Chapter III

The nine-seven train from Hanstead is one of the events of the day. In a hundred homes at a hundred breakfast-tables its name is sounded forth on six days out of the week. Wives remind husbands that they have only four minutes before the nine-seven will leave the station; husbands sharply remind their wives when the eggs have not arrived that they have only fourteen minutes before the nine-seven is due. In appearance it resembles all other trains, except in that it has hardly any third-class carriages at all; but in significance it stands alone — at least in Han-stead. It is due at Liverpool Street at nine-thirty-eight, and is approximately calculated, therefore, to enable those who travel by it to be in their offices before the clock has finished striking ten.

It was on the Thursday morning that Percy so nearly missed it, and, in consequence, was forced to leap into a third-class non-smoking carriage, as the train was halfway up the platform. Such things had happened to him before, but it was especially annoying this morning, as he had not had time for a cigarette, and, since the nine-seven stopped nowhere on the way, would be unable to have one at all, except an unsatisfactory one on his way to the office. Another annoying incident was that as he sprang in, and the guard banged the door behind him, he tripped violently over a bag and fell full length along the floor.

He turned savagely to apologize to a woman of whom he had just been aware — the only occupant of the carriage — and was completely taken aback.

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" I am so very sorry," said an exceedingly melodious voice. " It was entirely my fault. I do hope you're not hurt?"

Percy made haste to reassure her, and, such was the impression she made upon him, further to inform her that it was wholly his own stupidity. For he was aware, even in that agitated moment, that this was about the prettiest girl he had ever set eyes on. He had expected an anaemic typewriter, or a portly slum-woman; and, behold, here sat a girl, about his own age, dressed channingly and neatly, with mysterious effects about her costume which he could not analyse; pale, but with glorious eyes and pretty lips parted, it seemed, with genuine anxiety and sympathy.

" It's really nothing at all," he said again. " I ought to have looked where I was going. And it's my own fault, too, for being late."

She smiled, watching him with amused and appreciative eyes as he dusted his knees free from sawdust.

" Forgive me," she said. " But you've a lot more on your elbows. Yes, you'd much better take off your coat. You'll never get it off unless you do."

Percy hesitated, agreeably aware of her pleasantly friendly interest.

"Well, if you don't mind," he said, conscious that his shirt was irreproachable.

" I shall be distressed if you don't," she said, smiling again.

Percy was very deliberate in the process that followed, aware of a curious excitement. He took off his tailed coat, pulled up his shirt-sleeves daintily, and began to brush off the sawdust with his fingers. But it was not very successful. He was aware that the girl had moved, but did not venture to look at her till she spoke again.

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"You'd better have this brush/' she said, holding one out. " It's lucky I had one in my bag."

It was a beautiful brush, with an ivory back and a monogram which he could not make out

" Thanks, very much," he said.

" It's only fair," she smiled back at him. " You know, it really was my fault, although you are so dreadfully polite about it."

As Percy re-endued himself with his coat, pulled down his cuffs and settled himself opposite her, he was wondering whether it would be proper to go on talking. Han-stead was terribly rigid on certain kinds of etiquette.... He decided to ignore Hanstead.

" This train's always on time," he said. " Worse luck!"

" You come by it often? "

"I come by it every day," said Percy; "and it's just ten minutes earlier than it need be." "Ah!" said the girl.

Certainly she was surprisingly pretty, especially when she spoke and her whole face lighted up in a subdued kind of laughter. Her eyes were not only splendid, but they were kind too. Her lips moved deliciously when she spoke, showing very white teeth indeed behind them; but they relaxed, when she was silent (thought Percy), into a kind of melancholy. Her hair was as dark as possible, without being actually black, and was done up in a massive kind of way, quite new to Percy, but completely satisfying. But, above all, there was real charm about her. People often have features — a nose or ears, for instance, in the less marked instances — that have nothing to do with expression — features stuck on, so to speak, without any vital

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He tried in vain to elicit facts about her. "Do you come often by this train?" he asked, with a flare of audacity.

" It's the... the third time," she said. " You live down this line, I expect? " She seemed not to hear.

" How stupid of me! " she cried. " I've never suggested your having a cigarette. Do, please. I'm sure you smoke! "

"Well, but "

" My dear boy— I don't mind it at all. I— I Shall

I tell you?"

Percy tingled all over at her phrase. "Do tell me!"

"Well — I smoke myself sometimes, when I'm alone." Percy began to feel a desperate dog; he did not quite know why.

" Now do have one of mine," he said rather familiarly, drawing out his thin little silver case. She shook her head.

" I couldn't dream of it," she said. And there seemed to fall between Percy and her a sudden impenetrable wall of ice.

He drew out his matchbox and lighted up. Then he determined to attack again.

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" You didn't tell me whether you lived down this line? " he said.

She looked at him with a cool, odd look, and the ice-wall grew piercing cold: he understood that he was presuming.

" The point is/' she said, " whether this train will arrive up to time. I've got to be in the Strand by ten sharp, and I don't want to take a taxi unless I must."

