FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
"Look sharp, miss, jump in! Luggage in the rear van."
The porter hoisted her almost bodily up the steps of the railway
carriage, slamming the door behind her, the guard's whistle shrieked, and
an instant later the train started with a jerk that sent Diana staggering
against the seat of the compartment, upon which she finally subsided,
breathless but triumphant.
She had very nearly missed the train. An organised procession of some
kind had been passing through the streets just as she was driving to the
station, and her taxi had been held up for the full ten minutes' grace
which she had allowed herself, the metre fairly ticking its heart out in
impotent rage behind the policeman's uplifted hand.
So it was with a sigh of relief that she found herself at last
comfortably installed in a corner seat of a first-class carriage. She
glanced about her to make sure that she had not mislaid any of her hand
baggage in her frantic haste, and this point being settled to her
satisfaction, she proceeded to take stock of her fellow-traveller, for
there was one other person in the compartment besides herself.
He was sitting in the corner furthest away, his back to the engine,
apparently entirely oblivious of her presence. On his knee rested a
quarto writing-pad, and he appeared so much absorbed in what he was
writing that Diana doubted whether he had even heard the commotion,
occasioned by her sudden entry.
But she was mistaken. As the porter had bundled her into the carriage,
the man in the corner had raised a pair of deep-set blue eyes, looked at
her for a moment with a half-startled glance, and then, with the barest
flicker of a smile, had let his eyes drop once more upon his writing-pad.
Then he crossed out the word "Kismet," which he had inadvertently written.
Diana regarded him with interest. He was probably an author, she
decided, and since a year's training as a professional singer had brought
her into contact with all kinds of people who earned their livings by
their brains, as she herself hoped to do some day, she instantly felt a
friendly interest in him. She liked, too, the shape of the hand that
held the fountain-pen; it was a slender, sensitive-looking member with
well-kept nails, and Diana always appreciated nice hands. The man's head
was bent over his work, so that she could only obtain a foreshortened
glimpse of his face, but he possessed a supple length of limb that even
the heavy travelling-rug tucked around his knees failed to disguise, and
there was a certain _soigné_ air of rightness about the way he wore his
clothes which pleased her.
Suddenly becoming conscious that she was staring rather openly, she
turned her eyes away and looked out of the window, and immediately
encountered a big broad label, pasted on to the glass, with the word
"_Reserved_" printed on it in capital letters. The letters, of course,
appeared reversed to any one inside the carriage, but they were so big
and black and hectoring that they were quite easily deciphered.
Evidently, in his violent haste to get her on board the train, the porter
had thrust her into the privacy of some one's reserved compartment that
some one being the man opposite. What a horrible predicament! Diana
felt hot all over with embarrassment, and, starting to her feet,
stammered out a confused apology.
The man in the corner raised his head.
"It does not matter in the least," he assured her indifferently. "Please
do not distress yourself. I believe the train is very crowded; you had
better sit down again."
The chilly lack of interest in his tones struck Diana with an odd sense
of familiarity, but she was too preoccupied to dwell on it, and began
hastily to collect together her dressing-case and other odds and ends.
"I'll find another seat," she said stiffly, and made her way out into the
corridor of the rocking train.
Her search, however, proved quite futile; every compartment was packed
with people hurrying out of town for Easter, and in a few moments she
returned.
"I'm sorry," she said, rather shyly. "Every seat is taken. I'm afraid
you'll have to put up with me."
Just then the carriage gave a violent lurch, as the express swung around
a bend, and Diana, dropping everything she held, made a frantic clutch at
the rack above her head, while her goods and chattels shot across the
floor, her dressing-case sliding gaily along till its wild career was
checked against the foot of the man in the corner.
With an air of resignation he rose and retrieved her belongings, placing
them on the seat opposite her.
"It would have been better if you had taken my advice," he observed, with
a sort of weary patience.
Diana felt unreasonably angry with him.
"Why don't you say 'I told you so' at once?" she said tartly.
A whimsical smile crossed his face.
"Well, I did, didn't I?"
He stood for a moment looking down at her, steadying himself with one
hand against the doorway, and her ill-humour vanishing as quickly as it
had arisen, she returned the smile.
"Yes, you did. And you were quite right, too," she acknowledged frankly.
He laughed outright.
"Well done!" he cried. "Not one woman in twenty will own herself in the
wrong as a rule."
Diana frowned.
"I don't agree with you at all," she bristled. "Men have a ridiculous
way of lumping all women together and then generalising about them."
"Let's discuss the question," he said gaily. "May I?" And scarcely
waiting for her permission, he deliberately moved aside her things and
seated himself opposite her.
"But you were busy writing," she protested.
He threw an indifferent glance in the direction of his writing-pad, where
it lay on the seat in the corner.
"Was I?" he answered calmly. "Sometimes there are better things to do
than scribbling--pleasanter ones, anyway."
