On, on, hammering the flinty road with steel-shod hoofs, racing with the racing clouds, thundering across the pontoon, where benumbed soldiers huddled to stare, then bounding forward through the narrow lanes of hamlets, where pinched faces peered out at us from hovels, and gaunt dogs fled from us into the frozen hedge.
Far ahead we caught sight of the smoke of a locomotive.
“Landerneau!” gasped Speed. “Ride hard, Scarlett!”
The station-master saw us and halted the moving train at a frantic signal from Speed, whose uniform was to be reckoned with by all station-masters, and ten minutes later we stood swaying in a cattle-car, huddled close to our horses to keep warm, while the locomotive tore eastward, whistling frantically, and an ocean of black smoke poured past, swarming with sparks. Crossing the Aune trestle with a ripping roar, the train rushed through Châteaulin, south, then east, then south.
Toward noon, Speed, clinging to the stall-bars, called out to me that he could see Quimper, and in a few moments we rolled into the station, dropped two cars, and steamed out again into the beautiful Breton country, where the winter wheat was green as new grass and the gorse glimmered, and the clear streams rushed seaward between their thickets of golden willows and green briers, already flushing with the promise of new buds.
Rosporden we passed at full speed; scarcely a patch 385 of melting snow remained at Bannalec; and when we steamed slowly into Quimperlé, the Laïta ran crystal-clear as a summer stream, and I saw the faint blue of violets on the southern slope of the beech-woods.
Some gendarmes aided us to disembark our horses, and a sub-officer respectfully offered us hospitality at the barracks across the square; but we were in our saddles the moment our horses’ hoofs struck the pavement, galloping for Paradise, with a sweet, keen wind blowing, hinting already of the sea.
This was that same road which led me into Paradise on that autumn day which seemed years and years ago. The forests were leafless but beautiful; the blackthorns already promised their scented snow to follow the last melting drift which still glimmered among the trees in deep woodland gullies. A violet here and there looked up at us with blue eyes; in sheltered spots, fresh, reddish sprouts pricked the moist earth, here a whorl of delicate green, there a tender spike, guarding some imprisoned loveliness; buds on the beeches were brightening under a new varnish; naked thickets, no longer dead gray, softened into harmonies of pink and gold and palest purple.
Once, halting at a bridge, above the quick music of the stream we heard an English robin singing all alone.
“I never longed for spring as I do now,” broke out Speed. “The horror of this black winter has scarred me forever—the deathly whiteness, month after month; the freezing filth of that ghastly city; the sea, all slime and ice!”