THE TRAIN
The boat-train was due to leave in ten minutes, and the platform at
Victoria Station (how changed since then!) showed that scene of
discreet and haughty excitement which it was wont to exhibit about
nine o'clock every evening in those days. The weather was wild. It had
been wet all day, and the rain came smashing down, driven by the great
gusts of a genuine westerly gale. Consequently there were fewer
passengers than usual, and those people who by choice or compulsion
had resolved to front the terrors of the Channel passage had a
preoccupied look as they hurried importantly to and fro amid piles of
luggage and groups of loungers on the wind-swept platform beneath the
flickering gas-lamps. But the porters, and the friends engaged in the
ceremony of seeing-off, and the loungers, and the bookstall
clerks--these individuals were not preoccupied by thoughts of intimate
inconveniences before midnight. As for me, I was quite alone with my
thoughts. At least, I began by being alone.
As I was registering a particularly heavy and overfed portmanteau to
Paris, a young woman put her head close to mine at the window of the
baggage-office.
"Mr. Foster? I thought it was. My cab set down immediately after
yours, and I have been trying to catch your eye on the platform. Of
course it was no go!"
The speech was thrown at me in a light, airy tone from a tiny, pert
mouth which glistened red behind a muslin veil.
"Miss Deschamps!" I exclaimed.
"Glad you remember my name. As handsome and supercilious as ever, I
observe. I haven't seen you since that night at Sullivan's reception.
Why didn't you call on me one Sunday? You know I asked you to."
"Did you ask me?" I demanded, secretly flattered in the extremity of
my youthfulness because she had called me supercilious.
"Well, rather. I'm going to Paris--and in this weather!"
"I am, too."
"Then, let's go together, eh?"
"Delighted. But why have you chosen such a night?"
"I haven't chosen it. You see, I open to-morrow at the Casino de
Paris for fourteen nights, and I suppose I've got to be there. You
wouldn't believe what they're paying me. The Diana company is touring
in the provinces while the theatre is getting itself decorated. I hate
the provinces. Leeds and Liverpool and Glasgow--fancy dancing there!
And so my half-sister--Carlotta, y'know--got me this engagement, and
I'm going to stay with her. Have you met Carlotta?"
"No--not yet." I did not add that I had had reason to think a good
deal about her.
"Well, Carlotta is--Carlotta. A terrific swell, and a bit of a Tartar.
We quarrel every time we meet, which isn't often. She tries to play
the elder sister game on me, and I won't have it. Though she is
elder--very much elder, you now. But I think her worst point is that
she's so frightfully mysterious. You can never tell what she's up to.
Now, a man I met at supper last night told me he thought he had seen
Carlotta in Bloomsbury yesterday. However, I didn't believe that,
because she is expecting me in Paris; we happen to be as thick as
thieves just now, and if she had been in London, she would have looked
me up."
"Just so," I replied, wondering whether I should endeavor to obtain
from Marie Deschamps information which would be useful to Rosa.
By the time that the star of the Diana had said goodbye to certain
male acquaintances, and had gone through a complicated dialogue with
her maid on the subject of dress-trunks, the clock pointed almost to
nine, and a porter rushed us--Marie and myself--into an empty
compartment of a composite coach near to the engine. The compartment
was first class, but it evidently belonged to an ancient order of
rolling stock, and the vivacious Marie criticized it with considerable
freedom. The wind howled, positively howled, in the station.
"I wish I wasn't going," said the lady. "I shall be horribly ill."
"You probably will," I said, to tease her, idly opening the Globe. "It
seems that the morning steamer from Calais wasn't able to make either
Dover or Folkestone, and has returned to Calais. Imagine the state of
mind of the passengers!"
"Ugh! Oh, Mr. Foster, what is that case by your side?"
"It is a jewel-case."
"What a big one!"
She did not conceal her desire to see the inside of it, but I felt
that I could not, even to satisfy her charming curiosity, expose the
interior of Rosa's jewel-case in a railway carriage, and so I edged
away from the topic with as much adroitness as I was capable of.
