Chapter IV
The Azure Shore
Was it a dream, or had she really seen the Anarchist's bearded, goggled face bending over her in close proximity to her fellow-traveller's? Who could say? These two were shrouded in mystery, and permeated with intrigue, phantasmic, unreal. The woman professed not to have observed the man, and when asked to notice him as he passed their door in the corridor, had stared blankly in every other direction, looked at the conductor, attendants, other passengers, but always failed to perceive a man with beard and goggles.
Yet, when sitting on the jolting little seat in the corridor, while the attendant made up the beds, at her fellow-traveller's kind suggestion, so that she might lie facing the engine, Ermengarde, now wide awake and sensible, could have taken her oath that she saw these intriguers talking together, in the little lobby at the entrance end of the corridor.
"Talking to whom?" the woman of mystery replied, with that baffling, stony-blank look that she put on like a mask at times. "Yes, I asked the man to make up the beds at once, that you might face the engine. See what nice bedding they give us; sheets, pillow-cases, all complete, and snowy white—so different from London-washed linen. I shall be glad to go to bed myself, after all the shaking and rattling. Which man did you say? I see nobody with a beard. Let us smile at the bed-maker as if we meant tips—five-franc smiles. He's very civil. No; he's clean-shaven. So sorry going backwards upsets you."
That was all to be got out of this woman of mystery, who seemed so impersonal and so much above all feminine, not to say human, infirmity. Yet there was a curious attractiveness about her. The eyes, that were at times so blankly impervious to expression from within or impression from without, were beautiful in shape and colour, of the dark blue that varies from grey to purple, and shaded by long sweeping lashes on finely curved lids. Her mouth shut firmly in the true bow shape, with full lips, that, in repose, had a sort of voluptuous sadness. She was slender and rather tall, moved well, and had in her figure and bearing a sort of melancholy distinction. A woman with a past, undoubtedly, and, by all appearances, with a present of precarious tenure and painful interest as well. The kind of woman men can never pass without taking note of, though nothing in her bearing, look, or dress challenges observation, unless it be an accentuated quietness and reserve. Such women, it occurred to Ermengarde, when not absolute saints, are eminently fit for "treasons, stratagems, and spoils." What if she were in league with the Anarchist, whose anarchism might be, after all, of the common-place type that indiscriminately relieves fellow-creatures of the burden of personal property? A distinctly unpleasant idea to entertain of one who shared sleeping-quarters and was so ready to have beds made up and lights covered.
In cases like this, the only comfort is to carry nothing worth stealing. But few travellers are without a watch and at least some little money. Ermengarde's was safely sewn up in some inaccessible portion of her attire, and when her companion plausibly suggested the comfort of undressing before going to bed, and volunteered to help her out of her clothes, she was glad to be able to point out that there was not room enough to undress oneself in, much less anyone else. Then she wondered, did she look rich? and when they found her so little worth robbing, would they murder her in revenge afterwards?—or beforehand to prevent a disturbance—charming reflections to sleep upon. Of course, Arthur had been right—the man had an exasperating way of always being right, especially about unpleasant contingencies—in saying that she ought not to travel alone. How many tales and newspaper records there had been lately of passengers robbed and murdered by unknown hands, especially in Southern France and Italy! It would be a judgment on her for taking things into her own hands, and flaunting in her husband's face a certain small hoard they both knew of—to be used only in great emergency, such as conjugal desertion, or personal violence, or bankruptcy, their jest had been. That had been coarsely done, she owned now with flaming cheeks; he had felt, perhaps resented, the indelicacy of the revolt. Let them rob her, then, but let them spare her life. The thought of a motherless Charlie, screwing his precious fists into his darling eyes, was too moving.
It was his bedtime; perhaps he was just saying his little prayers for "fahver and muvver," or nestling his curly head contentedly into his pillow, and falling into that instant, happy sleep that made him look like a little angel, at the very moment when she laid her own head, uncomfortably full of hairpins—perilous to remove with no chance of replacing them in that jolting, swinging little bunk—upon the train-pillow, expectant of midnight robbery and assassination, but too glad to lay it anywhere to care much about anything.
"Won't you at least let me take off your boots?" the woman of mystery murmured drowsily from the top berth; and Ermengarde would have given all she possessed to do so, had she discerned the remotest possibility of ever being able to put them on again, having now reached that stage of anguish when one seems to have somebody else's feet on, and those several sizes too large.
As she lay face forward on a wide, springy bed, the swaying train soon became a cradle of rest, and the rhythmic rattle and crash of its wheels and engine a soft lullaby, or the gallop of giant steeds, bearing one swiftly away to regions of elysian slumber and soothing dreams. Let the Anarchist rob or murder her, or both, if he would; but let him do it gently, so as not to disturb that exquisite combination of motion and repose, or break the rhythm of that musical gallop of winged steeds, yoked to flying cars, flashing swifter and ever swifter across France, across Europe, across the night, from North to South, from sea to sea, from evening to morning, from darkness to dawn, from earth to fairyland, when—— Bang! crash! jolt! rumble! and everything falling together and coming to a dead stop, at the weird repeated cry of some lost spirit, that pierced the startled night in prolonged reverberations.