The Guests Of Hercules Part 3

"I know you have important engagements," Mary said, hastily, "and of course you couldn't go with me at such short notice; but I don't feel as if I could wait. I may be ill on your hands. I feel as if I should be, unless I run away where it's warm and bright."

Mrs. Home-Davis, much as she wanted to take the girl at her word, could not resist retorting: "It's not very bright and warm in Scotland at this time of year, yet you don't seem to have been ill there."

Mary could have replied that in the convent she had had the warmth and brightness of love, but she merely mumbled that she had often taken cold in the autumn.

"It will be impossible for us to leave home at present," her aunt went on. "If you're determined to go, I must get you some one to travel with, or you must have an elderly maid-companion. Perhaps that would be best.

One can't always find friends travelling at the time they're wanted."

"Mary isn't such a baby that she ought to need looking after," said Elinor. "She's nearly twenty-five--as old as I am--and you don't mind my going to Exeter alone."

Elinor was twenty-eight. When she was a child she had a.s.sumed airs of superiority on the strength of her age, Mary remembered, but now she and her cousin seemed suddenly to match their years. Mary was glad of this, however, and bolstered Elinor's argument by admitting her own maturity.

"I don't want a companion-maid, please," she said, with the mingling of meekness and violent resolution which had ended her novitiate. "It will be better for my Italian, to get one in Italy. I shall be safe alone till I arrive. You see, Reverend Mother has given me a letter to the Superior in the mother-house, and other letters, too. I shall have friends in Florence and Rome, and lots of places."

"But it wouldn't look well for you to travel alone," Mrs. Home-Davis objected.

"n.o.body will be looking at me. n.o.body will know who I am," Mary argued.

Then, desperately, "Rather than you should find me a companion, Aunt Sara, I won't go to Italy at all. I----"

She could have chosen no more efficacious threat; though if she had been allowed to finish her sentence, she would have added, "I'll go back to Scotland to Lady MacMillan's, or stay in the convent."

Thus the sting would have lost its venom for the Home-Davises, but Elinor, fearing disaster, cut the sentence short. "Oh, for mercy's sake, mother, let Mary have her own way," she broke in. "You can see she means to in the end, so why disturb yourself? Nothing can happen to her."

Elinor's eyes anxiously recalled to her mother a letter that had come from Doctor Smythe that morning announcing his return at the end of the week. It was providential that Mary should have proposed going, as it would have been awkward otherwise to get her out of the house in time; and Elinor was anxious that she should be taken at her word.

"It's more of appearances than danger that I'm thinking," Mrs.

Home-Davis explained, retiring slowly, face to the enemy, yet with no real desire to win the battle. "Perhaps if I write Mrs. Larkin in Florence--a nice, responsible woman--to find a family for you to stay with, it may do. Only in that case, you mustn't stop before you get to Florence. I'll buy your ticket straight through, by the Mont Cenis."

"No, please," Mary protested, mildly. "Not that way. I've set my heart on going along the Riviera, not to stop anywhere, but to see the coast from the train. It must be so lovely: and after this blackness to see the blue Mediterranean, and the flowers, and oranges, and the red rocks that run out into the sea; it's a dream of joy to think of it. I've a friend who has been twice with her father. She told me so much about the Riviera. It can't be much farther than the other way."

So it was settled, after some perfunctory objections on the part of Mrs.

Home-Davis, who wished it put on record that she had been overruled by Mary's obstinacy. If undesirable incidents should happen, she wanted to say, "Mary _would_ go by herself, without waiting for me. She's of age, and I couldn't coerce her."

III

Mary felt like an escaped prisoner as the train began to move out of Victoria Station--the train which was taking her toward France and Italy. It was like pa.s.sing through a great gray gate, labeled "This way to warmth and suns.h.i.+ne and beauty." Already, though the gate itself was not beautiful, Mary seemed to see through it, far ahead, vistas of lovely places to which it opened. She sat calmly, as the moving carriage rescued her from Aunt Sara and Elinor on the platform, but her hands were locked tightly inside the five-year-old squirrel m.u.f.f, which would have been given away, with everything of hers, if Sister Rose had not changed a certain decision at the eleventh hour. She was quivering with excitement and the wild sense of freedom which she had not tasted in London.

In leaving the convent she had not felt this sense of escaping, for the convent had been "home," the goodbyes had drowned her in grief, and she had often before driven off with Lady MacMillan, in the springy barouche behind the fat horses. Even the journey to London had not given her the thrill she hoped for, as rain had fallen heavily, blotting out the landscape. Besides, she had even then regarded her stay in London with the Home-Davises only as a stage on the journey which was eventually to lead her into warmth and sunlight.

This train, with the foreign-looking people who rushed about chattering French and German, Italian and Arabic on the platform and in the corridors, seemed to link London mysteriously with other lands. Even the strong, active porters, who sprang at huge trunks piled on cabs, and carried them off to the weighing-room, were different from other porters, more important, part of a great scheme, and their actions added to her excitement. She liked the way that an alert guard put her into her compartment, as if he were posting a letter in a hurry, and had others to post. Then the great and sudden bustle of the train going out made her heart beat.

