THE ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT.
To have fallen out of an express train going at full speed! I have had
some strange experiences, for a mere woman. But this, I think, beats
all.
And to owe it to Thomas Tennant! I will be even with him yet.
I went down to Brighton to spend the Sunday with Lettice Enderby--she
was acting at the theatre there. I found her not feeling very well. We
spent the day alone together. After dinner I had to make a rush for the
train. Who should I find myself shut in with as soon as the train had
started, but Tommy Tennant.
It was years and years since we had seen each other. And all the world
had happened since we had. But, so far as personal appearance was
concerned, he had not changed a bit. He was still the same jack-pudding
sort of little man, with round eyes and rosy cheeks. I knew him at
sight. What was queerer, he knew me. I take that as a compliment. I
flatter myself that I have not changed, except for the better, since
those days of long ago. Tommy's prompt recognition was the best
testimony to the truth of this fact I could possibly have had.
Although more than seas divided us, and never was a past more dead than
his and mine, at the sight of Tommy all my old grudge against him came
back again. Perhaps the glass or two of wine I had had with Lettice
might have had something to do with it, but directly I saw him I flew
into a rage. Tommy Tennant always has been the ideal man I hate. Give
me them good or give me them bad, but do give me them one or the other.
The irresolute, backboneless, jelly-like sort of man is beyond
endurance.
If Thomas Tennant ever had a backbone he lost it in his cradle!
He always used to be afraid of me. In that respect, as in the others, I
found he had not changed. He was frightened half out of his life
directly he saw who it was. When I began talking to him he started
shivering--literally shivering--in a way which made me wild. I do like
a man who can hold his own. Talk about conscience making cowards of us
all; I like the man of whom nothing can make a coward. He got into such
a state of mortal terror that he actually tried to steal out of the
carriage and escape from me while the train was going, for all I know,
perhaps fifty miles an hour.
That was how the trouble all began. It would have spoiled the sport to
have let him go, so I tried to stop him. He had opened the carriage
door, and in endeavouring to prevent his going out, I went out instead.
That is the simple truth.
There never was a more astonished woman. I doubt if there ever was one
with so much reason for astonishment. How it happened, or exactly what
happened, I do not know. There was not time enough to clearly
understand. I discovered that I was standing upon nothing, and then
that I was flying backwards through the air. After that I suppose I
lost my seven senses.
I could not, however, have lost them for long. Perhaps for not more
than a minute or so. When I came to I opened my eyes, and looking up
saw that the moon was shining in the sky overhead, and that it was
almost as light as day. I wondered where I was, and whether the end of
the world had come. I found that I was lying among a group of bushes on
what seemed a sloping bank, and that something very like a miracle had
taken place. Falling out of the train while it was rushing along the
top of an embankment, I must have gone, backwards, into a bush, which
while it had let me through, had sufficed to break my fall. I must have
rolled down the bank, until I was stopped by the clump of bushes amidst
which I found myself.
The miracle was that I was unhurt. I was a trifle shaken and a trifle
dazed. But not a bone was broken, and I felt that, so far as material
damage was concerned, I could get up when I chose and walk off,
practically as if nothing had occurred.
But I was a trifle dazed, and it was some moments before my senses
quite returned to me. What hastened their return was the fact of my
hearing footsteps. I listened. Somebody was walking, and not very far
off either. The person, whoever it was, seemed to be quite close at
hand. I did not know whereabouts I might be lying. I was only aware
that I was somewhere between Brighton and London. I had no notion how
far I might be from a station or a town. It struck me that it would be
just as well that I should discover who the pedestrian might chance to
be.
