TWO GIRLS ON A TRAIN
His object being to see England and not to become a member of the
menagerie of home types in a pile overlooking the Thames Embankment,
the hotel that Philip had chosen was a small one, where a truly English
headwaiter, who was not trying to conceal a German accent, treated him
with a lofty courtesy and his bath was brought by a maid instead of by
the labour-saving device of pipes.
"You rise very early," said the young woman in black at the desk.
"The King did not know that I was coming and I do just as I please,"
Phil replied; and she unbent a little from her dignity and almost
laughed.
Against the criterion of all sniffy people who talk of how many times
they have been abroad, which sometimes means only a journey from the
London to the Paris and the Paris to the Berlin menageries, he was
frankly one of the horde of tourists, rising at dawn to make
sightseeing a diligent business, who are assiduously cultivated by
shopkeepers if somewhat neglected by the nobility. When he moved on
the Tower, Westminster Abbey, or Oxford, he made no attempt to conceal
his red guidebook. He was at home with schoolmistresses from the
Middle West doing a schedule on a set sum or with the wealthy
acquaintance he had made on board ship who took him for a motor ride to
Canterbury.
Now he was on the way to Truckleford to spend the night, in response to
the invitation of the sixteenth degree cousin. Up to the moment of
starting he thought that he should have the compartment to himself,
when two young women appeared, both a trifle short of breath. So
impressionable a tourist as himself could not fail to notice that the
one who entered first was strikingly good-looking, a girl with a
quality of manner and dress which he associated with the Continent,
though he had never been there.
"We caught it, at any rate!" she gasped, dropping into a seat.
"Just about!" said the other, who was as distinctly plain at first
glance as the other was attractive. "But your run has given you a
lovely colour!" she added admiringly. If the one wished to be shown up
by contrast for her beauty and the other for her plainness, they had an
object in travelling together.
"My hair must be in a shocking state, though," said the beautiful one,
as Phil already designated her in his mind.
She drew a mirror from her bag, not to look at her colouring, of
course, but to arrange a few strands of hair. Turning her head this
way and that, she attended to the disarray due to her haste in dressing
perhaps, as well as to her rush for the train. If a woman's hand and
arm and the particular way she holds her fingers when she shepherds
strands of hair were more awkward, possibly fewer strands would need
attention in public. There is something confidential in these quick
fondling movements which have drawn a reader's eyelashes above the
margin of a newspaper many millions of times. This girl made it an
unusually graceful and leisurely function; and once, when her glance
met Phil's, it seemed not to see that any person was opposite to her,
yet it said: "I know that others are not displeased with what I see in
the mirror; then why should I be?"
The plain girl also had some riotously stray strands of hair, but they
did not concern her. It was not for her to find friendliness in
mirrors.
"Here I am riding the way that the train is going when I like the other
way!" she said, jumping up. "Let us change places."
"You dear mouse! You're always so thoughtful!" said the other
beautiful one, complying.
Now she was facing Phil. Reminded that the suburbs of London were so
uninteresting that he might be caught staring at a face short of the
window instead of looking out it, he began to read his paper
diligently. When they had left the chimney pots behind, he found that
the plain one's objection to riding the way that the train was going
apparently no longer applied; for she crossed over in a sudden,
impulsive movement which seemed characteristic of a restless nature and
with a sweeping gesture out of the window began talking of familiar
landmarks.
Evidently both had been long absent from England, which was not their
home. They mixed French with English in that bi-lingual facility which
does not mean an interlarding of words but bursts of sentences. They
criticised and compared what they saw with the Continent, and of the
two the plain one seemed to get more enthusiasm out of their return.
Having both faces in the tail of his eye, Phil wondered why the plain
one should ever want to travel in the other's company. He drifted into
a comparative analysis of the two: The one with her masses of black
hair, her small forehead, her luminous eyes, straight nose and
expressive mouth, with its full lips and the oval chin--a classic type
of its kind; the other with chestnut hair also in masses, but brushed
unbecomingly back from the high, broad forehead, the large, black-brown
eyes wide apart, a squarish chin and a lump of a nose. Yet analysed
there was a resemblance; the genius touch of a sculptor might have
transformed one face if it were plastic into the other. The features
of one made an ensemble; those of the other were assertively in
rebellion with one another.
But the amazing likeness was in the voices. Closing his eyes, Phil had
difficulty in telling which one of the two was speaking. Both voices
were pleasant, though the beautiful girl's voice seemed much the
pleasanter of the two when his eyes were open and the plain one's an
imitation.
He thought he should like to get acquainted, but he had not the
courage. He could not offer them papers or magazines when evidently
they were not in a mood to read. Besides, that sort of thing is not
done in England, or, for that, matter, in America, as a rule, on short
train journeys. Except for that one glance from the beautiful one,
which was to any human being in sight as an audience, he had no sign
that they recognised that there was any one else in the compartment.
"I shall be glad to be in Truckleford again, shan't you?" asked the
plain girl.
"Of course I shall! I can see Uncle Arthur waiting on the platform for
us now."
"And hear him say Henriette, my dear, and Helen, my dear!"
Then they were surprised by the young man opposite them declaring that
he must be about their seventeenth degree cousin and that he was going
to Truckleford, too.
"Really!" they exclaimed together.
He might have known what they would say. He had wondered if Americans
used guess as often as the English use really. There are many kinds of
reallys: forbidding, surprised, sceptical, inquiring. This was all
kinds. It was also the kind that leaves the next move with the other
person.
"That is, if the Reverend Arthur Sanford, of Truckleford," Phil
explained, "is my sixteenth cousin and you are Henriette and Helen
Ribot, and my father, the Reverend Franklin Sanford, of Longfield,
Massachusetts, has reckoned accurately."
"It sounds very mathematical," said Helen, the plain one, thoughtfully,
looking toward Henriette to take the lead, which she did charmingly.
"We've heard about you, Cousin Philip Sanford," she said, and her eyes
were sparkling into his in a way that made it difficult to look away;
"let us consider ourselves introduced."
There was a touch of the grand manner about the way she did this; in
part it was mischievous, her eyes said. But she did it delightfully,
and Helen, who held out her hand in turn, seemed plainer than ever.
But she arrested his attention with her remark:
"I had a suspicion that it was you all the time."
"Why?"
"You'll see, later." He was conscious of a closer scrutiny of his
features, and she added triumphantly: "Yes, you'll see, later."
Then she sank back on the cushions. When seventeenth cousin meets
seventeenth cousin for the first time there is enough to say. Helen
looked from one to the other, listening. It seemed her natural role.
Phil almost forgot her existence until the train stopped at Truckleford
and they stepped down on the station platform to be welcomed by an
elderly clergyman.
"Taller than your father! I like the Sanfords to be tall," he said to
Phil. "And, Henriette, now I have you I'll not let you go all summer.
You can do your painting here." He gave her a fond glance. "And you,
Helen, you will have to stay if Henriette stays."