THE Inspector came along to look at the tickets.
“You must either pay excess or change into a third,” he said firmly at
the sight of the third class ticket.
“But there’s no room,” its owner faltered. It is a phrase no longer in
vogue in the best novels, but the little lady of the green ulster was
of the faltering type.
“Plenty of room presently.” So firm was the Inspector he might have
been Marshal Foch himself. “Meantime you must find a place somewhere
else.”
At this cruel mandate the little lady shivered under her bright thin
garment.
“How much--how much is there to pay?” It was mere desperation. There
were only a few--a very few shillings in her purse. All her available
capital had been put into the green ulster and the new serge suit she
was wearing and a black felt hat with a neat green ribbon. But to be
torn out of that haven of refuge, to be flung again, bag and baggage,
into the maelstrom of Platform Three--the thought was paralyzing.
The Inspector condescended to look again at the third-class ticket.
“Clavering St. Mary’s. There’ll be twenty-one and six-pence excess.”
Miss Gray Eyes wilted visibly.
“I can’t stand here all day,” announced the Inspector. “This train was
due out a quarter of an hour ago.”
“But--” faltered the unlucky passenger.
“You’ll have to come out and find room lower down.”
At this point a slow, cool, rather cautious voice said “Inspector.”
“Madam?” It was a decidedly imperative “madam.”
“If there is no room in the third-class compartments this lady is
allowed a seat here, isn’t she?”
“There is room--if she’ll take the trouble to look for it.”
“She says there isn’t.” If anything the voice of Miss Fur Coat had
grown slower and cooler.
“I say there is.” The Inspector knew he was addressing a bona fide
first-class passenger, all the same he was terribly inspectorial.
“Well perhaps you’ll find it for her.” The considered coolness was
almost uncanny. “And then, perhaps, you’ll come back and show her where
it is.”
The Inspector was obviously a little stunned by Miss Fur Coat’s
suggestion, but he managed to blurt out, “And what about the train in
the meantime?” Then he went for Miss Green Ulster with a truculence
that verged on savagery. “Come on, madam. Come on out.”
“I don’t think I’d move if I were you.” The manner of the other lady
was quite impersonal.
“Very well, then,”--the Inspector produced a portentous looking
notebook--“I must have your name and address.”
It is quite certain that Miss Gray Eyes would have yielded to this
awful threat of legal proceedings to follow had it not been for the
further intervention of the good fairy or the evil genius opposite.
“You had better take mine, Inspector.” The voice was really inimitable.
“My father, I believe, is a director of your company.”
Miss Fur Coat knew that her father was a director of a railway company.
She didn’t know the name of it, nor did she know the name of the
company by which she was traveling, nor was she a student of Hegel, or
for that matter of any other philosopher, but there really seemed no
reason at that moment why they should not be one and the same.
The Inspector turned to confront the occupant of the corner seat. It
would be an abuse of language to say that he turned deferentially, but
somehow his notebook and pencil certainly looked a shade less truculent.
“I had better give you a card.” It was almost the voice of a dreamer,
yet the dry precision was really inimitable. “Pikey,”--she addressed
the lady opposite--“you have some cards?”
The duenna opened the queer-shaped dressing bag with an air of stern
disapproval. At the top was a small leather case which she handed to
her mistress.
“Inspector, this is my mother’s card. My father is Lord Carabbas.
That is _my_ name”--a neatly gloved finger indicated the middle--“Lady
Elfreda Catkin.” She pronounced the name very slowly and distinctly and
with a care that seemed to give it really remarkable importance.
The Inspector glanced at the card. Then he glanced at Lady Elfreda.
He made no comment. All the same a subtle change came over him. It
was hard to define, but it seemed to soften, almost to humanize him.
Finally it culminated in an abrupt withdrawal from the compartment with
a slight raising of the hat.
Before the train started, which in the course of the next three minutes
it reluctantly did, the guard came and locked the carriage door.
England ranks as a democratic country, but the fact that a daughter of
the Marquis of Carabbas was sitting in the left-hand corner, with her
back to the engine, lent somehow a quality to the atmosphere of the
compartment which would hardly have been there had its locale been the
rolling stock of the Tahiti Great Western or the Timbuctoo Grand Trunk.
At any rate two diligent students of _The Times_ newspaper peered
solemnly at each other over the top of their favorite journal. Both
lived in Eaton Place, they had belonged for years to the same clubs,
they were known to each other perfectly well by sight but they jobbed
in different markets; therefore they had yet to speak their first word
to each other--for no better reason than that he who spoke first would
have to make some little sacrifice of personal dignity in order to do
so.
Now, of course, was not the moment to break the habit of years, but
if their solemn eyes meant anything their minds held but a single
thought. Carabbas himself did not cut much ice in the City, but if he
was joining the board of the B. S. W. it meant that the astute Angora
connection was coming into Home Rails, in which case purely as a matter
of academic interest, there would be no harm in turning to page fifteen
in order to look at the price of B. S. W. First Preferred Stock.
That was all the incident meant to these Olympians, just that and
nothing more. But for the little lady of the green ulster it was of
wholly different portent. When shortly after nine o’clock that morning
she had left the home of her fathers in the modest suburb of Laxton
she had not dreamt that before midday she would find herself under
the personal protection of the daughter of a marquis. It was her good
fortune to be living in the golden age of democracy, but...!
