It was an odd memory but it brought a cloud of sadness, and Don, quick to detect the shadow, hurried Flamby off to the Coliseum and astounded her by booking a stage box. The Aunt was consulted over the telephone, the Aunt agreed to join the party in the evening, and during the remainder of that eventful afternoon there were all sorts of wonderful sights to be seen; delightful shops unlike any that Flamby had imagined, and an exhibition of water-colours in Bond Street which fired her ambition like a torch set to dry bracken, as Don had designed that it should do. They had tea at a fashionable tea-shop, and Don noted that even within the space of twenty-four hours the number of lovely women had perceptibly diminished. This historic day concluded, then, with dinner at the Carlton and Ellen Terry at the Coliseum. How otherwise an excellent programme was constituted mattered not, but when the red-robed Portia came finally before the curtain and bestowed one of her sweet smiles exclusively upon the enraptured girl, Flamby found that two big tears were trickling down her hot cheeks.
V
And now another figure in the pageant which Iamblichos called "the indissoluble bonds of Necessity" was about to reappear in his appointed place in response to the call of the unseen Prompter. Hideous are the settings of that pageant to-day; for where in the glowing pages of Dumas we see D'Artagnan, the gallant Forty-five and many another good friend riding in through the romantic gates of Old Paris, the modern historian finds himself concerned with railway stations which have supplanted those gates of Paris and of London alike. Thus Don entered by the gate of St. Pancras, Flamby by the smoky portal of London Bridge; and, on the following morning, Yvonne Mario stood upon a platform at Victoria awaiting the arrival of the Folkestone boat-train. She attracted considerable attention and excited adverse criticism amongst the other ladies present not only because of her personal charm but by reason of her dress. She wore a coat of black coney seal trimmed with white fox, and a little cap of the same, and her high-legged boots had white calf tops. Her complexion alone doomed her to the undying enmity of her sex, for the humid morning air had enhanced that clear freshness which quite naturally and properly annoyed every other woman who beheld it.
Several pressmen and photographers mingled with the groups along the platform, for the party with which Paul had been touring the French and British fronts included at least two other notable personages; and Bassett, Paul's press agent, said to Yvonne: "You will smile across a million breakfast tables to-morrow morning, Mrs. Mario, and from a thousand cinema screens later in the week."
Yvonne smiled there and then, a charming little one-sided smile, for she was really a very pretty woman in spite of her reputation as a beauty. "Modern journalism leaves nothing to the imagination," she replied.
"And very wisely. So few people have any."
They paced slowly along the platform. Excepting the porters who leaned against uptilted trucks and stared stolidly up the line, a spirit of furtive unrest had claimed everyone. People who meet trains always look so guilty, avoiding each other's glances and generally behaving as though their presence were a pure accident; periodically consulting the station clock as who should say, "If this train is not signalled very shortly I must be off. My time is of value." There is another type of course, much more rare, who appears at the last moment from some subterranean stairway. He is always running and his glance is wild. As the passengers begin to descend from the train he races along the platform, now and again pausing in his career and standing on tiptoe in order to look over the heads of the people in front of him. To every official he meets he says: "This train is the Folkestone train?" He rarely waits for a reply.
Indeed, at a modern railway station, as of old at the city gates, the fatuity of human aspirations may be studied advantageously. Soldiers were there, at Victoria, hundreds of them, lined up on a distant platform, and they symbolised the spirit of an age which exalts Mechanism to the pinnacle of a deity and which offers itself as a sacrifice upon his iron altars.
The train arrived in due course; cameras and note-books appeared; and people inquired "Is it Sir Douglas Haig they are expecting?" But presently the initiated spread the news that it was Paul Mario who returned from the Western front, and because his reputation was greater than that of Gabrielle D'Annunzio or Charlie Chaplin, everyone sought to obtain a glimpse of him.
He wore a heavy fur-lined coat and his eyes were dark with excitement. Surrounded by the other members of the party, like an emperor by his suite, Paul's was the outstanding personality among them all. There was a distinguished French general to bow, courtly, over Yvonne's hand, and a Labour Member to quote Cicero. But it was to Paul that the reporters sought to penetrate and upon Paul that the cameras were focussed. Bassett, who did not believe in thwarting the demands of popularity, induced him to say a few words.