" Sure to be in time," said poor Percy. " It always is unless there's a fog." (Interiorly he was scourging and lashing himself for his presumption. What an ill-bred ass he had been! Dense, pig-headed boor!)

She seemed to understand his self-reproaches, and her eyes grew kind again.

" You see, I'm quite new to this line. I've always lived in the Croydon direction — at least, for the last three years, and I've just moved. And the Brighton line "

And the two went' off into severe discussions and comparisons. But Percy's heart grew warm again within him at the thought that she lived now, at any rate, on the same railway line as himself, and that he might, if he were fortunate, travel up with her quite often. He wondered whether it were possible that she could really be in business.... Certainly she did not look like it. Once he thought of the Yarmouth girl, and bitter laughter rose in him. He was as one who has climbed a snow-peak, and looks back in disdain at the steaming valleys from which he has come. The Yarmouth girl indeed! Maud was her name!... Maud!...

Percy's business-application was quite appreciably affected all that morning by his experience in the train.

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It has been said that he was susceptible, but even he knew that this particular romance was different from the others. The only difficulty was that each new romance seemed so. But the quality seemed different. One may be deeply affected by both Beethoven and Tosti; one may even shed tears over Tosti and not over Beethoven; yet there is no question, even to a very moderate musician indeed, as to in which lies the deeper profundity. It was so with Percy in this particular experience. The thought of the Yarmouth girl had made him cross under certain circumstances; he had even attempted to write a few verses upon the moonlight on Yarmouth seas; but though he could not conceive of the thought of the girl he had met in the train ever making him cross, or of his own attempting to write verses to the music of the rolling wheels through which they had talked together, he had no question at all in his mind on the point that this was the deepest romance he had ever encountered. I do not mean that he analysed it all, in the very least. He analysed nothing — least of all himself. But he was just aware of her, as of music, during the whole of that morning: he talked with his fellow-clerks; he added up his columns: he carried in cheques to be signed; he stood patiently on the Turkey-carpet behind the mahogany table while his chief signed the cheques. And the whole while her presence was with him, as a perfume or a strain.

Yet he had arrived at no further facts about her at all. She had told him absolutely nothing, except that she lived on that railway line; he had no clue to her name, or her occupation, or her friends, or her home — beyond the clue of a monogram which he could not read, but which, on consideration, he thought bore a G somewhere in the midst of the silver tangle.

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He consulted Reggie at lunch, but with great diplomacy and aloofness.

" By the way/' he said, " I travelled up with a girl this morning, and couldn't make out what she was."

Reggie looked his inquiries over a sandwich.

"Very pretty indeed," said Percy, with a superbly dispassionate air. "Very well dressed and all that, and had a little dressing-bag. But third-class."

"I thought you had a second season?"

" Yes, but I had to get in anywhere. Only just caught the train, and tumbled over the bag. Well, we got talking. Nice girl! But I couldn't make her out. Travelling alone; quite poor: had an engagement at ten: always lived near Croydon till lately. So I suppose she comes up to town every day."

" Typist," suggested Reggie.

Percy shook his head.

" Too well dressed — too cheerful. Not that sort." "Milliner?"

" My dear chap, she was a lady."

" Give it up," said Reggie. " You want Sherlock Holmes!"

It perplexed Percy a good deal, and the more he thought of it the more he was perplexed. No profession with which he was acquainted seemed to fit her at all; and yet he had an idea that she was not of independent means, chiefly because she had such an exceedingly independent air.

He did his work quite badly that afternoon. Drowsiness was always the enemy after lunch, and drowsiness, reinforced by violent preoccupation, was irresistible. He re-

Digitized by Google ceived a rebuke from the bald head-clerk. And he went away at last to Liverpool Street, without any tea, in the vague hope of meeting her again on the platform.

Percy was in two minds as to whether or no he should let out at home, as if unconsciously, that he meant to go to a Catholic church on Sunday. Honestly he was not quite sure as to the attitude of his parents towards that ancient denomination: it was not discussed; there was no Catholic church at all in the neighbourhood; there was no particular reason why it should be discussed.

There was nothing to-night in Hanstead to take him away from home. On three nights out of four there usually was something — either a choir-practice, or a whist-drive, or a social evening, or an amateur concert. It was an extremely sociable place, within limits.

He ran into Mr. Main as he came up the High Street. Mr. Main was walking very fast as usual, with his trousers turned up and a flat hat on his head of such a cut as to make it appear as if he had no crown to his head at all; and he turned his eyes from side to side as he came, in a manner which his critics called underhand, but which, as a matter of fact, arose from nothing except a shy self-consciousness. Mr. Main was always afraid of saluting the wrong people and of neglecting those who saluted him. Percy waved a hand towards his own hat in a manner calculated to show respect, yet not adulation, and Mr. Main waved back to him from across the street.

" Aha! Good evening to you! " cried Mr. Main. " Going to have rain! " bawled Percy.

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"Aha! Yes, I think so," cried Mr. Main.

