of mud, and still Marianne leaned perilously out of the window to look back at the road behind them. But whenever a horseman did come in sight, it was never the one she hoped for.
After a few hours' rest at Lyon, the coach began climbing towards the mountains and was forced to slow its killing pace. The new road across Mont Cenis, begun by Napoleon seven years before, had been advised by Arcadius because it shortened the distance considerably. But the work was only recently completed and the crossing was an uncomfortable one for Marianne, Agathe and Gracchus, who were obliged to go a good deal of the way over the pass on foot while the coach was drawn by mules. Yet for all that, thanks to the comforting welcome they received from the monks of the hospice, and thanks, still more, to the splendours of the mountain scenery, which she beheld for the first time in her life, Marianne found here a brief respite from her troubles. There was something a little intoxicating, perhaps, in the knowledge that her coach was, if not actually the first, certainly only the second or third to travel that way. She did not feel in the least tired and, forgetting the need for haste, she sat for a long time beside the blue waters of the lake at the top of the pass, conscious of a strange yearning to remain there for ever breathing in the pure air and watching the slow flight of the jackdaws, black against the snowy majesty of the peaks. Time, here, stood still. It would be easy to forget the noise and deceits and complications of the world, its furies and its heartbreaks. There were no faded banners here, no popular songs, no trampled flowers to destroy the harmony of the scene, only the blue stars of gentian in the crevices of the rocks, and the silver lace of lichen. The bare, almost barrack-like shape of the hospice, it too enlarged by the Emperor, seemed to take on a kind of nobility, a strangely mystical air, as if its stern walls were illumined by the prayer and charity that dwelt within. Not until one of the monks came and laid his hand gently on her arm to remind her that an exhausted maid and a half-frozen coachman were waiting for her by the coach, now ready for the descent, did she consent to continue her journey to Susa.
The same wicked pace was resumed. They clattered through Turin and Genoa with hardly a glance. Neither the sun, nor the flower-filled gardens, nor the indigo sea had any power to lift the black mood that settled more firmly on Marianne with every turn of the wheels. She was possessed by a demoniacal urge to travel faster and yet faster, causing Gracchus to look anxiously at her from time to time. He had never seen his mistress so coldly desperate, so tense and irritable. He could not know that as they drew nearer to their goal she was suffering increasingly from misery and self-disgust. Until this point, she had still hoped against all hope that somehow Jason would come to her, Jason whom she had come to look on as her natural protector. Now that hope was gone.
They had slept last night for a bare four hours in a wretched inn tucked away in a fold of the Apennines. Sleep to Marianne was a series of nightmares broken by feverish wakings which left her feeling so little rested that before cock-crow she was up from her lumpy straw mattress and calling for her coach. Dawn on the day that was to be the last of the journey saw the berline with its occupants racing madly downhill to the sea. It was the fifteenth of May, the final day, but Lucca was not far ahead.
'Thirteen leagues or thereabouts,' said the innkeeper at Carrara.
Now the coach was travelling along a level, sandy road, almost as smooth as a private driveway, following the coast. Only the antique flagstones which stood out here and there showed that this was the ancient Via Aurelia, built by the Romans. Marianne closed her eyes and let her cheek sink on to the cushions. Beside her, Agathe was sleeping, curled up like a weary animal with her hat tipped forward over her face. Marianne wished she could do the same but, tired as she was, her taut nerves would not let her rest. The landscape of dunes and reeds, with a few distant umbrella pines standing out tall and black against a sky dotted with fleecy clouds, only served to depress her further. Her eyes would not stay shut and she found herself following the movements of a tartan that was flying seawards under its triangular sail. The tiny vessel looked so lighthearted, rejoicing in its freedom, and Marianne yearned to be out there with it, running straight before the wind, thinking of nothing else.
She realized suddenly what the sea could mean to a man like Jason Beaufort and why he remained so passionately faithful to it. She was sure that it was the sea which had come between them now to prevent him coming to her in her need. She knew now that he would not come. He might be on the other side of the world, far away in his own country perhaps, and Marianne's cry for help had gone unheard or, if it ever reached him, it would be too late, much, much too late.
A crazy idea came to her, born of a sudden panic and the sight of a dilapidated finger-post on which she read that Lucca was now a mere eight leagues distant. Why should she not escape, she too run away to sea? There must be ships, a harbour within reach. She could take ship and go herself to find the man who, perhaps just because she could not reach him, had suddenly become so strangely dear, so necessary, like the symbol of her threatened freedom. Three times he had asked her to go away with him and three times she had refused, in her blind pursuit of an illusory love. How could she have been such a fool!
Acting on this impulse, she called out to Gracchus who, carefree and tireless, was calmly whistling the latest popular tune from Desaugiers: '
'Do you know if there is a port on this road, somewhere with a fair-sized harbour?'
Gracchus's eyes opened wide beneath the dusty brim of his hat.
'Yes. The girl at the inn told me. There is Leghorn but aren't we going to Lucca?'
Marianne did not answer. Her eyes strayed once again to the tiny tartan which was now setting course along a golden pathway straight into the setting sun. Gracchus reined in the horses.
'Whoa there!' The coach came to a stand and Agathe opened big sleepy eyes. Marianne shivered.
'Why have you stopped?'
'Because if we're not going to Lucca any more, better say so at once. That's the road there, on the left. Straight on for Leghorn.'
It was true. On the left, a road led away towards hills dotted with cypress trees among which blossomed here and there the red-brown walls of a small farm or the warm pink campanile of a church. On the other side, the tartan had disappeared, absorbed into the red sunset. Marianne shut her eyes and swallowed back an anguished sob. She could not do it. She could not go back on her given word. Besides, there was the child-he made all such escapades impossible. His mother had no right to expose that frail life to the perils of the sea. From now on it was her duty to sacrifice everything, even her own deepest feelings, even her most natural hopes and fears, for his sake.
'Are you ill?' Agathe was asking, watching her white face. 'It is this dreadful journey.'
'No, it is nothing. Drive on, Gracchus. Of course we are going to Lucca.'
The whip cracked and the horses sprang forward. The coach turned its back resolutely on the sea and headed into the hills.
Dusk had fallen with a soft mauve haze by the time Lucca came in sight, and Marianne was feeling calmer. After leaving the Via Aurelia, they had crossed over a beautiful river, the Serchio, by a noble Roman bridge and driven over a peaceful, fertile plain towards a ring of hills in the centre of which the city had suddenly appeared before them, pink and charming within its bastion of walls, their sternness lightened by trees and greenery. Lucca, with its tracery of towers and romanesque campaniles, all clothed in softest green, seemed to rise up towards the rounded hills where the last rays of light still lingered in the air.
Marianne sighed. 'Here we are. Ask for the Duomo, Gracchus. That is the cathedral and the inn where we are to stay will be in the square.'
The travellers' papers were in order and the guards placid and good-humoured. After the briefest of formalities, the berline rumbled through the arched gateway just as the tinkling notes of the angelus floated from the belfries out over the surrounding countryside. A noisy band of children followed the coach, struggling to hitch a ride on the springs.
They passed along a street lined with tall, medieval houses. Lanterns were already burning here and there in the gathering dusk. Just as on every fine evening in Italy, the whole town seemed to be out of doors and the coach was obliged to travel at a walking pace. A good many of the crowd were men, groups of them arm in arm, heading towards the main squares of the town, but there were women also, dressed in sad colours for the most part but all of them enveloped from head to foot in big shawls of white lace. There was much talk and mutual greeting, occasional snatches of song, but Marianne noticed that many of the men wore uniform and concluded
