The Lion's Share by Arnold Bennett (booksvooks TXT) 📕

the carriage to take away the impedimenta of his master, gazed at each other and then burst out laughing.

"So that's marriage!" said Audrey.

"No," said Miss Ingate. "That's love. I've seen a deal of love in my time, ever since my sister Arabella's first engagement, but I never saw any that wasn't vehy, vehy queer."

"I do hope they'll be happy," said Audrey.

"Do you?" said Miss Ingate.


CHAPTER VIII


EXPLOITATION OF WIDOWHOOD

The carriage had emptied, and the two adventurers stood alone among empty compartments. The platform was also empty. Not a porter in sight. One after the other, the young widow and the elderly spinster, their purses bulging with money, got their packages by great efforts down on to the platform.

An employee strolled past.

"_Porteur?_" murmured Audrey timidly.

The man sniggered, shrugged his shoulders, and vanished.

Audrey felt that she had gone back to her school days. She was helpless, and Miss Ingate was the same. She wished ardently that she was in Moze again. She could not imagine how she had been such a fool as to undertake this absurd expedition which could only end in ridicule and disaster. She was ready to cry. Then another employee appeared, hesitated, and picked up a bag, scowling and inimical. Gradually the man, very tousled and dirty, clustered all the bags and parcels around his person, and walked off. Audrey and Miss Ingate meekly following. The great roof of the station resounded to whistles and the escape of steam and the clashing of wagons.

Beyond the platforms there were droves of people, of whom nearly every individual was preoccupied and hurried. And what people! Audrey had in her heart expected a sort of glittering white terminus full of dandiacal men and elegant Parisiennes who had stepped straight out of fashion-plates, and who had no cares--for was not this Paris? Whereas, in fact, the multitude was the dingiest she had ever seen. Not a gleam of elegance! No hint of dazzling colour! No smiling and satiric beauty! They were just persons.

At last, after formalities, Audrey and Miss Ingate reached the foul and chilly custom-house appointed for the examination of luggage. Unrecognisable peers and other highnesses stood waiting at long counters, forming bays, on which was nothing at all. Then, far behind, a truck hugely piled with trunks rolled in through a back door and men pitched the trunks like toys here and there on the counters, and officials came into view, and knots of travellers gathered round trunks, and locks were turned and lids were lifted, and the flash of linen showed in spots on the drabness of the scene. Miss Ingate observed with horror the complete undoing of a lady's large trunk, and the exposure to the world's harsh gaze of the most intimate possessions of that lady. Soon the counters were like a fair. But no trunk belonging to Audrey or to Miss Ingate was visible. They knew then, what they had both privately suspected ever since Charing Cross, that their trunks would be lost on the journey.

"Oh! My trunk!" cried Miss Ingate.

Beneath a pile of other trunks on an incoming truck she had espied her property. Audrey saw it, too. The vision was magical. The trunk seemed like a piece of home, a bit of Moze and of England. It drew affection from them as though it had been an animal. They sped towards it, forgetting their small baggage. Their _porteur_ leaped over the counter from behind and made signs for a key. All Audrey's trunks in turn joined Miss Ingate's; none was missing. And finally an official, small and fierce, responded to the invocations of the _porteur_ and established himself at the counter in front of them. He put his hand on Miss Ingate's trunk.

"Op-en," he said in English.

Miss Ingate opened her purse, and indicated to the official by signs that she had no key for the trunk, and she also cried loudly, so that he should comprehend:

"No key! ... Lost!"

Then she looked awkwardly at Audrey.

"I've been told they only want to open one trunk when there's a lot. Let him choose another one," she murmured archly.

But the official merely walked away, to deal with the trunks of somebody else close by.

Audrey was cross.

"Miss Ingate," she said formally, "you had the key when we started, because you showed it to me. You can't possibly have lost it."

"No," answered Winnie calmly and knowingly. "I haven't lost it. But I'm not going to have the things in my trunk thrown about for all these foreigners to see. It's simply disgraceful. They ought to have women officials and private rooms at these places. And they would have, if women had the vote. Let him open one of your trunks. All your things are new."

The _porteur_ had meanwhile been discharging French into Audrey's other ear.

"Of course you must open it, Winnie," said she. "Don't be so absurd!" There was a persuasive lightness in her voice, but there was also command. For a moment she was the perfect widow.

"I'd rather not."

"The _porteur_ says we shall be here all night," Audrey persisted.

"Do you know French?"

"I learnt French at school, Winnie," said the perfect widow. "I can't understand every word, but I can make out the drift." And Audrey went on translating the porter according to her own wisdom. "He says there have been dreadful scenes here before, when people have refused to open their trunks, and the police have had to be called in. He says the man won't upset the things in your trunk at all."