She stole a covert glance at the fur coat opposite. Such a garment in
itself was no longer a mark of caste, but this was rather a special
affair, a sealskin with a skunk collar, so simple, so unpretending
that it needed almost the glance of an expert to tell that it had cost
a great deal of money. Then she glanced at the hat above it, a plain
black velour with a twist of skunk round it, then down at the neat--the
adorably neat!--shoes, and then very shyly up again to their wearer.
But their wearer was holding the _Society Pictorial_ in front of her,
and in the opinion of the third class passenger it was, perhaps, just
as well that she was. Otherwise she could hardly have failed to read
what was passing in the mind of the Lady of Laxton. She must have seen
something of the envy and the awe, of the eager, the too-eager interest
which all the care in the world could not veil.
Miss Gray Eyes knew and felt she was a little snob, a mean and rather
vulgar little snob in the presence of Miss Puss-in-the-Corner, the tip
of whose decisive chin was just visible between her paper and her rich
fur collar.
What must it feel like to be the daughter of a marquis? A crude and
silly inner self put the question. A daughter of a marquis is just
like anybody else’s daughter--the answer came pat, but somehow at that
moment the third class passenger was unable to accept it. A gulf yawned
between herself and the girl opposite. They were of an age; their
heights and their proportions were nearly identical; at a first glance
they might almost have passed for sisters except that Miss Gray Eyes
was quite sure in her heart that she was the prettier; all the same
there was a world of difference in the way they looked at life and a
whole cosmos in the way life looked at them.
The little lady sighed at her thoughts--they were hard thoughts--and
opened her pilgrim basket. She took from it a notebook and pencil
and a dog-eared copy of _The Patrician_, the famous novel of Mr. John
Galsworthy, which bore the imprint of the Laxton Cube Library. For two
years past she had prescribed for herself a course of the best modern
English fiction. She was reading it diligently, less for relaxation
and human enjoyment than for purposes of self improvement. Her social
opportunities had been few and narrow, although her parents had rather
ambitiously given her an education excellent of its kind at the Laxton
High School for Young Ladies, which she had been able to supplement by
passing the Oxford Preliminary Examination.
For the second time in her life of twenty years Miss Cass--she was
known to her friends as Girlie Cass--had taken a situation as a nursery
governess. She had had one brief experience which had been terminated
by her mother’s illness and death. Since then she had been three months
a government clerk, but she was not quick at figures and she couldn’t
write shorthand. Life as a nursery governess was not going to be a bed
of roses for one as shy and sensitive as herself, but she was genuinely
fond of young children and somehow such a career with all its thorns
seemed more suited to one of her disposition than a stand-up fight in
the peace that was coming with terribly efficient competitors, who,
if they happened to want your particular piece of cake, would have no
scruples about knocking you down and trampling upon your prostrate
body in order to get it.
If Miss Cass had any taint of vanity it was centered in the fact that
she was by way of being a high-brow. She was not a high-brow of the
breed that looks and dresses and acts and thinks the part. In her
case it was more a secret sin than anything and it took the form of
competing week by week in the literary competition of the _Saturday
Sentinel_, under the “nom de plume” of Vera.
The subject this week was the “Influence of Mr. John Galsworthy upon
the English Novel.” It was, perhaps, a little advanced for the Laxton
Cube Library, but Vera was ambitious. She had not yet won a prize,
truth to tell she had not even been in sight of one, but three weeks
ago her essay on _Jane Eyre_ had been commended as showing insight. She
had not yet got over her excitement at receiving a compliment which
in her heart she felt she fully merited. If she plumed herself upon
anything it was upon her insight. One day when she had learned a little
more about life--her trouble was that she had so little invention--she
might even try to write a novel herself. But in her case it would have
to be based on first-hand experience. She would not be able, like the
Brontë Sisters, to weave a romance out of her inner consciousness.
“The Influence of Mr. John Galsworthy upon the English Novel.” Miss
Cass had the bad habit of sucking her pencil, but it was not easy to
marshal or to set down one’s thoughts with the train converging upon
Reading at forty miles an hour. However, she was able to write the
heading quite legibly. But then her difficulties began. What exactly
was the influence of Mr. John Galsworthy upon the English novel?
“Pikey.” It was almost the nicest voice Miss Gray Eyes had ever heard,
yet curiously low and penetrating in quality. “Do you recognize that?”
Miss Fur Coat folded back a page of her paper to display a photograph
of a famous beauty. “Rather flattering, don’t you think?”
Pikey lowered _The Queen_, which she had been studying with a kind
of latent ferocity, and exchanged periodicals without comment. She
was evidently a creature of very few words, and to judge by a certain
morose dignity it seemed to argue considerable hardihood on the part of
anyone to address her at all familiarly.
Miss Cass could not help wondering what the status was of this duenna
who seemed a cross between a lady’s maid and a werewolf. But the chain
of her reflections was interrupted by the stopping of the train at a
station of which she could not see the name. Here the two gentlemen
got out, after one of them had lowered the window and had called to
an official to unlock the door. And in the order of their going the
student of _The Patrician_ noticed that while neither of them showed
any particular concern for the green ulster, both were very careful not
to tread upon the fur coat.