If she had set herself to anger him to silence she could not have succeeded more completely.
“Good-bye,” she said abruptly.
He held her furs for her. And she went so swiftly that he could only follow her to the door. The large shape of the car swallowed her up; and the car twisted softly round the little drive and away to the London road. Minutes later he heard its Klaxon, just one sharp keen, like the harsh cry of a sea-bird....
2
Now two weeks later Ivor received this telegram from Cimiez: “Please come to stay with us here if possible. Trains packed, and sleeping cars unobtainable. Will order car to meet you Ritz, Paris, noon Saturday, to bring you down. Please wire.”
He fingered it, and he thoughtfully stared out of the window. A February prospect is not the best prospect to stare at thoughtfully. It provokes comparisons. The world outside his window was bleak and desolate. The world within his window was bleak and desolate. He wired, and went.
CHAPTER VI
1
Virginia was certainly right about the trains from Paris to the south being packed: there was not a sleeping-car to be had for months to come, and for an ordinary seat one had to fight; so that the capacity of French railway officials for being rude and being bribed was being exercised to the utmost. The douaniers were also charming, and people remarked on the genial smiles with which the passport officials at the ports greeted them.... The dawn of peace, the new year of 1919! What wonder that those who could rushed quickly away from the homes they had so long and vigorously protected, to the bright Mediterranean coast! The Sketch and the Tatler said that the Riviera had “at one bound” regained its pre-war glories of rank, fashion, and riches, and published photographs in proof of same. Carelessness was upon the world again—in 1919—and life glittered as of old, or even brighter. And what wonder—in 1919! Spectres there still were, but solaces abounded....
The hill of Cimiez, as all the world knows, adorns the background of the town of Nice; and the hill of Cimiez, as all the world knows, was adorned by Queen Victoria, who stayed there for a period, or two periods, upon its very crest. That crest is now distinguished by a statue of her person and a monument to her name—which is no less than the Hotel Victoria Regina, a very large and white hotel indeed, from whose windows the prospect of the Mediterranean seems but a little thing. A huge white palace it is, reigning on the hill of Cimiez, and quite dominating the smaller white palaces which are scattered about the slope of the hill, one here and the other there, on each side of the winding road that takes adventurous quality down to Nice, the pleasaunce of the mob. The presence of the great queen has left a deep impress on Cimiez, for what streets are not named directly after her despise any but the nomenclature of English majesty: whence come the rue Edward VII., the Avenue de Prince des Galles, the Place Regina, and recently the Avenue George V. Of course there are no shops on Cimiez. Those white patches of elegant shape that you see as your car climbs the winding road from Nice, are villas; and in the villas are rich Greeks from Egypt, India, and Smyrna; Jews from Egypt, India, Smyrna, and England; Englishmen from Lancashire; Americans and Grand Dukes from Paris; and Lord and Lady Tarlyon. And these last in the whitest and most elegant villa of all (the property of Mr. James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate) at the far end of the rue Edward (not Edouard) VII.