Miss Ingate gazed into the distance, and privately smiled. Audrey had never guessed that in Miss Ingate were such depths of obstinate stupidity. She felt quite distinctly that her understanding of human nature was increasing.

"Oh! Look!" said Miss Ingate casually. "I'm sure those must be real Parisians!" Her offhandedness, her inability to realise the situation, were exasperating to the young widow. Audrey glanced where Miss Ingate had pointed, and saw in the doorway of the custom-house two women and a lad, all cloaked but all obviously in radiant fancy dress, laughing together.

"Don't they look French!" said Miss Ingate.

Audrey tapped her foot on the asphalt floor, while people whose luggage had been examined bumped strenuously against her in the effort to depart. She was extremely pessimistic; she knew she could do nothing with Miss Ingate; and the thought of the vast, flaring, rumbling city beyond the station intimidated her. The _porteur_, who had gone away to collect their neglected small baggage, now returned, and nudged her, pointing to the official who had resumed his place behind the trunks. He was certainly a fierce man, but he was a little man, and there was an agreeable peculiarity in his eye.

Audrey, suddenly inspired and emboldened, faced him; she shrugged her shoulders Gallically at Miss Ingate's trunk, and gave a sad, sweet, wistful smile, and then put her hand with an exquisite inviting gesture on the smallest of her own trunks. The act was a deliberate exploitation of widowhood. The official fiercely shrugged his shoulders and threw up his arms, and told the _porteur_ to open the small trunk.

"I told you they would," said Miss Ingate negligently.

Audrey would have turned upon her and slain her had she not been busy with the tremendous realisation of the fact that by a glance and a gesture she had conquered the customs official--a foreigner and a stranger. She wanted to be alone and to think.

Just as the trunk was being relocked, Audrey heard an American girlish voice behind her:

"Now, you must be Miss Ingate!"

"I am," Miss Ingate almost ecstatically admitted.

The trio in cloaked fancy dress were surrounding Miss Ingate like a bodyguard.


CHAPTER IX


LIFE IN PARIS

Miss Thompkins and Miss Nickall were a charm to dissipate all the affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as Tommy. Miss Nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as Nick. The age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. The one came from Wyoming, the other from Arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. They had driven up to the terminus before going to a fancy-dress ball to be given that night in the studio of Monsieur Dauphin, a famous French painter and a delightful man. They had met Monsieur Dauphin on the previous evening on the terrace of the Cafe de Versailles, and Monsieur had said, in response to their suggestion, that he would be enchanted and too much honoured if they would bring their English friends to his little "leaping"--that was, hop.

Also they had thought that it would be nice for the travellers to be met at the terminus, especially as Miss Ingate had been very particularly recommended to Miss Thompkins by a whole group of people in London. It was Miss Thompkins who had supplied the address of reliable furnished rooms, and she and Nick would personally introduce the ladies to their landlady, who was a sweet creature.

Tommy and Nick and Miss Ingate were at once on terms of cordial informality; but the Americans seemed to be a little diffident before the companion. Their voices, at the introduction, had reinforced the surprise of their first glances. "Oh! _Mrs._ Moncreiff!" The slightest insistence, no more, on the "Mrs."! Nothing said, but evidently they had expected somebody else!

Then there was the boy, whom they called Musa. He was dark, slim, with timorous great eyes, and attired in red as a devil beneath his student's cloak. He apologised slowly in English for not being able to speak English. He said he was very French, and Tommy and Nick smiled, and he smiled back at them rather wistfully. When Tommy and Nick had spoken with the chauffeurs in French he interpreted their remarks. There were two motor-taxis, one for the luggage.

Miss Thompkins accompanied the luggage; she insisted on doing so. She could tell sinister tales of Paris cabmen, and she even delayed the departure in order to explain that once in the suburbs and in the pre-taxi days a cabman had threatened to drive her and himself into the Seine unless she would be his bride, and she saved herself by promising to be his bride and telling him that she lived in the Avenue de l'Opera; as soon as the cab reached a populous thoroughfare she opened the cab door and squealed and was rescued; she had let the driver go free because of his good taste.

As the procession whizzed through nocturnal streets, some thunderous with traffic, others very quiet, but all lined with lofty regular buildings, Audrey was penetrated by the romance of this city where cabmen passionately and to the point of suicide and murder adored their fares. And she thought that perhaps, after all, Madame Piriac's impression of Paris might not be entirely misleading. Miss Ingate and Nick talked easily, very charmed with one another, both excited. Audrey said little, and the dark youth said nothing. But once the dark youth murmured shyly to Audrey in English:

"Do you play at ten-nis, Madame?"

They crossed a thoroughfare that twinkled and glittered from end to end with moving sky-signs. Serpents pursued burning serpents on the heights of that thoroughfare, invisible hands wrote mystic words of warning and invitation, and blazing kittens played with balls of incandescent wool. Throngs of promenaders