The Splendid Folly. Margaret Pedler

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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