XVII
THE CONTINENTAL EXPRESS
I heard nothing from Paul for days, and was beginning to think reproachfully of his conduct, when, on the morning of the third day, a note was brought by hand to thePanoplyoffice. It was short and rather cryptic. He was evidently in some trouble, the exact nature of which he didn't disclose. He wanted me to come to him at once, and to keep the afternoon open.
I hurried down after lunch. Mrs. Gribble's face as she opened his hall door expressed relief. Paul has always been rather yearned upon by his landladies.
"Oh! I'm that glad you've come, Mr. Prentice," the good woman said, as she ushered me up the wide, shallow stair. "I don't think Mr. Ingram oughter be alone. He's bin talkin' to hisself dreadful all night. Me nor my 'usband couldn't get no sleep for harkening at 'im."
I entered the room with that air of boisterous incredulity which men keep for a stricken brother.
"On your back, Ingram? Nothing much wrong, I hope."
Paul was lying on the bed, half clad and in his dressing-gown. His pipe was in his mouth, and through the drift of tobacco smoke, with which the dark, oddly shaped little room was filled, I thought his face looked drawn. He motioned me to a chair with a wet pipe stem.
"Sit down and help yourself to tobacco," he said, and smoked on in silence.
"Prentice!" he broke out all of a sudden, so abruptly that I let the match I was striking fall; "did you ever break a woman's heart?"
I gaped at him.
"Oh, I'm not joking. I really am collecting evidence on the subject. I've been studying it hard now for two days and a night. There's not much help, is there," pointing out the open window, "in three chimney-pots and a demolition? If you hadn't come, I was prepared to take Mrs. Gribble's opinion. Come, Prentice—man to man—have you ever——?"
"No," I answered, rather shortly. "I've been too busy all my life."
"But it can be done?"
"My dear Ingram, you know 'women' is not a subject I've specialized on."
"But still, you keep your eyes open?"
"Well, then; I can't say I think it often happens: nothing like as often as the other way round; and yet——"
"And yet——I know. It may. And some people are doomed to knock their heads against exceptions all their lives."
He twisted himself to one side with the weak and peevish movement of a man seeking relief on the rack.
"Is the woman you're—er—writing about young, or only still young?"
"She's very, very young," he answered, with a curious sort of smile—bitter and yet tender at the same time.
"Good!" I commented cheerfully. "That's tremendously in her favor."
Paul smoked on. "I really didn't bring you here to talk generalities, Prentice," he said after a while. "Can you meet some people for me on the 3.45 Continental train at Charing Cross?"
I told him my afternoon was at his disposal.
"You're a sure good friend," he said simply, and I took the little phrase in full payment. Paul was seldom American in idiom but when he was touched or excited. "There's a mother and daughter—Mrs. and Miss Barbour. Let's see now; how will you spot them?"
"Did the daughter by any chance come with you to theÀ-peu-près, three weeks ago?"
"That's so, Prentice; I had forgotten."
"I think I shall know her again," I said, smiling a little behind my cigarette. Poor, unworldly Paul! "What am I to tell them?"
"I'm just figuring it out."
"What is really the matter, old man?"
"Mental vertigo, from thinking too long in a circle, really."
"I think I understand. A sort of moral fatigue."
"That's a splendid name for it."
"But will she—will they, be satisfied with that? Shall I be asked questions?"
"Say I'm run down."
"Run down and no visitors. Have I got it right?"
"And that I'm writing. Don't forget that part. How's time?"
I went to the window and looked at my watch. "Just time to do it comfortably."
"Good-bye, then, and thank you, Prentice, from my heart. You're doing me a big favor. Oh! by the way," calling me back from the door. "About Mrs. Hepworth."
"Yes?"
"She's written, making an appointment for to-night. The book, you know. More mutilation. I can't go as I am."
"Very well—I'll 'phone her."
I paused with my finger on the doorknob. "I can say 'moral fatigue' to her, I suppose."
Ingram seemed to think a moment. I wondered whether I had sounded impertinent.
"Yes," he said, slowly. "I think you can say it to her."
I reached Charing Cross with nearly ten minutes in hand. The 3.45 Continental, having probably thrown every local and slow train on the line half an hour out of its reckoning, was signalled "on time." A long line of porters was strung out along the curved platform. Motor-cars and carriages awaited the great ones of the earth, and a score of people paced the flagstones. Among them a couple of press men nodded absently to me. Punctually to time and quietly, as the expected always happens, the Folkestone express pushed its smoky old nose into the station. Porters shouted and jumped on the step, doors flew open, and the platform was covered in a trice with a jostling crowd of veiled women and ulstered men, the awkwardness of the long journey still in their cramped limbs. My trained eye searched the crowd rapidly but thoroughly for the girl I was to meet, and presently I saw her, beautiful, happily anxious, becomingly disordered from travel, and with perhaps a warmer pallor in her cheeks than when I had seen her last. She did not know me, of course, and it was the strangest, saddest thing in the world to feel myself scanned unconcernedly and passed over by the expectant eyes I had come to cloud, and maybe fill with tears. I reached her side and lifted my hat.
