F I’d ’a’ been slammed ashore on Robinson Caruso’s island all by me lonesome, I couldn’t feel lonesomer than what I feel lonesome now.” Nellie Gaskell was mumbling to herself for company. Crowds surrounded her, but she knew nobody. She faced the city of Cherbourg, and was afraid of it. She looked back over her left shoulder, and saw the huge steamer Mutterland that had brought her across the sea, already dwindling off toward its German port, after exuding its Paris-bound passengers on board a tender.
Nellie sat on somebody’s else trunk, and kicked her heels against somebody’s else initials. And then a porter came up and pulled the trunk out from under her. She had to stand up, and her shoes were too tight. She had saved them to wear down the gangplank, because he was to have met her, and a gangplank is a good place to show off shoes. Item, the toes were patent leather; item, buckles of silver-near.
Her plight was pitiful. She was friendless and Frenchless in France. And her shoes were too tight. And her other shoes were in her trunk. And she didn’t know where her trunk was.
After the harrowing series of mishaps that had attended her efforts to reach Paris with Dirk Memling, it seemed hardly possible that Fate should have another knife up her sleeve. She and Dirk had managed to get themselves separated in New York, and take different ships oversea. That ought to have been enough. But evidently it was not. Nellie bitterly recalled her motto:
“Poik up, old goil, the woist that ever was can always get a little woisser.”
But Doik hadn’t otta not met her. He knew she didn’t know enough French to keep from starving at a tabble dot. Besides, he had sent her a wireless that he would be at the shore end of the gangplank, and she had hurried down the cleated way with her face all made up to greet him. Her smiles had relaxed like curtains slowly lowered.
She had run hither and yon about the dock, dodging the facteurs as they catapulted trunks in all directions and howled “At-taw-shaw!” whatever that meant. But never a Memling she found. The other passengers had stampeded every which way, identifying luggage, and seeing it carried into the room where the customs officers made a polite pretense of examining things.
In time the trunks and the passengers and their parcels were stowed on the funny train which was evidently panting to get back to Paris. But no Memling came for Nellie.
A number of uniformed Frenchmen poured out a vast amount of words which Nellie supposed to be French; but she drearily shook her head, and answered:
“I don’t get you, Gastong.”
Nellie was so pretty that it was not hard even for a Frenchman to be polite to her, but she could not, or would not, understand.
Finally two interpreters approached her, and addressed her in English. They explained graciously that she should get her trunks through the customs, and get herself on board the train. They thought they knew English, but they had not met with East Side New Yorkese. Her answer threw them into complete disorder:
“Nay, nay, Pauline! Nix on the choo-choo for mine. A soitain poisson Marconies me he’ll toin up at the dock; so I’m all to the Cassie Bianca; ‘the goil stood on the boinin’ dock’—you know the rest.”
The first interpreter walked apart with the second interpreter, and said:
“What language is it she speaks? And who is Pauline?”
The second interpreter leaned on the first interpreter, and answered:
“But yes; but who is Choo-Choo? Some words are nearly Angleesh, but they do not mean somesing togezzer, and some words mean nossing alone, so perhaps it is Indian she talks.”
“But Choo-Choo is Chinois!”
They debated the mystic syllables, but all they got from them was a headache; also a vague notion that she was waiting for somebody named Bianca.
They asked her again if she were expecting perhaps somebody.
“Sure, Mike!” she brightened.
“What is it her name, please? Is it Pauline or Bianca?”
Nellie laughed Nellishly. “Her name! Pauline! I’d like you to hand that to him!”
“Ah, she is a him?”
“Her am.”
“Then perhaps if you will tell us who it is he is, we could write him a little blue—a telegram, and he comes or answers. Who is it he is and where, please?”
Nellie could not resist answering with an expression her Irish mother had used to use:
“If you knew that and had your supper, you could go to bed.”
The interpreters looked at each other and blushed, particularly the married one. She explained:
“If you could put me wise to where he is, you’d be some intoipreter.”
The unmarried interpreter desperately urged:
“You wish to go to Paris, yes?”