SIC TRANSIT
Are you the new person drawn towards me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you
suppose.
WALT WHITMAN.
On a cold morning in July, 1913, Lettice climbed down from a Belgian
third-class carriage, dragging her luggage behind her, and found
herself at Graide station, province of Luxemburg. Lettice was an expert
in the art of traveling cheaply. She had left Victoria the previous
afternoon, in a slow train, because the boat expresses don't take
third-class passengers. After a wait at Dover, she had crossed by night
in the fetid atmosphere of the second-class ladies' cabin of the old
_Rapide_, and had been excessively ill. Continuing her journey at 4
A.M., she had traveled to Brussels in a smoking compartment
with all the windows shut. Namur, Dinant, Houyet--she lost count of
her changes after that. Sometimes she faced the engine; more often
she had to ride back; once a Belgian _père de famille_ marched across
the width of the carriage and ruthlessly pulled up the window, her
window, under her very nose. Always somebody was smoking, to the usual
accompaniments, under the notice "Niet Rooken"; and always, at every
change, she had to drag her heavy basket down steps and across lines
of rail and heave it up to racks far above her aching head. We buy our
pleasures dear when we are young. But this was the end. At Graide she
was to meet the diligence which should land her at the doors of the
Hôtel Bellevue.
Of course there was no porter. In those days there never were any
porters at a Belgian country station. If you didn't _expédier_ your
baggage (as every self-respecting traveler should), you had to carry
it yourself. Lettice's baggage was what is known as a pilgrim basket,
gone at the corners, with a double strap which had slipped into a
string round its middle, leaving the ends bulging. Bending to it like a
patient donkey, she trailed across the loose gray gravel to the exit,
and at last was outside in the road. The Café de la Gare confronted
her, a yellow house with red facings and a blue slate roof. "Bureau de
la diligence" appeared on its sign, but the customary shabby, dirty,
stuffy, rickety ruin of a two-horse shandrydan was nowhere to be seen.
"Pour Rochehaut, madame?"
A smart commissionaire had seized her basket. Round his cap in
gilt lettering ran the words, "Hôtel Bellevue." Lettice nodded
distrustfully, and in a trice was whisked round the corner, still
clinging to her strap. Behold the diligence of the Hôtel Bellevue--a
brand-new motor char-à-banc, glistening in tan-colored varnish! The
commissionaire threw open the door with a flourish worthy of the
boulevards, and Lettice subsided in a corner as if her patient knees
had at last given way.
In the fresh air she presently revived enough to take notice of her
fellow-travelers. There were two, both women, the elder obviously
a maid. Lettice had seen them before, at Dinant, descending from a
_voiture-salon_ with a porter in attendance, and had marked them with a
malevolent eye, having tried in vain to secure that porter herself. But
even without that memory she would have noticed the younger of the two.
She was a tall slip of a girl, scarcely out of her teens, but not
dressed like an _ingénue_. Her French hat, her furs, her gloves, the
exquisite cloth of her suit, all her traveling appointments might
have belonged to a married woman of thirty. Yet she was not married,
for there was no wedding ring among the diamonds on her finger, and
Lettice, whose eyes were as good as opera-glasses, could read the label
on the gold-mounted dressing-case in the rack above her head--Miss D.
M. O'Connor, Hôtel Bellevue. She looked fragile, as if recovering
from an illness, and her figure was still slender and undeveloped; but
she had masses of exquisitely glossy dark hair, and great dark eyes,
full of fire and gloom. Young though she was, she knew how to get
herself obeyed. When she scowled (and she could scowl, with those black
brows), even a Belgian porter came to attention. Lettice was wondering
what it was that had set her at odds with the world, and written such
bitterness on the small, brooding face, when the dark eyes looked up
and met hers with a smile, sudden and child-like, which had just the
effect of a sunburst over a gloomy landscape.
But before she could speak the unsociable Lettice hurriedly averted
her eyes and blotted herself in her corner. She make talk with a
stranger for an hour, and begin an acquaintance which would have to
be continued, with smiles and remarks about the weather, every time
they chanced to meet in the hotel? No, thank you! The most interesting
character study was not worth that. Lettice would have walked a couple
of miles any day to avoid a chance acquaintance.
Miss O'Connor stared, half incredulous; then the clouds came down again
with a vengeance, and she turned her back on the ungrateful Lettice
and looked out of the window. They were passing down a straight road
between long strips of arable land, wheat, potatoes, cabbages, beets,
fenceless and flat as a table; and with the road went an avenue of
trees, each lopped to a mop-head atop of its naked stem, crawling away
like a green caterpillar to the limit of sight. In the distance a tiny
white church raised a gray conical spire like an extinguisher; a group
of white and gray dolls'-houses clustered below, drowsily basking, blue
haze and brown dust, under the hazy sky.
"Louisa! What time do we get to Rochehaut?"
"Half-past twelve the book said, Miss Dot."
"Which means half-past one, I suppose," said Dorothea O'Connor in her
caustic young voice. They were speaking in undertones, but Lettice,
whose ears were as sharp as her eyes, could not help hearing every
word. "This is the most hatefully ugly place I've ever seen. Of
course one expects advertisements to lie, but there is such a thing as
overdoing it."
When Dorothea was annoyed, she let it be known. Louisa, faithful soul,
bowed her head before the storm; but she paid about as much attention
as to the rages of a child.
"Oh, Miss Dot dear, I wish you'd leave this dreadful heathen country
and come back to England!"
"I'm coming back to England when I've done what I want, and not
before." There was a pleasing vigor and directness in Dorothea's
statements. "I'm sorry for you, Louisa, but after all you'll be able to
get a cup of real English tea at the Bellevue--all the advertisements
said so!"
