The ADVENTUROUS LADY

BY

J. C. SNAITH

AUTHOR OF “THE UNDEFEATED,” “THE SAILOR,” “BROKE OF COVENDEN”

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK MCMXX

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[Pg 1]

The ADVENTUROUS LADY

I

Peace and her blessings were flowing already. All the same there was a terrible crush at Belgravia. The congestion of passengers and their luggage at the terminus of the B. S. W. was enough to daunt the stoutest heart, but a girl in a sealskin coat with a skunk collar standing at the bookstall on Platform Three was as calm and collected as if the war was still going on. Outwardly at least she made no concession to the fact that the Armistice had been signed three days.

She chose some newspapers and magazines and paid for them with an air that almost treated money with the disdain it reserved for literature. Then she moved towards a figure of sombre dignity standing between the barrier and herself.

“Come on, Pikey,” she said.

A tall, griffin-like woman, craggy of feature but almost oppressively respectable, followed her mistress dourly. The duenna carried a large, queer-shaped, rather disreputable-looking dressing case whose faded [Pg 2]purple cover was adorned with a coronet. As their tickets were franked at the barrier, these ladies were informed that “All stations beyond Exeter” were up on the right.

In spite of such clear and explicit instructions, it was not easy to get to all the stations beyond Exeter. Platform Three was a maelstrom of almost every known community. There were Italians and Serbians, Welshmen and such men, Japanese sailors and turbaned Hindoos; the personal suite of President Masaryk; Tommies and poilus; American tars and doughboys; British and Colonial officers, their kit and appurtenances; and over and above all these were the members of the traveling public which in other days had kept the railways running and had paid the shareholders their dividends.

A cool head and a firm will were needed to get as far as the stations beyond Exeter. And these undoubtedly belonged to the girl in the fur coat. Her course was slow but it was calm and sure. With rare fixity of will she pursued it despite the peace that had come so suddenly upon the world. It was a very long train, but she was in no hurry nor did she betray the least anxiety, although somewhere about the middle—Salisbury and Devizes only—she cast a half-glance back to say to her companion, “I don’t see our porter, Pikey.”

To utter the word “porter” just then was either bravado or it was inhuman optimism. But the act [Pg 3]of faith was justified by the event, for hardly had the lady of the fur coat made the remark when a figure in corduroys almost miraculously emerged from the welter. Both travelers had a doubt at first as to whether this rare bird was Trotsky himself or merely a Sinn Fein delegate to the Peace Conference, so aloof yet so grim was his manner. But at that moment there seemed to be no other porter on Platform Three—it followed, therefore, that their porter it must be.

It was rather providential perhaps that the porter had been able to find them, but he was by way of being a connoisseur in the human female. He had not been employed at Belgravia for thirty-five years without learning to sort out the various ranks and grades of a heterogeneous society. As a matter of fact, there were only two grades of society for Mr. Trotsky. One grade was worth while, the other was not.

The progress of the party up Platform Three to all the stations beyond Exeter was slow but, like fate, it was inevitable. They walked through, over and beyond armed representatives of five continents, nursemaids with babies and perambulators, not to mention remarkable women with remarkable dogs, trolleys and milk cans and piles of luggage, until at last they reached a compartment not far from the engine. It was notable for the fact that it was two-thirds empty. Rugs, umbrellas and minor portmanteaux claimed the unoccupied seats; those remaining were adorned by [Pg 4]two distinguished-looking gentlemen who, however, were reading The Times newspaper with an assiduity that definitely and finally dissociated them from Mr. Trotsky and party.

The lady of the fur coat was in the act of opening her purse at the carriage door when a wild, weak voice said, excitedly, “Oh, porter, can you find me a place—please?”

On instinct Mr. Trotsky disregarded the appeal. There was frenzy in it; and that fact alone made any examination of the overburdened, rather hunted little creature at his elbow unnecessary. Dark fate itself could not have turned a deafer ear than he.

“People are standing in all the thirds.” The piping, rather piteous little note grew more insistent. “I can’t stand all the way to Clavering, St. Mary’s.”

“Not be so full after Reading,” said the laconic Mr. Trotsky, coldly accepting a substantial tip for services rendered.

“But—but there’s no place for my luggage.”

As Miss Fur Coat closed her bag she observed that a rather pretty gray-eyed mouse of a thing bearing a large wickerwork arrangement in one hand and an umbrella and a pilgrim basket in the other was standing at bay. She was literally standing at bay.

“There is room here, I believe.” The air of Miss Fur Coat was cautious and detached, but not unfriendly.

[Pg 5]

“But this is a first,” said Miss Gray Eyes, “and I have only a third-class ticket.”

“But if there’s no room?” Miss Fur Coat turned a gesture of immensely practical calm upon Mr. Trotsky.

“Better get in, I should think.” The servant of the railway company made the concession to the two honest half-crowns in his palm. “Inspector’ll be along in a minute. Talk to him.”

Mr. Trotsky, having done his duty to the public, turned augustly on his heel to make a private and independent examination of the engine. His advice, however, in the sight of the third-class passenger, seemed sound enough to put into practice. Or, perhaps, it would be more just to say that the other lady put it in practice for her. Miss Fur Coat was curiously quiet and unhurried in all her movements. She was absolutely cool, physically and mentally cool, in spite of the temperature of Platform Three and the mass of fur round her neck, whereas poor little Miss Gray Eyes could hardly breathe in her thin green ulster. And the slow-moving will of Miss Fur Coat had an almost dangerous momentum. Before the third class passenger realized what had happened, she had been taken charge of.

“Go first, Pikey. Clear a seat for this lady.”

Slightly Olympian if you like, but tremendously effective. Pikey, who looked fully capable of swallowing Miss Gray Eyes whole with a single motion of her large and powerful jaws, entered the carriage, and [Pg 6]calmly and competently transferred a plaid traveling rug and a leather-handled umbrella from one seat to the next.

“Thank you so much—thank you ever so much,” twittered the lady of the green ulster, at the same time inadvertently barging the end of the pilgrim basket into the middle of the middle prices on page eight of the Times newspaper.

A patient jobber from the oil market, en route to Croome Lodge for an hour’s golf, looked gently at the green ulster, looked at it less in anger than in divine resignation, over the top of his tortoise-shell pince-nez. One had to rub shoulders with all sorts of queer people these times! Still the Armistice was signed and Burmahs were up another half crown.

“This train is already twelve minutes late.” Miss Fur Coat announced the fact after a glance at almost the last thing in wrist watches on almost the last thing in wrists, and then assumed the best seat in the compartment, the one next the door with the back to the engine.

The tortoise-shell pince-nez peered over the top of Court and Society on page six. It looked slowly up and down Miss Fur Coat and then transferred an expert gaze to Pikey and the other lady. Before the head office could register any conclusion on a matter which really did not call for comment, a message was received from another department to ask what price Shells had closed at. And there for the time being the [Pg 7]incident ended as far as the Oil Market was concerned—ended almost before it began. For nothing whatever had happened, so it really did not amount to an incident. All the same, something was about to happen.

[Pg 8]

II

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.

[Pg 9]

“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.

[Pg 10]

“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 [Pg 11]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 [Pg 12]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,[Pg 13] 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 [Pg 14]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 [Pg 15]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 [Pg 16]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?