PAUL stood in the corridor and watched Paris slip by, rain-swept under a leaden sky. The storm had followed him across the Channel and had broken over the whole of the north of France. The rain looked as though it would never stop, and he rather enjoyed the dreary landscape, knowing that every moment he was nearing a sunny coast he had never seen. How did the poem go—Dijon, Maçon, Lyons, Valence, Avignon, Marseille—the very names were full of sunlight and the smell of wine—it couldn’t be raining in Valence or Avignon. His meditations were interrupted by the dinner steward and he took a ticket for the premier service. He went along to his sleeper to clean up for dinner, and realized with a shock as he opened the door that he was to share the compartment with another.
A very stout person was seated on the lower bunk. He was clad in a light grey suit covered with the largest checks Paul had ever seen, and on the floor beside him was an extremely pointed pair of light tan shoes. He was engaged in wriggling his toes, freed from their glacés prisons, with exquisite satisfaction, and mopping his face with a flowered bandana. As Paul came in he paused and looked out from the folds of flowered silk. The small eyes fringed with sandy lashes were set in a pink face. He was thick-necked and heavy-jowled, and his head being almost bald appeared to go up to a point, like some gleaming and highly coloured egg. Paul thought of a bookie he had once seen on Brighton Race Course.
“Evenin’,” he said.
“Good-evening,” replied Paul rather shortly.
“Whew! Bit warm, ain’t it? Glad to see you ain’t one o’ them Frenchies—can’t get on with their lingo myself. ’Ave a cigar—Coronas, they are.” And he offered Paul an enormous Corona from his pocket.
“Er—thanks awfully but I think I’d rather have a cigarette if you don’t mind—I’m just going to have dinner.”
“Oh, well—just as you like. Pity though—good cigars, they are.” He lit one himself and leant back with his thumbs in his waistcoat.
“’Aving dinner on the train, d’you say? You’re wrong, you know, you’re wrong. I ’ad a slap-up meal in Paree before starting, and jolly good it was; cheap, too, only fifty francs for a bottle of ’Eidseick—and everything of the best.” To add point to his remarks, he removed his cigar and got to work with a toothpick. Paul lit a cigarette and stared at him coldly. His companion was rendered temporarily speechless, but having brought his excavations to a triumphant conclusion he went on: “You got the top bunk, I see. Just as well, p’raps—I ain’t built for Alpine sports meself.” He laughed wheezily. “Stayin’ in Marsails?” he asked.
“No,” said Paul, “I’m going straight through to a fishing village along the coast.”
“Very nice, too,” said his companion. “Very nice indeed, I should say. I’m stoppin’ in Marsails for a while, just to see a bit of night life—and then I’m for the seaside meself. Come in for a bit of the best lately,” slapping his pocket, “so I thought I’d ’ave a look at the Sunny Sarth, as they say.”
The dinner bell came as a welcome interruption and Paul got up hurriedly.
“Well, I hope you’ll like it,” he said. “Er—care to have a look at my papers while I’m at dinner?”
“Well, that’s very kind of you. I don’t mind if I do. ’Ere—take a cigar to ’ave with your dinner—you’ll like it reelly—five bob a piece, they are.”
And Paul found himself in the corridor, Corona in hand. He started on a perilous journey to the restaurant car, the train lurching and shaking. Having navigated two coaches without accident, he saw Nemesis approaching in the form of a very large lady bearing down on him from the opposite direction. As he stepped backwards into a carriage to avoid her the train gave a particularly violent spring, jerking him off his balance. He felt his foot come down on something, and heard a small shriek behind him. Turning hurriedly round, he saw a tiny black felt hat bent in anguish over a pair of exquisite silk-clad legs, and a small hand clutching a patent-leather shoe. Paul blushed scarlet and addressed the top of the hat.
