“So that’s marriage!” said Audrey.

“No,” said Miss Ingate.  “That’s love.  I’ve seen a deal of love in my time, ever since my sister Arabella’s first engagement, but I never saw any that wasn’t vehy, vehy queer.”

“I do hope they’ll be happy,” said Audrey.

“Do you?” said Miss Ingate.

CHAPTER VIII

EXPLOITATION OF WIDOWHOOD

The carriage had emptied, and the two adventurers stood alone among empty compartments.  The platform was also empty.  Not a porter in sight.  One after the other, the young widow and the elderly spinster, their purses bulging with money, got their packages by great efforts down on to the platform.

An employee strolled past.

“Porteur?” murmured Audrey timidly.

The man sniggered, shrugged his shoulders, and vanished.

Audrey felt that she had gone back to her school days.  She was helpless, and Miss Ingate was the same.  She wished ardently that she was in Moze again.  She could not imagine how she had been such a fool as to undertake this absurd expedition which could only end in ridicule and disaster.  She was ready to cry.  Then another employee appeared, hesitated, and picked up a bag, scowling and inimical.  Gradually the man, very tousled and dirty, clustered all the bags and parcels around his person, and walked off.  Audrey and Miss Ingate meekly following.  The great roof of the station resounded to whistles and the escape of steam and the clashing of wagons.

Beyond the platforms there were droves of people, of whom nearly every individual was preoccupied and hurried.  And what people!  Audrey had in her heart expected a sort of glittering white terminus full of dandiacal men and elegant Parisiennes who had stepped straight out of fashion-plates, and who had no cares—­for was not this Paris?  Whereas, in fact, the multitude was the dingiest she had ever seen.  Not a gleam of elegance!  No hint of dazzling colour!  No smiling and satiric beauty!  They were just persons.

At last, after formalities, Audrey and Miss Ingate reached the foul and chilly custom-house appointed for the examination of luggage.  Unrecognisable peers and other highnesses stood waiting at long counters, forming bays, on which was nothing at all.  Then, far behind, a truck hugely piled with trunks rolled in through a back door and men pitched the trunks like toys here and there on the counters, and officials came into view, and knots of travellers gathered round trunks, and locks were turned and lids were lifted, and the flash of linen showed in spots on the drabness of the scene.  Miss Ingate observed with horror the complete undoing of a lady’s large trunk, and the exposure to the world’s harsh gaze of the most intimate possessions of that lady.  Soon the counters were like a fair.  But no trunk belonging to Audrey or to Miss Ingate was visible.  They knew then, what they had both privately suspected ever since Charing Cross, that their trunks would be lost on the journey.