The pretty girl pouted, and asked me for the Globe, behind which she
buried herself. She kept murmuring aloud extracts from the Globe's
realistic description of the weather, and then she jumped up.
"I'm not going."
"Not going?"
"No. The weather's too awful. These newspaper accounts frighten me."
"But the Casino de Paris?"
"A fig for it! They must wait for me, that's all. I'll try again
to-morrow. Will you mind telling the guard to get my boxes out,
there's a dear Mr. Foster, and I'll endeavor to find that maid of
mine?"
The train was already five minutes late in starting; she delayed it
quite another five minutes, and enjoyed the process. And it was I who
meekly received the objurgations of porters and guard. My reward was a
smile, given with a full sense of its immense value.
"Good-by, Mr. Foster. Take care of your precious jewel-case."
I had carried the thing in my hand up and down the platform. I ran to
my carriage, and jumped in breathless as the train whistled.
"Pleasant journey!" the witch called out, waving her small hand to me.
I bowed to her from the window, laughing. She was a genial soul, and
the incident had not been without amusement.
After I had shut the carriage door, and glanced out of the window for
a moment in the approved way, I sank, faintly smiling at the episode,
into my corner, and then I observed with a start that the opposite
corner was occupied. Another traveller had got into the compartment
while I had been coursing about the platform on behalf of Marie, and
that traveller was the mysterious and sinister creature whom I had met
twice before--once in Oxford Street, and once again during the night
watch in the cathedral at Bruges. He must have made up his mind to
travel rather suddenly, for, in spite of the weather, he had neither
overcoat nor umbrella--merely the frock coat and silk hat of
Piccadilly. But there was no spot of rain on him, and no sign of
disarray.
As I gazed with alarmed eyes into the face of that strange, forbidding
personality, the gaiety of my mood went out like a match in a breeze.
The uncomfortable idea oppressed me that I was being surely caught and
enveloped in a net of adverse circumstances, that I was the
unconscious victim of a deep and terrible conspiracy which proceeded
slowly forward to an inevitable catastrophe. On each of the previous
occasions when this silent and malicious man had crossed my path I had
had the same feeling, but in a less degree, and I had been able to
shake it off almost at once. But now it overcame and conquered me.
The train thundered across Grosvenor Bridge through the murky weather
on its way to the coast, and a hundred times I cursed it for its lack
of speed. I would have given much to be at the journey's end, and away
from this motionless and inscrutable companion. His eyes were
constantly on my face, and do what I would I could not appear at ease.
I tried to read the paper, I pretended to sleep, I hummed a tune, I
even went so far as to whistle, but my efforts at sang-froid were
ridiculous. The worst of it was that he was aware of my despicable
condition; his changeless cynical smile made that fact obvious to me.
At last I felt that something must happen. At any rate, the silence of
the man must be broken. And so I gathered together my courage, and
with a preposterous attempt at a friendly smile remarked:
"Beastly weather we're having. One would scarcely expect it so early
in September."
It was an inane speech, so commonplace, so entirely foolish. And the
man ignored it absolutely. Only the corners of his lips drooped a
little to express, perhaps, a profounder degree of hate and scorn.
This made me a little angry.
"Didn't I see you last in the cathedral at Bruges?" I demanded curtly,
even rudely.
He laughed. And his laugh really alarmed me.
The train stopped at that moment at a dark and deserted spot, which
proved to be Sittingbourne. I hesitated, and then, giving up the
struggle, sped out of the compartment, and entered another one lower
down. My new compartment was empty. The sensation of relief was
infinitely soothing. Placing the jewel-case carefully on my knees, I
breathed freely once more, and said to myself that another quarter of
an hour of that detestable presence would have driven me mad.
I began to think about Rosetta Rosa. As a solace after the
exasperating companionship of that silent person in the other
compartment, I invited from the back of my mind certain thoughts about
Rosetta Rosa which had been modestly waiting for me there for some
little time, and I looked at them fairly, and turned them over, and
viewed them from every side, and derived from them a rather thrilling
joy. The fact is, I was beginning to be in love with Rosa. Nay, I was
actually in love with her. Ever since our first meeting my meditations
had been more or less busy with her image. For a long period, largely
owing to my preoccupation with Alresca, I had dreamed of her but
vaguely. And now, during our interviews at her hotel and in the church
of St. Gilles, she had, in the most innocent way in the world, forged
fetters on me which I had no desire to shake off.