Mary had been brought to the station early, for Elinor had been nervous lest she might miss the train, and Doctor Smythe was coming at four o'clock that afternoon. But others who were to share the compartment were late. It was violently exciting to have them dash in at the last moment, and dispose of bags and thick rugs in straps to be used on the Channel.

They were two, mother and daughter perhaps; a delicate birdlike girl and a plump middle-aged woman with an air of extreme self-satisfaction.

In themselves they did not appear interesting, but Mary was interested, and wondered where they were going. When they took out fas.h.i.+on-papers and sixpenny novels, however, she felt that they were no longer worth attention. How could they read, when they were saying goodbye to England, and when each minute the windows framed charming pictures of skimming Kentish landscape? The strangely shaped oast-houses puzzled Mary. She longed to ask what they were, but the woman and the girl seemed absorbed in their books and papers. Mary thought they must be dull and stupid; but suddenly it came to her that to many people, these among others, maybe, this journey was a commonplace, everyday affair.

Even going to France or Italy might not be to them a high adventure.

Extraordinary to reflect that all over the world men and women were travelling, going to wonderful new places, seeing wonderful new things, and taking it as a matter of course!

She had never seen the sea; and when the billowing fields and neat hedges changed to chalky downs, a sudden whiff of salt on the air blowing through a half-open window made her heart leap. She nearly cried, "The sea!" but controlled herself because of her prim fellow-pa.s.sengers.

Mary would have been surprised if she had known their real feelings toward her, which were not as remote as she supposed.

She looked, they both thought, like a schoolgirl going abroad for her Christmas holidays, only it was early for holidays: but if she were a schoolgirl it was strange that she should be travelling alone. Her furs were old-fas.h.i.+oned and inexpensive, her gray tweed dress plain and without style, her hat had a home-made air, but from under the short skirt peeped smart patent-leather shoes with silver buckles and pointed toes, and there was a glimpse of silk stockings thin as a mere polished film. A schoolgirl would not be allowed to have such shoes and stockings, which, in any case, were most unsuited to travelling. (Poor Mary had not known this, in replacing the convent abominations which had struck Peter as pathetic; and Mrs. Home-Davis had not troubled to tell her); nor would a schoolgirl be likely to have delicate gray suede gloves, with many b.u.t.tons, or a lace handkerchief like a morsel of seafoam. These oddities in Mary's toilet, due to her inexperience and untutored shopping, puzzled her companions; and often, while she supposed them occupied with the fas.h.i.+ons, they were stealing furtive glances at her clear, saintly profile, the full rose-red lips which contradicted its austerity, and the sparkling waves of hair meekly drawn down over the small ears. Her rapt expression, also, piqued their curiosity.

They were inclined to believe it a pose, put on to attract attention; and though they could not help acknowledging her beauty, they were far from sure that she was a person to be approved. At one instant the mother of the birdlike girl fancied her neighbour a child. The next, she was sure that the stranger was much more mature than she looked, or wished to look. And when, on leaving the train at Dover, Mary spoke French to a young Frenchman in difficulties with an English porter, the doubting hearts of her fellow-travellers closed against the offender.

With an accent like that, this was certainly not her first trip abroad, they decided. With raised eyebrows they telegraphed each other that they would not be surprised if she had an extremely intimate knowledge of Paris and Parisian ways.

Even the Frenchman she befriended was ungrateful enough not to know quite what to think of Mary. He raised his hat, and gave her a look of pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude, in case anything were to be got by it: but the deep meaning of the gaze was lost on the lately emanc.i.p.ated Sister Rose.

She blushed, because it happened to be the first time she had ever spoken to a young man unchaperoned by Lady MacMillan: but she was regarding him as a fellow-being, and remembering that she had been instructed to seize any chance of doing a kindness, no matter how small.

She had never been told that it was not always safe for a girl to treat a Frenchman as a fellow-being.

Afterward, on the boat, when a porter had placed her in a sheltered deck-seat with a curved top, the fellow-being ventured again to thank the English Mees for coming to his rescue. It was a pleasure to Mary to speak French, which had been taught her by Sister Marie-des-Anges, a French nun from Paris; and she and the young man plunged into an animated conversation. Her travelling companions had chairs on deck not far off, and they knew what to think of the mystery now. They were on the way to Mentone, but as they intended stopping a day in Paris, and going on by a cheaper train than the _train de luxe_, Mary did not see them again during the journey.

She was unconscious of anything in her appearance or conduct to arouse disapproval. Her one regret concerning the thin silk stockings and delicate shoes (which she had bought because they were pretty) was that her ankles were cold. She had no rug; but the Frenchman insisted on lending her his, tucking it round her knees and under her feet. Then she was comfortable, and even more grateful to him than he had been to her for translating him to the porter. He was dark and thin, cynically intelligent looking, of a type new to Mary; and she thanked him for being disappointed that she could not stop in Paris. He inquired if, by chance, she were going to Monte Carlo. When she said no, she was pa.s.sing on much farther, he was again disappointed, because, being an artist, he often ran down to Monte Carlo himself in the winter, and it would have been a great privilege to renew acquaintance with so charming an English lady.

