The Devourers Part 43

They were at the door. By request of Nancy, n.o.body was there to speak to them. But all the boarders who were in the house were looking at them from behind the drawing-room curtains.

"Then what do you like for dessert?" said Fraulein, going down the stone steps by Anne-Marie's side, while Nancy still followed.

"I like peppermint bullseyes," said Anne-Marie, "and pink jelly." And she added: "Nothing else," while the pimply boy and the maid hoisted her into her carriage. Fraulein got in after her, with the many packages.

And the puppy barked at the mice.

"Good-bye, Anne-Marie! Good-bye, darling!" cried Nancy, kissing her with great difficulty through the carriage-window across Fraulein, and the violin, and the mice, that were on Fraulein's lap. "G.o.d bless you! G.o.d bless you and keep you, my own darling!"

The puppy barked deafeningly. The pimply boy nodded to the cabman, and off they were.

Nancy walked slowly back into the house, and up the stairs, and into the desolate rooms.

XV

Peggy and George accompanied her to the boat, Peggy excited and talkative, George depressed and silent. In his murky down-town office George had felt himself of late more poet than clerk, and now he was all elegy. She was leaving! She was going away with his heart, and she might perhaps never return! She might perhaps never return the four hundred dollars either. They belonged to a friend of George's--a mean and sordid soul. George stifled the unlovely thought, born of the clerk, and surrendered his spirit to the grief of the poet.

Farewell! Farewell! The s.h.i.+p turned its cruel side, and hid the little waving figure from his sight. It throbbed away like a great, unfaithful heart, abandoning the land. Farewell! What were four hundred dollars, belonging to a friend, compared with the torn and quivering heart-strings of a lover?

The s.h.i.+p heaved forward towards the east, rising and sinking as s.h.i.+ps rise and sink, carrying Nancy and her dresses, and her hats, and her little pots of cream, to the Unknown. And the nearer they got to him, the more frightened was Nancy. What if she should reach Paris, with the fourteen dollars she still possessed, and he were not there? What if he turned out to be a brute and a beast? What--oh, terrible thought!--if he were to think her not as pretty as he had expected? She was not really pretty. Oh, why had she not the pale suns.h.i.+ny hair of the American girl opposite her at table? Why not the youth-splashed eyes of the little girl from the West, who was going to Paris to study art? Why not the long, up-curling lashes of her light and starry glance?

Nancy comforted herself by hoping that he himself might be hideous. But if he were? How should she smile at him and talk to him if he were a repugnant, odious monster? Then she reasoned that if he were a monster, he would not have asked her to come. "Why not dine with me on Thursday?"

is not the kind of telegram a monster would send. No, he was not a monster.

What would he say to her when they met? Everything depended on the first moment. She pictured it in a thousand different ways. The pictures always began in the same manner. She arrived in Paris; she drove from the Gare du Nord, not to the Grand Hotel where he was staying, but to the Continental. She engaged a gorgeous suite of rooms. What! with fourteen dollars? Exactly so! What did it matter? It was Rouge or Noir.

If Rouge came up, all was well. If Noir--_la debacle_! _le deluge_!

Fifty francs more or less made absolutely no difference. A few hours'

rest. An hour or two for an elaborate toilette; all the creams used, all the details perfect. Then she would send a messenger, at a quarter to eight, to his hotel:

"Dear Unknown, I am here!"

Then--ah! then, what? He arrives, he enters, he sees her. Then she must say something. Ah! what? What are her first words to be? "_How do you do?_" Dreadful! No, never that! "_Here I am!_" Worse, worse still. In French, perhaps? "_Me voila!_" Ridiculous! No; she will say nothing. He must speak first.

Then she imagines his opening phrases. After a long silence his voice, deep and trembling with emotion: "Yes, you are the Woman of my Dreams!"

That would be very nice. Or, then: "Ah! Eve! Eve! How I have longed for you!" That would strike the right note at once. Or, then, with both hands outstretched: "So _this_ is Nancy!" That would be rather nice. But perhaps he will say something more original: "Why did you not tell me you had a dimple in your chin?"

Ah, how long Nancy lay awake thinking of those First Words! Nancy tossed in her little berth, and turned her pillow's freshest side to her hot cheek; and she palpitated and trembled, smiled and feared, repented and defied, until the huge boat creaked against the landing stage of the Havre dock.

She arrived at the Gare du Nord at three o'clock. She drove to the Continental, and engaged a suite of rooms that cost eighty francs a day: a sitting-room, all tender greens and delicate greys, looking as if it were seen through water, and adjoining it a gorgeous scarlet bedroom, with a dozen mirrors a-s.h.i.+ne, all deferentially awaiting the Elaborate Toilette.

Sleep was out of the question. By four o'clock the note that was to be sent at half-past seven was written, and Nancy began her elaborate toilette. She thought of ordering the coiffeur, but she remembered that coiffeurs had always dressed her hair in wonderful twists and coils and rolls, until her head looked like a cake to which her face did not in any way belong. So she did her hair _a la Carmen_, parted on one side.

