# An American Girl in India/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II
ERMYNTRUDE AND I SET OUT
'Ermyntrude,' I said, going up to my room to dress for dinner as soon as the last of the visitors had gone, and finding my maid awaiting me, 'we start for India at the end of November.'
'Oh, miss,' said Ermyntrude, collapsing dramatically on the edge of a box, with her hand on the place where she fondly imagined her heart to be; 'oh, miss, it 'ave always been my ambition to visit that savage land.'
'Good gracious, Ermyntrude!' I laughed, yet suddenly feeling somehow as if I were setting out on an adventurous Captain-Cook-like journey among the cannibals; 'it isn't a bit savage nowadays.'
Ermyntrude got up in her prim, decided sort of way, and busied herself at the toilet-table.
'Well, I can only say what I 'ave heard,' she said in a gently defensive, remonstrating sort of voice. 'But my Uncle Ebby, he was out in the Mutiny, you may remember or you may not, miss; anyway, the doings of them natives he had to tell of was most horrifying.'
​'Oh yes,' I said cheerfully; 'but that was long ago in the Mutiny. Everything has changed since then. All the natives are quite friendly now.'
But Ermyntrude always does see the gloomy side of things.
'Don't you trust them, miss,' Ermyntrude warned me solemnly as she helped me into a dressing-gown. 'Take my word, and don't you trust them, the Begums least of all, miss.'
'The Begums!' Ermyntrude's unsuspected acquaintance with those ladies and the depth of personal feeling she put into her condemnation of them surprised the query out of me.
'Yes, miss; if it hadn't been for the wicked perfidy of one of those Begums, I might have been a lady, driving about in a carriage and pair like you, miss.' Ermyntrude paused impressively midway between the wardrobe and the bed, my dinner dress poised aloft in her hands.
Now, it isn't often that I encourage Ermyntrude. But the connection between a Begum of the Purple East and my good plain English maid was irresistible. I let her tell me the story as her deft fingers rearranged my hair.
'Uncle Ebby—you have heard me speak of him, miss—he was a man that everybody trusted. You'd trust him with everything you had, miss, as soon as look at him. Well, one of those Begums had got to hear of him and his noble character, and being frightened like, with so many mutineers about, she sends for him, and when she sees him she takes to him at once.' Ermyntrude paused effectively to ​survey her handiwork, and became discursive. 'You see, Uncle Ebby was a very handsome man, miss. I always grudged that I didn't take more after him myself; you'd never take me for kin of his, miss. It's my sister Beatrice what takes after him—you've never seen my sister Beatrice, have you, miss?' Ermyntrude paused again, as if to recover the thread of her story. 'Well, as I was saying, the Begum takes a great fancy to my Uncle Ebby, and after a bit she tells him that she will marry him, and tell him where all her treasure is, if he can manage to get her away to a holy place close by, where she thought she would be safe. You see, miss, this was quite right and proper. Uncle Ebby wouldn't have done anything that wasn't. The Begum was a widow, though her husband, it's true, had only been killed a few days before by some of the mutineers who had a spite against him. Well, by great efforts Uncle Ebby managed to get her away to her holy place, and she most faithfully promises to marry him next day and tell him where her treasure is. But what do you think, miss?' Ermyntrude dramatically put the finishing touches to my coiffure and drew back. 'Why, when he wakes up next morning, there she was a-burning of 'erself on a 'eap of wood.'
Ermyntrude's aspirates always will go when she gets excited.
'Dear me, Ermyntrude,' I said, surprised at this sudden and unexpected ending to the story. 'Why did she do that?'
'Well, you see, miss,' Ermyntrude explained, ​recovering her composure and her aspirates at the same time, 'it seems that she had wanted to burn herself on what they calls the funereal pyre when her husband died, but them officers in charge was too keen on the watch to let her do that, so she made use of my Uncle Ebby to get away and do it on the quiet; and she promising all the time to marry him and give him all her treasure. Oh, I've no faith in Begums after that, miss, and it isn't to be expected, neither.'
