* * * *
Do you know—it’s very absurd—but as I pushed open the door for them and followed up the stairs to the bureau on the landing I felt somehow that this hotel was mine.
There was a vase of flowers on the window sill of the bureau and I even went so far as to re-arrange a bud or two and to stand off and note the effect while the manageress welcomed them. And when she turned to me and handed me the keys (the garçon was hauling up the boxes) and said: “Monsieur Duquette will show you your rooms”—I had a longing to tap Dick on the arm with a key and say, very confidentially: “Look here, old chap. As a friend of mine I’ll be only too willing to make a slight reduction…”
Up and up we climbed. Round and round. Past an occasional pair of boots (why is it one never sees an attractive pair of boots outside a door?). Higher and higher.
“I’m afraid they’re rather high up,” I murmured idiotically. “But I chose them because…”
They so obviously did not care why I chose them that I went no further. They accepted everything. They did not expect anything to be different. This was just part of what they were going through—that was how I analysed it.
“Arrived at last.” I ran from one side of the passage to the other, turning on the lights, explaining.
“This one I thought for you, Dick. The other is larger and it has a little dressing-room in the alcove.”
My “proprietary” eye noted the clean towels and covers, and the bed linen embroidered in red cotton. I thought them rather charming rooms, sloping, full of angles, just the sort of rooms one would expect to find if one had not been to Paris before.
Dick dashed his hat down on the bed.
“Oughtn’t I to help that chap with the boxes?” he asked—nobody.
“Yes, you ought,” replied Mouse, “they’re dreadfully heavy.”
And she turned to me with the first glimmer of a smile: “Books, you know.” Oh, he darted such a strange look at her before he rushed out. And he not only helped, he must have torn the box off the garçon’s back, for he staggered back, carrying one, dumped it down and then fetched in the other.
“That’s yours, Dick,” said she.
“Well, you don’t mind it standing here for the present, do you?” he asked, breathless, breathing hard (the box must have been tremendously heavy). He pulled out a handful of money. “I suppose I ought to pay this chap.”
The garçon, standing by, seemed to think so too.
“And will you require anything further, Monsieur?”
“No! No!” said Dick impatiently.
But at that Mouse stepped forward. She said, too deliberately, not looking at Dick, with her quaint clipped English accent: “Yes, I’d like some tea. Tea for three.”
And suddenly she raised her muff as though her hands were clasped inside it, and she was telling the pale, sweaty garçon by that action that she was at the end of her resources, that she cried out to him to save her with “Tea. Immediately!”
* * * *
This seemed to me so amazingly in the picture, so exactly the gesture and cry that one would expect (though I couldn’t have imagined it) to be wrung out of an Englishwoman faced with a great crisis, that I was almost tempted to hold up my hand and protest.
“No! No! Enough. Enough. Let us leave off there. At the word—tea. For really, really, you’ve filled your greediest subscriber so full that he will burst if he has to swallow another word.”
It even pulled Dick up. Like someone who has been unconscious for a long long time he turned slowly to Mouse and slowly looked at her with his tired, haggard eyes, and murmured with the echo of his dreamy voice: “Yes. That’s a good idea.” And then: “You must be tired, Mouse. Sit down.”
She sat down in a chair with lace tabs on the arms; he leaned against the bed, and I established myself on a straight-backed chair, crossed my legs and brushed some imaginary dust off the knees of my trousers. (The Parisian at his ease.)
There came a tiny pause. Then he said: “Won’t you take off your coat. Mouse?”
“No, thanks. Not just now.”
Were they going to ask me? Or should I hold up my hand and call out in a baby voice: “It’s my turn to be asked.”
No, I shouldn’t. They didn’t ask me.
The pause became a silence. A real silence.
“…Come, my Parisian fox-terrier! Amuse these sad English! It’s no wonder they are such a nation for dogs.”
But, after all—why should I? It was not my “job,” as they would say. Nevertheless, I made a vivacious little bound at Mouse.
“What a pity it is that you did not arrive by daylight. There is such a charming view from these two windows. You know, the hotel is on a corner and each window looks down an immensely long, straight street.”
“Yes,” said she.
“Not that that sounds very charming,” I laughed. “But there is so much animation—so many absurd little boys on bicycles and people hanging out of windows and—oh, well, you’ll see for yourself in the morning.… Very amusing. Very animated.”
“Oh, yes,” said she.
If the pale, sweaty garçon had not come in at that moment, carrying the tea-tray high on one hand as if the cups were cannon-balls and he a heavy weight lifter on the cinema.…
He managed to lower it on to a round table.
“Bring the table over here,” said Mouse. The waiter seemed to be the only person she cared to speak to. She took her hands out of her muff, drew off her gloves and flung back the old-fashioned cape.
“Do you take milk and sugar?”
“No milk, thank you, and no sugar.”
I went over for mine like a little gentleman. She poured out another cup.
“That’s for Dick.”
And the faithful fox-terrier carried it across to him and laid it at his feet, as it were.
“Oh, thanks,” said Dick.
And then I went back to my chair and she sank back in hers.
But Dick was off again. He stared wildly at the cup of tea for a moment, glanced round him, put it down on the bed-table, caught up his hat and stammered at full gallop: “Oh, by the way, do you mind posting a letter for me? I want to get it off by tonight’s post. I must. It’s very urgent.…” Feeling her eyes on him, he flung: “It’s to my mother.” To me: “I won’t be long. I’ve got everything I want. But it must go off tonight You don’t mind? It…it won’t take any time.”
“Of course I’ll post it. Delighted.”
“Won’t you drink your tea first?” suggested Mouse softly.
…Tea? Tea? Yes, of course. Tea.… A cup of tea on the bed-table.… In his racing dream he flashed the brightest, most charming smile at his little hostess.
“No, thanks. Not just now.”
And still hoping it would not be any trouble to me he went out of the room and closed the door, and we heard him cross the passage.
* * * *
I scalded myself with mine in my hurry to take the cup back to the table and to say as I stood there: “You must forgive me if I am impertinent…if I am too frank. But Dick hasn’t tried to disguise it—has he? There is something the matter. Can I help?”
(Soft music. Mouse gets up, walks