Then I forgot all about his gloomy warnings, for the train rumbled across a thousand street crossings—then out into all the sheep pastures in the civilized world, and—it was summer!
"This country must be Kent!" I mused, not geographically, but esthetically certain—as soft feathery green broke off occasionally into a pollard-trimmed swamp—then came up again a little later into a gentle, sheep-dotted rise. And I remembered the Duchess once more—"A stalwart, fair-haired lover, and a dozen Kentish lanes!"
I have lived to learn that this is common to Americans who have been brought up to understand that Kent is the garden-spot of England. No matter at which point along the entire coastline they may board a train, their first conviction upon seeing suburban scenery is that it must be Kent! (I say "suburban" advisedly, for none of it is far enough away from the other to be rural.)
So my journey through an elongated and rather circuitous Kent kept my mind away from the croakings of the ticket seller at Paddington—until the next morning at daybreak, when I found myself put down with mournful ceremony at a little wayside station which ought to have been labeled "St. Helena."
"Just as sorry as you are, miss, but this is your nearest hope for a train to Bannerley!" the guard said, by way of an appropriate farewell, so off I got.
"But this place is surely named St. Helena," I groaned, as I looked about me, yet the only actual similarity was in the matter of its being entirely surrounded. The island entirely surrounded by water, of course—this station entirely surrounded by land. I believe that I had never before in my life seen such a stretch of unimproved property!
"'The woods and I—and their infinite call,'" I quoted, as I looked out somewhat shamefacedly across the acres. For it was exactly the kind of place I had always longed to possess for my very own—yet here I had arrived at it, and might, for all I knew to the contrary, take possession of it by right of discovery—yet I was feeling lonely and resentful at the very start.
Then I remembered Robinson Crusoe and took heart, straining my eyes in hope of a sail, but nowhere was there a human face to be seen, nor sign of life. Not even a freight car stood drearily on a side-track—and, as you know, you have to be very far away from the center of things not to find a freight car! None was here, however, for there wasn't a side-track for it to stand upon—the main line running in two shining threads far away toward Ireland.
The only moving bodies visible were a paper sack being blown gently down the track, a blue fly buzzing around a blackened banana peeling and a rook cawing overhead. I looked up at the rook and smiled philosophically.
"I anticipated a 'coo,' then apprehended a 'croak'—what I get is a happy compromise, a 'caw,'" I said, and I find that things usually turn out this way in the great journey of life. Nothing is ever so good, nor so bad, as you think it's going to be when you're standing at the ticket window. The great anticipator is also a great apprehender—therefore realization is bound to be a relief.