Ermyntrude's lips closed with the firm snap of disapproval that I knew so well.
Poor dear Ermyntrude has no sense of humour. I don't believe she has ever seen anything funny in life right straight away from the time that she was born. Ermyntrude takes herself seriously. Therefore, like all other people who take themselves seriously, she furnishes a constant fund of merriment to those more fortunate beings blessed with the joyous gift of an eye to the lighter side of things.
Her name straight away strikes one as a bit incongruous when one looks at my eminently respectable maid-like maid. Now, if her godfathers and godmothers in her baptism could only have had visions of what manner of woman she would be when she grew up, they couldn't possibly have called her Ermyntrude. I do think it is such a mistake to label people for life before they've had time to show what they are going to be like. You take a wretched puling infant, just like fifty thousand other wretched infants, and you go and fix it for life with some sort ​of name that you think sounds pretty, or that its grandmother or its maiden aunt had, quite oblivious of the fact that Nature may not have intended it for anything of the kind. It is just as if you took the seeds in your garden and as soon as you saw the first tiny green shoots come up, you said, 'Now I'll call these violets,' and you went on calling them violets, though they would persist in growing up sunflowers. Just think of the unfortunate Hermiones, Rosemaries, Beatrices, and Alexandras that one meets whom Nature never intended for any such high-flown appellations, and they can't, poor things, possibly live up to them, however much they try. It's like the jackdaw in the peacock's feathers. It's quite pathetic. While, as for the charming, tall, and graceful girls who are doomed to go through life as Emmas, Janes, Sarahs, and Jemimas, it's really tragic. Aunt Agatha has very strong ideas on this subject, though I'm bound to say they are not quite mine. It was owing to my impulsive defence of a maid called 'Glory' whom Aunt Agatha wanted to rechristen Emma, more suitably to her rank in life, that I found myself later on bound down to Ermyntrude.
It was like this. The first maid with whom Aunt Agatha started life had been most appropriately named Emma. Aunt Agatha thought that a very good and suitable name for a maid, and so when the first one left and she was appointing another, she had told her in her downright way:
'I don't care what your name is. My last maid's name was Emma. I'm accustomed to Emma, and ​I think it's a very good name for a maid, so I shall call you Emma.'
I was only a child at that time, but even now I remember how Aunt Agatha looked at the new maid over her glasses, in that awe-inspiring, contradict-me-not sort of way of hers, and how the new maid, doubtless taken aback a bit at being rechristened after coming to years of discretion, had meekly retired, murmuring acquiescence. I had found out afterwards, though, that she could lay claim to nothing better than Sarah Jane, and I suppose she thought Emma as good as that any day, and that it wasn't worth making a fuss about. But only a short time before Ermyntrude appeared on the scene Aunt Agatha had been engaging another new maid. She had had quite half a dozen all rechristened Emma—since Sarah Jane, alias Emma number two. I'm bound to admit that maids didn't just cotton on to Aunt Agatha's ways, somehow. As I said before, you have to get to know Aunt Agatha, and I can imagine she would be particularly trying if you weren't in a position to answer back. Anyway, I had happened to be present when she was engaging the latest new maid. Aunt Agatha had offered her liberal wages, and it was all nicely settled, when Aunt Agatha dismissed her with what was evidently her little formula.
'I don't care what your name is. I've always called my maids Emma. I'm used to it, and I think it a very good name for a maid, so I shall call you Emma.'
Aunt Agatha had looked again over her spectacles ​in a decisive sort of way that implied dismissal. But this maid wasn't going to be called Emma quite so easily.
'If you please, ma'am, my name's Glory,' she said meekly, yet not without a touch of obstinacy.
Aunt Agatha had looked up surprised and indignant.
'A most unsuitable name,' she said severely. 'I shall call you Emma.'
