“Oh, not till eight, certainly,” said Mrs Wentworth with a faint touch of reproach. “But I don’t know—the evenings are drawing in so, and it is so cold. No, I think we had better go by the earlier train you mentioned, reaching Cobbolds at—when did you say?”
“Somewhere between eleven and twelve,” Mr Stainer replied. “Well, as you like,” for a glance from behind the tea-urn had warned him not to press the guests to stay over another luncheon; “of course you know best. But you will have to hurry. Shall I telegraph them?”
“You are very kind—yes please, at once. It is some miles from the post-office I fancy, but that won’t signify; I can settle about the porterage when I get there,” said Mrs Wentworth airily, though not without some internal tremors. “Mrs Helmont will be all the more pleased to have us sooner than she expects.” Blissful ignorance! The Fells was a good seven miles from the telegraph office, and there was a standing order that unless telegrams were doubly dubbed “immediate,” they were to be confided to the groom who rode over to fetch the afternoon letters—an arrangement known of course to the habitués among the Helmont guests, as belonging to which Mrs Wentworth gave herself out.
Thus and thus did it come to pass that, as already described, a forlorn group of three shivering women was to be seen on the uncovered platform of the little wayside station that dreary, drizzling November morning.
“There must be a carriage for us,” said Mrs Wentworth; “there has been heaps of time for the telegram to reach them. You may be sure they would send a man on horseback with it.”
“All the same there just isn’t a carriage nor the ghost of one. I told you how it would be, mamma,” said Imogen, unsympathisingly.
Mrs Wentworth felt too guilty to resent the reproach. Suddenly came the sound of wheels. “There now!” she exclaimed, “I believe it’s coming. Can you see,” she went on anxiously, peering out from the very inefficient shed-like roof, which was the only shelter at that side of the station; “can you see,” to the station-master, or porter, or station-master and porter mixed together, who was the only visible functionary, and whose good offices and opinion she had already sought, “if that is the carriage for us?”
“It’s from The Fells, sure enough, but it’s naught but a dogcart,” he replied, disappearing as he spoke to reconnoitre the dogcart and inquire its errand.
“A dogcart!” ejaculated Mrs Wentworth aghast. Imogen could scarcely help laughing at her horrified expression.
“Well, mamma,” she was beginning, “you know you—” But she was interrupted. The station-master returned, followed by a tall, a very tall man—a gentleman; of that there was no doubt, notwithstanding the coarseness and muddiness of his huge ulster and his generally bespattered appearance. Who could he be? Mrs Wentworth jumped to one of her hasty conclusions; he must be the agent or bailiff. She was profoundly ignorant of English country life, and was not without a strain of the Anglo-Indian arrogance so quickly caught by the small-minded of our country-folk in the great Eastern Empire—yes, that was it. They had doubtless sent him on quickly to say that the brougham, or omnibus, was on its way.