"I missed the last train."
"Did ye!" said the porter coldly. It was not a question; there was no
flicker of the interest of a question in his voice, only a dreary
indifference which seemed to demand what in the world you were thinking
of to trouble him about a stupidity which had happened twenty times a
day throughout twenty years of his service on the line. Darsie drew
herself up with a feeling of affront. He was a rude, ill-mannered man,
who ought to be taught how to speak to ladies in distress. She would
ask her father to complain to the railway!
What were porters paid for but to make themselves useful to passengers?
She drew herself up in haughty fashion, then as suddenly collapsed as
her eye rested on her dusty boots and blackened, bloodstained skirt.
Ridiculous to act the grand lady with such handicaps as these! She drew
a sharp breath, and said in a voice of childlike appeal--
"I'm left behind! My friends have gone on. It's very awkward!"
"Are ye?" asked the porter indifferently. He took one hand out of his
pocket and pointed woodenly to the right. "Waiting-room first door. Ye
can sit there!"
Of all the callous, cold-blooded--! Darsie turned with a swing and
marched forward into the bleak little cell which had the audacity to
call itself a first-class waiting-room, seated herself on a leather-
covered bench which seemed just the most inhospitable thing in the way
of furniture which the mind of man could conceive, and gave herself up
to thought. Never, never so long as she lived would she ever again
leave home without some money in her pocket! How in the name of all
that was mysterious could she contrive to possess herself of eightpence
within the next hour? "Our old woman" would lend it with pleasure, but
Darsie shrank from the idea of the darkening country road with the dread
of the town-dweller who in imagination sees a tramp lurking behind every
bush. No, this first and most obvious suggestion must be put on one
side, and even if she could have humbled herself to beg from the porter,
Darsie felt an absolute conviction that he would refuse. At the farther
side of the station there stretched a small straggling village. Surely
somehow in that village--! With a sudden inspiration Darsie leaped to
her feet and approached the porter once more. Into her mind had darted
the remembrance of the manner in which poor people in books possessed
themselves of money in critical moments of their history.
"Porter, will you please tell me the way to the nearest pawnshop?"
"P-p--!" Now, indeed, if she had wished to rouse the porter to
animation, she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams! He spun round,
and gaped at her with a stupefaction of surprise. "Pawnshop, did ye
say? P-awn! What do _you_ want with a pawnshop, a slip of a girl like
you?"
"That's my business!" returned Darsie loftily. Since he had been so
unsympathetic and rude, she was certainly not going to satisfy his
curiosity. Her dear little watch would provide her with money, and
somehow--she didn't understand why--pawnbrokers gave things back after
paying for them, in the most amiable and engaging of fashions.
"That's my business! If you would kindly direct me--"
"We haven't got no pawnshop," said the porter gruffly. He stared at her
slowly up and down, down and up, appeared to awake to a suspicious
interest, and opined gruffly, "You'd better go 'ome!"
"Just what I'm trying to do," sighed poor Darsie to herself. She turned
and went slowly back to her leather seat, and a second disconsolate
review of the situation. In time to come this experience would rank as
an adventure, and became an oft-told tale. She would chill her
listeners with hints of The Tramp, evoke shrieks of laughter at her
imitation of the porter. Darsie realised the fact, but for the moment
it left her cold. Summer evenings have a trick of turning chill and
damp after the sun is set, and the vault-like waiting-room was dreary
enough to damp the highest spirits. _How was she going to obtain that
eightpence for a ticket_?
The station clock struck nine; the porter took a turn along the platform
and peered curiously through the dusty window; a luggage train rattled
slowly past, an express whizzed by with thunderous din. The station
clock struck the quarter, and still the problem was as far as ever from
solution.
"Well," sighed Darsie miserably, "I must just wait. I'm perished with
cold already. In two more hours I shall be frozen. Rheumatic fever, I
suppose, or galloping decline. It will settle Aunt Maria, that's _one_
good thing! but it's hard all the same, in the flower of my youth! To
think of all that a human creature can suffer for the sake of a
miserable eightpence!"
