The frill flowed on with the beat of the Cathedral clock, and came to an end.
"Now I must go. It"s supper--supper in the garage."
He walked with her almost in silence down the Cathedral steps and to the door of the house in the dark street by the river.
"You do say good-bye so curiously," he remarked, "so suddenly. Perhaps it"s English."
"Perhaps it is," she agreed, disappearing into the house.
"What have you got there?" said her companions in the lighted room upstairs.
"My dress for the dance." But she did not open the parcel to show them the charmed frills. ("How is it they don"t know that I left him in the street below?") She looked at the seven travellers who met each night round the table for dinner, overcome with the mystery of those uncommunicating, shrouded heads. "What have they all been doing?"
"Has every one had runs?"
"Yes, every one has been out. What have you been doing?"
"I haven"t left Metz to-day," she replied, giddy with the isolation and the silence of the human mind.
CHAPTER VII
THE THREE "CLIENTS"
"What!" cried f.a.n.n.y on Monday morning, staring at the _brigadier_ and at the pink paper he offered her.
"At once, at once, mademoiselle. You ought to have been told last night.
You must go back for your things for the night and then as quickly as you can to the Hotel de l"Europe. I don"t know how many days you"ll be, but here is an order for fifty litres of petrol and a can of oil, and Pichot is getting you two spare tubes...."
She stared at him in horror a moment longer, then took the pink order and disappeared through the dark garage door. Her mind was in a frenzy of protestation. She saw the waiting cars which might have gone instead, the drivers polishing a patch of bra.s.s for want of something to do, and accident, pure accident, had lighted on _her_, to sweep _her_ out of Metz, away from that luminous personality which brooded over the city like a sunset, out into the nondescript world, the cold _Anywhere_.
White frills and yards of bleached calico lying at the dressmaker"s cried out to her to stay, to make some protest, to say something, anything--that she was ill--and stay.
She splashed petrol wastefully into the tank, holding the small blue tin with firm hands high in the air above the leather strainer and the funnel.
"And if I said--(it is mad)--if I said, "I am in love. _I can"t go_.
Send some one who is not in love!"" She glanced down from her perch on the footboard at the olive profile bent over the next car. The driver was sitting on his step with his open hand outstretched to hold a dozen bright washers which he was stirring with his forefinger. The hand with the washers sank gently to rest on his knee, and he sighed as he ceased stirring, and looked absently down the garage, his mystical cloak of bone and skin shrouding his thoughts. Idle men all down the garage hung about the cars, each holding within him some private affection, some close hope, something which sent a spurt of dubious song out of his mouth, or his eyes, wandering sightless, down the shed.
The tank, resenting her treatment, overflowed violently and drenched her skirt and feet.
"Are you ready, mademoiselle?"
"Coming. Where are the tubes?"
"I have them."
She drove through the yard, down the street, and hurried over the bridge to her room. Nightgown, toothbrush, comb, sponge, and powder--hating every hour of the days and nights her preparations meant.
At the Hotel de l"Europe, three men waited for her with frowns, loaded with plaid rugs, m.u.f.flers, black bags, and gaping baskets of food, from which protruded bottles of wine. It was, then, to be one of those days when they lunched by the wayside in the bitter cold.
She drew up beside them. A huge man with an unclean bearskin coat and flaccid red cheeks told her she was very late. She listened, apologising, but intent only on her question.
"And could you tell me--(I"m so dreadfully sorry, but they only told me very late at the garage)--and would you mind telling me which day you expect to get back?"
He turned to the others.
"It depends," said a dry, dark man with a look of rebuke, "on our work.
To-morrow night, perhaps. Perhaps the next morning."
"Where shall I drive you?"
"Go out by Thionville. We are going up the Moselle to Treves."
Anxious to dispose of such a mountain of a man, it was suggested that the Bearskin should climb in beside the driver. Instantly f.a.n.n.y was smothered up as he sat down, placing so many packages between himself and the outer side of the car that he sank heavily against her arm, and the fur of his coat blew into her mouth.
In discomfort she drove them from the town, brooding over her wheel, unhappily on and on till Metz had sunk over the edge of the flat horizon. The weary way to Thionville unfurled before them, furnaces to the left and flat gra.s.s prairie to the right--little villages and cl.u.s.tering houses went by them, and Thionville itself, with its tramlines and faint air of Manchester, drew near. Beyond Thionville the road changed colour abruptly, and stretched red and gravelly before them. The frost deepened, the wheels bit harder on the road surface, the gra.s.s-fields sparkled with a brittle light, and scanty winter orchards sprang up beside the road, which narrowed down and became a lane of beautiful surface. Not for long, however, for the surface changed again, and long hours set in when the car had to be held desperately with foot and hand brake to save the springs, and the accelerator could only be touched to be relinquished.
f.a.n.n.y, hardly sad any more, but busy and hungry, secretly lifted the corner of her sleeve to peer at her wrist-watch, and seeing that it was half-past twelve, began to wonder how soon they would decide to sit down by the roadside for their lunch. She fumbled in the pocket of the car, but the last piece of chocolate had either been eaten or had slipped down between the leather and the wood. She could bring up nothing better than an old postcard, a hairpin, and a forgotten sc.r.a.p of chamois-leather.
At last they stopped for lunch, choosing a spot where a hedge rose wirily against the midday sky, and spread the rugs on the frozen gra.s.s.
The sudden cessation of movement and noise brought a stillness into the landscape; a child"s voice startled them from the outskirts of a village beyond, and the crackle of a wheelbarrow that was being driven along the dry road.
The third man, who had blackberry eyes, and gla.s.ses which enlarged them, made great preparations over the setting of the meal. They had forgotten nothing. When they sat down, the Bearskin upon the step of the motor, the others cross-legged upon the ground, each man had a napkin as big as a sheet spread across the surface of his coat and waistcoat, and tied into the band of the overcoat at the side. Bottles of red wine, and a bottle of white to finish with, lay on a cloth spread upon the gra.s.s.
Bread, cheese, sausage, _pate_, and a slab of chocolate; knives, forks and a china cup apiece. f.a.n.n.y, who had taken her own uneatable lunch from the garage, was made to eat some of theirs. They were on a high, dry, open plateau of land, and the winter sun, not strong enough to break the frost, faintly warmed their necks and hands and the round bodies of the bottles.
It was not unpleasant sitting there with the three white-chested strangers, watching the sky through the p.r.o.ngs of the bare hedge, spreading _pate_ on to fresh bread, and balancing her cup half full of red wine among the fibres and roots of the gra.s.s.
"Now that I have started I am well on my way to getting back," she thought, and found that within her breast the black despair of the morning had melted. She watched her companions for amus.e.m.e.nt.
The Bearskin, c.u.mbrous, high-coloured, and blue-eyed, looked like an innkeeper in an English tavern. When he took off his cloth hood she thought she had never seen anything so staring as the pink of his face against the blue of his cap; but when the cap came off too for a second that he might stir his forehead with his finger, the blaze and crackle of his red hair beneath was even more ferocious. Yet he seemed intimidated by his companions, and kept silence, eating meekly from his knife, and spreading his napkin with care to the edge of his knees.
The little man with warm black eyes and the colder, thinner man talked appreciatively together.
"_He!_ The _pate_ is not bad."
"Not bad at all. And you haven"t tried the cheese?"
"No, no. I never touch cheese before the wine; it"s a sin. Now the bottle is all warmed. Try some."
"What is your father?" said the little man suddenly to f.a.n.n.y.
"He is in the army."
"You have no brother--no one to take care of you?"
"You mean, because I come out here? But in England they don"t mind; they think it interesting for us."