Perhaps tomorrow I shall be able to give you…”
Out, out. And down the métro and squeezed into a full carriage. The more the better. Everybody was one bolster the more between me and the concierge. I was radiant.
“Ah! pardon, Monsieur!” said the tall charming creature in black with a big full bosom and a great bunch of violets dropping from it. As the train swayed it thrust the bouquet right into my eyes. “Ah! pardon, Monsieur!”
But I looked up at her, smiling mischievously.
“There is nothing I love more, Madame, than flowers on a balcony.”
At the very moment of speaking I caught sight of the huge man in a fur coat against whom my charmer was leaning. He poked his head over her shoulder and he went white to the nose; in fact his nose stood out a sort of cheese green.
“What was that you said to my wife?”
Gare Saint Lazare saved me. But you’ll own that even as the author of False Coins, Wrong Doors, Left Umbrellas, and two in preparation, it was not too easy to go on my triumphant way.
* * * *
At length, after countless trains had steamed into my mind, and countless Dick Harmons had come rolling towards me, the real train came. The little knot of us waiting at the barrier moved up close, craned forward, and broke into cries as though we were some kind of many-headed monster, and Paris behind us nothing but a great trap we had set to catch these sleepy innocents.
Into the trap they walked and were snatched and taken off to be devoured. Where was my prey?
“Good God!” My smile and my lifted hand fell together. For one terrible moment I thought this was the woman of the photograph, Dick’s mother, walking towards me in Dick’s coat and hat. In the effort—and you saw what an effort it was—to smile, his lips curled in just the same way and he made for me, haggard and wild and proud.
What had happened? What could have changed him like this? Should I mention it?
I waited for him and was even conscious of venturing a fox-terrier wag or two to see if he could possibly respond, in the way I said: “Good evening, Dick! How are you, old chap? All right?”
“All right. All right.” He almost gasped. “You’ve got the rooms?”
Twenty times, good God! I saw it all. Light broke on the dark waters and my sailor hadn’t been drowned. I almost turned a somersault with amusement.
It was nervousness, of course. It was embarrassment. It was the famous English seriousness. What fun I was going to have! I could have hugged him.
“Yes, I’ve got the rooms,” I nearly shouted. “But where is Madame?”
“She’s been looking after the luggage,” he panted. “Here she comes, now.”
Not this baby walking beside the old porter as though he were her nurse and had just lifted her out of her ugly perambulator while he trundled the boxes on it.
“And she’s not Madame,” said Dick, drawling suddenly.
At that moment she caught sight of him and hailed him with her minute muff. She broke away from her nurse and ran up and said something, very quick, in English; but he replied in French: “Oh, very well. I’ll manage.”
But before he turned to the porter he indicated me with a vague wave and muttered something. We were introduced. She held out her hand in that strange boyish way Englishwomen do, and standing very straight in front of me with her chin raised and making—she too—the effort of her life to control her preposterous excitement, she said, wringing my hand (I’m sure she didn’t know it was mine), Je ne parle pas Français.
“But I’m sure you do,” I answered, so tender, so reassuring, I might have been a dentist about to draw her first little milk tooth.
“Of course she does.” Dick swerved back to us. “Here, can’t we get a cab or taxi or something? We don’t want to stay in this cursed station all night. Do we?”
This was so rude that it took me a moment to recover; and he must have noticed, for he flung his arm round my shoulder in the old way, saying: “Ah, forgive me, old chap. But we’ve had such a loathsome, hideous journey. We’ve taken years to come. Haven’t we?” To her. But she did not answer. She bent her head and began stroking her grey muff; she walked beside us stroking her grey muff all the way.
“Have I been wrong?” thought I. “Is this simply a case of frenzied impatience on their part? Are they merely ‘in need of a bed,’ as we say? Have they been suffering agonies on the journey? Sitting, perhaps, very close and warm under the same travelling rug?” and so on and so on while the driver strapped on the boxes. That done——
“Look here, Dick. I go home by métro. Here is the address of your hotel. Everything is arranged. Come and see me as soon as you can.”
Upon my life I thought he was going to faint. He went white to the lips.
“But you’re coming back with us,” he cried. “I thought it was all settled. Of course you’re coming back. You’re not going to leave us.” No, I gave it up. It was too difficult, too English for me.
“Certainly, certainly. Delighted. I only thought, perhaps…”
“You must come!” said Dick to the little fox-terrier. And again he made that big awkward turn towards her.
“Get in, Mouse.”
And Mouse got in the black hole and sat stroking Mouse II and not saying a word.
* * * *
Away we jolted and rattled like three little dice that life had decided to have a fling with.
I had insisted on taking the flap seat facing them because I would not have missed for anything those occasional flashing glimpses I had as we broke through the white circles of lamplight.
They revealed Dick, sitting far back in his corner, his coat collar turned up, his hands thrust in his pockets, and his broad dark hat shading him as if it were a part of him—a sort of wing he hid under. They showed her, sitting up very straight, her lovely little face more like a drawing than a real face—every line was so full of meaning and so sharp cut against the swimming dark.
For Mouse was beautiful. She was exquisite, but so fragile and fine that each time I looked at her it was as if for the first time. She came upon you with the same kind of shock that you feel when you have been drinking tea out of a thin innocent cup and suddenly, at the bottom, you see a tiny creature, half butterfly, half woman, bowing to you with her hands in her sleeves.
As far as I could make out she had dark hair and blue or black eyes. Her long lashes and the two little feathers traced above were most important.
She wore a long dark cloak such as one sees in old-fashioned pictures of Englishwomen abroad. Where her arms came out of it there was grey fur—fur round her neck, too, and her close-fitting cap was furry.
“Carrying out the mouse idea,” I decided.
* * * *
Ah, but how intriguing it was—how intriguing! Their excitement came nearer and nearer to me, while I ran out to meet it, bathed in it, flung myself far out of my depth, until at last I was as hard put to it to keep control as they.
But what I wanted to do was to behave in the most extraordinary fashion—like a clown. To start singing, with large extravagant gestures, to point out of the window and cry: “We are now passing, ladies and gentlemen, one of the sights for which notre Paris is justly famous,” to jump out of the taxi while it was going, climb over the roof and dive in by another door; to hang out of the window and look for the hotel through the wrong end of a broken telescope, which was also a peculiarly ear-splitting trumpet.
I watched myself do all this, you understand, and even managed to applaud in a private way by putting my gloved hands gently together, while I said to Mouse: “And is this your first