7.
CHAPTER VII: "COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SANDS!''
NOTHING further happened to me till I
reached Yellowsands, except an exciting
ride on the mail-coach, which connected it
with the nearest railway-station some twenty
miles away. For the last three or four miles
the road ran along the extreme precipitous
verge of cliffs that sloped, a giant's wall of
grassy mountain, right away down to a dreamy
amethystine floor of sea, miles and miles, as
it seemed, below. To ride on that coach,
as it gallantly staggered betwixt earth and
heaven, was to know all the ecstasy of flying,
with an added touch of danger, which birds
and angels, and others accustomed to fly, can
never experience. And then at length the
glorious mad descent down three plunging
cataracts of rocky road, the exciting rattling
of the harness, the grinding of the strong
brakes, the driver's soothing calls to his
horses, and the long burnished horn trailing
wild music behind us, like invisible banners
of aerial brass, — oh, it stirred the dullest
blood amongst us thus as it were to tear
down the sky towards the white roofs of
Yellowsands, glittering here and there among
the clouds of trees which filled the little
valley almost to the sea's edge, while floating
up to us came soft strains of music, silken
and caressing, as though the sea itself sang
us a welcome. Had you heard it from
aboard the Argo, you would have declared
it to be the sirens singing, and it would have
been found necessary to lash you to the
mast. But there were no masts to lash you
to in Yellowsands — and of the sirens it is
not yet time to speak.
It was the golden end of afternoon as the
coach stopped in front of the main hotel,
The Golden Fortune; and for the benefit of
any with not too long purses who shall hereafter
light on Yellowsands, and be alarmed
at the name and the marble magnificence of
that delightful hotel, I may say that the
charges there were surprisingly "reasonable,''
owing to one other wise provision of
the young lord and master of that happy
place, who had had the wit to realise that
the nicest and brightest and prettiest people
were often the poorest. Yellowsands, therefore,
was carried on much like a club, to
which you had only to be the right sort of
person to belong. I was relieved to find
that the hotel people evidently considered
me the right sort of person, and did+n't
take me for a Sunday-school treat, — for
presently I found myself in a charming little
corner bedroom, whence I could survey the
whole extent of the little colony of pleasure.
The Golden Fortune was curiously situated,
perched at the extreme sea-end of a
little horse-shoe bay hollowed out between
two headlands, the points of which
approached each other so closely that the
river Sly had but a few yards of rocky channel
through which to pour itself into the sea.
The Golden Fortune, therefore, backed by
towering woodlands, looked out to sea at
one side, across to the breakwater headland
on another, and on its land side commanded
a complete view of the gay little haven, with
its white houses built terrace on terrace upon
its wooded slopes, connected by flights of
zigzag steps, by which the apparently
inaccessible shelves and platforms circulated their
gay life down to the gay heart of the place, —
the circular boulevard, exquisitely leafy and
cool, where one found the great casino and
the open-air theatre, the exquisite orchestra,
into which only the mellowest brass and the
subtlest strings were admitted, and the Café
du Ciel, charmingly situated among the trees,
where the boulevard became a bridge, for
a moment, at the mouth of the river Sly.
Here one might gaze up the green rocky
defile through which the Sly made pebbly
music, and through which wound romantic
walks and natural galleries, where far inland
you might wander
"From dewy dawn to dewy night,
And have one with you wandering,''
or where you might turn and look across the
still lapping harbour, out through the little
neck of light between the headlands to the
shimmering sea beyond, — your ears filled
with a melting tide of sweet sounds, the
murmur of the streams and the gentle
surging of the sea, the rippling of leaves, the soft
restless whisper of women's gowns, and the
music of their vowelled voices. It was here
I found myself sitting at sunset, alone, but so
completely under the spell of the place that
I needed no companion. The place itself
was companion enough. The electric fairy
lamps had popped alight; and as the sun
sank lower, Yellowsands seemed like a
glowing crown of light floating upon the
water.
I had as yet failed to catch any sight of
Rosalind; so I sat alone, and so far as I had
any thoughts or feelings, beyond a
consciousness of heavenly harmony with my
surroundings, they were for that haunting
unknown face with the violet eyes and the
heavy chestnut hair.
Presently, close by, the notes of a guitar
came like little gold butterflies out of the
twilight, and then a woman's voice rose like
a silver bird on the air. It was a gay wooing
measure to which she sang. I listened with
ears and heart. "All ye,'' it went, —
All ye who seek for pleasure,
Here find it without measure —
No one to say
A body nay,
And naught but love and leisure.
All ye who seek forgetting,
Leave frowns and fears and fretting,
Here by the sea
Are fair and free
To give you peace and petting.
All ye whose hearts are breaking
For somebody forsaking,
We+'ll count you dear,
And heal you here,
And send you home love-making
"Bravo!'' I cried involuntarily, as the
song ended amid multitudinous applause;
and I thus attracted the attention of another
who sat near me as lonely as myself, but
evidently quite at home in the place.
"You have+n't heard our sirens sing
before?'' he said, turning to me with a
pleasant smile, and thus we fell into talk of
the place and its pleasures.
"There+'s one feature of the place I might
introduce you to if you care for a stroll,''
he said presently. "Have you heard of
The Twelve Golden-Haired Bar-maids?'' I
had+n't, but the fantastic name struck my
fancy. It was, he explained, the name given
to a favourite buffet at the Hotel Aphrodite,
which was served by twelve wonderful girls,
not one under six feet in height, and all with
the most glorious golden hair. It was a whim
of the management, he said.
So, of course, we went.
