Ten days before the wedding Paul moved into rooms at the Ritz, and Margot devoted herself seriously to shopping. Five or six times a day messengers appeared at his suite bringing little byproducts of her activity—now a platinum cigarette-case, now a dressing-gown, now a tiepin or a pair of links—while Paul, with unaccustomed prodigality, bought two new ties, three pairs of shoes, an umbrella and a set of Proust. Margot had fixed his personal allowance at two thousand a year.
Far away in the Adriatic feverish preparations were being made to make Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde’s villa at Corfu ready for the first weeks of her honeymoon, and the great bed, carved with pineapples, that had once belonged to Napoleon III, was laid out for her reception with fragrant linen and pillows of unexampled softness. All this the newspapers retailed with uncontrolled profusion, and many a young reporter was handsomely commended for the luxuriance of his adjectives.
However, there was a hitch.
Three days before the date fixed for the wedding Paul was sitting in the Ritz opening his morning’s post, when Margot rang him up.
“Darling, rather a tiresome thing’s happened,” she said. “You know those girls we sent off to Rio the other day? Well, they’re stuck at Marseilles, for some reason or other. I can’t quite make out why. I think it’s something to do with their passports. I’ve just had a very odd cable from my agent there. He’s giving up the job. It’s such a bore all this happening just now. I do so want to get everything fixed before Thursday. I wonder if you could be an angel and go over and see to it for me? It’s probably only a matter of giving the right man a few hundred francs. If you fly you’ll be back in plenty of time. I’d go myself, only you know, don’t you, darling, I simply haven’t one minute to spare.”
Paul did not have to travel alone. Potts was at Croydon, enveloped in an ulster and carrying in his hand a little attaché-case.
“League of Nations business,” he said, and was twice sick during the flight.
At Paris Paul was obliged to charter a special aeroplane. Potts saw him off.
“Why are you going to Marseilles?” he asked. “I thought you were going to be married.”
“I’m only going there for an hour or two, to see some people on business,” said Paul.
How like Potts, he thought, to suppose that a little journey like this was going to upset his marriage. Paul was beginning to feel cosmopolitan, the Ritz today, Marseilles tomorrow, Corfu next day, and afterwards the whole world stood open to him like one great hotel, his way lined for him with bows and orchids. How pathetically insular poor Potts was, he thought, for all his talk of internationalism.
It was late evening when Paul arrived at Marseilles. He dined at Basso’s in the covered balcony off bouillabaisse and Meursault at a table from which he could see a thousand lights reflected in the still water. Paul felt very much a man of the world as he paid his bill, calculated the correct tip, and sat back in the open cab on his way to the old part of the town.
“They’ll probably be at Alice’s, in the Rue de Reynarde,” Margot had said. “Anyway, you oughtn’t to have any difficulty in finding them if you mention my name.”
At the corner of the Rue Ventomargy the carriage stopped. The way was too narrow and too crowded for traffic. Paul paid the driver. “Merci, Monsieur! Gardez bien votre chapeau,” he said as he drove off. Wondering what the expression could mean, Paul set off with less certain steps down the cobbled alley. The houses overhung perilously on each side, gaily alight from cellar to garret; between them swung lanterns; a shallow gutter ran down the centre of the path. The scene could scarcely have been more sinister had it been built at Hollywood itself for some orgiastic incident of the Reign of Terror. Such a street in England, Paul reflected, would have been saved long ago by Mr. Spire and preserved under a public trust for the sale of brass toasting forks, picture postcards and “Devonshire teas.” Here the trade was of a different sort. It did not require very much worldly wisdom to inform him of the character of the quarter he was now in. Had he not, guidebook in hand, traversed the forsaken streets of Pompeii?
No wonder, Paul reflected, that Margot had been so anxious to rescue her protégées from this place of temptation and danger.
A Negro sailor, hideously drunk, addressed Paul in no language known to man, and invited him to have a drink. He hurried on. How typical of Margot that, in all her whirl of luxury, she should still have time to care for the poor girls she had unwittingly exposed to such perils.
Deaf to the polyglot invitations that arose on all sides, Paul pressed on his way. A young lady snatched his hat from his head; he caught a glimpse of her bare leg in a lighted doorway; then she appeared at a window, beckoning him to come in and retrieve it.
All the street seemed to be laughing at him. He hesitated; and then, forsaking, in a moment of panic, both his black hat and his self-possession, he turned and fled for the broad streets and the tram lines where, he knew at heart, was his spiritual home.
By daylight the old town had lost most of
