through the stilled and waiting air. The ever-changing colours on mountain, sky, and sea hinted at the progress of some glorious spiritual drama of mysterious import. It seemed in the waiting hush as if the secret of the universe might soon be whispered abroad.
But Nature worshipped alone; there was no sweet-toned Angelus floating over crest and gorge, from convent to church tower, and trembling far away over darkening waves, to give the antiphon and complete the evensong of the world. Republican France is too free to allow men to worship publicly as they please.
Ermengarde, uplifted, tranquillized, yet full of unrest and a sort of compunction mingled with longing, was like a wondering child at some solemn rite, dimly guessed at through the faces of those present. She lost herself completely in watching the moving drama of flushed sky and sea. What pure, pale-green spaces above the sun-glow, what lakes of rose, purple, violet, and orange! the whole spectrum broken up and scattered, while the deep peacock blue of the Eastern sea grew deeper than ever.
The sunlight lying so lovingly on vine and olive-covered steep, turning blue gloom of pines to glowing velvet, and calling out all the warmer tints in the mysterious grey-green of olives, slanted more and more till every wood and cultivated patch and building on gorge and flank facing the light, had its true colour, flushed, darkened, and faded. Night was gathering in vales and clefts, and stealing up the great shoulder of Mont Agel, dark upon the west; the eastern peaks were crimson jewels paling to palest claret. Ermengarde was absorbed in the silent symphony of melting and mingling colour to that degree she scarcely seemed to breathe, when voices jarred suddenly into the stillness from beneath her feet, where the mule-path ran unseen under the rocky steep.