Mary had feared that she might be ill in crossing the Channel, as she had never been on the water before, and could not know whether she were a good or a bad sailor. Aunt Sara and Elinor had told her unpleasant anecdotes of voyages; but when Dover Castle on its gray height, and white Shakespeare Cliff with its memories of "Lear," had faded from her following eyes, still she would hardly have known that the vessel was moving. The purring turbines scarcely thrilled the deck; and presently Mary ate sandwiches and drank a decoction of coffee, brought by her new friend. He laughed when she started at a mournful hoot of the siren, and was enormously interested to hear that she had never set eyes upon the sea until to-day. Mademoiselle, for such an ingenue, was very courageous, he thought, and looked at Mary closely; but her eyes wandered from him to the phantom-shapes that loomed out of a pale, wintry mist: tramps thras.h.i.+ng their way to the North Sea: a vast, distant liner with tiers of decks one above the other: a darting torpedo-destroyer which flashed by like a streak of foam.

Everything was so interesting that Mary would far rather not have had to talk, but she had been brought up in a school of old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy.

To her, a failure in politeness would have been almost a crime: and as the sisters had never imagined the possibility of her talking with a strange young man, they had not cautioned her against doing so.

She had meant to scribble a few notes of her impressions during the journey, for the benefit of Reverend Mother and the nuns, posting her letter in Paris; but as the Frenchman appeared surprised at her travelling alone, and everybody else seemed to be with friends, she decided not to write until Florence. There, when she could say that she had reached her journey's end safely, she might confess that she had left London without her relatives or even the companion-maid they advised.

"If Reverend Mother saw Aunt Sara, even for five minutes," Mary said to herself, "she couldn't blame me."

As it happened, there had been such a rush at the last, after the great decision was made, that Mary had not written to the convent. She had only telegraphed: "Leaving at once for Florence. Will write."

She was hoping that Reverend Mother would not scold her for what she had done, when suddenly another cliff, white as the cliffs of Dover, glimmered through the haze. Then she forgot her sackcloth, for, according to the Frenchman, this was old Grisnez, pus.h.i.+ng its inquiring nose into the sea; and beyond loomed the tall lighthouse of Calais.

It was absurdly wonderful on landing at Calais to hear every one talking French. Of course, Mary had known that it would be so, but actually to hear it, and to think that these people had spoken French since they were babies, was ridiculously nice. She felt rewarded for all the pains she had taken to learn verbs and acquire exactly the right accent; and she half smiled in a friendly way at the dark porters in their blue blouses, and at the toylike policemen with their swords and capes. Her porter was a cross-looking, elderly man, but at the smile she had for him he visibly softened; and, with her dressing-bag slung by a strap over his broad shoulder, made an aggressive s.h.i.+eld of his stout body to pilot her through the crowd.

Now she left behind the two Englishwomen and her French acquaintance, for she was a pa.s.senger in the _luxe_, which started earlier than the ordinary first-cla.s.s train for Paris. The Frenchman hoped and believed that she would regret his society, but she forgot him before the train went out, having no premonition of any future meeting.

This, then, was what they called a _wagon lit_! She was delighted with her quarters, supposing, as the compartment seemed small, that it was entirely for her use during the journey. She had been told that she would be provided with a bed, and she wondered how it was to be arranged.

Darkness fell over France, but Mary felt that she could see through the black veil, away to the south, where roses were budding in warm suns.h.i.+ne. She was whole-heartedly glad, for the first time, to be out of the convent.

If it had not been winter and night, she would perhaps have longed to stop in Paris, but the sight of the great bleak Gare du Nord chilled her. The ordeal of the _douane_ had to be gone through there, and Mary was glad when it was over, and she could go on again, though she was once more protected by a gallant porter; and a youngish official of the customs, after a glance at her face, quickly marked crosses on her luggage without opening it. Other women, older and not attractive, saw this favouritism, and swelled with resentment, as Elinor Home-Davis had when saying:

"_Is_ she the kind who can ever let men alone? She makes eyes at the footman!"

Mary had never heard of "making eyes." One did not use these vulgar expressions at the convent. But Peter would have known what Elinor meant; and even Reverend Mother knew instinctively that, if Mary Grant went out into the world, she would unconsciously influence all sorts and conditions of men with whom she came in contact, as the moon influences the tides. And Reverend Mother would have felt it safer for just such creatures as Mary to live out their lives in the shelter of a convent.

But Mary thought only how kind Frenchmen even of the lower cla.s.ses were, and wondered if those of other nations were as polite. Slowly the train took her round Paris, and, after what seemed a long time, stopped in another huge station, which s.h.i.+vered under a white, crude flood of electric light. Its name--Gare du Lyon--sounded warm, however, and sent her fancy flying southward again. She was growing impatient to get on when, to her surprise, a porter hovering in the corridor with a large dressing-bag plumped it into the rack beside her own. Mary started.

Could it be possible that any one else had a right to come in with her?