It was a presumption on my part. I acknowledged frankly that it was a
presumption. I was a young doctor, with nothing to distinguish me from
the ruck of young doctors. And she was--well, she was one of those
rare and radiant beings to whom even monarchs bow, and the whole earth
offers the incense of its homage.
Which did not in the least alter the fact that I was in love with her.
And, after all, she was just a woman; more, she was a young woman. And
she had consulted me! She had allowed me to be of use to her! And,
months ago in London, had she not permitted me to talk to her with an
extraordinary freedom? Lovely, incomparable, exquisite as she was, she
was nevertheless a girl, and I was sure that she had a girl's heart.
However, it was a presumption.
I remembered her legendary engagement to Lord Clarenceux, an
engagement which had interested all Europe. I often thought of that
matter. Had she loved him--really loved him? Or had his love for her
merely flattered her into thinking that she loved him? Would she not
be liable to institute comparisons between myself and that renowned,
wealthy, and gifted nobleman?
Well, I did not care if she did. Such is the egoism of untried love
that I did not care if she did! And I lapsed into a reverie--a reverie
in which everything went smoothly, everything was for the best in the
best of all possible worlds, and only love and love's requital
existed....
Then, in the fraction of a second, as it seemed, there was a grating,
a horrible grind of iron, a bump, a check, and my head was buried in
the cushions of the opposite side of the carriage, and I felt
stunned--not much, but a little.
"What--what?" I heard myself exclaim. "They must have plumped the
brakes on pretty sudden."
Then, quite after an interval, it occurred to me that this was a
railway accident--one of those things that one reads of in the papers
with so much calmness. I wondered if I was hurt, and why I could hear
no sound; the silence was absolute--terrifying.
In a vague, aimless way, I sought for my matchbox, and struck a
light. I had just time to observe that both windows were smashed, and
the floor of the compartment tilted, when the match went out in the
wind. I had heard no noise of breaking glass.
I stumbled slowly to the door, and tried to open it, but the thing
would not budge. Whereupon I lost my temper.
"Open, you beast, you beast, you beast!" I cried to the door, kicking
it hard, and yet not feeling the impact.
Then another thought--a proud one, which served to tranquillize me: "I
am a doctor, and they will want me to attend to the wounded."
I remembered my flask, and unscrewing the stopper with difficulty,
clutched the mouth with my teeth and drank. After that I was sane and
collected. Now I could hear people tramping on the ground outside, and
see the flash of lanterns. In another moment a porter, whose silver
buttons gleamed in the darkness, was pulling me through the window.
"Hurt?"
"No, not I. But if any one else is, I'm a doctor."
"Here's a doctor, sir," he yelled to a gray-headed man near by. Then
he stood still, wondering what he should do next. I perceived in the
near distance the lights of a station.
"Is that Dover?"
"No, sir; Dover Priory. Dover's a mile further on. There was a goods
wagon got derailed on the siding just beyond the home signal, and it
blocked the down line, and the driver of the express ran right into
it, although the signal was against him--ran right into it, 'e did."
Other people were crawling out of the carriages now, and suddenly
there seemed to be scores of spectators, and much shouting and running
about. The engine lay on its side, partly overhanging a wrecked wagon.
Immense clouds of steam issued from it, hissing above the roar of the
wind. The tender was twisted like a patent hairpin in the middle. The
first coach, a luggage-van, stood upright, and seemed scarcely
damaged. The second coach, the small, old-fashioned vehicle which
happily I had abandoned at Sittingbourne, was smashed out of
resemblance to a coach. The third one, from which I had just emerged,
looked fairly healthy, and the remaining three had not even left the
rails.
All ran to the smashed coach.
"There were two passengers in that coach," said the guard, who, having
been at the rear of the train, was unharmed.
