When Deryck Brand alighted at the little northern wayside station, he looked up and down the gravelled platform, more than half expecting to see Jane. The hour was early, but she invariably said "So much the better" to any plan which involved rising earlier than usual. Nothing was to be seen, however, but his portmanteau in the distance—looking as if it had taken up a solitary and permanent position where the guard had placed it—and one slow porter, who appeared to be overwhelmed by the fact that he alone was on duty to receive the train.
There were no other passengers descending; there was no other baggage to put out. The guard swung up into his van as the train moved off.
The old porter, shading his eyes from the slanting rays of the morning sun, watched the train glide round the curve and disappear from sight; then slowly turned and looked the other way,—as if to make sure there was not another coming,—saw the portmanteau, and shambled towards it. He stood looking down upon it pensively, then moved slowly round, apparently reading the names and particulars of all the various continental hotels at which the portmanteau had recently stayed with its owner.
Dr. Brand never hurried people, He always said: "It answers best, in the long run, to let them take their own time. The minute or two gained by hurrying them is lost in the final results." But this applied chiefly to patients in the consulting-room; to anxious young students in hospital; or to nurses, too excitedly conscious at first of the fact that he was talking to them, to take in fully what he was saying. His habit of giving people, even in final moments, the full time they wanted, had once lost him an overcoat, almost lost him a train, and won him the thing in life he most desired. But that belongs to another story.
Meanwhile he wanted his breakfast on this fresh spring morning. And he wanted to see Jane. Therefore, as porter and portmanteau made no advance towards him, the doctor strode down the platform.
"Now then, my man!" he called.
"I beg your pardon?" said the Scotch porter.
"I want my portmanteau."
"Would this be your portmanteau?" inquired the porter doubtfully.
"It would," said the doctor. "And it and I would be on our way to Castle Gleneesh, if you would be bringing it out and putting it into the motor, which I see waiting outside."