"Miss Barbour, I think."
She looked at me with a slight stiffening of the figure.
"My name is Prentice. I am a friend of Paul Ingram's."
"Of Paul's? Is he here?"
"Miss Barbour, pray do not be alarmed or anxious. Ingram is not quite well enough to meet the train and has asked me——"
Her eyes filled with terror. "Where is he? At his rooms? Oh! we will go at once, mother!"
I had never thought it would be easy; I saw now that it was not going to be as easy even as I had thought.
"Miss Barbour," I said, venturing to lay a hand on her coat-sleeve. "Pray attend to me for one moment. Ingram is to see no one to-night. There is no need for alarm, but——"
"——Mother, mother!"
A stout, comely old lady was making her way toward us. By her side a gnarled and grizzled railway servant walked, soothing her agitation with a patiently reassuring manner that, had he been a doctor and not a porter, concerned with chests, in fact, instead of with trunks, might have won him riches and a title.
"Yes, marm, I understand you puffeckly. Two gladstings, you said—large tin trunk, and a 'at-box. No, marm, I aint a-leavin' you. I'm agoin' to git you a four-w'eeler. You stand 'ere until I comes back. Your two gladstings, your large tin trunk, and your 'at-box is all numbered the same, and will be put together on this 'ere counter. 'Ave your keys in your 'and in case they wants one opened. As soon as that there man 'as marked them with chork I shall come back and put 'em on my barrer; then I shall take 'em to your four-w'eeler. No marm; I'm your porter, and no one else sha'n't 'ire me. No marm; nor no one else sha'n't take your four-w'eeler."
"Mother, Paul is ill, and I'm not to see him. This is Mr. Prentice, a friend of his."
"There," said Mrs. Barbour, jingling her keys sharply. "What did I say, Nelly. Those drains at Palèze. Is it something infectious, mister—mister——? Is there any temperature yet?"
I caught at the "infection" and lied, as I had foreseen I would. People were jostling and bumping against us. The girl had to catch my arm once.
"Please,pleaseset your minds at rest," I said. "I am confident it is nothing but a little overwork and worry that will be all right to-morrow. But, in the meantime, Paul is, as no doubt you know, rather nervous and scrupulous. To-morrow we shall know for certain what it is. He is writing, and you may take my word for it, it will be good news. And now, madam, please let me pass your luggage through the customs, see you safely into a cab, and take a good report back before Paul settles for the night." I had not been asked to do this, but nothing fits so easily and naturally into one lie as another lie.
The mother was tractable and not greatly concerned. I could see she was one of those ministering women upon whom sickness acts as a challenge, and who can look forward to a long spell of nursing, untroubled by misgivings as to the ultimate result. But the girl's white face and questioning eyes tortured me. I could feel the question in them even when my back was turned to her. I would not judge Paul hardly: would not judge him at all. I knew enough of life to know that a man may without a moment's warning find himself faced by some terrifying, insoluble problem, out of which there is no gentle, no easy, no honorable way. But his strange manner—his phrase, stranger still, about the "exceptions" it had been his lot to encounter, filled me with misgiving. I even wondered if mayhap I was the last man that should ever see perfect happiness in that perfect face.
I had put them into their cab, and was leaving the terminus, when, passing before a telephone box, I remembered my other message. I rang through to Portland Place, and, for the first time since I had known her, heard Althea's level voice along the wire, not only without pleasurable emotion, but even with a sudden inexplicable distaste. I was surprised, too, at the concern in it when I had delivered my message. She pressed me for a true account, and, tired of mystification, I gave her Paul's own words. At her next sentence I nearly dropped the receiver.
"My dear lady—think! Oh! youcan't."
"I'll risk it," Althea said, with a stubborn little laugh that I could fancy a flushed cheek accompanied. "I'm not conventional, as you know. Besides, you say the creature isn't in bed. Oh! you clever male duffers, with your insight and analysis, and not enough wit to know after months what a woman sees in the first five minutes—that a fellow-creature is perishing before your eyes of sheer intellectual starvation."
What could I do? Ring off. Sigh and make a further mental note as to the insane quality in a woman's courage. For what Althea proposed was nothing more nor less than to call at Ingram's rooms the next day in her car, if fine, and discuss alterations and revisions with him in the course of a long motor ride. As for me, with that child's white face and panic-stricken eyes before me, and a pleasant sense of being responsible for more than I could control, it was only left to pray for foul weather. Which, believe me or not, I heartily did.