As I was about to rise, with the intention of prospecting, something
heavy falling among the bushes almost on top of me startled me half out
of my wits. I sprang to my feet. At the bottom of the bank on the other
side of a fence which formed a boundary between the railway and the
country beyond, a man stood, staring at me in the moonlight. He was
tall, and he wore a long black overcoat and a billycock hat; even then,
and in that light, I could see he was a gentleman. But it was the look
which was on his face which took me aback. I never saw such a look on a
man's face before. He stared at me as if he was staring at a ghost. And
just as I was about to accost him, and to request his assistance, at
least to the extent of informing me as to my whereabouts, leaping right
round, he began to tear across the moonlit field as if Satan was at his
heels.
I was going to call and beg him not to leave me, a stranger in the
land, alone in the lurch like that, when I was reminded of the
something which had fallen among the bushes, and which had first made
me conscious of his presence, by kicking against something which felt
soft and yielding, and which was lying on the ground.
I stooped down to see what it was.
"Sakes alive! It's a woman!"
It was; a young woman--and she was dead. No wonder he had stared at me
as if he had been staring at a ghost. No wonder, as he saw me looking
at him from among the bushes, that he had thought that the victim of
his handiwork had risen from the dead to look again upon his face. No
wonder he had torn for his life across the grass, feeling that she was
at his heels.
I seemed to be in for a pretty thing. I have looked upon dead folk many
a time; yes, and upon not a few who have come to their death by
"accident." I have lived in parts of the world in which life is not
held so sacred as it is in England; where not such a fuss is made every
time the doctor is forestalled--where the doctor is not the only
individual who is licensed to kill; where men shoot now and then at
sight, and, when they are pushed to it, women too. I know a girl--and
liked her--who shot a man who had insulted her in New Orleans, and left
him on the sidewalk. Nobody said a word. She is married now to a rich
man, and to a good man, as good men go, and she has a family, and she
is highly esteemed. In England that seems odd, but I suppose the fact
is that when one is in Rome one does as the Romans do, and that is all
about it.
And at that moment I happened to be in England, and I made up my mind
there and then that, if I could help it, I would have no finger in the
pie. I had no desire to go into the witness-box--I would almost as soon
have gone into the dock. Cross-examining counsel have a knack of making
mincemeat of a witness. Things come out--the things which one would
much rather did not come out. I had not returned to England, a widow,
with my big pile, with the intention of coming such a cropper at the
outset. Rather than be mixed up in such a mess, I would almost sooner
take my passage in the first steamer back to the States, and count the
ties out West again.
Please the fates, I had done with scandals--fresh ones, anyhow--for the
rest of my days. The woman was dead. She was beyond my help. Let
whoever found her hang the man who laid her there. The house in which I
lived was too transparent for me to indulge in the luxury of throwing
stones.
I gathered myself together. The most miraculous part of the business
was that my clothing seemed to have escaped uninjured; falling
backwards had been my salvation. I peeped at my face in my handglass. I
seemed to be all right--right enough, at any rate, to pass muster at
night and in a crowd. I went up the bank to the line. From that
altitude I had a good view of the surrounding country. Straight along
the line to the left, not so very far away, lights were glimmering. I
made up my mind to chance it, to keep along the line and to make for
them.
They proved to be the lights of a station. The station was Three
Bridges Junction. I managed to enter it to the best of my knowledge and
belief, entirely unobserved. I thanked my stars when I felt the
platform beneath my feet.
From the mirror in the waiting-room I learned that my handglass had not
deceived me. I could pass muster. A woman in the room addressed me--she
and I had it to ourselves.
"Excuse me, miss, but do you know your back's all covered with weeds?"
As she brushed them off I thanked her, murmuring something about my
having been sitting on the grass.
Going out on to the platform I all but came into collision with the man
who had stood staring at me from the other side of the railing. The
sight of him fairly took my breath away. He was going from me or he
could scarcely have failed to notice the singularity of my demeanour.
It was he--there could be no mistake about that. But, lest I might be
in error, I resolved to have another glimpse at him. Before I could put
my resolution into force he had vanished, into what I discovered to be,
as I strolled slowly past it, a refreshment-room.
I should not wonder if he did stand in need of refreshment!
