Selected Stories (33 page)

I had tried the second. But both are equally detestable and unsuccessful. At any rate, whichever you're trying is the worse, the impossible one.

It was the landlord this time. . . . Imitation of the landlord by the concierge threatening to toss me out. . . . Imitation of the concierge by the concierge taming the wild bull. . . . Imitation of the landlord rampant again, breathing in the concierge's face. I was the concierge. No, it was too nauseous. And all the while the black pot on the gas ring bubbling away, stewing out the hearts and livers of every tenant in the place.

“Ah!” I cried, staring at the clock on the mantelpiece, and then, realising that it didn't go, striking my forehead as though the idea had nothing to do with it. “Madame, I have a very important appointment with the director of my newspaper at nine-thirty. Perhaps to-morrow I shall be able to give you . . .”

Out, out. And down the métro and squeezed into a full carriage. The more the better. Everybody was one bolster the more between me and the concierge. I was radiant.

“Ah! pardon, Monsieur!” said the tall charming creature in black with a big full bosom and a great bunch of violets dropping from it. As the train swayed it thrust the bouquet right into my eyes. “Ah! pardon, Monsieur!”

But I looked up at her, smiling mischievously.

“There is nothing I love more, Madame, than flowers on a balcony.”

At the very moment of speaking I caught sight of the huge man in a fur coat against whom my charmer was leaning. He poked his head over her shoulder and he went white to the nose; in fact his nose stood out a sort of cheese green.

“What was that you said to my wife?”

Gare Saint Lazare saved me. But you'll own that even as the author of
False Coins
,
Wrong Doors
,
Left Umbrellas
, and two in preparation, it was not too easy to go on my triumphant way.

At length, after countless trains had steamed into my mind, and countless Dick Harmons had come rolling towards me, the real train came. The little knot of us waiting at the barrier moved up close, craned forward, and broke into cries as though we were some kind of many-headed monster, and Paris behind us nothing but a great trap we had set to catch these sleepy innocents.

Into the trap they walked and were snatched and taken off to be devoured. Where was my prey?

“Good God!” My smile and my lifted hand fell together. For one terrible moment I thought this was the woman of the photograph, Dick's mother, walking towards me in Dick's coat and hat. In the effort—and you saw what an effort it was—to smile, his lips curled in just the same way and he made for me, haggard and wild and proud.

What had happened? What could have changed him like this? Should I mention it?

I waited for him and was even conscious of venturing a fox-terrier wag or two to see if he could possibly respond, in the way I said: “Good evening, Dick! How are you, old chap? All right?”

“All right. All right.” He almost gasped. “You've got the rooms?”

Twenty times, good God! I saw it all. Light broke on the dark waters and my sailor hadn't been drowned. I almost turned a somersault with amusement.

It was nervousness, of course. It was embarrassment. It was the famous English seriousness. What fun I was going to have! I could have hugged him.

“Yes, I've got the rooms,” I nearly shouted. “But where is Madame?”

“She's been looking after the luggage,” he panted. “Here she comes, now.”

Not this baby walking beside the old porter as though he were her nurse and had just lifted her out of her ugly perambulator while he trundled the boxes on it.

“And she's not Madame,” said Dick, drawling suddenly.

At that moment she caught sight of him and hailed him with her minute muff. She broke away from her nurse and ran up and said something, very quick, in English; but he replied in French: “Oh, very well. I'll manage.”

But before he turned to the porter he indicated me with a vague wave and muttered something. We were introduced. She held out her hand in that strange boyish way Englishwomen do, and standing very straight in front of me with her chin raised and making—she too—the effort of her life to control her preposterous excitement, she said, wringing my hand (I'm sure she didn't know it was mine),
Je ne parle pas français
.

“But I'm sure you do,” I answered, so tender, so reassuring, I might have been a dentist about to draw her first little milk tooth.

“Of course she does,” Dick swerved back to us. “Here, can't we get a cab or taxi or something? We don't want to stay in this cursed station all night. Do we?”

