All Abroad

by W. Pett Ridge

ALL ABROAD

By W. PETT RIDGE

MR. CHAMPNESS came out of the Hotel du Havre, looked up and down the river front, made urgent inquiries of the proprietor. The bell had gone for lunch, and it was not usual for his pupil to be late for this or for any meal.

"Miss Hinton! I say! Hullo there!" Mr. Champness called up through the din of traffic to the terrace of the hotel next door; the lady addressed was making her selection of shrimps, anchovies, olives and sardines offered by a waitress. From the edge of the pavement he shouted again, and this time a smile of recognition was obtained. "Seen anything of Ellaby?"

"Certainly I will," she answered, with cheerfulness, "unless you can get anyone else to play the accompaniment."

"I say," he repeated, with both hands forming a megaphone, "have you seen—anything—of young Ellaby?"

"I visited the ruins once," she said, "but I'm quite willing to go again."

He gave an ejaculation of despair at the stupidity of the sex to which he did not belong, and, going through the entrance to the courtyard, ran up the staircase, made his way, with apologies, through the dining-room, to the terrace. Miss Hinton listened to the somewhat aggressive and heated repetition of the inquiry.

"So sorry!" she declared. "At first I thought you were asking about 'Songs of Araby,' and then it sounded as though you were inviting me to go to Jumièges. These motor-cars make such a clatter as they go through!" Miss Hinton gave a brief lecture on the habits and customs of the country.

"You have not yet answered my question. Don't be evasive, please."

"I saw Mr. Ellaby yesterday evening. With you."

"Obviously that information is in no way useful. Where is your niece? I say, where is your niece? Give me a plain answer, please—yes or no."

"You are spoiling my meal, Mr. Champness, and that is something for which I can never forgive you. But if you must know, Barbara asked my permission to go to Rouen for the day."

Mr. Champness frowned so determinedly that his pince-nez fell off, selecting a round pat of butter as a point of least resistance. He went, cleaning the glasses with his handkerchief, and sustained three collisions in the dining-room. At his own hotel he complained very strongly of the dishes offered, flouting the proprietor's arguments, and declaring that absence of previous criticism regarding similar food in no way implied satisfaction. The meal over, he went again to his pupil's room and found it still empty; he searched the narrow streets near the church, and took once more a survey of the river front. An American artist of his acquaintance landed from the steam ferry.

"Why, yes, Mr. Champness, I saw him not more than an hour since, before I went across. He told me he was going away for a round of golf."

"A mere subterfuge!" cried Champness distractedly. "The point is, where have they really gone?"

"They?"

"The girl spoke about Rouen, and the boy talked of Dieppe. Now, the one clear fact is, of course, that these are not their real destinations."

"Mr. Champness, you are beginning to interest me. Do I understand that your young friend and that remarkably pretty girl at the Hotel de la Marine have gone off together? Say," exclaimed the American artist delightedly, "this is where I come in! This is what I'm good at. This and baseball are the two games I play. Come over here for coffee, and let's figure it all out."

A reserved man hitherto, the American now pulled up the flood-gates and allowed eloquence to swirl through. Within five minutes he had persuaded Mr. Champness that the young couple had gone to Havre. At Havre there was an English consul, qualified to perform the ceremony of marriage; neither, debating this across a round white table, knew the preliminaries required, but Mr. Champness thought it unlikely that a young man and a young woman could walk into the office and say: "Here we are! Marry us as quickly as you can." Something in the form of notice would be demanded. Witnesses would surely be necessary.

"But I must get there as quickly as possible," said Champness.

"My car is at your disposal."

"Wouldn't the train be quicker?"

"The train?" echoed the American. "Snails travel by that train, sir, when they want to go slowly."

Miss Hinton strolled across as the car arrived. Its owner had prepared for the journey, but Mr. Champness, with no ceremony, borrowed his coat and goggles, announced himself as well capable of driving, and ordered the American to put in a good afternoon's work at the easel.

"Going for a trip?" asked Miss Hinton. Champness was examining the stock of petrol, and he offered only a grunt for reply. "You'll find it rather warm."

"If I don't," he snapped, "I shall make it so."

"How very strange you are to-day! I can't understand you at all."

