THE MAN WHO WAS IN A HURRY
He lay back in a corner seat of the carriage, panting, white-faced,
exhausted. His clumsy boots, studded with nails, were wet, and his
frayed black trousers were splashed with mud. In his eyes was the light
of vivid fear, his delicate mouth was twitching still with excitement.
In his ears there rang yet the angry cry of the guard, the shouting of
porters, the excitement of that leap through the hastily-opened carriage
door tingled yet in his veins. Before his eyes there was a mist. He
was conscious indeed that the carriage which he had marked out as being
empty was tenanted by a single person, but he had not even glanced
across towards the occupied seat. What mattered it so long as they were
off? Already the fields seemed flying past the window, and the
telegraph posts had commenced their frantic race. Ten, twenty, forty
miles an hour at least-off on that wonderful run, the pride of the
directors and the despair of rival companies. Nothing could stop them
now. All slower traffic stood aside to let them pass, the express with
her two great engines vomiting fire and smoke, crawling across the map,
flying across bridges and through tunnels from the heart of the country
to the great city. Gradually, and with the exhilaration of their ever
increasing speed, the courage of the man revived, and the blood flowed
once more warmly through his veins. He lifted his head and looked
around him.
Shock the first came when he realised that he was in a first-class
carriage; shock the second, when he saw that his solitary companion
was a lady. He took in the details of her appearance and
surroundings--wonderful enough to him who had been brought up in a
cottage, and to whom the ways and resources of luxury were all unknown.
Every seat save the one which he occupied was covered with her
belongings. On one was a half-opened dressing-case filled with
gold-topped bottles and emitting a faint, delicate perfume. On another
was a pile of books and magazines, opposite to him a sable-lined coat,
by his side a luncheon basket and long hunting flask. Then his eyes
were caught by an oblong strip of paper pasted across the carriage
window--he read it backwards--"Engaged." What an intrusion! He looked
towards the woman with stammering words of apology upon his lips--but
the words died away. He was tongue-tied.
He had met the languid gaze of her dark, full eyes, a little
supercilious, a little amused, faintly curious, and his own fell at once
before their calm insolence. She was handsomely dressed. The delicate,
white hand which held her novel was ablaze with many and wonderful
rings. She was evidently tall, without doubt stately. Her black hair,
parted in the middle, drooped a little to the side by her ears, her
complexion, delightfully clear, was of a curious ivory pallor
unassociated with ill-health. She regarded him through a pair of
ivory-handled lorgnettes, which she carelessly closed as he looked
towards her.
"Will you tell me," she asked quietly, "why you have entered my carriage
which is engaged--and in such an extraordinary manner?"
He drew a little breath. He had never heard a voice like it
before--soft, musical, and with the slightest suggestion of a foreign
accent. Then he remembered that she was waiting for an answer. He
began his apology.
"I am sorry--indeed I am very sorry. I had no time to look inside, and
I thought it was an empty carriage--a third-class one, too. It was very
stupid."
"You appeared to be" she remarked, "in a hurry."
The faint note of humour in her tone passed undetected by him.
"I wanted to get away," he said. "I had walked fourteen miles, and
there was no other train. I am very sorry to intrude upon you. The
train was moving when I reached the platform, and I jumped."
She shrugged her shoulders slightly and raised her book once more. But
from over its top she found herself watching very soon this strange
travelling companion of hers. The trousers above his clumsy boots were
frayed and muddy, his black clothes were shiny and antiquated in
cut--these, and his oddly-arranged white tie, somehow suggested the
cleric. But when she reached his face her eyes lingered there. It
puzzled and in a sense attracted her. His features were cleanly cut and
prominent, his complexion was naturally pale, but wind and sun had
combined to stain his cheeks with a slight healthy tan. His eyes were
deep-set, keen and bright, the eyes of a visionary perhaps, but afire
now with the instant excitement of living. A strange face for a man of
his apparently humble origin. Whence had he come, and where was he
going? The vision of his face as he had leaped into the carriage
floated again before her eyes. Surely behind him were evil things,
before him--what? She took up her novel again, but laid it down almost
immediately. "You are going" she asked, "to London?"
"To London," he repeated dreamily. "Yes."
"But your luggage--was that left behind?"
He smiled.
"I have no luggage," he said. "You are going up for the day only?" she
hazarded.
He shook his head. There was a note of triumph almost in his tone.
"I am going for good," he said. "If wishes count for anything I shall
never set foot within this county again."
There was a story, she felt sure, connected with this strange
fellow-passenger of hers. She watched him thoughtfully. A human
document such as this was worth many novels. It was not the first time
that he had excited her interest.
"London" she said, "is a wonderful place for young men."
He turned a rapt face towards her. The fire seemed leaping out of his
eyes.
"Others have found it so," he said. "I go to prove their words."
"You are a stranger there, then?"
"I have never been further south than this in my life," he replied. "I
know only the London of De Quincey and Lamb-London with the halo of
romance around it."
She sighed gently.
"You will find it all so different," she said. "You will be bitterly
disappointed."
He set his lips firmly together.
"I have no fear," he said. "I shall find it possible to live there, at
any rate. If I stayed where I was, I must have gone mad."
"You are going to friends?" she asked.
He laughed softly.
"I have not a friend in the world," he said. "In London I do not know a
soul. What matter? There is life to be lived there, prizes to be won.
There is room for every one."
She half closed her eyes, watching him keenly all the time with an
interest which was certainly not diminished.
"London is a wonderful city," she said, "but she is not always kind to
the stranger. You have spoken of De Quincey who wove fairy fancies
about her, and Lamb, who was an affectionate stay-at-home, a born
dweller in cities. They were dreamers both, these men. What about
Chatterton?"
"An unhappy exception," he said. "If only he had lived a few months
longer his sorrows would have been over."
"To-day," she said, "there are many Chattertons who must die before the
world will listen to them. Are you going to take your place amongst
them?"
He smiled confidently.
"Not I," he answered. "I shall work with my hands if men will have none
of my brains. Indeed," he continued, turning towards her with a swift,
transfiguring smile, "I am not a village prodigy going to London with a
pocketful of manuscripts. Don't think that of me. I am going to London
because I have been stifled and choked--I want room to breathe, to see
men and women who live. Oh, you don't know the sort of place I have
come from--the brain poison of it, the hideous sameness and narrowness
of it all."
"Tell me a little," she said, "and why at last you made up your mind to
leave. It is not so long, you know, since I saw you in somewhat
different guise."
A quick shiver seemed to pass through him; underneath his tanned skin he
was paler, and the blood in his veins was cold. His eyes, fixed upon
the flying landscape, were set in a fixed, unseeing stare--surely the
fields were peopled with evil memories, and faces in the trees were
mocking him. So he remained for several moments as though in the grip
of a nightmare, and the lady watched him. There was a little tragedy,
then, behind.
"There was a man once," he said, "who drew a line through his life, and
said to himself that everything behind it concerned some other
person--not him. So with me. Such memories as I have, I shall
strangle. To-day I commence a new life."
She sighed.
"One's past" she said, "is not always so easily to be disposed of.
There are ghosts which will haunt us, and sometimes the ghosts are
living figures."
"Let them come to me," he murmured, "and my fingers shall be upon their
throats. I want no such legacies."
She shook her head slowly.
"Ghosts" she said, with a faint smile, "are sometimes very difficult
people to deal with."