This was so rude that it took me a moment to recover; and he must have noticed, for he flung his arm round my shoulder in the old way, saying: “Ah, forgive me, old chap. But we've had such a loathsome, hideous journey. We've taken years to come. Haven't we?” To her. But she did not answer. She bent her head and began stroking her grey muff; she walked beside us stroking her grey muff all the way.

“Have I been wrong?” thought I. “Is this simply a case of frenzied impatience on their part? Are they merely ‘in need of a bed,' as we say? Have they been suffering agonies on the journey? Sitting, perhaps, very close and warm under the same travelling rug?” and so on and so on while the driver strapped on the boxes. That done—

“Look here, Dick. I go home by métro. Here is the address of your hotel. Everything is arranged. Come and see me as soon as you can.”

Upon my life I thought he was going to faint. He went white to the lips.

“But you're coming back with us,” he cried. “I thought it was all settled. Of course you're coming back. You're not going to leave us.” No, I gave it up. It was too difficult, too English for me.

“Certainly, certainly. Delighted. I only thought, perhaps . . .”

“You must come!” said Dick to the little fox-terrier. And again he made that big awkward turn towards her.

“Get in, Mouse.”

And Mouse got in the black hole and sat stroking Mouse II and not saying a word.

Away we jolted and rattled like three little dice that life had decided to have a fling with.

I had insisted on taking the flap seat facing them because I would not have missed for anything those occasional flashing glimpses I had as we broke through the white circles of lamplight.

They revealed Dick, sitting far back in his corner, his coat collar turned up, his hands thrust in his pockets, and his broad dark hat shading him as if it were a part of him—a sort of wing he hid under. They showed her, sitting up very straight, her lovely little face more like a drawing than a real face—every line was so full of meaning and so sharp-cut against the swimming dark.

For Mouse was beautiful. She was exquisite, but so fragile and fine that each time I looked at her it was as if for the first time. She came upon you with the same kind of shock that you feel when you have been drinking tea out of a thin innocent cup and suddenly, at the bottom, you see a tiny creature, half butterfly, half woman, bowing to you with her hands in her sleeves.

As far as I could make out she had dark hair and blue or black eyes. Her long lashes and the two little feathers traced above were most important.

She wore a long dark cloak such as one sees in old-fashioned pictures of Englishwomen abroad. Where her arms came out of it there was grey fur—fur round her neck, too, and her close-fitting cap was furry.

“Carrying out the mouse idea,” I decided.

Ah, but how intriguing it was—how intriguing! Their excitement came nearer and nearer to me, while I ran out to meet it, bathed in it, flung myself far out of my depth, until at last I was as hard put to it to keep control as they.

But what I wanted to do was to behave in the most extraordinary fashion—like a clown. To start singing, with large extravagant gestures, to point out of the window and cry: “We are now passing, ladies and gentlemen, one of the sights for which
notre Paris
is justly famous,” to jump out of the taxi while it was going, climb over the roof and dive in by another door; to hang out of the window and look for the hotel through the wrong end of a broken telescope, which was also a peculiarly ear-splitting trumpet.

I watched myself do all this, you understand, and even managed to applaud in a private way by putting my gloved hands gently together, while I said to Mouse: “And is this your first visit to Paris?”

“Yes, I've not been here before.”

“Ah, then you have a great deal to see.”

And I was just going to touch lightly upon the objects of interest and the museums when we wrenched to a stop.

Do you know—it's very absurd—but as I pushed open the door for them and followed up the stairs to the bureau on the landing I felt somehow that this hotel was mine.

There was a vase of flowers on the window sill of the bureau, and I even went so far as to rearrange a bud or two and to stand off and note the effect while the manageress welcomed them. And when she turned to me and handed me the keys (the
garçon
was hauling up the boxes) and said: “Monsieur Duquette will show you your rooms”—I had a longing to tap Dick on the arm with a key and say, very confidentially: “Look here, old chap. As a friend of mine I'll be only too willing to make a slight reduction . . .”

