Hester stood a silent statuesque figure, watching her husband as he disappeared along the avenue of casuarina trees. Then her dauntless spirit gave way and she fell down in a faint.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Alfred Rayner in disguise, limping over the hard road with his bare brown-stained feet, and trammelled by his unwonted garb, made slow progress. At length he reached the railway station. It was empty save for a few stray passengers who had stepped out of a train which had just steamed in. He hurried to the ticket-office, and adapting his "munshi" acquired Tamil as closely as possible to the servants' patois, asked for a third-class ticket for Beypore, the clerk volunteering the information that a train was just starting.
Rayner hurried to the platform and saw some passengers, all natives, scrambling into the carriages of the waiting train with many bundles and much vociferation. He reckoned himself fortunate to secure an empty one, and seated himself on the hard bench with a relieved air.
"Off at last, and not a single pair of eyes to pry on me—or worse, thank goodness!" he muttered. "There might have been a force of police lying in wait. But who would recognise the defaulting barrister in this old hag of an ayah? I mustn't forget for one instant that I am an old ayah, or else woe betide me!"
The fugitive tried to make himself as comfortable as his circumstances would admit, resolving to secure a period of sleep and at the first break in the journey to fortify himself by a good breakfast. This, however, he feared might not be for some time seeing the train, for an express, was going at an unaccountably slow pace. Sheer exhaustion came to his aid, and he fell into a deep sleep, only to awake when the train pulled up at a station.
"Now for some breakfast, I'm desperately hungry!" he said, yawning and stretching himself with an air of satisfaction, which soon changed to bewilderment when he observed that the few passengers were all tumbling out of their respective carriages, and that the train had evidently reached its terminus.
Rubbing his eyes he peered out, perceiving to his dismay the familiar station of Puranapore. Mistaking this train for the express for Beypore, he had been carried to the place which of all others he would have wished to avoid.
"Good heavens!" he muttered, throwing himself back on the carnage bench. "And the very first person I see may be Zynool himself!" Then to his relief he remembered that, after all, he appeared as an old Hindu ayah, on whom the haughty Mussulman would not deign to look.