At eight o'clock next morning I was in the train leaving Liverpool for
London.
I had selected a second-class compartment labelled "For Ladies," and my
only travelling companion was a tall fair woman, in a seal-skin coat and
a very large black hat. She had filled the carriage with the warm odour
of eau-de-Cologne and the racks on both sides with her luggage, which
chiefly consisted of ladies' hat boxes of various shapes and sizes.
Hardly had we started when I realised that she was a very loquacious and
expansive person.
Was I going all the way? Yes? Did I live in Liverpool? No? In London
perhaps? No? Probably I lived in the country? Yes? That was charming,
the country being so lovely.
I saw in a moment that if my flight was to be carried out to any purpose
I should have to conceal my identity; but how to do so I did not know,
my conscience never before having had to accuse me of deliberate
untruth.
Accident helped me. My companion asked me what was my husband's
profession, and being now accustomed to think of Martin as my real
husband, I answered that he was a commander.
"You mean the commander of a ship?"
"Yes."
"Ah, yes, you've been staying in Liverpool to see him off on a voyage.
How sweet! Just what I should do myself if my husband were a sailor."
Then followed a further battery of perplexing questions.
Had my husband gone on a long voyage? Yes? Where to? The South. Did I
mean India, Australia, New Zealand? Yes, and still farther.
"Ah, I see," she said again. "He's probably the captain of a tramp
steamer, and will go from port to port as long as he can find a cargo."
Hardly understanding what my companion meant by this, I half agreed to
it, and then followed a volley of more personal inquiries.
I was young to be married, wasn't I? Probably I hadn't been married
very long, had I? And not having settled myself in a home perhaps I was
going up to London to wait for my husband? Yes? How wise--town being so
much more cheerful than the country.
"Any friends there?"
"No."
"None whatever?"
"None whatever."
"But won't you be lonely by yourself in London?"
"A little lonely perhaps."
Being satisfied that she had found out everything about me, my
travelling companion (probably from the mere love of talking) told me
something about herself.
She was a fashionable milliner and had a shop in the West End of London.
Occasionally she made personal visits to the provinces to take orders
from the leading shopkeepers, but during the season she found it more
profitable to remain in town, where her connection was large, among
people who could pay the highest prices.
By this time we had reached Crewe, and as there was some delay in
getting into the station, my travelling companion put her head out of
the window to inquire the cause. She was told that a night train from
Scotland was in front of us, and we should have to be coupled on to it
before we could proceed to London.
This threw her into the wildest state of excitement.
"I see what it is," she said. "The shooting season is over and the
society people are coming down from the moors. I know lots and lots of
them. They are my best customers--the gentlemen at all events."
"The gentlemen?"
"Why, yes," she said with a little laugh.
After some shunting our Liverpool carriages were coupled to the Scotch
train and run into the station, where a number of gentlemen in
knickerbockers and cloth caps were strolling about the platform.
My companion seemed to know them all, and gave them their names,
generally their Christian names, and often their familiar ones.
Suddenly I had a shock. A tall man, whose figure I recognised, passed
close by our carriage, and I had only time to conceal myself from
observation behind the curtain of the window.
"Helloa!" cried my companion. "There's Teddy Eastcliff. He married
Camilla, the Russian dancer. They first met in my shop I may tell you."
I was feeling hot and cold by turns, but a thick veil must have hidden
my confusion, for after we left Crewe my companion, becoming still more
confidential, talked for a long time about her aristocratic customers,
and I caught a glimpse of a life that was on the verge of a kind of
fashionable Bohemia.
More than once I recognised my husband's friends among the number of her
clients, and trembling lest my husband himself should become a subject
of discussion, I, made the excuse of a headache to close my eyes and be
silent.
My companion thereupon slept, very soundly and rather audibly, from
Rugby to Willesden, where, awakening with a start while the tickets were
being collected, she first powdered her face by her fashion-glass and
then interested herself afresh in my affairs.
"Did you say, my dear, that you have no friends in London?"