She got up stiffly and pressed her face against the pane. People were
beginning to assemble for the nine-ten. An old man with a satchel of
tools, two old women with baskets. "The poor are always generous to the
poor. Suppose I ask them? Twopence three farthings each would not kill
them!" But when one is not used to begging, it is extraordinary how
difficult it is to begin. Darsie tried to think of the words in which
she would proffer her request, and blushed in discomfort. No! she
_could_ not. Of the two disagreeables it really seemed easier to shiver
two hours, and retain one's pride intact, and then, suddenly, the door
of the waiting-room opened with a bang, and Dan's heavy figure stood on
the threshold! The cry of delight, of breathless incredulity with which
Darsie leaped to her feet, must have been heard to the end of the
platform. She rushed forward, clutched his arm, and hugged it fast in
the rapture of relief.
"Oh, Dan--you angel--you angel! Have you dropped down straight from the
skies?"
"Not I! Nothing so easy. Scorched along bad roads on a rickety
machine. Would you be kind enough to let go my arm and stop shrieking!
You'll have the whole village here in a moment. So _you're_ all right,
I see! Sitting quietly here, after scaring us half out of our wits--"
"I think _I'm_ the one to be scared! You were all ready enough to go
on, and leave me stranded by myself. I've gone through a martyrdom.
Dan! tell me, when did you miss me first?"
Dan gave an expressive grimace. He looked hot and dusty, and thankful
to sit down on the leather bench.
"Well, it was too much of a scrimmage to think of anything for the first
few miles, but things have a way of printing themselves on one's brain,
and when I _did_ begin to think, there seemed something missing! I
remembered Vie's face--the colour of a beetroot, and Clemence limping in
the rear. I remembered John and Russell hauling up Hannah by her arms,
and the two mothers were safely in their carriage--I'd made sure of
that, but--I couldn't remember a thing about _you_! Then I asked Vie,
and she said you were a long way behind, and I began to guess what had
happened. At the first stop I did a rush round, and--there you weren't!
So of course I came back."
"But how--how? There was no train. Did you cycle? Where did you get
your machine?"
"Borrowed him from the stationmaster, and left my watch in exchange, in
case I never went back. Jolly good exchange for him, too. It's the
worst machine I ever rode, and that's saying a good deal. I told your
mother I'd bring you back all right, and persuaded her to go home. What
on earth possessed you to be such a muff?"
Darsie tossed her head, gratitude giving place to wounded pride.
"Muff, indeed! You don't know what you are talking about, or you
wouldn't be so unkind. I ran like the rest, but I fell--caught my foot
on something, and fell on my face. I believe I fainted." There was an
irrepressible note of pride in her voice as she made this last
statement, for fainting, being unknown in the healthy Garnett family,
was regarded as a most interesting and aristocratic accomplishment. "I
do believe I fainted, for for several minutes I didn't know where I was.
And I hurt myself, too; look at my hand!"
Dan looked and whistled.
"Skinned it properly, haven't you! Reminds me of the days of my youth.
Better sponge it clean with your handkerchief and some of that water.
And when you _did_ remember, the train had gone--."
"Yes--and not another until after ten, and not a halfpenny in my pocket
to buy a ticket, and no one but a callous wretch of a porter to consult.
Oh, Dan, I _was_ wretched--I'll bless you all my life for coming back
like this!"
"Rot!" said Dan briskly. "I was the only man. Couldn't do anything
else. I say, you know, it was your doing that I came to this blessed
old picnic at all, and you _have_ let me in for a day! Eleven to eleven
before we've done with it--twelve solid hours! I've had about as much
picnic as I want for the rest of my natural life."
"I'm sorry. I thought it would be so nice. I'm sorry I bothered you,
Dan." Darsie was tired and cold, in a condition of physical depression
which made her peculiarly sensitive to a slighting mood. She leaned her
head against the ugly wall, and shut her lids over her smarting eyes.
