Margaret Pedler - The Splendid Folly

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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-a-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.

CHAPTER III

AN ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH

One moment the even throbbing of the engine as the train slipped along
through the silence of the country-side--the next, and the silence was
split by a shattering roar and the shock of riven plates, the clash of
iron driven against iron, and of solid woodwork grinding and grating as
it splintered into wreckage.

Diana, suddenly--horribly--awake, found herself hurled from her seat.
Absolute darkness lapped her round; it was as though a thick black
curtain had descended, blotting out the whole world, while from behind
it, immeasurably hideous in that utter night, uprose an inferno of cries
and shrieks--the clamour of panic-stricken humanity.

Her hands, stretched stiffly out in front of her to ward off she knew not
what impending horror hidden by the dark, came in contact with the
framework of the window, and in an instant she was clinging to it,
pressing up against it with her body, her fingers gripping and clutching
at it as a rat, trapped in a well, claws madly at a projecting bit of
stonework. It was at least something solid out of that awful void.

"What's happened? What's happened? What's happened?"

She was whispering the question over and over again in a queer,
whimpering voice without the remotest idea of what she was saying. When
a stinging pain shot through her arm, as a jagged point of broken glass
bit into the flesh, and with a scream of utter, unreasoning terror she
let go her hold.

The next moment she felt herself grasped and held by a pair of arms, and
a voice spoke to her out of the darkness.

"Are you hurt? . . . My God, are you hurt?"

With a sob of relief she realised that it was the voice of her
fellow-traveller. He was here, close to her, something alive and human
in the midst of this nightmare of awful, unspeakable fear, and she clung
to him, shuddering.

"Speak, can't you?" His utterance sounded hoarse and distorted. "You're
hurt--?" And she felt his hands slide searchingly along her limbs,
feeling and groping.

"No--no."

"Thank God!" He spoke under his breath. Then, giving her a shake:
"Come, pull yourself together. We must get out of this."

He fumbled in his pocket and she heard the rattle of a matchbox, and an
instant later a flame spurted out in the gloom as he lit a bundle of
matches together. In the brief illumination she could see the floor of
the compartment steeply tilted up and at its further end what looked like
a huge, black cavity. The whole side of the carriage had been wrenched
away.

"Come on!" exclaimed the man, catching her by the hand and pulling her
forward towards that yawning space. "We must jump for it. It'll be a
big drop. I'll catch you."

At the edge of the gulf he paused. Below, with eyes grown accustomed to
the darkness, she could discern figures running to and fro, and lanterns
flashing, while shouts and cries rose piercingly above a continuous low
undertone of moaning.

"Stand here," he directed her. "I'll let myself down, and when I call to
you--jump."

She caught at him frantically.

"Don't go--don't leave me."

He disengaged himself roughly from her clinging hands.

"It only wants a moment's pluck," he said, "and then you'll be safe."

The next minute he was over the side, hanging by his hands from the edge
of the bent and twisted flooring of the carriage, and a second afterwards
she heard him drop. Peering out, she could see him standing on the
ground below, his arms held out towards her.

"Jump!" he called.

But she shrank from the drop into the darkness.

"I can't!" she sobbed helplessly. "I can't!"

He approached a step nearer, and the light from some torch close at hand
flashed onto his uplifted face. She could see it clearly, tense and set,
the blue eyes blazing.

"God in heaven!" he cried furiously. "Do what I tell you. _Jump_!"

The fierce, imperative command startled her into action, and she jumped
blindly, recklessly, out into the night. There was one endless moment of
uncertainty, and then she felt herself caught by arms like steel and set
gently upon the ground.

"You little fool!" he said thickly. He was breathing heavily as though
he had been running; she could feel his chest heave as, for an instant,
he held her pressed against him.

He released her almost immediately, and taking her by the arm, led her to
the embankment, where he stripped off his overcoat and wrapped it about
her. But she was hardly conscious of what he was doing, for suddenly
everything seemed to be spinning round her. The lights of the torches
bobbed up and down in a confused blur of twinkling stars, the sound of
voices and the trampling of feet came faintly to her ears as from a great
way off, while the grim, black bulk of the piled-up coaches of the train
seemed to lean nearer and nearer, until finally it swooped down on top of
her and she sank into a sea of impenetrable darkness.

The next thing she remembered was finding a flask held to her lips, while
a familiar voice commanded her to drink. She shook her head feebly.

"Drink it at once," the voice insisted. "Do you hear?"

And because her mind held some dim recollection of the futility of
gainsaying that peremptory voice, she opened her lips obediently and let
the strong spirit trickle down her throat.

"Better now?" queried the voice.

She nodded, and then, complete consciousness returning, she sat up.

