The Cheat (Holman)/Chapter 4
If you have never been caught in a Paris traffic jam you have never plumbed the nethermost depths of exasperation.
All the taxicabs, trucks, victorias, fiacres, old women, cripples, and unleashed children in the world seemed to have chosen the same precise hour the next morning to gather in the streets leading to the Gare du Nord. At least so it seemed to Dudley Drake sitting on tenter-hooks in the tonneau of a jouncing taxi, alternately reading his watch and praying to the driver for the impossible blessing of more speed. Hours seemed to pass during which the machine proceeded by asthmatic fits and jerks and appeared to be getting nowhere.
A block from the railway station Dudley paid his chauffeur and entrusted his fortune to his long legs. The boat train for Cherbourg was leaving the Gare du Nord within ten precious minutes. By dint of battering-ram tactics Dudley eventually got himself into the station, across the gloomy, high roofed interior, and finally into the rear of the crowd that was passing through the grilled gate to the waiting Cherbourg train.
"Express Train for New York," read the sign over the gate, a French method of flattering home-going Americans.
Dudley spurted here and there searching the faces of the passengers. And finally he discovered her, moving away from him, the tall, severe duenna preceding her with a piece of hand luggage. Dudley frantically stumbled over a porter. He became entangled in the leash of a woman's yelping poodle and had no time to be polite. But at last he caught up to Carmelita and put his hand upon her shoulder. Startled, she looked around. If there was joy in her face, she banished it quickly behind a cold mask.
"I have been trying to—telephone you—all morning," he panted. "Carmelita, forgive me for everything I said last night—except that I love you."
"Never." Her lips were firm—but trembling. She turned toward the gate. Her chaperone was already several yards ahead, blissfully unconscious of the interruption, cut off by the mulling crowd.
"Carmelita, I love you," he said desperately into her ear.
"I hate you!" with deep conviction.
The duenna, surrounded by baggage, was beckoning from the other side of the grill. The train would start in a few minutes.
"I am so utterly miserable, Carmelita."
"I am glad."
"I was a fool."
"Yes."
"At least kiss me good-bye."
"No." But her voice had lost its arrogance.
Then suddenly he had swept her, protesting and all, into his arms, for all of Atlantic-bound Paris to see, and kissed her again and again upon her petulant, trembling lips. At first she fought madly, but gradually she yielded and was clinging to him, sobbing nervously, happily. He led her, a sturdy arm supporting her, back through the crowd, away from her train and Buenos Aires and Don Pablo Mendoza and her duenna and her trunks.
And Carmelita's past, as represented by a frightened and gesticulating and very respectable elderly Spanish lady shrilling into the ears of an uncomprehending French guard her demand that the train stop at once, rolled out of the train-shed of the Gare du Nord. Dudley asked, "Can't we be married at once, Carmelita—to-day—this morning?"
She nodded assent, her eyes dancing with excitement.
And again Dudley Drake was in a taxi and very much in a hurry.