To have fallen out of an express train going at full speed! I have had some strange experiences, for a mere woman. But this, I think, beats all.
And to owe it to Thomas Tennant! I will be even with him yet.
I went down to Brighton to spend the Sunday with Lettice Enderby--she was acting at the theatre there. I found her not feeling very well. We spent the day alone together. After dinner I had to make a rush for the train. Who should I find myself shut in with as soon as the train had started, but Tommy Tennant.
It was years and years since we had seen each other. And all the world had happened since we had. But, so far as personal appearance was concerned, he had not changed a bit. He was still the same jack-pudding sort of little man, with round eyes and rosy cheeks. I knew him at sight. What was queerer, he knew me. I take that as a compliment. I flatter myself that I have not changed, except for the better, since those days of long ago. Tommy's prompt recognition was the best testimony to the truth of this fact I could possibly have had.
Although more than seas divided us, and never was a past more dead than his and mine, at the sight of Tommy all my old grudge against him came back again. Perhaps the glass or two of wine I had had with Lettice might have had something to do with it, but directly I saw him I flew into a rage. Tommy Tennant always has been the ideal man I hate. Give me them good or give me them bad, but do give me them one or the other. The irresolute, backboneless, jelly-like sort of man is beyond endurance.
If Thomas Tennant ever had a backbone he lost it in his cradle!
He always used to be afraid of me. In that respect, as in the others, I found he had not changed. He was frightened half out of his life directly he saw who it was. When I began talking to him he started shivering--literally shivering--in a way which made me wild. I do like a man who can hold his own. Talk about conscience making cowards of us all; I like the man of whom nothing can make a coward. He got into such a state of mortal terror that he actually tried to steal out of the carriage and escape from me while the train was going, for all I know, perhaps fifty miles an hour.
That was how the trouble all began. It would have spoiled the sport to have let him go, so I tried to stop him. He had opened the carriage door, and in endeavouring to prevent his going out, I went out instead.
That is the simple truth.
There never was a more astonished woman. I doubt if there ever was one with so much reason for astonishment. How it happened, or exactly what happened, I do not know. There was not time enough to clearly understand. I discovered that I was standing upon nothing, and then that I was flying backwards through the air. After that I suppose I lost my seven senses.