There were, it turned out, three carriages in all, those open hacks that may still be had in Paris if they are hunted up in time. Jenny had a standing order with them and when they were not called upon still they circled about her address, like flies about a bowl of cream. The three cabbies were hunched up on their boxes, their coats about their ears, for though it was an early autumn night, it had become very chilly by twelve o’clock. They had been ordered for eleven and had been sitting on their boxes for the past hour.
Jenny, cold with dread lest Robin should get into one of the other carriages with a tall slightly surprised English girl, seated herself in the farthest corner of the foremost fiacre and called, ‘Here, here,’ leaving the rest of the guests to dispose of themselves. The child, Sylvia, sat across from her, the ragged gray rug held in two clenched hands. There was a great deal of chattering and laughter, when to her horror Jenny saw that Robin was moving toward the second carriage in which the English girl had already seated herself. ‘Ah no, no!’ Jenny cried, and began beating the upholstery, sending up a cloud of dust. ‘Come here,’ she said in an anguished voice, as if it were the end of her life, ‘Come here with me, both of you,’ she added in a lowered and choking tone; and assisted by the doctor, Robin got in, the young Englishwoman, to Jenny’s consternation, taking the seat by her side.
Doctor O’Connor now turned to the driver and called out: ‘Ecoute, mon gosse, va comme si trente-six diables étaient accrochés à tes fesses!’ Then waving his hand in a gesture of abandon, he added: ‘Where to but the woods, the sweet woods of Paris! Fais le tour du Bois!’ he shouted, and slowly the three carriages, horse behind horse, moved out into the Champs Elysées.
Jenny, with nothing to protect her against the night but her long Spanish shawl, which looked ridiculous over her flimsy hoop and bodice, a rug over her knees, had sunk back with collapsed shoulders. With darting, incredible swiftness, her eyes went from one girl to the other, while the doctor, wondering how he had managed to get himself into the carriage which held three women and a child, listened to the faint laughter from the carriages behind, feeling, as he listened, a twinge of occult misery. ‘Ah!’ he said under his breath. ‘Just the girl that God forgot.’ Saying which, he seemed to be precipitated into the halls of justice, where he had suffered twenty-four hours. ‘Oh, God help us,’ he said, speaking aloud, at which the child turned slightly on her seat, her head, with large intelligent eyes directed toward him, which had he noticed, would have silenced him instantly (for the doctor had a mother’s reverence for childhood.) ‘What manner of man is it that has to adopt his brother’s children to make a mother of himself, and sleeps with his brother’s wife to get him a future—it’s enough to bring down the black curse of Kerry.’
‘What?’ said Jenny in a loud voice, hoping to effect a break in the whispered conversation between Robin and the English girl. The doctor turned up his coat collar.
‘I was saying, madame, that by his own peculiar perversity God has made me a liar—’
‘What, what is that you say?’ demanded Jenny, her eyes still fixed on Robin so that her question seemed to be directed rather to that corner of the carriage than to the doctor.
‘You see before you, madame,’ he said, ‘one who was created in anxiety. My father, Lord rest his soul, had no happiness of me from the beginning. When I joined the army he relented a little because he had a suspicion that possibly in that fracas which occasionally puts a son on the list of “not much left since", I might be damaged. After all, he had no desire to see my ways corrected with a round of buckshot. He came into me early in the dawn as I lay in my bed, to say that he forgave me, and that indeed he hoped to be forgiven; that he had never understood, but that he had, by much thought, by heavy reading, come back with love in his hand, that he was sorry, that he came to say so; that he hoped I could conduct myself like a soldier. For a moment he seemed to realize my terrible predicament: to be shot for man’s meat, but to go down like a girl, crying in the night for her mother. So I got up in bed on my knees and crawled to the foot where he stood, and cast my arms about him and said, “No matter what you have done or thought, you were right, and there’s nothing in my heart but love for you and respect."’
Jenny had shrunk into her rug and was not listening. Her eyes followed every movement of Robin’s hand, which was laid now on the child’s hand, now stroking her hair, the child smiling up into the trees.
‘Oh,’ said the doctor, ‘for the love of God!’