Up and up we climbed. Round and round. Past an occasional pair of boots (why is it one never sees an attractive pair of boots outside a door?). Higher and higher.

“I'm afraid they're rather high up,” I murmured idiotically. “But I chose them because . . .”

They so obviously did not care why I chose them that I went no further. They accepted everything. They did not expect anything to be different. This was just part of what they were going through—that was how I analysed it.

“Arrived at last.” I ran from one side of the passage to the other, turning on the lights, explaining.

“This one I thought for you, Dick. The other is larger and it has a little dressing-room in the alcove.”

My “proprietary” eye noted the clean towels and covers, and the bed linen embroidered in red cotton. I thought them rather charming rooms, sloping, full of angles, just the sort of rooms one would expect to find if one had not been to Paris before.

Dick dashed his hat down on the bed.

“Oughtn't I to help that chap with the boxes?” he asked—nobody.

“Yes, you ought,” replied Mouse, “they're dreadfully heavy.”

And she turned to me with the first glimmer of a smile: “Books, you know.” Oh, he darted such a strange look at her before he rushed out. And he not only helped, he must have torn the box off the
garçon's
back, for he staggered back, carrying one, dumped it down and then fetched in the other.

“That's yours, Dick,” said she.

“Well, you don't mind it standing here for the present, do you?” he asked, breathless, breathing hard (the box must have been tremendously heavy). He pulled out a handful of money. “I suppose I ought to pay this chap.”

The
garçon
, standing by, seemed to think so too.

“And will you require anything further, Monsieur?”

“No! No!” said Dick impatiently.

But at that Mouse stepped forward. She said, too deliberately, not looking at Dick, with her quaint clipped English accent: “Yes, I'd like some tea. Tea for three.”

And suddenly she raised her muff as though her hands were clasped inside it, and she was telling the pale, sweaty
garçon
by that action that she was at the end of her resources, that she cried out to him to save her with “Tea. Immediately!”

This seemed to me so amazingly in the picture, so exactly the gesture and cry that one would expect (though I couldn't have imagined it) to be wrung out of an Englishwoman faced with a great crisis, that I was almost tempted to hold up my hand and protest.

“No! No! Enough Enough. Let us leave off there. At the word—tea. For really, really, you've filled your greediest subscriber so full that he will burst if he has to swallow another word.”

It even pulled Dick up. Like someone who has been unconscious for a long time he turned slowly to Mouse and slowly looked at her with his tired, haggard eyes, and murmured with the echo of his dreamy voice: “Yes. That's a good idea.” And then: “You must be tired, Mouse. Sit down.”

She sat down in a chair with lace tabs on the arms; he leaned against the bed, and I established myself on a straight-backed chair, crossed my legs and brushed some imaginary dust off the knees of my trousers. (The Parisian at his ease.)

There came a tiny pause. Then he said: “Won't you take off your coat, Mouse?”

“No, thanks. Not just now.”

Were they going to ask me? Or should I hold up my hand and call out in a baby voice: “It's my turn to be asked.”

No, I shouldn't. They didn't ask me.

The pause became a silence. A real silence.

“. . . Come, my Parisian fox-terrier! Amuse these sad English! It's no wonder they are such a nation for dogs.”

But, after all—why should I? It was not my “job,” as they would say. Nevertheless, I made a vivacious little bound at Mouse.

“What a pity it is that you did not arrive by daylight. There is such a charming view from these two windows. You know, the hotel is on a corner and each window looks down an immensely long, straight street.”

“Yes,” said she.

“Not that that sounds very charming,” I laughed. “But there is so much animation—so many absurd little boys on bicycles and people hanging out of windows and—oh, well, you'll see for yourself in the morning. . . . Very amusing. Very animated.”

“Oh yes,” said she.

If the pale, sweaty
garçon
had not come in at that moment, carrying the tea-tray high on one hand as if the cups were cannon-balls and he a heavy-weight lifter on the cinema . . .