But that maid was evidently roused.
'I can't go against my godfather and godmothers in my baptism, ma'am, and go about masquerading under another name,' she had remonstrated. 'It wouldn't be right, nohow.'
Now, if there is one thing that Aunt Agatha hates it is opposition. If a look could have withered up the poor offending Glory, hers would have done it.
'You will either be "Emma" in my service or any absurd name you like outside it.' Aunt Agatha fixed her with a haughty stare through her lorgnettes.
'I'm Glory,' was all the maid said sullenly.
'Well, go there, then,' was what Aunt Agatha looked, but, of course, being a lady, she didn't say it. Sometimes Aunt Agatha has wonderful self-control. It all depends upon whether she remembers her dignity or not in time. All she said now was: 'Go to the housekeeper's room and think it over for half an hour, then come and tell me.' And such is human nature that, after that half-hour's cogitation, Glory came back Emma, which she has ever since remained. Whether a good name weighed little ​in comparison with the flesh-pots of Egypt, or whether she thought of the rose, and philosophically asked with the poet, 'What's in a name?' lies hidden among the many mysteries of the housekeeper's room.
Now, during that half-hour when the fate of Glory hovered in the balance, I had mildly expostulated with Aunt Agatha.
'When the poor girl's name is Glory,' I had said, 'why on earth can't you call her Glory? She can't help her name being what it is.'
Well, I needn't tell you right here what Aunt Agatha replied, first upon the subject of the presumption of nieces, then upon the presumption of the lower classes, and finally upon the criminal idiotcy of godfathers and godmothers in general. Anyway, the consequence of my defence of Glory was this. Aunt Agatha happened to be present a short time later when I was engaging Ermyntrude. We had fixed up everything most satisfactorily, and she was just leaving the room when I thought to ask her what her Christian name was.
'Ermyntrude, miss,' she had replied in her prim, demure way.
I admit I got a bit of a shock. She hadn't just exactly prepared one for a name like that.
Aunt Agatha was looking at me with a malicious sort of smile, and her mouth pursed up.
'All right, Ermyntrude,' I had said, and Ermyntrude had demurely retired.
'You don't mean to say,' burst out Aunt Agatha as soon as the door was closed, 'that you are going ​to call that eminently plain and respectable-looking young person Ermyntrude?'
Now, in view of my expressed opinion in the Glory-Emma incident, what could I do but stoutly stand by Ermyntrude? Though I don't mind admitting that in the privacy of my room I approached Ermyntrude cautiously as to whether she had any other Christian name.
'Oh yes, two others, miss,' she had replied, with something of pride in her voice, 'Victoria Alexandrina, miss.'
At that I had collapsed and hung on to Ermyntrude. So Ermyntrude she remains to this day.
But in spite of what Aunt Agatha said about it being impossible to expect anything sensible from a girl with a high-flown name like that, Ermyntrude is eminently practical, and has never foolishly tried to live up to her splendid appellations. She had proved herself invaluable, and when I suddenly decided to go out to India, I mentally decided at one and the same time to take her with me.
Those two months before the end of November seemed just to fly. Ermyntrude was in her element packing up. But she never quite understood why I wanted all my smartest things. A topi, a white umbrella tied with green, and something cool, was all she thought necessary. In that savage land what did it matter? It was only with the greatest difficulty that I got her to pack some winter things which she thought quite insane to take to a land where the natives went unclothed. I confess that we both bought topis, and to our great surprise ​rather fancied ourselves in them. Of these topis, alas! more anon.
And so after many days of much talk and anticipation, of much contradictory advice from friends, of much bustle and preparation, there we were saying good-bye at Charing Cross Station.
