“This is Merton Junction, is it not?” she said timidly. “It is here that one changes for Greenwell, is it not?”
“Greenwell,” said the porter questioningly; “that is on the other side of Middleham, is it not?” For Greenwell was a very little town.
“I don’t know,” said Lettice—for Lettice of course it was—“I thought everybody would know it here. They told me in London to take my ticket to Merton, and then get another.”
The porter looked confused and rather bothered. He was on the point of leaving the station for the night. There were no more trains for an hour or two. He did not know what to do with this unfortunate traveller, and yet, not being of a surly nature, did not like to throw her off.
It ended in the poor man’s giving himself a good deal of trouble to find out that there was no train for Greenwell till four o’clock in the morning. There was nothing for it but for Lettice to spend the night in the desolate waiting-room of the station, for the junction was some distance from the small town of the name. Even had she felt able to walk there, Lettice could hardly have had a couple of hours’ sleep before she would have had to come back again.
It was not a cheerful prospect—four or five hours at a railway station in the middle of the night in January. The porter poked up the fire, and told her she’d no need to be “afeard;” he would speak to the night-porters, there’d be a couple of them there, and at four o’clock there’d be some one to give her her ticket. And with a friendly “good night,” none the less so for the fee which Lettice gave him, he went off.
She was a little frightened. In vain she told herself she had no need to be so. All the horrible stories she had ever heard of in such circumstances returned to her mind. She tried to sleep on the hard horsehair sofa, and succeeded in dozing uncomfortably, to be startled awake by one of the night-porters coming in to stir up the fire. Then she dozed again, to wake shivering with cold, the fire out, the faint gaslight sufficing but to make darkness visible. She started up; there was light enough to see the time by her watch. With the greatest relief, she saw that it was half-past three!
Half an hour later, she had got her ticket, and was stepping into a first-class carriage of the train, which had come in from the south, and was going on to Middleham.
“Now at last,” thought Lettice, “my troubles are over. In a few hours more I shall be with Arthur.”
As she settled herself in her place, she saw by the feeble lamp-light that there were two other persons in the carriage—two gentlemen. She glanced at them, but with no interest curiosity, and she distinguished neither of their faces. One, an elderly man, got out at the first station they stopped at. The little bustle of handing him some of his belongings brought Lettice face to face with the remaining passenger. Both started, both gave vent to an exclamation; but Lettice’s was of dismay, her companion’s of relief.