"
"I see," said Carleton.
They were spinning along the white way that winds between mountain and
sea, out of the principality, and so toward Cap Martin, Mentone, and on
to Italy. The tramcars had ceased to run; the endless daytime procession
of motor-cars and carriages was broken by the hours of sleep, and the
glimmering road was empty save for immense, white-covered carts which
had come from distant Lombardy, and over Alpine passes, bringing eggs
and vegetables for the guests of Hercules. Slowly, yet steadily,
shambled the tired mules, and would shamble on till dawn. There were
often no lights on the carts, which moved silently, like mammoth ghosts,
great lumbering vehicle after vehicle, each drawn by three or four mules
or horses. As the lamps of Schuyler's powerful car flashed on them
round sharp rock-corners, tearing the veil of shadow, they loomed up
unexpectedly in the night, like some mystery suddenly revealed in a
place of peace.
Schuyler liked motoring at night on the Riviera; for he never tired of
the dark forms of mountains, cut out black in the creamy foam of
star-spattered clouds, or the salt smell of the sea and its murmur,
singing the same song Greeks and Romans had heard on these shores. He
never tired of meeting the huge carts from Italy, travelling slowly
through the dark. He always had the same keen, foolish wish to know
whence they came, and what were the thoughts behind the bright eyes
which waked from sleep and stared for an instant, as his lamps pried
under the great quaking canopies: and more than all he enjoyed arriving
at his own gate, seeing the pale shimmer of his marble statues against
backgrounds of ivy and ilex, and drawing in the sweetness of his orange
blossoms and roses.
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