Diana flushed. It certainly was an unusual thing to do, to get into
conversation with an unknown man with whom one chanced to be travelling,
and she had never before committed such a breach of the
conventions--would have been shocked at the bare idea of it--but there
was something rather irresistible about this man's cool self-possession.
He seemed to assume that a thing must of necessity be right, since he
chose to do it.
She looked up and met his eyes watching her with a glint of amusement in
their depths.
"No, it isn't quite proper," he agreed, answering her unspoken thought.
"But I've never bothered about that if I really wanted to do a thing.
And don't you think"--still with that flicker of laughter in his
eyes--"that it's rather ridiculous, when two human beings are shut up in
a box together for several hours, for each of them to behave as though
the other weren't there?"
He spoke half-mockingly, and Diana, felt that within himself he was
ridiculing her prim little notions of conventionality. She flushed
uncomfortably.
"Yes, I--I suppose so," she faltered.
He seemed to understand.
"Forgive me," he said, with a sudden gentleness. "I wasn't laughing at
you, but only at all the absurd conventions by which we cut ourselves off
from many an hour of pleasant intercourse--just as though we had any too
many pleasures in life! But if you wish it, I'll go back to my corner."
"No, no, don't go," returned Diana hastily. "It--it was silly of me."
"Then we may talk? Good. I shall behave quite nicely, I assure you."
Again the curiously familiar quality in his voice! She was positive she
had heard it before--that crisp, unslurred enunciation, with its keen
perception of syllabic values, so unlike the average Englishman's
slovenly rendering of his mother-tongue.
"Of what are you thinking?" he asked, smiling. And then the swift,
hawk-like glance of the blue eyes brought with it a sudden, sure sense of
recognition, stinging the slumbering cells of memory into activity. A
picture shaped itself in her mind of a blustering March day, and of a
girl, a man, and an errand-boy, careering wildly in the roadway of a
London street, while some stray sheets of music went whirling hither and
thither in the wind. It had all happened a year ago, on that critical
day when Baroni had consented to accept her as his pupil, but the
recollection of it, and the odd, snubbed feeling she had experienced in
regard to the man with the blue eyes, was as clear in her mind as though
it had occurred only yesterday.
"I believe we have met before, haven't we?" she said.
The look of gay good-humour vanished suddenly from his face and an
expression of blank inquiry took its place.
"I think not," he replied.
"Oh, but I'm sure of it. Don't you remember"--brightly--"about a year
ago. I was carrying some music, and it all blew away up the street and
you helped me to collect it again?"
He shook his head.
"I think you must be mistaken," he answered regretfully.
"No, no," she persisted, but beginning to experience some slight
embarrassment. (It is embarrassing to find you have betrayed a keen and
vivid recollection of a man who has apparently forgotten that he ever set
eyes on you!) "Oh, you must remember--it was in Grellingham Place, and
the greengrocer's boy helped as well."
She broke off, reading the polite negation in his face.
"You must be confusing me with some one else. I should not be likely
to--forget--so charming a _rencontre_."
There was surely a veiled mockery in his composed tones, irreproachably
courteous though they were, and Diana coloured hotly. Somehow, this man
possessed the faculty of making her feel awkward and self-conscious and
horribly young; he himself was so essentially of the polished type of
cosmopolitan that beside him she felt herself to be as raw and crude as
any bread-and-butter miss fresh from the schoolroom. Moreover, she had
an inward conviction that in reality he recollected the incident in
Grellingham Place as clearly as she did herself, although he refused to
admit it.
She relapsed into an uncomfortable silence, and presently the attendant
from the restaurant car came along the corridor and looked in to ask if
they were going to have dinner on the train. Both nodded an affirmative.
"Table for two?" he queried, evidently taking them to be two friends
travelling together.
Diana was about to enlighten him when her _vis-à-vis_ leaned forward
hastily.
"Please," he said persuasively, and as she returned no answer he
apparently took her silence for consent, for something passed
unobtrusively from his hand to that of the attendant, and the latter
touched his hat with a smiling--"Right you are, sir! I'll reserve a
table for two."
Diana felt that the acquaintance was progressing rather faster than she
could have wished, but she hardly knew how to check it. Finally she
mustered up courage to say firmly:--
"It must only be if I pay for my own dinner."
"But, of course," he answered courteously, with the slightest tinge of
surprise in his tones, and once again Diana, felt that she had made a
fool of herself and blushed to the tips of her ears.
A faint smile trembled for an instant on his lips, and then, without
apparently noticing her confusion, he began to talk, passing easily from
one subject to another until she had regained her confidence, finally
leading her almost imperceptibly into telling him about herself.
In the middle of dinner she paused, aghast at her own loquacity.
"But what a horrible egotist you must think me!" she exclaimed. "I've
been talking about my own affairs all the time."
"Not at all. I'm interested. This Signor Baroni who is training your
voice--he is the finest teacher in the world. You must have a very
beautiful voice for him to have accepted you as a pupil." There was a
hint of surprise in his tones.
"Oh, no," she hastened to assure him modestly. "I expect it was more
that I had the luck to catch him in a good mood that afternoon."