It seemed the style of hair-dress that the Girl in the Letters would adopt. But when it was done it looked startling and impertinent. So she unpinned it again and decided in favour of a simple, unaffected coiffure. She parted her hair in the middle, plaited it, and pinned it round her head. It _was_ unaffected and simple. She looked like the youngest of the two Swedish girls in the boarding-house. She did not look at all like the Girl in the Letters. So once more she unpinned it, and did it _a la pierrot_--a huge puff in the middle, waving down over her forehead, and two huge puffs, one on each side. It looked pretty and unladylike.

By this time it was six o'clock. The creams! First a little cold cream; then _Creme Imperatrice_; then--she remembered the directions given her by the person in the shop perfectly--a tiny amount of Leichner's rouge, mixed with a little _Creme des Cremes_ in the palm of the hand, gently rubbed into the cheeks and chin; then powder--rose-coloured and Rachel.

Now a _soupcon_ of rouge on the lobes of the ears and in the nostrils.

This, the person in the shop said, was very important. Then the eyebrows brushed with an atom of _mascaro_, a touch of Leichner on the lips, an idea of shadow round the eyes--and behold!

Nancy beheld. Her face looked mauve, and her nostrils suggested a feverish cold. Her eyes looked large, and tired, and intense, like the eyes of the prairie chickens at Monte Carlo.

Seven o'clock! She had forgotten her nails! For twenty minutes she painted her nails with the pink varnish, which was sticky, and, once on, would not wash off. Her fingers looked as if she had dipped them in blood.

Half-past seven! She must send the note. She rang the bell, and a waiter came. He had been a nice, well-behaved German waiter, as he had shown her respectfully to her expensive rooms. When he saw her as she now appeared--she had hastily slipped into the lightest of the three trailing dresses--the waiter stared; he stared rudely, with raised eyebrows, at her, and took the note from her hand.

He read the address, nodded, and said: "Jawohl! All right. C'est bon!"

And then he smiled. He smiled--at her!--and went down the pa.s.sage whistling softly.

Nancy shut her door. She took off the trailing dress, and went to her bathroom. She turned on the hot water and washed her face. She washed off the shades and _soupcons_, the _cremes_ and the _mascaro_ from her eyebrows and her chin, her ears and her nostrils. Then she pinned her hair loosely on the top of her head, as she always did, and put on the darkest of the three trailing gowns. But her nails she scrubbed in vain.

They remained aggressively rose-coloured, and Nancy blushed hotly every time she saw them. She decided to put her hat and gloves on. She did so.

Then she sat down in her sitting-room and waited. She waited fifteen minutes.

Then somebody knocked.

Nancy started to her feet as if she had been shot. With beating heart she ran back into the bedroom and shut the door after her. No, it was not quite shut; it swung lightly ajar, and Nancy left it so. She heard the knock repeated more loudly at the outer door; she heard the door open, and someone enter. Then the door closed, and steps--the waiter's steps--went back along the hall.

Somebody was in that room. Somebody! A man! A man whom she had never seen. A man to whom she had written forty or fifty letters, whom she had called "mon ami" and "mes amours," "Prince Charming," and "my unknown lover"!

Nancy stood motionless, petrified with shame, her face hidden in her white-gloved hands. She would never go in--never! Not if she had to stand here for years! She could not face that silent man next door.

The situation was becoming ridiculous. The silence was tense in both rooms. Ah, when three thousand miles had separated them, how near she had felt to him! And now, with a few feet of carpet and an open door between them, he was far away--incommensurably far away! A stranger, an intruder, an enemy!

Utter silence. Was he there? Yes. Nancy knew he was there, waiting.

Suddenly Nancy was frightened. The one idea possessed her to get away from that unseen, silent man. She would slip through the bathroom, and out into the pa.s.sage and away! She took a step forward. Her trailing dress rustled. Her high-heeled boots creaked. And in the next room the man coughed.

Nancy stood still again, transfixed--turned to stone.

Another long silence, ludicrous, untenable. Then in the next room the First Words were spoken. He spoke them in a calm and well-bred voice.

"Our dinner will be cold."

Nancy laughed suddenly, softly, convulsively. Her voice was treble and sweet as she replied:

"What have you ordered?"

The man in the next room said: "Fillet of sole."

"Fried?" asked Nancy earnestly; and, knowing that unless she slid in on that fillet of sole she would never do so, she pa.s.sed quickly under the draped portiere and entered the room.

They looked each other in the face. She saw a large and stalwart figure, a hard mouth, and a strong, curved nose in a sunburnt face, two chilly blue eyes under a powerful brow, and waving grey hair. He looked down at her, and was satisfied. His cool blue gaze took her in from the top of her large black feathered hat to the tips of her Louis XV. shoes.

"Come," he said, offering his arm. And they went out together.

The dinner was not cold. Nancy hardly spoke at all. She was nervous and charming. She sipped Liebfraunmilch, and dimpled and rippled while he told her that he had mines in Peru, and that he had been away from civilization for twenty years.

"I went down to the mines when I was twenty, and came back when I was forty. That is four years ago. I have been fighting my way ever since, trying to keep clear of the wrong woman. I am afraid of women."