He cocked an eye at the clock. “In half an hour.”
A train was on the point of starting. There was a scuttle for seats. She felt sure it was the Paris train. From it emanated the magic influence of the great city whither she was bound. A questioned porter informed her it was going in the opposite direction. The Paris express left at four-fifty. The train steamed out. It seemed to Félise as though she had lost a friend. She looked round helplessly, and seeing a fat peasant woman sitting on a bench, surrounded by bundles and children, she ran to her side for protection. It is the unknown that frightens. In the Hôtel des Grottes she commanded men with the serenity of a Queen Elizabeth, and as for commercial travellers and other male visitors, she took no more account of them than of the geese that she plucked. And the terrifying Aunt Clothilde had terrified in vain. But here, in this cold, glass-roofed, steel-strutted, screeching, ghostly inferno of a place, with men prowling about like roaring lions seeking probably whom they might devour, conditions were terrifyingly unfamiliar.
Yet she did not care. Under the blasphemous roof of her Aunt Clothilde she could not have remained. For, in verity, blasphemy had been spoken. Her father was loved and honoured by all the world; by her mother, by Uncle Gaspard, by Corinna, by Martin. And she herself—did she not know her father? Was there ever a man like him? The insulting words rang through her brain. She would have confronted terrors a million fold more grisly than these in order to escape from the blasphemer, whom she could never forgive—no, not for all the curés and abbés in Christendom. An intense little soul was that of Félise Fortinbras. It swept her irresistibly out of the unhallowed villa, with a handbag containing a nightgown, a toothbrush and a faded little photograph of her father and mother standing side by side in wedding garb, on the way to the dread, fascinating whirlpool of Paris, where dwelt the worshipped gods of her idolatry. And, as she sat in the comforting lee of the fat and unafraid peasant woman and her bundles and her children, she took herself to task for cowardice.
The journey, under two hours, was but a trifle. Had it been to Brantôme, an all-night affair, she might have had reason for quailing. But to Paris it was practically but a step. . . . The Abbé Duloup spoke of going to Paris as her uncle spoke of going to Périgueux. Yet her heart thudded violently during the interminable half hour. And there was the grim possibility of the appearance of a pursuing Aunt Clothilde. She kept a fearful eye upon the doorway of the salle d’attente.
At last the train rushed in, and there was clangour of luggage trucks and clamour of raucous voices announcing the train for Paris; and a flow of waiting people, among whom was her neighbour with her varied impedimenta, swept across the lines and scaled the heights of the carriages. By luck, in front of Félise loomed a compartment showing second class on the door panel and “Dames seules” on the window. She clambered in and sank into a seat. Who her lonely lady fellow-travellers were she could not afterwards remember; for she kept her eyes closed, absorbed in the adventure that still lay before her. Yet it was comforting to feel that as long as the train went on she was safe in this feminine sanctuary, free from depredations of marauding males.
Paris. One of the ladies, seeing that she was about to remain in the carriage, jerked the information over a descending shoulder. Félise followed and stood for a moment more confused than ever in the blue glare and ant-hill hurry of the Gare de Montparnasse. A whole town seemed to have emerged from the train and to stream like a rout of refugees flying from disaster, men, women and children, laden with luggage, towards the barrier. Carried along, she arrived there at length, gave up her ticket, and, issuing from the station, found herself in a narrow street, at the end of which, still following the throng, she came to a thundering thoroughfare. Never, in all her imaginings of Paris, had she pictured such a soul-stunning phantasmagoria of flashing light and flashing movement. There were millions of faces passing her by on the pavement, in the illuminated interiors of omnibuses, in the dimmed recesses of taxi-autos, on waggons, on carts, on bicycles; millions in gaily lit cafés; before her dazzled eyes millions seemed to be reflected even in the quivering, lucent air. She stood at the corner of the Place de Rennes and the Boulevard de Montparnasse paralysed with fear, clutching her handbag tight to her side. In that perilous street thousands of thieves must jostle her. She could not move a step, overwhelmed by the immensity of Paris. A good-natured sergent de ville, possibly the father of pretty daughters, noticed her agonised distress. It was not his business to perform unsolicited deeds of knight errantry; but having nothing else to do for the moment, he caught her eye and beamed paternal encouragement. Now a sergent de ville is a sergent de ville (recognisable by his uniform) all France over. Félise held Père Chavrol, who exercised that function at Brantôme, in high esteem. This policeman had a fat, dark, grinning, scrubbily-moustached face which resembled that of Père Chavrol. She took her courage and her handbag in both hands.
“Monsieur,” she said, “can you direct me to the Rue Maugrabine?”
He couldn’t. He did not know that street. In what quartier was it? Félise was ignorant.
“C’est là où demeure mon père,” she added. “C’est Monsieur Fortinbras. Tout le monde le connaît à Paris.”
But alas! the sergent de ville had never heard of the illustrious Fortinbras: which was strange, seeing that all Brantôme knew him, although he did not live there.