Charing Cross Station that morning didn't seem to know itself. I guess there's always a bit of life to be seen round about there, but that Thursday morning must have gone just right away with the record. It looked as if all London were at home there, and the guests had been asked to bring along with them all the luggage they possessed. Porters darted here, there, and everywhere amongst the crowd struggling along under huge trunks that contained the finery that was to rival even the gorgeous East, or wheeling about smooth-running trucks that threatened to topple over from a superfluity of many boxes neatly poised. Trim-looking maids and irreproachable valets for once forgot their breeding, and rushed distracted through the crowd. Only Ermyntrude remained serene.
It was a real fine crowd. Smart young men in well-built frock coats and top-hats gossiped with smarter women, in suitable or unsuitable travelling costume, as the case might be. Fond mammas wore a slightly worried look, while charming daughters grew flushed with the excitement attendant on the start on such a journey of exploration to an unknown land. Ubiquitous aunts and cousins showed up in full force, and made of it a field-day.
I guess no one who saw me that morning will deny ​that I looked just as smart as anybody there. Now, I always make a point of dressing suitably. When I go to a garden-party, I do the thing properly in lace and furbelows. When I cycle, I do it in a neat white drill or blue serge skirt; and when I travel, I don't look as if I were going to a church parade in Hyde Park. Some people have no idea of the fitness of things. Now, there was Marjory Manifold, got up as if she were going to a first-class wedding in Hanover Square, when, in reality, she was going on a dirty Dover-Calais boat, where she would probably be very ill, and then on the most disarranging journey possible at bone-shaking speed across France. I smiled as I thought of Marjory in that get-up a few hours hence. Now, I was dressed in dark blue cloth, plain, but well made—anybody could see that—and a simple black hat with feathers, and a fur boa, and, above all, I had that pleasing glow that comes only from the consciousness of being well dressed. I ask any woman, Is there any feeling that bucks you up like that? Now Lady Manifold had gone to the other extreme. She was one of that very large class of Britons who think anything good enough for a journey, and she must have routed out all the oldest things that she possessed. The worst of it was that her things fitted her so badly that they looked as if they could not possibly have been made for her, and that absurd little straw hat, thirty years too young for her, might easily have been one that Marjory had no longer any use for. How Marjory could have allowed her to come out like that I can't imagine. I was quite ​glad she kept inside the carriage, and didn't join our group on the platform. I've no use for an ill-dressed woman.
We certainly had a very jolly group. Lots of friends had come to see us off. Aunt Agatha, Dorothy and Bob, of course, were there, and half a dozen young men of various degrees of uninterestingness (I don't believe there is such a word as that, but there ought to be). Major Mackworth, whom I had had great difficulty in preventing proposing to me for quite a long time, was hanging round, but I felt I needn't keep my eye on him now, as he couldn't do much on a crowded platform like that. I talked most to Captain Sewell, of the Rangers. If I had been born a German fräulein, I think I should have admired Captain Sewell, of the Rangers. He was rather like a bull-dog, very broad, very strong, very military, with a waxed moustache, and very tight clothes, and a general braced-up sort of look. He hadn't much conversation, but what he had was amusing, because he took himself seriously. Captain Sewell, like Ermyntrude, has no sense of humour.
'London will be quite empty this afternoon,' he was saying, looking round with the kind of air that was capable of ignoring millions.
'Oh, but you'll be here,' I said, with obvious mockery.
'But I shall not,' he said seriously. 'I leave town at once for Scotland. Can't stand London empty.'
'You should have come to the great Durbar,' I ​said, with a smile, trying to look as if I hadn't seen Lord Hendley pushing his way towards us through the crowd.
Captain Sewell's doubtless valuable reply was lost in a sudden commotion from behind. Lady Manifold had put her head—surmounted by the absurd straw hat—out of the carriage window, and was loudly declaring the necessity of sending off a telegram at once, before the train left. She wore a worried look.
'Quick, Marjory, get me a telegraph-form out of my dressing-bag,' she was saying.
Marjory reluctantly broke off her conversation with Mr. Lovelace and darted into the compartment. I called in after her.