"And his moods vary considerably, don't they?" he said, smiling as though
at some personal recollection.
"Oh, do you know him?" asked Diana eagerly.
In an instant his face became a blank mask; it was as though a shutter
had descended, blotting out all its vivacious interest.
"I have met him," he responded briefly. Then, turning the subject
adroitly, he went on: "So now you are on your way home for a well-earned
holiday? Your people must be looking forward to seeing you after so long
a time--you have been away a year, didn't you say?"
"Yes, I spent the other two vacations abroad, in Italy, for the sake of
acquiring the language. Signor Baroni"--laughingly--"was horror-stricken
at my Italian, so he insisted. But I have no people--not really, you
know," she continued. "I live with my guardian and his daughter. Both
my parents died when I was quite young."
"You are not very old now," he interjected.
"I'm eighteen," she answered seriously.
"It's a great age," he acknowledged, with equal gravity.
Just then a waiter sped forward and with praiseworthy agility deposited
their coffee on the table without spilling a drop, despite the swaying of
the train, and Diana's fellow-traveller produced his cigarette-case.
"Will you smoke?" he asked.
She looked at the cigarettes longingly.
"Baroni's forbidden me to smoke," she said, hesitating a little. "Do you
think--just one--would hurt my voice?"
The short black lashes flew up, and the light-grey eyes, like a couple of
stars between black clouds, met his in irresistible appeal.
"I'm sure it wouldn't," he replied promptly. "After all, this is just an
hour's playtime that we have snatched out of life. Let's enjoy every
minute of it--we may never meet again."
Diana felt her heart contract in a most unexpected fashion.
"Oh, I hope we shall!" she exclaimed, with ingenuous warmth.
"It is not likely," he returned quietly. He struck a match and held it
while she lit her cigarette, and for an instant their fingers touched.
His teeth came down hard on his under-lip. "No, we mustn't meet again,"
he repeated in a low voice.
"Oh, well, you never know," insisted Diana, with cheerful optimism.
"People run up against each other in the most extraordinary fashion. And
I expect we shall, too."
"I don't think so," he said. "If I thought that we should--" He broke
off abruptly, frowning.
"Why, I don't believe you _want_ to meet me again!" exclaimed Diana, with
a note in her voice like that of a hurt child.
"Oh, for that!" He shrugged his shoulders. "If we could have what we
wanted in this world! Though, I mustn't complain--I have had this hour.
And I wanted it!" he added, with a sudden intensity.
"So much that you propose to make it last you for the remainder of your
life?"--smiling.
"It will have to," he answered grimly.
After dinner they made their way back from the restaurant car to their
compartment, and noticing that she looked rather white and tired, he
suggested that she should tuck herself up on the seat and go to sleep.
"But supposing I didn't wake at the right time?" she objected. "I might
be carried past my station and find myself heaven knows where in the
small hours of the morning! . . . I _am_ sleepy, though."
"Let me be call-boy," he suggested. "Where do you want to get out?"
"At Craiford Junction. That's the station for Crailing, where I'm going.
Do you know it at all? It's a tiny village in Devonshire; my guardian is
the Rector there."
"Crailing?" An odd expression crossed his face and he hesitated a
moment. At last, apparently coming to a decision of some kind, he said:
"Then I must wake you up when I go, as I'm getting out before that."
"Can I trust you?" she asked sleepily.
"Surely."
She had curled herself up on the seat with her feet stretched out in
front of her, one narrow foot resting lightly on the instep of the other,
and she looked up at him speculatively from between the double fringe of
her short black lashes.
"Yes, I believe I can," she acquiesced, with a little smile.
He tucked his travelling rug deftly round her, and, pulling on his
overcoat, went hack to his former corner, where he picked up the
neglected writing-pad and began scribbling in a rather desultory fashion.
Very soon her even breathing told him that she slept, and he laid aside
the pad and sat quietly watching her. She looked very young and childish
as she lay there, with the faint shadows of fatigue beneath her closed
eyes--there was something appealing about her very helplessness.
Presently the rug slipped a little, and he saw her hand groping vaguely
for it. Quietly he tiptoed across the compartment and drew it more
closely about her.
"Thank you--so much," she murmured drowsily, and the man looking down at
her caught his breath sharply betwixt his teeth. Then, with an almost
imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, he stepped back and resumed his
seat.
The express sped on through the night, the little twin globes of light
high up in the carriage ceiling jumping and flickering as it swung along
the metals.
Down the track it flew like a living thing, a red glow marking its
passage as it cleft the darkness, its freight of human souls contentedly
sleeping, or smoking, or reading, as the fancy took them. And half a
mile ahead on the permanent way, Death stood watching--watching and
waiting where, by some hideous accident of fate, a faulty coupling-rod
had snapped asunder in the process of shunting, leaving a solitary
coal-truck to slide slowly back into the shadows of the night, unseen,
the while its fellows were safely drawn on to a aiding.