The Guests Of Hercules. C. N. Williamson
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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 suède gloves, with many buttons, 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 fashions, 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 passionate gratitude, in case anything were to be got by it: but the deep meaning of the gaze was lost on the lately emancipated 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 passing 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 thrashing 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-fashioned 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, pushing 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 shield 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 passenger in the luxe, which started earlier than the ordinary first-class 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 sunshine. 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