malicious twinkle in her eyes—
"I'm not a bit nervous."
"But you've been married so much longer than I have," he responded.
Then came the disposition of the bags and parcels. She calmly directed the porters to put the overflow into the upper berth. The garde came up to remonstrate in his most rapid French.
"But where is M'sieur to sleep if the bags go up there?" he argued.
Mrs. Medcroft dropped her toilet bag and turned to Brock with startled eyes, her lips parted. He was standing in the passage, his two bags at his feet, an aroused gleam in his eyes. A deep flush overspread her face; an expression of utter rout succeeded the buoyancy of the moment before.
"Really," she murmured and could go no farther. The loveliest pucker came into her face. Brock waved the garde aside.
"It's all right," he explained. "I shan't occupy the—I mean, I'll take one of the other compartments." As the garde opened his lips to protest, she drew Brock inside the compartment and closed the door. Mrs. Medcroft was agitated.
"Oh, what a wretched contretemps!" she cried in despair. "Roxy has made a frightful mess of it, after all. He has not taken a compartment for you. I'm—I'm afraid you'll have to take this one and—and let me go in with—"
"Nonsense!" he broke in. "Nothing of the sort! I'll find a bed, never fear. I daresay there's plenty of room on the train. You shan't sleep with the servants. And don't lie awake blaming poor old Rox. He's lonesome and unhappy, and he—"
"But he has a place to sleep," she lamented. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Brock. It's perfectly horrid, and I'm—I'm dreadfully afraid you won't be able to get a berth. Roxbury tried yesterday for a lower for himself."
"And he—couldn't get one?"
"No, Mr. Brock. But I'll ask the maids to give up their—"
"Please, please don't worry—and please don't call me Mr. Brock. I hate the name. Good night! Now don't think about me. I'll be all right. You'll find me as gay as a lark in the morning."
He did not give her a chance for further protest, but darted out of the compartment. As he closed the door he had the disquieting impression that she was sitting upon the edge of her berth, giggling hysterically.
The garde listened to his demand for a separate compartment with the dejection of a capable French attendant who is ever ready with joint commiseration and obduracy. No, he was compelled to inform Monsieur the American (to the dismay of the pseudo-Englishman) it would be impossible to arrange for another compartment. The train was crowded to its capacity. Many had been turned away. No, a louis would not be of avail. The deepest grief and anguish filled his soul to see the predicament of Monsieur, but there was no relief.
Brock's miserable affectation of the English drawl soon gave way to sharp, emphatic Americanisms. It was after eight o'clock and the train was well under way. The street lamps were getting fewer and fewer, and the soft, fresh air of the suburbs was rushing through the window.
"But, hang it all, I can't sit up all night!" growled Brock in exasperated finality.
"Monsieur forgets that he has a berth. It is not the fault of the compagnie that he is without a bed. Did not M'sieur book the compartment himself? Très bien!"
As the result of strong persuasion, the garde consented to make "the grand tour" of the train de luxe in search of a berth. It goes without saying that he was intensely mystified by Brock's incautious remark that he would be satisfied with "an upper if he couldn't do any better." For the life of him, Monsieur the garde could not comprehend the situation. He went away, shaking his head and looking at the tickets, as much as to say that an American is never satisfied—not even with the best.
Brock lowered a window-seat in the passage and sat down, staring blankly and blackly out into the whizzing night. The predicament had come upon him so suddenly that he had not until now found the opportunity to analyse it in its entirety. The worst that could come of it, of course, was the poor comfort of a night in a chair. He knew that it was a train of sleeping-coaches—Ah! He suddenly remembered the luggage van! As a last resort, he might find lodging among the trunks!
And then, too, there was something irritating in the suspicion that she had laughed as if it were a huge joke—perhaps, even now, she was doubled up in her narrow couch, stifling the giggle that would not be suppressed.
When the garde came back with the lugubrious information that nothing, positively nothing, was to be had, it is painful to record that Brock swore in a manner which won the deepest respect of the trainman.
"At four o'clock in the morning, M'sieur, an old gentleman and his wife will get out at Strassburg, their destination. They are in this carriage and you may take their compartment, if M'sieur will not object to sleeping in a room just vacated by two mourners who to-day buried a beloved son in Paris. They have kept all of the flowers in their—"
"Four o'clock! Good Lord, what am I to do till then?" groaned Brock, glaring with unmanly hatred at the door of the Medcroft compartment.
"Perhaps Madame may be willing to take the upper—" ventured the guard timorously, but Brock checked him with a peremptory gesture. He proposed, instead, the luggage van, whereupon the guard burst into a psalm of utter dejection. It was against the rules, irrevocably.
"Then I guess I'll have to sit here all night," said Brock faintly. He was forgetting his English.
"If M'sieur will not occupy his own bed, yes," said the guard, shrugging his shoulders and washing his hands of the whole incomprehensible affair. "M'sieur will then be up to receive the Customs officers at the frontier. Perhaps he will give me the keys to Madame's trunks, so that she may not be disturbed."
"Ask her for 'em yourself," growled Brock, after one dazed moment of dismay.
The hours crawled slowly by. He paced the length of the wriggling corridor a hundred times, back and forth; he sat on every window-seat in the carriage; he nodded and dozed and groaned, and laughed at himself in the deepest derision all through the dismal night. Daylight came at four; he saw the sun rise for the first time in his life. He neither enjoyed nor appreciated the novelty. Never had he witnessed anything so mournfully depressing as the first grey tints that crept up to mock him in his vigil; never had he seen anything so ghastly as the soft red glow that suffused the morning sky.
"I'll sleep all day if I ever get into that damned bed," he said to himself, bitterly wistful.
The Customs officers had eyed him suspiciously at the border. They evidently had been told of his strange madness in refusing to occupy the berth he had paid for. Their examination of his effects was more thorough than usual. It may have entered their heads that he was standing guard over the repose of a fair accomplice. They asked so many embarrassing and disconcerting questions that he was devoutly relieved when they passed on, still suspicious.
The train was late, and at five o'clock he was desperately combating an impulse to leave it at Strassburg, find lodging in a hotel, and then, refreshed, set out for London to have it out with the malevolent Medcroft. The disembarking of the venerable mourners, however, restored him to a degree of his peace of mind. After all, he reviewed, it would be cowardly and base to desert a trusting wife; he pictured her as asleep and securely confident in his stanchness. No: he would have it out with Medcroft at some later day.
