At
Cannes, yachts sat high in the quaint harbour like proud white swans:
mysterious islands slept on the calm surface of the sea, dreaming of
their own reflections; and a company of blue-clad mountains, strangely
crowned, were veiled below their foreheads like harem women with
delicate fabric of cloud, thin as fine muslin.
After Cannes, appeared Antibes, with its peninsula of palms and pines,
its old harbour, town, and white lighthouse; and at last, Nice.
Many people whose faces Mary had seen at dinner the night before, and
again at luncheon, left the train at Nice; and on the platforms, waiting
for local trains, she saw girls in flowery hats, and white or pale
tinted serge dresses, such as they might wear on a cool day of an
English summer. They could not be travelling far, in such frocks and
hats, and Mary wondered where they were going, with their little plump
hand-bags of netted gold or embroidered velvet.
By and by a train moved in, also on its way to Monte Carlo. Women and
men suddenly surged together in a compact wave, and struggled with each
other at the doors of the corridor carriages. Fat men had no hesitation
in pushing themselves in front of thin women; robust females dashed
little men aside, and mounted triumphantly. All were eager, and bent
upon some object in which they refused to be thwarted.
The beauty of the coast was dreamlike to Mary, who had lived ever since
she could remember in the north of Scotland, among moorland and hills
whose only intrinsic brilliance of colour came at the time of heather.
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