He looked about him. He saw the crowd on deck but he did not connect it with her. He was out of his reckoning. He had never thought of what would happen in port as regarded her, or where he would go or what he would do; making plans was not in his way. In the ordinary course of things he would have gone to the British consulate and the Shipwrecked Mariners’ people would have returned him, carriage paid, to England. He had always been in the hands of others and of chance.
She—he had always called her She, and here, be it said, he did not know her name, never having asked—She had now taken him into her hands and he felt vaguely that she was a power on this new beach where he was stranded.
Had you told him that she was a woman of society and very wealthy his idea of her power would not have been increased; he knew nothing of wealth or society. She was She in her old dress that he knew so well, and still carrying the sou’wester he had fetched from the cave where she had done that chap in, and as for any idea of being under an obligation to her for food or housing he had none. He would have done the same for her.
Yet, to tell the truth, the docks, with no money in his pocket and the cold prospect of brilliant Marseilles, had made him feel adrift like a lost child. Civilisation had affected him as it had affected her, so that something, now, made him put his hand on her shoulder to get the touch of her, and she, knowing that every eye in all that party behind her was upon them, took the great hand and held it and patted it.
It was as well to take her stand at once, though she was scarcely bothering about that. Then, still holding his hand, she came along that white deck towards the gang-plank. The officers knew and, as they bade her good-bye, they nodded to Raft, but the Parisians knew nothing but that Cléo had gone clearly mad—and that that awful sailor had placed his hand on her shoulder, familiarly!
There were several automobiles waiting by the wharf and Madame de Brie, half-dumb and slightly agitated, having pointed out the car she had reserved for Cléo, the girl introduced Raft.
“This is Raft who saved my life,” said Cléo.
Then she took Raft by the arm and pushed him into the seat beside the chauffeur; having done that, she got into the car, following Madame de Brie. The Comtesse de Mirandole got in, also, followed by Monsieur de Brie and his gold eye glasses.
The mistral was blowing so that the windows of the car had to be kept closed.
Used to fresh air, the girl nearly choked at first with the stuffiness of the car. The olfactory nerve is really a prolongation of the brain, as though the brain, distrusting the other senses, had pushed out a trustworthy scout to see what the world and its contents were really like. The sense of smell never lies; it is of all senses the truest and it handed along without comment to the brain of Cléo the faint perfume of the stephanotis affected by Madame de Brie and of the Yoya-yoya affected by the Comtesse de Mirandole, also traces from the varnish and upholstery of the car.