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She had never in all her life travelled alone before. She hardly knew how to procure her ticket, and her helplessness in regard to box and dressing-case was so apparent that Mrs. Slifer saw to the one and Maude carried the other, together with the fur-lined coat when this was thrown aside. The hours that they passed with her in the train were the strangest that the Slifers had ever passed.
Madame von Marwitz strode majestically along the platform, her white cloak trailing in the dust, called for station-masters, demanded special trains, fixed haughty, uncomprehending eyes upon the officials who informed her that she could not possibly get a train until ten, resigned herself, with sundry exclamations of indignation and stamps of the foot, to the tedious wait, sailed into the refreshment room only to sail out again, mounted the car not yet dismissed, bore the Slifers to a hotel where they had a dinner over which she murmured at intervals "Bon Dieu, est-ce-donc possible!" and then, in the chill, dark evening, toured about in the adjacent country until ten, when Burton was sent back to Les Solitudes and when they all got into the train for Exeter.
She left them with the Sargent portrait looking down at them and the room in its strangeness and beauty seemed part of the spell she laid upon them. The Slifers, herded together in the middle of it, gazed about them half awe-struck and spoke almost in whispers. "Why, girls," said Mrs. Slifer, who was the first to find words, "this is the most thrilling thing I ever came across."
Gregory was touched by the tolerance with which, in the midst of her own sad thoughts, she satisfied the Slifers' curiosity. "Then she really is Norse," said the professor. "Really half Norse." "I like her geniality and her reticence," said the professor, watching the humours of the little scene. "Those enterprising ladies won't get much out of her.
What will the Jones say when they hear about this! They'd give their eye-teeth to be with us now." The Slifers, indeed, were never to forget their adventure. It was to be impressed upon their minds not only by its supreme enviableness but by its supreme discomfort.
When the Slifers arose next day, late, for they were very weary, they found that Madame von Marwitz had departed by an early train. Meanwhile, at Les Solitudes, old Mrs. Talcott turned from side to side all night, sleepless. Her heart was heavy with anxiety. Karen was found and to-morrow Mercedes would be with her; she had sent for Mercedes, so the note pinned to Mrs.
She is a very handsome woman perhaps you would expect me to say handsome still; but that seems a sort of treason to her mature beauty." "And who else?" "Oh, the Storbes from New Orleans, the Slifers from Mobile no end of people some from Philadelphia and Ohio." "Ohio? Those Bensons!" said she, turning sharply on him. "Yes, those Bensons, Penelope. Why not?" "Oh, nothing. It's a free country.
Slifer, marshalling her girls, and stooping to pat Victor, was introducing herself, and while Gregory told the professor that that was Miss Woodruff, Madame Okraska's ward, she bent to expound to the Slifers the inscription on Victor's collar, speaking, it was evident, with kindness.
The long arm of coincidence throws the Slifers into Mercedes's Cornish garden a little too heavily. The author does not strain the muscles of coincidence's arm to bring them into relation. Then the long arm of coincidence rolled up its sleeves and set to work with a rapidity and vigour which defy description.
Maude, the lean and tawny, and Beatrice, the dark and pretty, had followed deftly in their mother's wake and were smiling, Maude with steely brightness, Beatrice with nonchalant assurance, at Madame von Marwitz. "Bon Dieu!" the great woman muttered. She gazed away from the Slifers and about her with helpless consternation.
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