'Lord Hendley will send it off,' I said, giving him a look of interrogation, and, woman-like, sending off the very man I most wanted to talk to.
'Delighted!' he murmured, but he looked anything but that as he went off with the hastily-written telegram and a sixpence. I could see him frown as he saw Charlie Danford greet me.
'Hullo!' called out that callow youth to me across a sea of heads as I stood for a moment on the steps of our compartment. 'Are you off by the Ducal train too?'
'What?' I asked, when he had managed to push his way nearer through the crowd. 'Why do you call this a Ducal train?'
'Oh, didn't you know?' he laughed, as he managed to circumvent Aunt Agatha's somewhat rotund figure, that was the last obstacle that stood ​between us. 'I thought everybody knew that three Dukes and Duchesses were off by this train for the great Durbar. By Jove! here they come.' He adjusted his eyeglass critically. 'Look, I say, isn't she a ripper?'
And there, making their way through the crowd just like ordinary human beings, were the three famous Dukes and Duchesses—nay, four, as I was soon to learn from the owner of a deep bass voice on my right. He also seemed to be the owner of a pale, tired-looking little woman who was standing beside him.
'Look!' he was saying impressively, in a deep, solemn voice, that seemed to impress visibly the meek little woman—'look, there go four Dukes and four Duchesses, and—I know them all.'
To prove that he spoke the truth, he swept off his hat and got the smallest of bows from the smallest and nearest of the Duchesses. The nearest Duke, intentionally or not, looked fixedly ahead. But I found out afterwards that this was a habit of that particular Duke.
'Seven-eighths of these people have come to say good-bye to the other eighth—eh, what?' said Charlie Danford in his pleasant voice, surveying the crowd critically through his eyeglass. Nobody took any notice of the remark. Nobody ever does take any notice of what Charlie Danford says, yet he's always asked everywhere. I never could make out why. I suppose it is that he looks very well. No one could ever call Charlie Danford a cad to look at, and that's something nowadays. It's so ​much better to be a nonentity than to risk being called a cad.
Just then I saw Lord Hendley coming back, pushing his way through the crowd.
'I say,' he began as soon as he could get near enough to me to speak without shouting for everyone else to hear, 'who's Tommy?'
'Tommy?' I asked, doubtless looking as puzzled as I felt.
'Yes,' he said, 'the Tommy mentioned in Lady Manifold's telegram.'
'What!' I cried, horrified. 'Do you mean to say that you read that telegram you were given to send off?'
'I had to,' he confessed, looking comically apologetic. 'They couldn't read her writing, and asked me to try and make out what it was.'
'And could you?' I was curious enough to ask.
'Well,' he laughed, 'I only hope I deciphered it right, but I made it read: "Be sure Tommy does not eat too much. His health is delicate."'
I laughed. I knew Lady Manifold's playful little habit—that occasionally became exceedingly trying to her friends—of sending off telegrams on the most impossible of subjects on every possible occasion.
'It doesn't sound right, does it?' I said. 'Poor Lady Manifold! If you've mutilated her telegram! I'm sure Tommy could never forgive the state of his health being exposed in a public telegram like that.'
'My only hope,' said Lord Hendley comically, 'is that Tommy isn't a human being.' ​'I'll ask Marjory,' I laughed.
I leaned across the broad shoulders of Aunt Agatha and whispered in Marjory's ear. She was still talking to her special admirer, Mr. Lovelace.
'Who's Tommy?' I asked, low enough, I thought, not to be heard by anyone else.
Mr. Lovelace, however, must have heard, because I could see him blush even though I wasn't looking at him. Marjory blushed too, and after a quick, shy glance in his direction, frowned on me severely.
'Oh,' I said, without thinking, 'is Mr. Lovelace called Tommy, too?'
Marjory looked horrified, and they both blushed again. I guess she called him Tommy when they were alone, and they both felt as if she had just been caught in the act. But Mr. Lovelace, having conquered his blushes, came gallantly to the rescue.
