One of the passengers (judging by the handbag that she carried) had not stopped at the village.
As she advanced toward him along the road, he remarked that she was a small wiry active woman—dressed in bright colors, combined with a deplorable want of taste. Her aquiline nose seemed to be her most striking feature as she came nearer. It might have been fairly proportioned to the rest of her face, in her younger days, before her cheeks had lost flesh and roundness. Being probably near-sighted, she kept her eyes half-closed; there were cunning little wrinkles at the corners of them. In spite of appearances, she was unwilling to present any outward acknowledgment of the march of time. Her hair was palpably dyed—her hat was jauntily set on her head, and ornamented with a gay feather. She walked with a light tripping step, swinging her bag, and holding her head up smartly. Her manner, like her dress, said as plainly as words could speak, “No matter how long I may have lived, I mean to be young and charming to the end of my days.” To Alban’s surprise she stopped and addressed him.
“Oh, I beg your pardon. Could you tell me if I am in the right road to Miss Ladd’s school?”
She spoke with nervous rapidity of articulation, and with a singularly unpleasant smile. It parted her thin lips just widely enough to show her suspiciously beautiful teeth; and it opened her keen gray eyes in the strangest manner. The higher lid rose so as to disclose, for a moment, the upper part of the eyeball, and to give her the appearance—not of a woman bent on making herself agreeable, but of a woman staring in a panic of terror. Careless to conceal the unfavorable impression that she had produced on him, Alban answered roughly, “Straight on,” and tried to pass her.
She stopped him with a peremptory gesture. “I have treated you politely,” she said, “and how do you treat me in return? Well! I am not surprised. Men are all brutes by nature—and you are a man. ‘Straight on’?” she repeated contemptuously; “I should like to know how far that helps a person in a strange place. Perhaps you know no more where Miss Ladd’s school is than I do? or, perhaps, you don’t care to take the trouble of addressing me? Just what I should have expected from a person of your sex! Good-morning.”
Alban felt the reproof; she had appealed to his most readily-impressible sense—his sense of humor. He rather enjoyed seeing his own prejudice against women grotesquely reflected in this flighty stranger’s prejudice against men. As the best excuse for himself that he could make, he gave her all the information that she could possibly want—then tried again to pass on—and again in vain. He had recovered his place in her estimation: she had not done with him yet.
“You know all about the way there,” she said “I wonder whether you know anything about the school?”
No change in her voice, no change in her manner, betrayed any special motive for putting this question. Alban was on the point of suggesting that she should go on to the school, and make her inquiries there—when he happened to notice her eyes. She had hitherto looked him straight in the face. She now looked down on the road. It was a trifling change; in all probability it meant nothing—and yet, merely because it was a change, it roused his curiosity. “I ought to know something about the school,” he answered. “I am one of the masters.”
“Then you’re just the man I want. May I ask your name?”
“Alban Morris.”