The boat-train was due to leave in ten minutes, and the platform at
Victoria Station (how changed since then!) showed that scene of
discreet and haughty excitement which it was wont to exhibit about
nine o'clock every evening in those days. The weather was wild. It had
been wet all day, and the rain came smashing down, driven by the great
gusts of a genuine westerly gale. Consequently there were fewer
passengers than usual, and those people who by choice or compulsion
had resolved to front the terrors of the Channel passage had a
preoccupied look as they hurried importantly to and fro amid piles of
luggage and groups of loungers on the wind-swept platform beneath the
flickering gas-lamps. But the porters, and the friends engaged in the
ceremony of seeing-off, and the loungers, and the bookstall
clerks--these individuals were not preoccupied by thoughts of intimate
inconveniences before midnight. As for me, I was quite alone with my
thoughts. At least, I began by being alone.
As I was registering a particularly heavy and overfed portmanteau to
Paris, a young woman put her head close to mine at the window of the
baggage-office.
"Mr. Foster? I thought it was. My cab set down immediately after
yours, and I have been trying to catch your eye on the platform. Of
course it was no go!"
The speech was thrown at me in a light, airy tone from a tiny, pert
mouth which glistened red behind a muslin veil.
"Miss Deschamps!" I exclaimed.
"Glad you remember my name. As handsome and supercilious as ever, I
observe. I haven't seen you since that night at Sullivan's reception.
Why didn't you call on me one Sunday? You know I asked you to."
"Did you ask me?" I demanded, secretly flattered in the extremity of
my youthfulness because she had called me supercilious.
"Well, rather. I'm going to Paris--and in this weather!"
"I am, too."
"Then, let's go together, eh?"
"Delighted. But why have you chosen such a night?"
"I haven't chosen it. You see, I open to-morrow at the Casino de
Paris for fourteen nights, and I suppose I've got to be there. You
wouldn't believe what they're paying me. The Diana company is touring
in the provinces while the theatre is getting itself decorated. I hate
the provinces. Leeds and Liverpool and Glasgow--fancy dancing there!
And so my half-sister--Carlotta, y'know--got me this engagement, and
I'm going to stay with her. Have you met Carlotta?"
"No--not yet." I did not add that I had had reason to think a good
deal about her.
"Well, Carlotta is--Carlotta. A terrific swell, and a bit of a Tartar.
We quarrel every time we meet, which isn't often. She tries to play
the elder sister game on me, and I won't have it. Though she is
elder--very much elder, you now. But I think her worst point is that
she's so frightfully mysterious. You can never tell what she's up to.
Now, a man I met at supper last night told me he thought he had seen
Carlotta in Bloomsbury yesterday. However, I didn't believe that,
because she is expecting me in Paris; we happen to be as thick as
thieves just now, and if she had been in London, she would have looked
me up."