'Yes,' he said laughingly, 'I confess to being called Tommy.'
'Oh,' I said, trying to make up for what I had done. 'Being called anything ending in "Y" is a sure sign of popularity, isn't it?'
I think Marjory felt that I was depriving her of her last few minutes' conversation with her young man. She looked at her watch, which is always a sure sign with a woman that someone is in the way.
'We're due to start in five minutes,' she said.
They were ordinary enough words, but they gave me a cold, streaky pain down the back right away. Not until then had I realised what the moment of departure would be like. I suddenly felt that I ​would give anything not to be going. Lady Manifold, dowdy and fidgety, and Marjory, shallow and frivolous, all at once seemed the most undesirable of fellow-travellers, while, as for the owner of the deep bass voice, he made me feel murderous already, and the meek little woman who looked up at him admiringly I felt inclined to shake right away. The Delhi Durbar suddenly appeared to me to be what some of the papers had called it—a useless expenditure and an empty circus show. I saw all the tawdriness and glitter of it in a flash.
'Yes,' Lord Hendley was saying, 'one has heard so much of the Durbar, I hope you won't be disappointed.'
Lord Hendley has a most embarrassing habit of apparently reading one's thoughts—or, rather, I should say my thoughts, for, of course, I've never discussed the subject with anybody else. I never mention Lord Hendley's name to anyone if I can help it, and I always turn kind of hot if I hear it mentioned suddenly. I wonder if that really means anything?
I believe I should have got quite gulpy in the throat just then, but, fortunately, a whistle blew and saved me. Immediately there was a general bustle on the platform, and everybody began to kiss everybody else—I mean, of course, all those who were within the table of consanguinity. Those who couldn't kiss began to shake hands hurriedly, and the air was full of last messages and injunctions from fond and anxious friends and relatives. Aunt Agatha was, of course, well to the fore here, and ​would keep talking about something flannel. I grew quite hot when she made me assure her in a stage whisper that I had them on.
I always do hate these occasions. People get so excited, and seem to lose all self-control in a sort of kissing, handshaking scrimmage. I feel like Bob, who says he's so awfully afraid of being kissed by somebody by mistake in the general confusion of the moment. Bob always says he hates kissing, but he insisted on saluting me heartily on both cheeks now. 'Just to make old Hendley jealous,' he whispered, as he gave me the second with quite unnecessary emphasis. Bob has such ridiculous ideas, though I did once know a husband who was jealous of his wife being kissed by her brother. But I have an idea that some brothers-in-law must be real irritating. I feel sure my husband, if I ever have one, will find Bob so.
'You are sure you haven't forgotten the meat lozenges and the chlorodyne and the quinine?' he asked as he released me. That was purely to annoy me. He knew that I had only taken them under protest when Aunt Agatha had finally declared that she wouldn't sleep at nights with me so far away unless she knew that I was provided with them and several other things.
Lord Hendley looked at me for a moment without speaking as we shook hands.
Then, I don't know how it was, I did just the stupidest thing possible. I had known for some time that he couldn't come with us to India as he had suddenly announced his intention of doing that ​afternoon at tea, but I had determined to show him that I wasn't interested in his coming or not coming either way by not asking him what prevented him. And then at the very last moment, like an idiot, I blurted it out before I knew what I was saying. 'Why aren't you coming?' I asked. I always did hate parting like this in public. I get somehow right down caught up and whirled around, and invariably say the wrong thing.
'Oh,' he said, brightening up wonderfully, 'I hope to come out later, but a reason that I'm not at liberty to give yet prevents my coming just now.'
'A State secret, I suppose?' I said, feeling just mad with myself when I saw how pleased he was that I had asked him that question. I guess he thought I was sorry he wasn't coming, and, of course, I didn't want him to think that.
Another whistle, more confusion.
