Observing that all but a few sturdy and muscular men submitted to this spoliation, and unhesitatingly obeyed the commands of the gnomes, Ermengarde, feeling very lone and lorn, and suddenly forgetting for sheer weariness the whole of the French language in a lump, gave herself up for lost, and was borne passively in the tide of fellow-sufferers, who formed a soft but shifting support, to the gangway, where the pleasing spectacle of a nervous man dropping an open purse of gold into the sea just in front of her in attempting to produce a ticket, showed that every depth has a lower deep, and consoled her with the reflection that her own spare pence were safely bestowed in various inaccessible portions of her attire.
But here she was at last, in the beau pays de France, within measurable distance of the much-desired and artistically decorated sofa, etc., if stiff and trembling limbs would but support her through the tourist's purgatory, the Douane. Never again would she dread solitary travel; the sea trip in retrospect grew to be absolutely delicious—if she had only known it at the time—in the exaltation of having survived the awful ordeal of passing through the chops of the Channel—not that she had noticed any chops—she felt capable of penetrating to Central Africa. Actually penetrating only to the centre of the Douane, which at first sight she supposed to be a large stable or coach-house, our poor untravelled traveller sought the friendly face of Numéro Quatre among the long lines of brass-plated gnomes, only to find it, with its elfish grin and the whole of her travelling necessaries, conspicuous by its absence.
It was then, after long and vain search and countless wild and polyglot inquiries of unsympathizing foreigners, and endless courses up and down and round the crowded, many-voiced Douane, that the hapless Ermengarde began to ask herself why she had left the safe and comfortable precincts of her native land, and braved cold and famine and the terrors of the deep, only to become the prey of grinning brigands upon savage and inhospitable shores. Poor little Charlie, unwilling victim of enforced football, but at least happy in ignorance of his mother's fate! London was undoubtedly foggy; but property there was comparatively safe. People there were at least not compelled to part with the whole of their possessions at the bidding of strange monsters. Nor were they obliged there to lose expensive Train de Luxe by waiting for hours in places with nothing to sit upon for people who never came.
Crowds of smiling gnomes, cheerfully hung with other people's property, stood in rank, gaily responding to the cries of rapture with which their respective victims singled them out; there were dramatic meetings between robbers and robbed, joyous recognition of property and gnome, ecstatic greetings on the part of despoiled tourists of Numéro Cinq, Numéro Cent, Numéro everything but Quatre.
Agonized inquiries for Numéro Quatre of other brass-plated caps elicited cheerful replies that he would be here soon; but he was small and Ermengarde was not over tall; and as gnome after gnome was recaptured by long-lost owners, and compelled to unload his spoil upon the long counter, to be marked with mystic runes to a briefly muttered shibboleth in polyglot accents, and the congested crowd thinned and melted, and time and strength and the last remnants of hope in Ermengarde's breast with it, she felt herself on the point of tears, and was just beginning to drag herself empty-handed to the long-desired repose of that artistically decorated stateroom, when, at the far end of the hall, the square and cheerful countenance of the missing Numéro Quatre was at last discerned, and the whole of his sins and her sufferings forgotten in an eye-blink.
As for the gnome, he unblushingly commanded his victim to quicken her trembling steps on pain of losing the train, went through a quick pantomime at the counter, and dashed off with his spoil at express speed, followed at a respectful distance by his exhausted prey, whose fainting spirits rose when at last she saw the long-hoped-for train, with its vases of mimosa, rose, and sweet double stock in the restaurant car windows. Very haughtily she handed her ticket to a magnificently gold-braided person at his demand, expecting to be respectfully conducted to her place "as to a theatre stall"; and sighed with deep content, feeling that the great all-compensating moment of the journey had at last arrived.
But the great gold-braided one, muttering a number to the long-lost Quatre, merely waved a hand towards a sort of steep companion-ladder, and turned to resume a broken chat with a friend. The ladder surmounted, and the gnome having plumped the baggage, sadly reduced in quantity and possibly in quality, into the first compartment he came to and vanished with silver in hand, Ermengarde found herself in a narrow slip of a compartment with a wide and springy seat, a tiny, hinged slab under the outside window and just room and no more for the disposal of moderate-sized female limbs without positive discomfort or involuntary kicks against an oblique wooden partition, narrowing to the doorway, varnished, and featureless, a large spittoon filled with water, a fellow traveller with mountains of hand-baggage, and nothing more. The private dressing-room, the airy space, the little hinged seats, "should the passenger wish to change position," etc., where were these?
Our pilgrimage through this vale of tears is mile-stoned by lost illusions, Ermengarde reflected, subsiding with a deep sigh in the best corner of the seat, which her fellow pilgrim had considerately left for her, and feeling too glad to sit upon anything after the long skirmish through the Douane to be over-critical, when suddenly a frightful thought struck her.
"Surely this carriage faces the sea?" she cried in tones of horror.
"Certainly," the other lady returned sweetly.