That was all the talk he had with her. In the evening the arrival of an English motor party kept him busy, both during dinner and afterwards; for not only did they desire coffee and liqueurs served in the vestibule, but they gave indications to his experienced judgment of requiring relays of whiskies and sodas until bedtime. Again he did not visit the Café de l’Univers.
The next morning she started for the Riviera. She was proceeding thither via Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne and the coast. To Martin’s astonishment Félise was accompanying her, on a visit for ten days or a fortnight to the South. It appeared that the matter had been arranged late the previous evening. Lucilla had made the proposal, swept away difficulty after difficulty with her air of a smiling, but irresistible providence and left Bigourdin and Félise not a leg save sheer churlishness to stand on. Clothes? She had ten times the amount she needed. The perils of the lonely and tedious return train journey? Never could Félise accomplish it. Bigourdin turned up an Indicateur des Chemins de Fer. There were changes, there were waits. Communications were arranged, with diabolical cunning, not to correspond. Perhaps it was to confound the Germans in case of invasion. As far as he could make out it would take seventy-four hours, forty-three minutes to get from Monte Carlo to Brantôme. It was far simpler to go from Paris to Moscow, which as every one knew was the end of the world. Félise would starve. Félise would perish of cold. Félise would get the wrong train and find herself at Copenhagen or Amsterdam or Naples, where she wouldn’t be able to speak the language. Lucilla laughed. There was such a thing as L’Agence Cook which moulded the Indicateur des Chemins de Fer to its will. She would engage a man from Cook’s before whose brass-buttoned coat and a gold-lettered cap band the Indicateur would fall to pieces, to transfer Félise personally, by easy stages, from house to house. Félise had pleaded her uncle’s need. Lucilla, in the most charming way imaginable, had deprecated as impossible any such colossal selfishness on the part of Monsieur Bigourdin. Overawed by the Olympian he had peremptorily ordered Félise to retire and pack her trunk. Then, obeying the dictates of his sound sense he had asked Lucilla what object she had in her magnificent invitation. His little girl, said he, would acquire a taste for celestial things which never afterwards would she be in a position to gratify. To which, Lucilla:
“How do you know she won’t be able to gratify them? A girl of her beauty, charm and character, together with a little knowledge of the world of men, women and things, is in a position to command whatever she chooses. She has the beauty, charm and character and I want to add the little knowledge. I want to see a lovely human flower expand”—she had a graceful trick of restrained gesture which impressed Bigourdin. “I want to give a bruised little girl whom I’ve taken to my heart a good time. For myself, it’s some sort of way of finding a sanction for my otherwise useless existence.”
And Bigourdin clutching at his bristles had plucked forth no adequately inspired reply. The will of the New World had triumphed over that of the Old.
All the staff of the hotel witnessed the departure.
“Monsieur Martin,” said Félise in French, about to step into the great car, a medley, to her mind, of fur rugs and dark golden dogs and grey cats and maids and chauffeurs and innumerable articles of luggage, “I have scarcely had two words with you. I no longer know where I have my head. But look after my uncle and see that the laundress does not return the table-linen black.”
“Bien, Mademoiselle Félise,” said Martin.
Lucilla, pink and white and leopard-coated, shook hands with Bigourdin, thanked him for his hospitality and reassured him as to the perfect safety of Félise. She stepped into the car. Martin arranged the rugs and closed the door. She held out her hand to him.
“We meet in Egypt,” she said in a low voice. As the car drove off, she turned round and blew a gracious kiss to the little group.
“Voilà une petite sorcière d’Américaine,” said Bigourdin. “Pif! Paf! and away goes Félise on her broomstick.”