He leaned slightly towards me.
'Yes,' he said quietly; 'it is a kind of State secret.'
I looked up at him quickly. He was serious.
Now, I never pretend to have any control over the expression of my eyes. I always think it best to let them be perfectly natural. But sometimes they do say things for one that one would never say in words. Of course, that may be an advantage or a disadvantage, as the case may be. I suppose they had an interrogative sort of look just now. At any rate, I could see Lord Hendley hesitate a moment. Then he bent down (have I mentioned that ​he is nearly a head taller than I am? if not, I make the humiliating confession now in brackets as quite unimportant).
'The Government is going to——'
Then, woman-like, I changed my mind, and didn't want to hear.
'I thought,' I said hurriedly, 'that it was a State secret.'
I suddenly felt that I shouldn't respect him any more if he told me anything that really was a secret. Yet, of course, I should have been annoyed if he hadn't offered to tell me after that interrogative look in my eyes. I have thought the whole thing out quietly since, but I haven't yet quite made up my mind whether a woman prefers a man who won't divulge to her a secret he ought to withhold, or the man who gives in and tells her. I'm inclined to think that she respects the former against her will, which doesn't make the home sort of friendly, while she much prefers the latter, because she can look down upon him. There's nothing pleases a woman so much as having something to look down upon.
'There are some people,' whispered Lord Hendley, still with his head bent down towards me, 'that no one would expect a man to keep even a State secret from.'
My heart, I admit, went all of a flutter. Was that really equal to a proposal? What I should have said I don't quite know, for just then that tiresome Aunt Agatha took possession of me and bundled me into the carriage. She was murmuring ​her last hurried injunctions and her firm belief in something flannel.
'I say,' shouted Bob over the heads of I don't know how many people, 'have you got the filter?'
'Goodness gracious!' said Aunt Agatha excitedly; 'if you've forgotten that you must'—she looked round vaguely, as if for inspiration, then, brightening up—'drink nothing but tea.'
'Yes,' I said gravely, 'I'll always drink tea when there's no water to be got.'
But Aunt Agatha was too far gone for gentle sarcasm. I knew she was racking her brains to think of some other last injunction, and that she might break out any moment. I trembled to think to what details her mind might not descend in the final throes of parting.
I turned round hastily to escape her, and there was Lord Hendley again confronting me. Now I had said all that I had to say to Lord Hendley on a public railway platform, and I felt that if the train didn't move off soon I should end by saying something fatuous. Was there ever anything more trying than seeing people off or being seen off one's self at a railway-station? I don't know which is the lesser evil. You've already said all you've got to say long before you get there, but, still, you've got to make idiotic remarks to fill up the time, knowing that at any moment you may be cut short in the middle of a sentence by the train moving off. You are absolutely at the mercy of that wretched train, which seems to mock you by its very uncertainty, like a puzzle to which the guard and the ​driver only hold the keys. Suddenly a bell rings, and, with a sigh of relief, you ensconce your friend comfortably in the carriage. Surely the train is just off now. You look furtively along to see if the guard isn't signalling to the driver to start. But the guard is engaged in animated and prolonged conversation with the fussy old gentleman whose seat is in the last carriage. You look back quickly at your friend, who is leaning out of the window. You catch his eye and feel unhappy and foolish, having nothing more to say.
'You'll soon be off now,' you stammer confusedly, and immediately regret having said it, for fear there may be too great a note of satisfaction in your voice.
'Yes; we ought to be off now,' your friend answers fatuously, looking at his watch for the third time within the minute. Then there is another pause. That train looks as if it meant to cling to that platform till the very last gasp. You daren't look along again to find out what the guard is doing, for you are conscious that your friend is looking down on you from the carriage window. You feel desperately that you must say something else. 'You'll let me know you get home safely?' you blurt out before you remember that you've already asked that twice.
Then at last the whistle goes, and you suppress a sigh of infinite relief. Your friend sinks back into the seat.
