The sight of the kind, benevolent countenance was reassuring and comforting, and after their new friend had left them the girls resumed their talk with fresh alacrity.
Miss Sefton was the chief speaker. She began recounting the glories of a grand military ball at Knightsbridge, at which she had been present, and some private theatricals and tableaux that had followed. She had a vivid, picturesque way of describing things, and Bessie listened with a sort of dreamy fascination that lulled her into forgetfulness of her parents’ anxiety.
In spite of her alleged want of imagination, she was conscious of a sort of weird interest in her surroundings. The wintry afternoon had closed into evening, but the whiteness of the snow threw a dim brightness underneath the faint starlight, while the gleam of the carriage lights enabled them to see the dark figures that passed and repassed underneath their window.
It was intensely cold, and in spite of her furs Miss Sefton shivered and grew perceptibly paler. She was evidently one of those spoiled children of fortune who had never learned lessons of endurance, who are easily subdued and depressed by a passing feeling of discomfort; even Bessie’s sturdy cheerfulness was a little infected by the unnatural stillness outside. The line ran between high banks, but in the mysterious twilight they looked like rocky defiles closing them in.
After a time Bessie’s attention wandered, and her interest flagged. Military balls ceased to interest her as the temperature grew lower and lower. Miss Sefton, too, became silent, and Bessie’s mind filled with gloomy images. She thought of ships bedded in ice in Arctic regions; of shipwrecked sailors on frozen seas; of lonely travellers laying down their weary heads on pillows of snow, never to rise again; of homeless wanderers, outcasts from society, many with famished babes at their breasts, cowering under dark arches, or warming themselves at smoldering fires.
“Thank God that, as father says, we cannot realize what people have to suffer,” thought Bessie. “What would be the use of being young and happy and free from pain, if we were to feel other people’s miseries? Some of us, who are sympathetic by nature, would never smile again. I don’t think when God made us, and sent us into the world to live our own lives, that He meant us to feel like that. One can’t mix up other people’s lives with one’s own; it would make an awful muddle.”
“Miss Lambert, are you asleep, or dreaming with your eyes open? Don’t you see we are moving? There was such a bustle just now, and then they got the steam up, and now the engine is beginning to work. Oh! how slowly we are going! I could walk faster. Oh! we are stopping again—no, it is only my fancy. Is not the shriek of the whistle musical for once?”
“I was not asleep; I was only thinking; but my thoughts had travelled far. Are we really moving? There, the snow-plow has cleared the line; we shall go on faster presently.”
“I hope so; it is nearly eight. I ought to have reached London an hour ago. Poor Neville, how disappointed he will be. Oh, we are through the drift now and they are putting on more steam.”
“Yes, we shall be at Cliffe in another ten minutes;” and Bessie roused in earnest. Those ten minutes seemed interminable before the lights of the station flashed before their eyes.