'Ah, Didon, nous sommes perdues!' exclaimed Marie. Didon, plucking up her courage for the moment, asserted the legality of her own position and of that of her mistress. They had both a right to come to Liverpool. They had both a right to get into the cab with their luggage. Nobody had a right to stop them. They had done nothing against the laws. Why were they to be stopped in this way? What was it to anybody whether they called themselves Melmotte or Racine?
The gentleman understood the French oratory, but did not commit himself to reply in the same language. 'You had better trust yourself to me; you had indeed,' said the gentleman.
'But why?' demanded Marie.
Then the gentleman spoke in a very low voice. 'A cheque has been changed which you took from your father's house. No doubt your father will pardon that when you are once with him. But in order that we may bring you back safely we can arrest you on the score of the cheque,-- if you force us to do so. We certainly shall not let you go on board. If you will travel back to London with me, you shall be subjected to no inconvenience which can be avoided.'
There was certainly no help to be found anywhere. It may be well doubted whether upon the whole the telegraph has not added more to the annoyances than to the comforts of life, and whether the gentlemen who spent all the public money without authority ought not to have been punished with special severity in that they had injured humanity, rather than pardoned because of the good they had produced. Who is benefited by telegrams? The newspapers are robbed of all their old interest, and the very soul of intrigue is destroyed. Poor Marie, when she heard her fate, would certainly have gladly hanged Mr Scudamore.
When the gentleman had made his speech, she offered no further opposition. Looking into Didon's face and bursting into tears, she sat down on one of the boxes. But Didon became very clamorous on her own behalf,--and her clamour was successful. 'Who was going to stop her? What had she done? Why should not she go where she pleased. Did anybody mean to take her up for stealing anybody's money? If anybody did, that person had better look to himself. She knew the law. She would go where she pleased.' So saying she began to tug the rope of her box as though she intended to drag it by her own force out of the station. The gentleman looked at his telegram,--looked at another document which he now held in his hand, ready prepared, should it be wanted. Elise Didon had been accused of nothing that brought her within the law. The gentleman in imperfect French suggested that Didon had better return with her mistress. But Didon clamoured only the more. No; she would go to New York. She would go wherever she pleased;--all the world over. Nobody should stop her. Then she addressed herself in what little English she could command to half-a-dozen cab-men who were standing round and enjoying the scene. They were to take her trunk at once. She had money and she could pay. She started off to the nearest cab, and no one stopped her. 'But the box in her hand is mine,' said Marie, not forgetting her trinkets in her misery. Didon surrendered the jewel-case, and ensconced herself in the cab without a word of farewell; and her trunk was hoisted on to the roof. Then she was driven away out of the station,--and out of our story. She had a first-class cabin all to herself as far as New York, but what may have been her fate after that it matters not to us to enquire.