Her cheeks were white. Her lips quivered like a wearied child's, but
she made a charming picture all the same, her inherent picturesqueness
showing itself even in this moment of collapse.
Dan's gaze grew first sympathetic, then thoughtful, as he looked. In a
dim, abstract way he had been conscious that Darsie Garnett was what he
would have described as "a pretty kid," but the charm of her personality
had never appealed to him until this moment. Now, as he looked at the
dark eyelashes resting on the white cheek, the droop of the curved red
lips, the long, slim throat that seemed to-night almost too frail to
support the golden head, a feeling of tenderness stirred at his heart.
She was such a tiny scrap of a thing, and she had been tired and
frightened. What a brute he was to be so gruff and ungracious! "Buck
up, Darsie! Only ten minutes more to wait. I'll get you a cup of
coffee when we arrive. Your mother said we were to take a cab, so all
the worry's over and nothing but luxury ahead."
But Darsie, quick to note the soothing effect of her prostration,
refused to "buck up," and looked only more worn and pathetic than
before. The opportunity of lording it over Dan was too precious to be
neglected, so she blinked at him with languid eyes, and said faintly--
"I'll try, but I'm so _very_ tired! Do you think you could talk to me,
Dan, and amuse me a little bit? That would pass the time. Tell me
about yourself, and all you are going to do when you go up to
Cambridge."
And to his own astonishment Dan found himself responding to her request.
His was one of the silent, reserved natures which find it difficult to
speak of the subjects which lie nearest to the heart, but even silent
people have their moments of expansion, and when once Dan had broken the
ice, he found it unexpectedly easy to talk, with Darsie's big eyes fixed
on his in eloquent understanding. She was a capital little listener;
never interrupted at the wrong moment, indulged in senseless
ejaculations, or fidgety, irritating movement. Nothing about her moved,
hardly even the blue eyes, so fixed and absorbed was their gaze, while
Dan spoke in low, rapid tones of the course of work which lay ahead, of
the ambitions and dreams which were to crown his efforts. He must take
first-class honours at Cambridge; nothing less than first-class honours
would do--honours so distinguished that he would have no difficulty in
obtaining a good post as schoolmaster to tide him over the next few
years. "Teaching's the thing for me--for it leaves four months over for
my own work, the real work of my life--scientific study and research!
That's the only thing worth living for from my point of view, and I
shall plump for that. I don't care for money, I don't want to marry,
I'd be content to make enough to keep body and soul together, if I could
only help on the cause of humanity. I am not going up to Cambridge for
two years. I can do better grinding quietly at home, and the governor
doesn't mind. In fact, he is just as well pleased to think I shall have
more time to run when Hannah goes up to Newnham."
Darsie drew her breath sharply.
"Oh, Dan! how fortunate you are--how fortunate Hannah is, to be able to
do as you like! I would give my ears to go up to Newnham, too, but
father says it's impossible. He can't afford it with the boys'
education getting more expensive every year. I shall have to stay at
home, and turn into a miserable morning governess, teaching wretched
little kids to read, and taking them for a walk round the park. Oh, oh!
it makes me _ill_ to think about it."
Dan laughed shortly.
"Excuse me! it makes you well. You look quite like yourself again.
I'll give you a bit of advice if you like: don't believe that anything's
impossible in this world, because it isn't! Put the nursery governess
idea out of your mind, and fire ahead for Newnham. There's always the
chance of a scholarship, and even if that didn't come off, who can tell
what may happen in three years' time? The way may clear in a dozen
ways; it probably _will_ clear, if you get ready yourself. There are
precious few things one can't gain by steady slogging ahead."
Darsie looked at him with a kindling glance, her lips set, a spot of red
showed on either cheek.
"Right!" she said briefly, and at that moment the train steamed into the
station and the conference was at an end.