By the time we're ready to start the man
will have brought the luggage."
"It sounds unnecessarily complicated," Dauntrey muttered; but Eve gave
him a gimlet look from under level brows, and he slouched away
obediently, leaving his wife to follow slowly with the girl.
XXXV
The last familiar face Mary saw as she left Monte Carlo was that of the
hunchbacked dwarf at St. Roman. He was hobbling away from his pitch to
go home, and from the window of the closed landau Mary waved a hand to
him as the horses trotted by.
"Who was that?" Eve asked, leaning forward, then throwing herself back
as if she wished not to be seen.
"Only the dwarf beggar at the bridge," Mary answered.
"Oh, only a beggar!" Lady Dauntrey settled herself comfortably again.
The voice of the waves came up with the wind in a ceaseless moan, and
for the first time Mary hated the sound of the sea. It was like the
wailing of a great company of mourning women. Far above the road,
Roquebrune clock struck seven. It was scarcely night, but darkness
loomed ahead like a black wall, toward which the horses hurried yet
could never pass. In this wall glittered square peepholes of light,
which were windows of houses at Cap Martin--Angelo's house among others.
When with a turn of the road the bright spots vanished, Mary was
overwhelmed with homesickness, such pangs as children suffer. She did
not wish to be in the Villa Mirasole, but leaving it behind in the
darkness and travelling toward the unknown made her feel that she was
shut out in the night alone, far from Vanno, far from all that could
remind her of him.
Pages:
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513