'Now you're off,' you say, careless that you are beaming joyfully. The train actually moves. ​'Good-bye.' 'Good-bye.' You feel quite yourself again, and are even prepared to walk along a few steps to smile a last adieu. Then suddenly the train stops dead, and at once you are an inane, blithering idiot again. All your newly-regained self-confidence goes, and you swear solemnly under your breath that you will never in all your life see anybody off by train again. And when it's a real sad parting and there's a danger of tears, then Heaven help you!
I felt that this digression on the eccentricity of starting trains was necessary to explain the fact that I found myself shaking hands with Lord Hendley for the third time. How it happened I don't quite know. I suppose it was that I kept on forgetting to whom I had said good-bye and to whom not, and then remembering as soon as I went to say good-bye again. But I really do think any mistake is excusable on an occasion like this. Of course no one could have any desire to shake hands three times with anybody. It was pure accident, but it made me feel very silly. I guess if I'd been a servant-maid I should have giggled right there.
We were all in the carriage now, Lady Manifold, Marjory torn from the gaze of admiring Tommy Lovelace, myself, the pompous friend of Duchesses and the submissive lady, who, it was perhaps fortunate, had no one to see them off. It was enough of a block round our carriage as it was. Marjory and I filled the window, Lady Manifold sat back placidly, probably thinking of Tommy. At last, to my intense relief, the train moved. Then it stopped. ​Aunt Agatha whispered quite loudly another parting injunction that she fondly thought no one else could hear. I was determined that no one should say I had given anyone the last look like the heroine in a penny novelette, so I tried to beam genially on everybody. The train moved again. I smiled round and fixed my eyes on Bob as I felt the train was really off this time. I thought he was quite safe. And he really was the last person I saw upon the platform. He was standing with his arm slipped through Lord Hendley's.
We were really out of the station. I was sinking back into my seat with a wholly exhilarating sense of relief when I heard a little gasp from the pale-faced, submissive woman, and was conscious of a slightly agitated look on the face of the pompous gentleman opposite. Then I felt it. I had sat back full and rather heavily on something that gave and squashed down flat. I suppose it was a foolish thing to do, but in the excitement of the moment I thought it least humiliating to pretend not to notice it. So I sat tight. In a moment I congratulated myself on my presence of mind. My very first thought told me it was the top-hat of the friend of Duchesses. I had noticed on the platform that he had been wearing a top-hat, and now in a furtive glance over to the other side of the carriage I saw that he was hatless, and caught no glimpse of the topper on the rack above. I sat tighter. I even smiled as I glanced unconcernedly out of the window. I felt overjoyed at the thought that I was sitting on his hat. He was a pompous, objectionable ​person, and I felt he wanted sitting on. I was doing the next best thing to that. What right had anyone to start for India in a top hat? Why, even the Dukes had worn bowlers and one of them a cap. I sat tight, and smiled like the tiger of the Niger.
Then the blow fell. That objectionable man stooped down slowly, with a snake-like movement, and what I saw even then was a nasty gloating smile—I believe he must have read my thoughts—stooped down and drew his beautiful shining topper carefully from underneath the seat, brushing it on his sleeve in that horrid, creepy way men have. I gazed fascinated at the snake-like movement. Then it flashed upon me. If I wasn't sitting on his hat, what, then, was I sitting on? I admit I lost my presence of mind right there. I leaped up with a little cry. Underneath, very flat, very subdued-looking, lay what had once been a big cardboard box of chocolate creams that that babyish girl Marjory had brought to eat by the way. I had had a premonition on the platform that I should never get on with Marjory. Needless to say, those chocolates were uneatable, and over the state of my dress I draw a veil. And it was new on that morning. I felt horribly aggrieved with the pompous man and Marjory and everybody in general, most of all with Lady Manifold, because she sympathised. I read the Morning Post upside down all the way to Dover.