“Madame—je vous demande pardon—qu’est-ce que j’ai fait—” he stammered, bending down over her, and just then a face as exquisite as the legs was raised to his own. He caught a glimpse of brown eyes in a fine oval face and a small scarlet mouth twisted into an expression half of pain and half of amusement.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t think I’m permanently damaged. But you took me rather by surprise.”
Paul blushed again, and renewing his apologies in English he turned to go on his way when a voice called him back.
“I say, is this yours?” she said, and Paul saw her face round the door of the carriage now definitely laughing at him, and her hand holding out a battered Corona-Corona. He went back to retrieve it, conscious of the fact that the whole carriage was looking on with delighted interest.
“Thanks awfully,” he said. “Someone just gave me the wretched thing—how absurd!” and he caught her eye and laughed, and went on to dinner feeling he’d cut a figure that was far from heroic. And such a lovely girl. . . . Paul wondered if she’d had dinner—if he’d see her again—if he could possibly go back later to inquire about her foot.
Sitting down to dinner, he found himself entirely unable to concentrate on the copy of Life and Letters he’d brought with him to read. What extraordinarily nice legs she’d got. Paul wasn’t an expert on legs, but frequent visits to the British Museum to study the Greek vases made him recognize that hers really were the most classic shape. He sighed and ordered his food and wine, and found himself wishing he was the sort of chap who’d have the courage to ask a girl out to dinner. The empty chair opposite wasn’t very good company, and Paul, stimulated by the happenings of the past twenty-four hours, was bursting to talk. The restaurant car was packed, mostly with English and Americans, and above the rattle of the train there was a cheerful sound of conversation, the clatter of plates, and the popping of corks. Paul made another determined attempt on Life and Letters.
“Par ici, madame, s’il vous plait,” and then a voice said, “Oh—d’you mind if I sit at your table?” It was the girl he had trampled on.
She settled herself opposite him, placed a yellow-covered copy of André Gide on the table, and taking up a large flat handbag she held it in front of her and began to powder her nose.
What a fool she must think him, with his pompous Corona and his weak French; a tourist, a schoolmaster on holiday—horrible! That, he thought, looking at her covertly, was what she did not look like, a tourist. She seemed very much at home and Paul envied and admired her. She was something quite new to him, as exciting as a new flower discovered in a foreign land. Her face hidden, he noticed her hands, darting in and out of her bag with first a puff and then a lipstick, small, incredibly bronzed, with scarlet-enamelled nails. She lowered her handbag and frowned slightly into the mirror, which seemed to Paul extraordinary considering that it reflected a bronzed oval face with a flowerlike scarlet mouth and enormous brown eyes that looked frank and childish in spite of their heavy make-up. She was beautiful, she was startling, but to Paul she was a problem about which he had no data.
Could she possibly be a lady of Uncertain Virtue?
She summoned the waiter and ordered a cocktail and her dinner in faultless French.
“Aren’t these trains positively filthy?”
Paul gave a slight start and said: “Er—yes.”
She polished her glass, plate, knife, and fork with a napkin and smiled at him. The waiter brought her Martini and she leant across the table.
“Won’t you have a cocktail, too, to wash away our stormy encounter?”
Paul gave in gladly; she was making a party of it, and, damn it, why not? After all, wasn’t he in France? He summoned the waiter and ordered another.
“I must explain about that cigar,” he said. “I don’t generally carry them in my hand, but an awful fellow in my compartment pressed it on me. I don’t smoke the things myself.”
“Certes, vous n’avez pas l’air d’être banquier,” she retorted, nonplussing him for the moment. “We all hate bankers, don’t we? Perhaps your expensive friend is one. Let’s make him buy us some champagne. Isn’t this soup almost too P. L. M.? I suppose you’re going to India or somewhere from Marseille?”
“Oh, no,” replied Paul. “I’m going to St. Antoine along the coast. Do you know it? I say, by the way, would you really like some champagne?”
“Oh my dear no. I was only joking. But thanks very much. St. Antoine! Why, it’s my home town.”
(She had called him “my dear,” and was going to St. Antoine.)