"'Tisn't tea I'm thinking of, Miss Dot, but this dreadful wicked idea
of yours. Deceiving your dear kind uncle and all--"
"It's no business of Uncle Jack's what I do, and if I don't tell him
it's only because I don't want him to be bothered." Louisa sighed and
shook her head. "I won't be moaned at," Dorothea declared, with an
inimical flash. "No, and I won't be prayed at either! I've told you,
you can go home if you like; but if you stay, you'll just have to
resign yourself, because I _am_ going through with it--I should despise
myself for ever and ever if I didn't! There: is that plain?"
"Oh, Miss Dot, you have shook your hat so crooked!" was Louisa's
earnest reply. Dorothea laughed, as she submitted to have it set
straight.
"I rather hate you sometimes, Louisa darling, you make me feel such a
brute," she said, "but I'm going on, all the same. Dear me, is this
place an example of the unsurpassed view, I wonder? It'll add a fresh
joy to Rochehaut if there's an outbreak of typhoid!"
They were passing through the village which in the distance had looked
so trim. Set well back from the road on either side was a row of white
houses; before each house, a midden, foursquare; before the middens,
a gutter, running auburn; between the gutters, the main street,
down which the omnibus had to pass. Dorothea, her face buried in
her handkerchief, was rummaging her bag impatiently for a bottle of
lavender salts, when something made her glance at her fellow-traveler.
Lettice was no longer gray, she was green, and trying weakly to
unfasten her veil. Suddenly her surprised and unyielding waist was
clasped by a peremptory arm, and the lavender salts were thrust under
her nose.
"How many hatpins have you?--oh, here's the last. Move my things off
the seat, Louisa. Now put your head down on these rugs; that's better.
We shall be out of this hateful village directly."
The amazed Lettice found herself laid flat on the cushions.
Automatically she rose up, reacting like a bent twig; instantly she was
pressed back again.
"No, you must lie still. I saw you at Brussels, looking as ill as ill,
even then. Are you ill, or is it only the traveling that's upset you?"
"I had a bad crossing," said Lettice, in a tone that was almost surly.
"A bad crossing? You came over last night? Then I don't wonder at
anything. My flask, Louisa--no, that's the eau-de-Cologne, how stupid
you are! I'm going to give you a liqueur; brandy's hateful, and no good
at all, but a curaçao does pull you together. Open your mouth--that's
right--"
Lettice had opened her mouth to say she did not like liqueurs, but
she was given no time; her zealous nurse immediately poured the dose
down her throat. This was an outrage--it was forcible feeding--and on
Lettice, of all people! Lettice, who could not bear so much as to be
touched against her will! Coughing in the most lady-like way, pink with
choking and with injured dignity, she presented a pathetic sight for
any one with eyes to see. Dorothea had none.
"You aren't one bit fit to be going about alone and looking after
yourself," she said, in a mixture of severity and solicitude. "You
ought to be in bed! Are you cold?--why, your hands are like lumps of
ice! My cloak, Louisa. When we get to the hotel you shall have a hot
bottle and I'll see after you properly. No, don't try to talk."
Hitherto Lettice had expressed no gratitude, but now, having been told
to keep silence, she said "Thank you," in a tone of acid obstinacy. It
is trying to be done good to against your will. Nobody had ever before
attempted such a liberty with Lettice. Denis might lecture, but he
never dreamed of enforcing his advice; while her own sisters would have
laughed at the possibility. "Make Lettice do what she doesn't choose?"
cried Rosabel. "You might just as well argue with the leg of that
table!"
Lettice, of course, did not agree with them; she considered herself to
be of a yielding disposition, bordering on flabbiness; but there are
things the meekest cannot stand. The moment Dorothea's back was turned
she rose up and put on her hat again. After that she felt happier,
if less comfortable. Lettice was one of those persons who are never
really happy when they are comfortable; instinctive dread of slackness
(springing by rebound from innate love of luxury) drove her to deny her
body in order to ease her soul. Certainly her body was not at ease.
Violent remedies did not suit her. It might have been the curaçao, or
the insult, or both of them together, but her sensations were growing
acute.
She saw nothing when they plunged into a rick dark green valley of
woods. She was blind to the silvery splendors of distant hills and
river. They turned into a wide courtyard and drew up. Lettice saw only
that the Hôtel Bellevue had many piazzas and balconies, all full of
people, all watching the arrival of the coach. Dorothea descended on
one side. Her patient slipped out on the other and made towards the
door.
"Why, Lettice!"
It was Denis, who had sprung out of his chair and was advancing towards
her, smiling, as the phrase goes, all over his face. Lettice, while
wishing him at Jericho, produced an answering smile.
"Well," said she.
"Why didn't you tell me you were coming? You said you meant to spend
the night in Brussels! You might have sent a wire!"
"I forgot," said Lettice, still edging towards the door. She wished he
would not stand directly in the way. Denis at last began to perceive
that something was wrong.
"Did you have a bad crossing? You're all the colors of the rainbow, my
dear girl--"
Lettice suddenly swerved past him and almost ran towards the house. As
she reached the door another dense and solid person came out, and got
hopelessly in the way. A delay at such a moment ... well, if it had
been anybody in the world but Lettice ... and even as it was....
"Good Lord!" said Denis.
The new-comer, who was Harry Gardiner, turned with commendable presence
of mind and rang for a maid. "Show this lady to her room--"
"And take her a cup of tea at once," finished Dorothea, coming up
breathless to resume command. "I'll see to her myself in a moment."
Lettice's last thought, as she hid her shame within the house, was that
she must on no account forget to lock her door.