Eva Ibbotson

But Marie-Claude, who had danced her first Wili at the age of sixteen, had scant patience with those specters of betrayed maidenhood who endeavor to dance to death any gentlemen foolish enough to cross their path—and two hours before the start of the evening performance, she announced her intention of going to look at the shops.

Neither of her friends went with her. Kirstin had joined the group of girls comforting Maximov—who needed to be told some twenty times an hour that he was not to blame for Simonova’s accident—and Harriet had decided to hurry back to the Metropole to see if the new doctor expected that afternoon held out any more hope.

The city was golden in the late afternoon sun. People sat in cafes on the mosaic pavements; children splashed in the fountains. Marie-Claude walked with pleasure, enjoying the full delights of window-shopping as experienced by those untroubled by any intention to buy.

Rejecting a pink and white striped silk suit, approving a blue organdie, she wandered along the Rua Quintana, crossed a busy square and paused by a kiosk at the edge of a small park overlooking the harbor where she bought a bottle of lemonade.

She was just selecting a bench on which to sit and drink it when she saw, coming down the steps of the porticoed police station, the gangling figure of Dr. Finch-Dutton. He was carrying a small wooden box and apparently dressed for traveling.

So he wasn’t away in the jungle as Harriet had thought. Strange… why had he made no contact? And what did he want with the police?

Repressing the natural instinct of flight so common in people acquainted with the Englishman, Marie-Claude studied him. He had entered the park by the other gate, sat down in a chair by the bandstand and now proceeded to take out of the wooden box something at which he stared with great intensity.

“Bon jour, Monsieur.”

Edward looked up, blushed, jumped to his feet. He had avoided all truck with the ballet company-complete surprise was the essence of his plan to snatch Harriet away—and he no longer felt capable of trusting anyone. But the sight of Marie-Claude, her face gilded by the rays of the westering sun, entirely overset him. Whoever had been responsible for Harriet’s eruption, it could hardly be this enchanting girl with her staggering facility in oral French. And lifting his hat, he eld out the glass specimen bottle he had been studying and said simply, “Look!”

Marie-Claude looked, gave a small shriek and retreated. Inside the bottle lay a large, dead reddish-brown worm with a great many baggy legs and two stumpy antennae.

“It’s Peripatus!” said Edward raptly, staring for the hundredth time at this miracle which he had been vouchsafed. “I found it this morning. You can’t imagine what this will mean to the head of my department. It’s absolutely crucial, you see—the missing link between the Arthropods and the Annelids.”

He launched into an account of the creature’s significance, while Marie-Claude’s jaw tightened in an effort not to yawn.

But there was no stopping Edward, who saw himself as a man sanctified ana set apart. For he had not meant to go into the forest again; he had been packed and ready, made his farewells at the Club when, with half an hour to wait before the cab was due, he had decided to go bug-hunting just once more.

And there on a damp patch of leaf-mold beneath a clump of kapok trees, he had found it!

Edward’s joy had at first been purely entomological. But no man can feel a rapture as intense as his without undergoing a general change in outlook. As he prepared Peripatus for the long journey home, Edward had seen himself as a man who had failed in magnanimity. Harriet, it was true, had to be apprehended; she had to be taken to the Gregory by force—there was no way out of that—but he had intended to have as little to do with her on the journey as possible. She would be aired and exercised like the prisoner she effectively was until he restored her to her father, and that was all.

But as he drowned the wriggling creature in alcohol, Edward had realized the pettiness of such thoughts. Once the ship was safely away and there was no question of Harriet making scenes or asking to be taken back, he would make it his business to help her… to heal her. He would go into her cabin… her dark, quiet cabin… he would let her weep; he would even put his arm around her and stroke her hair. There was no question of marriage now, of course, but there were… other relationships, thought Edward, seeing afresh his duty to this luckless and fallen girl.

“That it should happen like this,” he said now, holding up the bottle to the light. “On my last day!”

“Your last day?” said Marie-Claude sharply, putting down her lemonade.