“I think he has an idea,” she whispered, “that I may be going away for good....”
“And I have an idea,” she whispered, “that I probably am.”
4
They went. And as they went no one was visible—except dear Hugo in his shirt-sleeves at his bedroom window; and he cheerfully waved to them and they threw farewell gestures to him, for Hugo was really very, very nice—and always so very aloof from everything! His friends might quarrel with each other, but they could never quarrel with Hugo Cypress, the last of the beaux sabreurs.
The large touring-car, with chauffeur and maid (known as “the Smith,” because her name was Mdlle. Louise Madeleine Dupont) in front, and Ivor and Virginia behind, swiftly approached Antibes, on the road to Cannes. And it passed Antibes.
“I’m damned if we’ll lunch at Antibes!” Ivor suddenly said: but gave no reason to Virginia’s, “Is this man mad?” eyebrow-look.
They did dine, however, seven hours later, within the blond ramparts of Avignon. “Romantic old place, Avignon!”
CHAPTER X
1
No car, not even such a one as Lady Tarlyon’s, can reach Paris from the south within a day, or even within two days without particular preparation; and besides, it is a chilly kind of nuisance to motor at night over some of the worst roads known to man—especially when one can stay so very comfortably at that ancient hostelry of modern comforts, the Hôtel des Cardinaux, just within the blond ramparts of Avignon, as you enter Avignon through the village of Villeneuve-les-Avignon and across the broad sweep of the Rhone. The Hôtel des Cardinaux, four square and stout sides enclosing what the hasty traveller may remember as a labyrinth of courtyards—in which loiter the queenly ilex-trees and upon which seems to open every window in the place, a multitude of small-paned windows—is also blond, a seared and dirty blond reminiscent of a century when fine ladies did not mind a little dirt so only their lovers were laced and perfumed. In fact, the only thing in Avignon that seems not to be of that dirty and delightful blond is the crucifix on the hill which rises above the centre of that ancient town—that gray symbol of a great idea, which even the vast and glowing Castle of the Popes cannot mortify. Stare one way—if you can find any altitude from which to stare, for this is a stuffy and enclosed town, a town of crooked side-streets and cramped movements, a town of bustling commerçants—stare one way, and you will see this crucifix upon its hill; stare another, over the crenellated ramparts that now look so amazingly useless, and you will see the broad sweep of the Rhone over which you blissfully hurried into Avignon; and when you have looked at the Rhone for a few minutes, you will say that it looks a hard and heartless river, a river of steel. The land of Provence is green and light in spring, but the Rhone beside Avignon is always of steel, and the reflection of the sun upon its smooth waters is but an illusion to placate the romantic stranger. And over it the mistral hurls itself at you as you stand, say, at your open bedroom window at the Hôtel des Cardinaux, so that you cry, “My God, I thought it was warm in Provence!” and you close the window very quickly, and you draw up a chair to the ugly fireplace in which a fire is struggling smokily with the mistral in the chimney. And you say gloomily to yourself that Avignon is not a place in which to be happy in this century: in some past century, maybe Mr. George Moore’s century, but not in this. For, though you are in the land of lovers and troubadours, your thoughts are not of romance: certainly not until you have dined.