They Call Me Patrice

They were both chatting away absorbedly by the time the husband reappeared ten minutes later. He acted mysterious. He looked cautiously left and right as if bearing tidings of highest secrecy, then whispered, “Pat, they’re going to open up the dining car in a couple minutes. One of the porters just tipped me off. I think we better start moving up that way if we want to make it. There’ll be a stampede on as soon as word gets around.”

The wife jumped to her feet.

He immediately soft-pedaled her with the flats of both hands, in comic intensity. “Sh! Don’t give it away, what are you trying to do?”

She tiptoed out into the aisle, as though the amount of noise would give away the secret.

She pulled at the sleeve of the girl beside her in passing. “You come with us,” she whispered.

“What about the seats? We’ll lose them.”

“Not if we put our baggage in them.” The girl still hesitated.

The wife seemed to understand; she was quick that way. She sent him on ahead, to break trail. Then as soon as his back was turned, bent low over the seat in whispered reassurance. “He’ll look after the check, I’ll see that he does.”

“No, it isn’t that—” the girl faltered.

“Hurry up, we’ll lose him.”

She guided Helen lightly forward with a friendly hand.

“You can’t neglect yourself now, of all times,” she remonstrated in an undertone. “I know.”

They secured seats together in the dining car, which was crowded as soon as the doors were opened, just as he had foreseen. The unlucky ones had to wait in the aisle outside.

“Just so we won’t sit down to the table still strangers,” the wife said, cheerfully unfolding her napkin, “he’s Hazzard, Hugh, and I’m Hazzard, Patrice.” The dimples showed up. “Funny name, isn’t it?”

“Be more respectful,” her young husband grumbled, without lifting his nose from the bill-of-fare.

“What’s your name?”

“Georgesson.”

She smiled at the two of them. It wasn’t a very broad smile, but it had depth and meaning.

“You’ve both been awfully friendly to me.”

She looked down at the menu card the steward had handed her, so they wouldn’t detect the emotion that made her lips tremble.

The lights had gone out in the car. All but those tiny, subdued ones over each individual seat. The three were already old friends by now.

“She just came out,” Patrice reported, eyes fastened watchfully on a door far down the aisle in the dim distance. “Come on, do you want to come with me, Helen? Quick, Hugh, the overnight-case.” She prodded him heartlessly in the ribs.

“All right, take it easy,” Hugh grunted sleepily.

“I’m going to make him take back his seat,” Helen murmured on their way down the aisle. “He can’t sit up all night on the edge of a suitcase.”

“You can’t either,” Patrice remarked, stepping carefully over somebody’s outstretched feet, and then stopping to give her companion a hand over the same hazard. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll take turns, all three of us; we’ll work it by relays.”

They closed the dressing-room door.

“I’m going to take as long as I want,” Patrice announced determinedly, snapping open the overnight-case and fumbling for facial tissues.

“We’re nearly the last ones in anyway,” Helen said.

After that they combed and creamed in silence for awhile, giving an occasional unsteady little lurch in unison.

“I hope Hugh’s people like me,” Patrice remarked suddenly.

“Haven’t you ever seen them before?”

“They’ve never laid eyes on me. I met Hugh in Europe, and we were married over there. We’ve lived there all this last year. We’re just coming from the other side now, you know. This is practically a continuation of the same trip. We went straight from the ship to the train. We made terribly close connections; we weren’t in New York more than two hours.”

“Didn’t you ever send them a picture?”

“No. I started to several times, but I was never quite satisfied with the ones I had. I knew I was going to meet them eventually, and snapshots are so...  so— How on earth do you make this water stay in?” she interrupted herself.

“You push that thing down, I think.”

“I have a horror of losing this. It slipped down a drain on the Other Side once, and they had to take out a whole section of pipe.” She stripped off her wedding-band before plunging her hands in the water.

“It’s beautiful,” Helen said wistfully.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Patrice agreed. She held the ring pinched between two fingers so Helen could look at it. “See what it says on the inside? His name and mine, together.”

She ran a flimsy-scarf-like handkerchief through the center of the narrow band, deftly knotted it, and dropped the ring into the open dressing-case.

“Isn’t it supposed to be bad luck to do that? I mean take your ring off?”

“I couldn’t have bad luck.”

The train pounded on in silence for a few more minutes, its hurtling roar deadened somewhat in the closed compartment where they were.

Patrice stepped back, her toilette completed. She hugged her own arms in a sort of half-ecstasy of delicious, shivering fright. “This is the last night. By tomorrow night this time we’ll already be there, the worst’ll be over.”