Percy was beginning to be old enough to feel compassion for Mr. Main, and to understand the dreariness of the poor man's position. People were rude to the curate sometimes; there was no question of that. The Mayor never dreamed of giving him more of a salute than he gave to a tradesman, though he took his hat entirely off to the Vicar. Even as Percy turned round at the door to find his key he heard a remark bellowed at the curate down the street by a hobbledehoy, and saw Mr. Main still walking very fast, swinging his umbrella with an air of obviously assumed unconsciousness. Poor Mr. Main! And with that wife of his too!

The dining-room in Hanstead House was as correct as everything else in it. It was papered in dark red, with a dark red carpet. It had a mahogany side-board with a mahogany wine-cooler that was never used, underneath it. It had a black marble clock in the middle of the black marble mantelpiece, flanked by two semi-recumbent bronze female figures. It had a large engraving of Luke Fildes' " The Doctor " over the mantelpiece, and two oil-portraits on the other walls. There was a writing-table between the windows at which a letter could be written in emergencies. It was all perfectly comfortable and quite dull, and entirely what a dining-room should be. The woodwork was all painted a chocolate brown.

It was here that the four sat down to dinner at half-past seven — Mrs. Brandreth Smith with her back to the windows, her husband opposite to her, with his back to the fire, and the children on either side. Helen was in a new dress, very Greek-looking indeed, with sleeves cut short at the eljbows. They were waited upon by Alice, a perfectly correct-looking maid with an anxious face.

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Of course, there was nothing at all to talk about. Nobody had any news; everyone knew everyone else's experiences perfectly. Helen talked a little about a new student (female) she had had tea with that day. The doctor made some remarks about the Mayor's scheme for the Queen Victoria fountain; Percy observed that he had seen Mr. Main just now; Mrs. Brandreth Smith assented to what was said and kept a roving eye upon the table and Alice. No one was dressed for dinner, really; there was no conceivable reason why they should be: the doctor wore his frock-coat: Percy, a short black jacket and waistcoat over his grey trousers; his mother wore a black satin bodice over her black cloth skirt.

And then, suddenly, by one of those coincidences that really do make it appear as if one mind can affect many, Helen opened out on a piece of gossip, just as the bread-and-butter pudding was set on the table.

" I saw a Catholic priest in the High Street to-night," she said.

" How do you know he was a priest? " asked Percy.

"One of the Irish boys called him 'Father' just as I went by. He was asking his way to Sloan's End."

Sloan's End was one of the little corners of the parish that grieved the Vicar's heart, since it was inhabited chiefly by Irish who entirely refused to come to his church, and who, on Saturday evenings, were sometimes a little noisy. Besides, they wouldn't salute him in the street.

" I didn't like the look of him," said Helen judicially. " He didn't look like a gentleman."

The doctor roused himself.

"Sloan's End? Oh, yes, there's a woman dying there. That'll be what brought him. I must say these priests look after their poor wonderfully."

" Well, I didn't like the look of him," persisted Helen.

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" And I don't know what they want to bother dying people for. I'm sure I shan't want a clergyman to come and see me when I'm dying. It seems to me a stuffy sort of thing to want."

" Hush, my dear! " said her mother.

It was a very typical evening for these four. They drank soup made out of a shin of beef; ate some shoulder of mutton with boiled potatoes and cabbage, and bread-and-butter pudding, some cheese and some apples. Plates were taken away and other plates substituted. By each plate stood a tumbler and a red wine-glass. The doctor drank a single glass of sherry, and Percy a bottle of fizzy beer; and when dinner was over, and Alice had filled up each wine-glass with water, they all went away to the drawing-room and sat grouped about the thick black mat that lay before the fire. Percy spread out his legs and smoked a single Virginia cigarette; the doctor took up The Nation, which, as an earnest Liberal, he read through every week and regarded as an oracle; Mrs. Brandreth Smith, when she returned from her nightly visit to the kitchen, opened her work-basket* and began to sew; Helen fetched a large drawing-board and propped it on the arms of her upright chair. Each of them made a small remark now and then of no interest whatever. Percy, looking rather moody, first decided to say nothing about his excursion on Sunday till it was all over, and then gave himself to pondering over the girl he had met in the train.

It was a typical evening. None of them, except perhaps Helen, were really interested at all in their occupations. Yet upon them all had descended a Scheme of Life that gave them no choice except to submit — a scheme which tightened its grip on them every month that went by, and was gradually crushing out every elastic instinct that they

Digitized by Google possessed. The doctor doctored because it was his profession; his wife managed her household because it was her household; Percy went up to the City and did accounts, because there was nothing else for him to do; and even Helen, though just now she did rather enjoy what she believed to be an artistic life, would presently find that even that was no more than a convention; her Greek costumes would cease to seem odd or bold; her ideas of art would become formulae which, having learned rigorously, she would teach to others with equal rigour. There was no spice in life anywhere, no sting of conviction, no ardour of enterprise. The one soul among them who had real competence in her work was the mother, and she had no scope. There was everything necessary to Life, except Life itself.

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