Gregory, as he strolled and waited for his old friend and whilom Oxford tutor, Professor Blackburn, whom he had promised to see off, had often to pause or to deviate in his course; for, though it was still early, and the season not a favourite one for crossing, the platform was quite sufficiently crowded, and crowded, evidently, with homeward-bound Americans, mostly women. Gregory tended to think of America and its people with the kindly lightness common to his type. Their samenesses didn't interest him, and their differences were sometimes vexatious. He had a vague feeling that they'd really better have been Colonials and be done with it. Professor Blackburn last night had reproved this insular levity. He was going over with an array of discriminations that Gregory had likened to an explorer's charts and instruments. He intended to investigate the most minute and measure the most immense, to lecture continually, to dine out every evening and to write a book of some real appropriateness when he came home. Gregory said that all that he asked of America was that it should keep its institutions to itself and share its pretty girls, and the professor told him that he knew more about the latter than the former. There were not many pretty girls on the platform this morning, though he remarked one rather pleasing young person who sat idly on a pile of luggage and fixed large, speculative, innocently assured eyes upon him when he went by, while near her her mother and a tawny sister disputed bitterly with a porter. Most of the ladies who hastened to and fro seemed, while very energetic, also very jaded. They were packed as tightly with experiences as their boxes with contraband clothing, and they had both, perhaps, rather heavily on their minds, wondering, it was probable, how they were to get them through. Some of them, strenuous, eye-glassed and scholastic, looked, however, as they marshalled their pathetically lean luggage, quite innocent of material trophies.
Among these alien and unfamiliar visages, Gregory caught sight suddenly of one that was alien yet recognizable. He had seen the melancholy, simian features before, and after a moment he placed the neat, black person, walking beside a truck piled high with enormous boxes, as Louise, Madame von Marwitz's maid. To recognise Louise was to think of Miss Woodruff. Gregory looked around the platform with a new interest.
Miss Woodruff was nowhere to be seen, but a new element pervaded the dingy place, and it hardly needed the presence of four or five richly dressed ladies bearing sheaves of flowers, or that of two silk-hatted impresario-looking gentlemen with Jewish noses, to lead Gregory to infer that the element was Madame von Marwitz's, and that he had, inadvertently, fallen upon the very morning of her departure. Already an awareness and an expectancy was abroad that reminded him of that in the concert hall. The contagion of celebrity had made itself felt even before the celebrity herself was visible; but, in another moment, Madame von Marwitz had appeared upon the platform, surrounded by cohorts of friends. Dressed in a long white cloak and flowing in sables, a white lace veil drooping about her shoulders, a sumptuous white feather curving from her brow to her back, she moved amidst the scene like a splendid, dreamy ship entering some grimy Northern harbour.
Mrs. Forrester, on heels as high as a fairy-godmother's and wearing a strange velvet cloak and a stranger velvet bonnet, trotted beside her; Sir Alliston was on the other hand, his delicate Vandyke features nipped with the cold; Mr. Claude Drew walked behind and before went Eleanor Scrotton, smiling a tight, stricken smile of triumph and responsibility. As the group passed Gregory, Miss Scrotton caught sight of him.
"We are in plenty of time, I see," she said. "Dear me! it has been a morning! Mercedes is always late. Could you, I wonder, induce these people to move away. She so detests being stared at."
Eleanor, as usual, roused a mischievous spirit in Gregory. "I'm afraid I'm helpless," he replied. "We're in a public place, and a cat may look at a king. Besides, who could help looking at those marvellous clothes."
"It isn't a question of cats but of impertinent human beings," Miss Scrotton returned with displeasure. "Allow me, Madam," she forged a majestic way through a gazing group.
"Where is Miss Woodruff?" Gregory inquired. He was wondering.
"Tiresome girl," Miss Scrotton said, watching the ladies with the flowers who gathered around her idol. "She will be late, I'm afraid. She had forgotten Victor."
"Victor? Is Victor the courier? Why does Miss Woodruff have to remember him?"