"The point is," he said, with one foot on the step, "that I understand you. Your scheme, Miss Hinton, has been well thought out, but it's my business to see that it isn't carried into practice. I am now going to Havre to stop the marriage of my pupil and your niece."

"I'm coming with you," she said readily.

A small crowd assembled to hear the argument, and folk leaned out from windows. The American artist managed to give a word of advice; Miss Hinton stepped in. Mr. Champness started the car, and the crowd made way. As the car took the straight road by the side of the river, Miss Hinton closed her parasol, threw it to the seats at the back, and wound a blue veil about her head. "Rather sit behind?" asked Champness gruffly. She answered that she was quite comfortable. They reached Villequier without exchanging any other words. He obeyed the painted request to slacken speed; received the thanks given by signboard at the other end of the village.

"You drive well."

"Don't make silly remarks," he begged exasperatedly, "just for the sake of talking. I'd rather you didn't speak at all."

"Yesterday evening," said Miss Hinton, "you were kind enough to pay me a compliment on the intelligence of my conversation."

"I didn't know then what you were capable of doing."

"Do you really imagine," she asked, "that I have done anything to encourage this affair? Do you think I am responsible in any way?"

"I have been a coach now for a good many years, and I am fully capable of putting two and two together."

"What do you make the answer?"

"Here is a young man of property entrusted to my charge," argued Champness heatedly, "and here is a young woman entrusted to your charge. My duty is to get him ready for an examination in September; your duty, I take it, is to get her well married and of! your hands. In the absence of direct evidence, we have to consider motives, and the——"

"Look out!"

He swerved the car, and just escaped contact with another that came out of a narrow road at right angles.

"You were in the wrong there," she mentioned. "They sounded the horn, and you didn't. Any commendation I gave to your driving is hereby withdrawn. Try to be more careful in future. An accident in which our two names were coupled would afford me no satisfaction."

"I am glad," he remarked, "to discover that you draw the line somewhere."

Miss Hinton contented herself, after this, in ejaculating the names of some of the villages and towns as they went through: Lillebonne (with a wave of the hand at the Roman amphitheatre), St. Romain, Harfleur. They pulled up in the Rue de Paris at Havre, where an announcement of "Five o'clock Tea" caught their eyes simultaneously; he invited her with a jerk of the head, and she accepted with a curt nod. At the table silence was preserved until Champness searched his pockets in order to settle the bill.

"Have you—have you, by chance, money on you?" he stammered.

"Plenty," she answered, exhibiting a note-case.

"I haven't a centime. Forgot all about it, to tell the truth. Shall I take charge of——"

"No," said Miss Hinton, "I'll keep it myself."

"I only offered because it seemed to contain rather a lot of money."

"Often, during my life," said Miss Hinton, "I have found a lot of money to be useful. I suppose the time will come when I shall have to leave all I possess to someone else, but meanwhile I rather enjoy spending it at the rate of about three thousand a year."

He repeated the figures in tones of amazement. "I had really no idea," he declared. "from the way you and your niece lived at Caudebec, that you were people of so much importance. What do you think I earn? Altogether, I mean, including the articles I write for the magazines and the trifling amounts I get for my verses—how much a year?"

"I am too well bred," smiled Miss Hinton, "to guess, and too much of a woman not to want to know."

He scribbled on a slip of paper and passed it across the table. "That is precisely what I fetch in the open market."

"Your poetry," she said, leaning forward interestedly, "is it any good?"

It happened that Champness had in his hip pocket an envelope containing several printed specimens, and these were submitted with explanatory remarks. "This is rather neat, I think," and, "That I wrote once at Rapallo," and "This is not quite up to my mark, but they used it." At the end Miss Hinton, in paying the account, mentioned that she had always been under the impression that poets wrote mainly on the subject of love; Champness answered that the topic was one which had engaged but little of his attention, and, remarking that there appeared to be thunder in the air, suggested they should now see to the business which had brought them to the town. They found the English Consul had left five minutes earlier; the clerk in charge of the office was able to say, of his own knowledge, no marriage had that day taken place; he explained the regulations affecting ceremonies of the kind. A fortnight's notice had to be given by the parties. The notice was required to be posted up in the office for that period. No marriage after three o'clock in the afternoon. Total cost to the gentleman, three pounds five shillings. The storm outside broke as the information was being given, and the clerk made something like a sworn affidavit to the effect that he had prophesied its arrival throughout the whole of the day.