There did not appear to be a seat in the place. English people talk
about the discomfort of the American depôts but my experience is that,
from the discomfort point of view, the average English station runs the
American depôt hard. I sat on one of those square trollies which the
porters use for baggage. There I watched and waited for my gentleman to
emerge, refreshed. The trolley was close to the refreshment-room. I
could see him at the bar. He was not content with one drink. He
disposed of two.
Probably he needed them!
Presently he came out. He had had his back towards me while he had been
drinking. As he came out of the buffet, turning, he walked in the
direction of the trolley on which I was sitting. He moved right past,
so close to me that by putting out my foot, I could have tripped him
up.
It was he. My first impression had not been wrong. That he had got
cured of his fright was plain--certainly he showed no signs of it. He
seemed quite at his ease. His hands were in the pockets of his
overcoat, an umbrella was under his arm, a cigarette was between his
teeth. There might not have been such a thing as a ghost--or the shadow
of the shade of a ghost--in all the world.
Back he came. He sailed up to a porter. I heard him asking him when
there was a train to town. As the man, having given the information,
was making off, I cut in. I put to my gentleman the question which he
had put to the porter.
"Can you tell me when the next train starts for London?"
He told me what I asked, adding a word or two on his own account, as I
had expected and desired. I responded. He seemed disposed for
sociability. Why should I object? We began to talk. The end of it was
that we travelled in the same compartment up to town.
It was so funny!
He was that most remarkable product--an English gentleman. Given the
real article--and there is no mistaking it when once encountered--there
is nothing in the world which can be compared to it. I speak who know.
He was tall. He was perfectly dressed. He was handsome--I never saw a
more handsome man. And he had that air of infinite, yet unconscious,
condescension which the English gentleman, alone of all the creatures
of the world, is born with, and which, willy-nilly, he carries with him
from the cradle to the grave.
They tell you in the different countries of the world that the
Englishman is awkward, shy, ungraceful, seldom at his ease. May be; but
not the English gentleman. He is the only man I have known who is
always at his ease in every possible situation. But he is not to be
found on every bush. Even in his own country he is the rarest of rare
birds. Being born a peer, even though he can trace his tree to Noah,
does not make a man a gentleman--you bet that it does not. I believe
that an English gentleman is a caprice, an accident. He is not to be
accounted for by natural laws. And though, for all I know, he may be
trusted by his fellows, he is not to be trusted by a woman. He has one
code of honour for his own sex and another for ours.
That is so, though it may not be according to the copybooks.
My friend the gentleman was a real smart man. As he lolled back in his
seat, enjoying his tobacco, it did you good to see him smile. His voice
was typical of his kind, it fell like music on your ears. As you looked
at him and listened, you could have sworn that he had not a care upon
his mind. He was at peace with himself, and all the world. And it was
all so natural; he was to the manner born.
I found him quite delightful. I could see what he was doing--he was
reckoning me up. And he was puzzled where to place me. I took him into
my real confidence, for reasons of my own, and that puzzled him still
more. I told him nothing but the truth. How I had gone out to America,
and met poor dear Daniel, and married him. And how he had died and left
me a widow, and his pile to comfort me. And how I had come back to
England childless and forlorn and all alone. I laid stress upon my
loneliness. I think that touched him. When a woman tells a man that she
is lonely he takes it that she means that there is not a man anywhere
in sight, and that the coast is clear for him, and that does touch
him. His manner became quite sympathetic. He was as nice as could
be--allusive, as a real smart man can be, with a delicate, intangible
directness almost equal to a woman's.
We were almost like old friends by the time that we reached town. He
put me into a hansom at Victoria station. I asked him to come and see
me, to have consideration for my loneliness. He promised that he would.
All the way home, as the cab bore me through the streets, I kept
thinking of Mr. Reginald Townsend--that was the name which he had given
me--and of the woman he had left, lying by the line, amidst that clump
of bushes.
I believe I have written that I like a man to be thorough. It seemed
probable that Mr. Townsend was that.