"I'm all right now--really," she said.

The owner of the voice regarded her critically.

"Yes, I think you'll do now," he returned. "Stay where you are. I'm
going along to see if I can help, but I'll come back to you again."

The darkness swallowed him up, and Diana sat very still on the
embankment, vibrantly conscious in every nerve of her of the man's cool,
dominating personality. Gradually her thoughts returned to the
happenings of the moment, and then the full horror of what had occurred
came back to her. She began to cry weakly. But the tears did her good,
bringing with them relief from the awful shock which had strained her
nerves almost to breaking-point, and with return to a more normal state
of mind came the instinctive wish to help--to do something for those who
must be suffering so pitiably in the midst of that scarred heap of
wreckage on the line.

She scrambled to her feet and made her way nearer to the mass of crumpled
coaches that reared up black against the shimmer of the starlit sky. No
one took any notice of her; all who were unhurt were working to save and
help those who had been less fortunate, and every now and then some
broken wreck of humanity was carried past her, groaning horribly, or
still more horribly silent.

Suddenly a woman brushed against her--a young woman of the working
classes, her plump face sagging and mottled with terror, her eyes
staring, her clothes torn and dishevelled.

"My chiel, my li'l chiel!" she kept on muttering. "Wur be 'ee? Wur be
'ee?"

Reaching her through the dreadful strangeness of disaster, the soft Devon
dialect smote on Diana's ears with a sense of dear familiarity that was
almost painful. She laid her hand on the woman's arm.

"What is it?" she asked. "Have you lost your child?"

The woman looked at her vaguely, bewildered by the surrounding horror.

"Iss. Us dunnaw wur er's tu; er's dade, I reckon. Aw, my li'l, li'l
chiel!" And she rocked to and fro, clutching her shawl more closely
round her.

Diana put a few brief questions and elicited that the woman and her child
had both been taken unhurt out of a third-class carriage--of the ten
souls who had occupied the compartment the only ones to escape injury.

"I'll go and look for him," she told her. "I expect he has only strayed
away and lost sight of you amongst all these people. Four years old and
wearing a little red coat, did you say? I'll find him for you; you sit
down here." And she pushed the poor distraught creature down on a pile
of shattered woodwork. "Don't be frightened," she added reassuringly.
"I feel certain he's quite safe."

She disappeared into the throng, and after searching for a while came
face to face with her fellow traveller, carrying a chubby, red-coated
little boy in his arms. He stopped abruptly.

"What in the world are you doing?" he demanded angrily. "You've no
business here. Go back--you'll only see some ghastly sights if you come,
and you can't help. Why didn't you stay where I told you to?"

But Diana paid no heed.

"I want that child," she said eagerly, holding out her arms. "The
mother's nearly out of her mind--she thinks he's killed, and I told her
I'd go and look for him."

"Is this the child? . . . All right, then, I'll carry him along for you.
Where did you leave his mother?"

Diana led the way to where the woman was sitting, still rocking herself
to and fro in dumb misery. At the sight of the child she leapt up and
clutched him in her arms, half crazy with joy and gratitude, and a few
sympathetic tears stole down Diana's cheeks as she and her fellow-helper
moved away, leaving the mother and child together.

The man beside her drew her arm brusquely within his.

"You're not going near that--that hell again. Do you hear?" he said
harshly.

His face looked white and drawn; it was smeared with dirt, and his
clothes were torn and dishevelled. Here and there his coat was stained
with dark, wet patches. Diana shuddered a little, guessing what those
patches were.

"_You've_ been helping!" she burst out passionately. "Did you want me to
sit still and do nothing while--while that is going on just below?" And
she pointed to where the injured were being borne along on roughly
improvised stretchers. A sob climbed to her throat and her voice shook
as she continued: "I was safe, you see, thanks to you. And--and I felt
I must go and help a little, if I could."

"Yes--I suppose you would feel that," he acknowledged, a sort of grudging
approval in his tones. "But there's nothing more one can do now. An
emergency train is coming soon and then we shall get away--those that are
left of us. But what's this?"--he felt her sleeve--"Your arm is all
wet." He pushed up the loose coat-sleeve and swung the light of his
lantern upon the thin silk of her blouse beneath it. It was caked with
blood, while a trickle of red still oozed slowly from under the wristband
and ran down over her hand.

"You're hurt! Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's nothing," she answered. "I cut it against the glass of the
carriage window. It doesn't hurt much."

"Let me look at it. Here, take the lantern."

Diana obeyed, laughing a little nervously, and he turned back her sleeve,
exposing a nasty red gash on the slender arm. It was only a surface
wound however, and hastily procuring some water he bathed it and tied it
up with his handkerchief.

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