Mr. Champness drove the uncovered car, through the torrents of rain and the swift lightning, to an hotel that he had noticed on the way from the tea-rooms. His companion wore the heavy travelling coat, and this, with its deep collar, protected her; Champness himself was only partially shielded by the glass screen, and the head waiter, receiving them in the courtyard, insisted—Miss Hinton supporting the resolution in eloquent terms—that the jacket and waistcoat should be taken away to undergo a process of drying. The head waiter found a dressing-gown, and made a useful recommendation in favour of dinner in a private room.

"Sure you are all right?" demanded Champness concernedly. "I can't blame myself sufficiently for bringing you on this wild-goose chase."

"If you remember, I insisted upon coming."

"Let me take all the blame," he urged. He regarded himself in the mirror. A maid at the doorway announced that Madame's room was ready. "I say," remarked Champness alarmedly, "shall we really have to stay here all night?"

"Are you thinking," asked Miss Hinton, preparing to follow the maid, "of your reputation or the expense?"

"Both!" he answered.

He secured quite a good round of applause by an effective entrance in the hall, and by demanding the use of the telephone; the combination of his odd appearance and this order seemed to be welcomed by residents of the hotel, kept in by stress of weather. Apparently they knew, as he discovered a few minutes later, that in France the means of communication are suspended during a thunderstorm. He returned to give the announcement, and the time of waiting for his companion was occupied by self-communings that he did not trouble to put into the form of rhythm or rhyme.

Miss Hinton, as keeper of the purse, had given orders for the meal. It proved an excellent dinner, and not for the first time in the world's history food succeeded in changing a man's views. Champness, at the dessert, declared that if he could be informed of the safety of his pupil, the whole matter would present itself in the light of an admirable joke; Miss Hinton trusted her niece was not out in the storm.

"Tell me something," he begged, tendering the black cherries.

"Put the question."

"Had you any idea they meant to go off together?"

"I thought you were quite certain on that point, judging from the remark you made when we were leaving in the car."

"I may," admitted Champness, "have done you an injustice."

"As a matter of fact, you did. My niece is an intelligent girl, and your pupil—if you don't mind me saying so—is not too well furnished with mental ability. In spite of your efforts, he is quite a fool. If you had not been under the mistaken impression that I was a hard-up woman, taking my niece about for the purpose of making a good marriage for her, and if you had not allowed yourself to be influenced by your American friend, you would have seen there was every reason why I should strongly object to a marriage."

"I know you better now, dear."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I say," he repeated, with confusion, "that I know you better now."

"Thought," remarked Miss Hinton, "that you added something else. The rain has stopped, I think. Do you feel capable of driving home?"

"With your help," he said deferentially. "Would you mind paying for the dinner? I'll settle with you when we reach Caudebec."

The head waiter was desolated to find Monsieur and Madame intended to depart, and urged several reasons against this course. A ten-franc note—"Too much!" whispered Champness—induced him to withdraw these, to restore the dried jacket and waistcoat, and to see the two off with best wishes for a good journey. The moon had come out; Champness remembered the way, and when two hours later they saw the lights of the town, and the broad river that gave it company, they said in unison, with regretful accents: "Why, we're here already!" The owner of the car was in the centre of the roadway.

"Say, now," he cried jovially, "what do you think you two sparks are up to? Is this the way to treat a friend who lends you his automobile for a spin? I'd almost decided to put the police on your track."

"Any news of the young couple?" demanded Champness anxiously.

"He came back from Dieppe at six o'clock, and she was home from Rouen some time before that. He has gone to bed because he is tired after his day of golf, and she is waiting up to find out what on earth has become of her respected aunt!"

*****

Mr. Champness met Miss Hinton the following morning, in the Rue de la Boucherie, a street so narrow as to give folk an excuse for stopping to talk.

"Been thinking about those fees the consul charges," he said. "They seem really quite moderate."

"Do you believe you could afford the outlay?"

"I'll save up, dearest!" Mr. Champness, on this occasion, gave the last word with good elocutionary power.