The departure in the freshness of the August morning was a great event. Every one in the hotel, including the patron in his cook's white costume, the patronne, the grinning ape of a waiter, all the artists, and half the village gathered to watch the motor get under way. The lumbering ark of a car was laden with bags and trunks and bundles, for the Americans meant to be comfortable. Then Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert, their natural amplitude swollen by their dust-coats, goggles, and veils, mounted with stately complacency to their respective seats, and Milly tucked herself into a corner. Then the ratlike French chauffeur attempted to crank the engine, and perspiring, red in the face, spluttering with oaths, made many desperate efforts to arouse his monster. There were sympathetic murmurs from the audience. "Now he's got her—ah—oh—no! Hang to it Pierrot, etc." Finally Pierre exploded in a tragic tirade to his employer, who sat stolidly through all the rumpus, merely asking at the end, "What's he saying, Milly?"
"He can do nothing with the curséd beast," Milly abridged.
"That's evident," Gilbert remarked with cynical satisfaction.
"He thinks it's the water; he warned you not to come down here."
It seemed as if Milly's little trip was not to come off, after all, when Bragdon, who had picked up some knowledge of the new machines in his earlier singlestate, tipped up the hood and dove for the carburetor. After a time he signalled to the Hawaiian to work the crank, and then with a whir, a rumble, at last a clear bellow, the monster responded, trembled, turned its snout up the narrow road, and disappeared. Milly threw a kiss to her husband, who waved his hat in answer. He had saved the day, and she was proud of him.
They had a wonderful time, in spite of Pierre and his balky car, bowling along the winding, leafy roads not far from the sea, through little gray stone villages whose inhabitants turned out en masse, including children and animals, to witness their stately progress of ten miles an hour. They got stuck once in a ford and had to be fished out with three yoke of cream-colored bulls and a long ship's rope. That was about noon, and they decided to lunch at the next inn, though it did not look inviting. However, Milly's French coaxed a tolerable meal from the fat housewife whom they discovered cleaning fish in the kitchen, and even the stodgy Roy mellowed under the influence of fresh fish and a drinkable bottle of wine which he and Milly discovered somewhere.
That evening, without further mishap, they rumbled into the hamlet of Poldau. For the last hour they had seen signs of the coming fête. All the natives, arrayed in their best clothes, were drifting westward to the rocky cape, where, perched on a lonely cliff, was the tiny chapel, "Our Lady of the Guard," which was the scene of the Pardon on the morrow. Before they entered Poldau night had fallen, and the long yellow beams from the powerful Phare glanced out across the sullen waters and the level land. It was beneath this lofty lighthouse they slept, in a clean, bare little inn. Milly, lying in her cushiony bed, could hear the waves grumbling around the rocks, and watch the sweep of that golden beam of light,—speaking to the distant passers-by upon the Atlantic, warning them of the dangers of this treacherous coast....
It was the first time she had been separated from her family, and she lay awake long hours, restless and sleepless, wondering whether Yvonne would remember to pull up the extra blanket over Virginia before the early morning dampness. And she thought about her husband, fleetingly, contrasting him with Roy Gilbert, who seemed to have grown heavier in mind as well as in person these last years. Roy was surely what the artists called bourgeois, but she liked him—he was so kind and good to Nettie. She felt at home, getting back to the familiar bourgeois atmosphere of the Gilberts, where life was made easy and comfortable, and you knew every idea any one would advance before the words were half spoken....
Milly was wakened before dawn by the sound of a drunken quarrel beneath her window. Some Breton evidently had begun to celebrate the Pardon too soon; a shrill woman's voice broke the silence with unintelligible reproaches. There was the sound of blows, of crashing glass, a scuffle, sobs,—then silence, broken now and again by fresh sobs. Ah, those men,—men!... The lamp in the Phare went out: it was dawn. Milly fell into a broken sleep.