"Are you counting me?" I asked. "Because I changed carriages at
Sittingbourne."
"Praise God for that, sir!" he answered. "There's only one, then--a
tall, severe-looking gent--in the first-class compartment."
Was it joy or sorrow that I felt at the thought of that man buried
somewhere in the shapeless mass of wood and iron? It certainly was not
unmixed sorrow. On the contrary, I had a distinct feeling of elation
at the thought that I was probably rid forever of this haunter of my
peace, this menacing and mysterious existence which (if instinctive
foreboding was to be trusted) had been about to cross and thwart and
blast my own.
The men hammered and heaved and chopped and sawed, and while they were
in the midst of the work some one took me by the sleeve and asked me
to go and attend to the engine-driver and stoker, who were being
carried into a waiting-room at the station. It is symptomatic of the
extraordinary confusion which reigns in these affairs that till that
moment the question of the fate of the men in charge of the train had
not even entered my mind, though I had of course noticed that the
engine was overturned. In the waiting-room it was discovered that two
local doctors had already arrived. I preferred to leave the
engine-driver to them. He was unconscious as he lay on a table. The
stoker, by his side, kept murmuring in a sort of delirium:
"Bill, 'e was all dazed like--'e was all dazed like. I told him the
signal wasn't off. I shouted to him. But 'e was all dazed like."
I returned to the train full of a horrible desire to see with my own
eyes a certain corpse. Bit by bit the breakdown gang had removed the
whole of the centre part of the shattered carriage. I thrust myself
into the group, and--we all looked at each other. Nobody, alive or
dead, was to be found.
"He, too, must have got out at Sittingbourne," I said at length.
"Ay!" said the guard.
My heard swam, dizzy with dark imaginings and unspeakable suspicions.
"He has escaped; he is alive!" I muttered savagely, hopelessly. It was
as if a doom had closed inevitably over me. But if my thoughts had
been legible and I had been asked to explain this attitude of mine
towards a person who had never spoken to me, whom I had seen but
thrice, and whose identity was utterly unknown, I could not have done
so. I had no reasons. It was intuition.
Abruptly I straightened myself, and surveying the men and the
background of ruin lighted by the fitful gleams of lanterns and the
pale glitter of a moon half-hidden by flying clouds, I shouted out:
"I want a cab. I have to catch the Calais boat. Will somebody please
direct me!"
No one appeared even to hear me. The mental phenomena which accompany
a railway accident, even a minor one such as this, are of the most
singular description. I felt that I was growing angry again. I had a
grievance because not a soul there seemed to care whether I caught the
Calais boat or not. That, under the unusual circumstances, the steamer
would probably wait did not occur to me. Nor did I perceive that there
was no real necessity for me to catch the steamer. I might just as
well have spent the night at the Lord Warden, and proceeded on my
journey in the morning. But no! I must hurry away instantly!
Then I thought of the jewel-box.
"Where's my jewel-box?" I demanded vehemently from the guard, as
though he had stolen it.
He turned to me.
"What's that you're carrying?" he replied.
All the time I had been carrying the jewel-box. At the moment of the
collision I must have instinctively clutched it, and my grasp had not
slackened. I had carried it to the waiting-room and back without
knowing that I was doing so!
This sobered me once more. But I would not stay on the scene. I was
still obsessed by the desire to catch the steamer. And abruptly I set
off walking down the line. I left the crowd and the confusion and the
ruin, and hastened away bearing the box.
I think that I must have had no notion of time, and very little notion
of space. For I arrived at the harbour without the least recollection
of the details of my journey thither. I had no memory of having been
accosted by any official of the railway, or even of having encountered
any person at all. Fortunately it had ceased to rain, and the wind,
though still strong, was falling rapidly.
Except for a gatekeeper, the bleak, exposed pier had the air of being
deserted. The lights of the town flickered in the distance, and above
them rose dimly the gaunt outlines of the fortified hills. In front
was the intemperate and restless sea. I felt that I was at the
extremity of England, and on the verge of unguessed things. Now, I had
traversed about half the length of the lonely pier, which seems to
curve right out into the unknown, when I saw a woman approaching me in
the opposite direction. My faculties were fatigued with the crowded
sensations of that evening, and I took no notice of her. Even when she
stopped to peer into my face I thought nothing of it, and put her
gently aside, supposing her to be some dubious character of the night
hours. But she insisted on speaking to me.
