“No,” said Evereld, “but I shall manage very well now, thank you,” and with rather hurried farewells she sprang from the carriage not offering to carry the basket any further but promising to send a porter. Fortunately her companion was in such a bustle with the effort of collecting her various belongings that she did not notice the English girl’s somewhat abrupt departure, and Evereld with a joyful sense of escape made her way to the outside of the station and getting into one of the little public carriages drove off to make her purchases in the town.
Having bought an ulster and a warm shawl which made a very respectable show when put into her cloak straps she went back to the station, dined in a leisurely way and passed the rest of her two hours’ waiting time as patiently as she could. By six o’clock she was safely in the train once more, with the happy knowledge that she had no more changes that night, and would arrive at Lyons in rather more than four hours. Her heart danced for joy as she reflected that by the next afternoon she might have safely reached Bride O’Ryan and Aimée Magnay, her greatest friends, in Mrs. Magnay’s old home in Auvergne. That was the safe refuge towards which she was steering her course, that was the thought which had darted into her mind on the previous evening when she had decided that flight was the only thing under the circumstances.
Later on however when darkness had stolen like a pall over the landscape, when weary with want of sleep and worn out with excitement and anxiety, the glad sense of escape died away, she grew unutterably sad-hearted and forlorn.
At the other end of the carriage two men wrangled together over the vexed question of having the window open or shut. A fat French lady went to sleep and snored monotonously, just opposite her a young couple on their honeymoon laughed and chatted in low tones with much outward demonstration, while beyond a young mother sat with her baby in her arms, an air of placid content on her face.
Never before had Evereld felt such a unit, never before had she realised how really alone she was in the world. She shuddered to think what would have become of her if Ralph had never crossed her path. And then as the engine throbbed on through the darkness all those terrors of imagining from which her healthy uneventful life had so far been exempt, laid strong hold upon her, and made the night hideous.
She saw Ralph lying ill and forlorn in a fever hospital. She saw him lying with pale lips and hands folded in the awful calm of death. She saw herself alone and brokenhearted, struggling to make something of her maimed life and failing in the attempt. She saw Sir Matthew tracking her out and carrying her back to the house in Queen Anne’s Gate. Worst of all she saw herself standing in church and passively allowing herself to be married to Bruce Wylie.
She had just reached this climax in her miserable thoughts when as the train stopped at the wayside station the door of the carriage was opened and in came a very aged priest whose rusty black raiment had an old and somewhat countrified look. His thin, worn face might have been stern in youth, but the passing years had mellowed it, and like Southey’s holly tree what had once been sharp and aggressive had grown tender as it more nearly approached heaven. His keen eyes seemed to take in the occupants of the carriage in one glance and he at once divined that the sad little English girl in the corner was for some reason feeling altogether desolate. He took the vacant place beside her and began to unwrap a package which he carried. It proved to be a cage containing a bullfinch, and Evereld watched with interest the scared fluttering of the bird and the gentle reassuring face of the old man as he tried to pacify it.
“It is its first journey,” he said glancing at her. “The unaccustomed has terrors for us all. It will soon understand that it is quite safe. Eh, Fifi? Should I let any harm happen to thee, thou foolish one?”
“Can it sing any tune?” said Evereld. “We had one in London that sang a bit of the National Anthem.”
“And Fifi is just as patriotic,” said the old priest laughing, “he will pipe two lines of Partant pour la Syrie, I am taking him to cheer up one of my parishioners who is lying ill at Lyons. He will think Fifi from the Presbytère almost as good as one of his own friends from the village. And when the lad is better why he will bring back this winged missionary to me. My old housekeeper would not hear of parting with Fifi altogether, he is the life of the house she says.”