“If you’ve never been there before you’ll like it,” she went on. “Of course everyone’s quite mad, or pretends to be. Lots of bright young people in bright young jumpers. They talk and drink and bathe at midnight and have amusing parties, but it’s all froth, you know. Just a few really hard workers like myself go there every year.”
She was speaking seriously, and Paul, who hadn’t enough courage to ask her what she worked at, concluded she was probably a journalist, or perhaps a professional dancer. Yes, very likely she was a dancer and he would see her in pearls in some Casino.
“Do you paint, too?” she asked.
(Good God! and he’d thought of her foxtrotting!)
“No, I’m afraid I can’t do anything like that. I’m a barrister. I say, do you really paint?”
“Why do you look so astonished?” she laughed.
“Well, I don’t know but—I’ve got a cousin who paints and she goes about in a sort of hand-woven bathrobe—like Burne-Jones, you know,” he added vaguely. She gave a peal of laughter.
“Sandals and no sex appeal—I know. Funny old-fashioned thing. I don’t see why one should dress the part, do you? And anyhow it’s a far cry from Morris to Matisse.”
“No, I don’t—that is, I mean,” he stumbled, “I think you look awfully nice as you are.”
She smiled into her coffee cup.
“We shall get swept out with the crumbs if we stay here much longer. Why not come and have a cigarette in my carriage if you don’t want to talk to your banker friend?”
So Paul followed the entrancing creature along the lurching train, and they sat down in opposite corners of the carriage. She gave him a French cigarette from her case and then said: “Is that to-day’s London paper you’ve got? May I look at it? I crossed over last night, and forgot to get a Daily Mail in Paris.”
She subsided behind it and Paul tried to bury himself in a magazine. He was rather proud of himself, for he’d insisted on paying for her dinner. And she’d asked him to dine with her in St. Antoine. What a marvellous holiday he was going to have. With a sense of guilt he suddenly remembered Major Kent, and the quest he was on. By Jove—if she was a painter she would probably know Adelaide Moon—even Adrian himself. He would ask her. He leant across and addressed the Daily Mail.
“I was wondering—do you know anyone called Adelaide Moon—or—”
The paper dropped from her hands. She stood up, and her face was white.
“I—I—Good-night—I’m going to bed.” And she disappeared into the corridor.
Paul sat staring at the empty seat in front of him. What had happened? Why had she rushed away? Could it have been his question—or something she’d read in the paper? He picked it up and scanned it.
The Premier to visit America. Murder in a London hotel. Cricket results. There was nothing there. Could he have offended her?
Puzzled and miserable, he went along to his carriage.
Paul told afterwards of the strange effect that his first view of the South had on him that morning, after rattling through the night from the grey rain-swept North:
“I woke up about half-past six, dressed and went out into the corridor. I suppose I was a bit sleepy still, and didn’t have time to dissect things and look at them like a tourist. I know I felt, as I leant out of the window, that I had suddenly come to life in a new world—a world that really had been created by the sun. It was brilliant, hard, dry and clear, extraordinarily arresting and exciting. There was a great plain stretching away to the distant mountains under a pale clear blue sky, and peasants ploughing with teams of white oxen. I could see far away towns and villages, white and sharply defined in the clear morning air. Then some low hills of crumbling yellowish rock with a little green scrub on them, some of them cut away into terraced vineyards. I remember a square stone house looking as though it had grown out of the side of the rock, with tiny slits of windows like a Moorish fort, and an old peasant woman dressed in black sitting under a vine minding some goats. The whole country was dried with sun so that the colours of the earth, sky, houses, and vegetation were pallid and full of light. I felt frightfully stimulated and excited, as though all kinds of adventure were waiting for me in this vital pagan land. Near Avignon I saw my first silvery grey olive trees—and then, as we drew in, the Palace of the Popes. I was torn between its castellated Italian towers and the smell of steaming bowls of coffee they were selling on the station. The coffee won!”