"You are Carl Foster," she said abruptly. The voice was harsh,
trembling, excited, yet distinguished.
"Suppose I am?" I answered wearily. How tired I was!
"I advise you not to go to Paris."
I began to arouse my wits, and I became aware that the woman was
speaking with a strong French accent. I searched her face, but she
wore a thick veil, and in the gloom of the pier I could only make out
that she had striking features, and was probably some forty years of
age. I stared at her in silence.
"I advise you not to go to Paris," she repeated.
"Who are you?"
"Never mind. Take my advice."
"Why? Shall I be robbed?"
"Robbed!" she exclaimed, as if that was a new idea to her. "Yes," she
said hurriedly. "Those jewels might be stolen."
"How do you know that I have jewels?"
"Ah! I--I saw the case."
"Don't trouble yourself, madam; I shall take particular care not to be
robbed. But may I ask how you have got hold of my name?"
I had vague ideas of an ingenious plan for robbing me, the particulars
of which this woman was ready to reveal for a consideration.
She ignored my question.
"Listen!" she said quickly. "You are going to meet a lady in Paris. Is
it not so?"
"I must really--"
"Take advice. Move no further in that affair."
I attempted to pass her, but she held me by the sleeve. She went on
with emphasis:
"Rosetta Rosa will never be allowed to sing in 'Carmen' at the Opéra
Comique. Do you understand?"
"Great Scott!" I said, "I believe you must be Carlotta Deschamps."
It was a half-humorous inspiration on my part, but the remark produced
an immediate effect on the woman, for she walked away with a highly
theatrical scowl and toss of the head. I recalled what Marie Deschamps
had said in the train about her stepsister, and also my suspicion that
Rosa's maid was not entirely faithful to her mistress--spied on her,
in fact; and putting the two things together, it occurred to me that
this strange lady might actually be Carlotta.
Many women of the stage acquire a habitual staginess and
theatricality, and it was quite conceivable that Carlotta had
relations with Yvette, and that, ridden by the old jealousy which had
been aroused through the announcement of Rosa's return to the Opéra
Comique, she was setting herself in an indefinite, clumsy, stealthy,
and melodramatic manner to prevent Rosa's appearance in "Carmen."
No doubt she had been informed of Rosa's conference with me in the
church of St. Gilles, and, impelled by some vague, obscure motive, had
travelled to London to discover me, and having succeeded, was
determined by some means to prevent me from getting into touch with
Rosa in Paris. So I conjectured roughly, and subsequent events
indicated that I was not too far wrong.
I laughed. The notion of the middle-aged prima donna going about in
waste places at dead of night to work mischief against a rival was
indubitably comic. I would make a facetious narrative of the meeting
for the amusement of Rosa at breakfast to-morrow in Paris. Then,
feeling all at once at the end of my physical powers, I continued my
way, and descended the steps to the Calais boat.
All was excitement there. Had I heard of the railway accident? Yes, I
had. I had been in it. Instantly I was surrounded by individuals who
raked me fore and aft with questions. I could not endure it; my
nervous energy, I realized, was exhausted, and having given a brief
outline of the disaster, I fled down the saloon stairs.
My sole desire was to rest; the need of unconsciousness, of
forgetfulness, was imperious upon me; I had had too many experiences
during the last few hours. I stretched myself on the saloon cushions,
making a pillow of the jewel-box.
"Shall we start soon?" I murmured to a steward.
"Yes, sir, in another five minutes. Weather's moderating, sir."
Other passengers were in the saloon, and more followed. As this would
be the first steamer to leave Dover that day, there was a good number
of voyagers on board, in spite of adverse conditions. I heard people
talking, and the splash of waves against the vessel's sides, and then
I went to sleep. Nothing could have kept me awake.