Authors: Ethel White
“Then you shall be.” Iris swung round to find herself facing Mr. Todhunter. “You’ll help me find Miss Froy, won’t you?” she asked confidently.
He smiled down indulgently at her but he did not reply at once. It was the pause of deliberation and was characteristic of his profession.
“I shall be delighted to co-operate with you,” he told her. “But—who
is
Miss Froy?”
“An English governess who is missing from the train. You must remember her. She peeped in at your window and you jumped up and drew down the blind.”
“That is exactly what I should have done in the circumstances. Only, in this case, the special circumstances did not arise. No lady did me the honour to linger by my window.”
His words were so unexpected that Iris caught her breath, as though she were falling through space.
“Didn’t you
see
her?” she gasped.
“No.”
“But your wife called your attention to her. You were both annoyed.”
The beautiful Mrs. Todhunter, who had been listening, broke in with none of her habitual languor.
“We are not a peep-show and no one looked in. Do you mind if we shut the door? I want to rest before dinner.”
The professor turned to Iris with forced kindness.
“You’re tired,” he said. “Let me take you back to your carriage.”
“No.” Iris shook off his hand. “I won’t let the matter rest. There are others. These ladies—”
Dashing into the next coupé where the Misses Flood-Porter now sat upright in dignity, she appealed to them.
“You’ll help me find Miss Froy, won’t you? She’s
English
.”
“May I explain?” interposed the professor as the ladies looked to him for enlightenment.
Iris could hardly control her impatience as she listened to the cultured drawl. Her eyes were fixed on the solid fresh-coloured faces of the sisters. Then Miss Rose spoke.
“I have no recollection of your companion. Some one may have been with you, but I was not wearing my glasses.”
“Neither was I,” remarked Miss Flood-Porter. “So you can understand that we shall not be able to help you. It would be against our principles to identify some one of whom we were not sure.”
“Most unfair,” commented Miss Rose. “So, please, don’t refer to us. If you do, we must refuse to interfere.”
Iris could hardly believe her ears.
“But isn’t it against your principles not to raise a finger to help an Englishwoman who may be in danger?” she asked hotly.
“Danger?” echoed Miss Rose derisively. “What could happen to her on a crowded train? Besides, there are plenty of other people who are probably more observant than ourselves. After all, there is no reason why we should be penalised because we are English.”
Iris was too bewildered by the unexpected collapse of her hopes, to speak. She felt she had been betrayed by her compatriots. They might boast of wearing evening dress for the honour of their country, but they had let down England. The Union Jack lay shredded in tatters and the triumphant strains of the National Anthem died down to the screech of a tin whistle.
She hated them all so fiercely that when the vicar’s wife put her head round the door she could only glare at her.
Mrs. Barnes gave a general smile as she explained her presence.
“My husband is sleeping now, so I thought I’d run in for a chat. When we travel, I’m first in command, which is a new experience for me and only comes once a year.”
She spoke eagerly as though to justify her husband’s weakness. Then she turned to Iris, who was following the professor from the coupé.
“Don’t let me drive you away.”
“Nothing could keep me.” Iris spoke with bitter hopelessness. “Of course,
you
didn’t see Miss Froy?”
“Was that the little lady in tweed, with a blue feather in her hat?” asked Mrs. Barnes. “Why,
of course
, I remember her, and her kindness. We were so grateful for the tea.”
Her relief was so overwhelming that Iris felt on the verge of tears as she turned to the professor.
“Are you convinced now?” she asked shakily.
The professor glanced at the vicar’s wife with almost an apologetic air, for the lady was a familiar type which he admired and approved, when it was safely married to some one else.
“The question is unnecessary,” he said. “It was simply a matter of getting corroborative evidence. I’m sorry to have doubted your word in the first place. It was due to the unfortunate circumstances of your sunstroke.”
“Well, what are you going to do?” insisted Iris.
Having made one blunder, the professor was not inclined to be precipitate.
“I think I had better consult Hare,” he said. “He is an expert linguist and has quite a fair brain, although he may appear irresponsible at times.”
“Let’s find him at once,” urged Iris.
In spite of her haste she stopped to speak impulsively to the vicar’s wife.
“Thank you so very much. You don’t know what this means to me.”
“I’m glad—but why are you thanking me?” asked Mrs. Barnes, in surprise.
Leaving Miss Rose to explain Iris followed the professor.
Hare was frankly incredulous when they ran him to earth in the restaurant car.
“Bless my soul,” he explained, “Miss Froy popping up again? There’s something about that good woman that keeps me guessing. I don’t mind admitting that I never really believed in the old dear. But what’s happened to her?”
The professor took off his glasses to polish them. Without them his eyes appeared weak, rather than cold, while the painful red ridges on either side of his nose aroused Iris’ compassion. She felt quite friendly towards him, now that they were united in a common cause—the restitution of Miss Froy.
“The Misses Flood-Porter didn’t want to be drawn in,” she declared. “That was clear. But why did those six foreigners all tell lies about her?”
“It must be some misunderstanding,” said the professor nervously. “Perhaps I—”
“No, you didn’t,” cut in Hare. “You were a clinking interpreter, professor. You didn’t slip up on a thing.”
Iris liked him for the ready good nature which prompted him to reassure the professor, because she was sure that he considered him privately a pompous bore.
“We’ll have to play the good old game of ‘Spot the lady,’” went on Hare. “My own idea is, she’s disguised as the doctor. That black beard is so obvious that she’s making it too easy. Or she may be pulling the train, dressed up as a ladylike engine. I’d put nothing past Miss Froy.”
Iris did not laugh.
“You’re not amusing,” she said, “because you seem to forget that, besides being a real person, she is still missing. We must
do
something.”
“Admittedly,” agreed the professor. “But it’s a perplexing problem, and I do not care to act without careful consideration.”
“He means he wants to smoke,” explained Hare. “All right, professor. I’ll take care of Miss Carr, while you squeeze out some brain-juice.”
He grinned across the ash-dusted table at Iris, when the professor had gone.
“Have I got it right?” he asked. “Is this Miss Froy a complete stranger to you?”
“Of course.”
“Yet you’re nearly going crackers over her. You must be the most unselfish person alive. Really, it’s almost unnatural.”
“But I’m
not
,” admitted Iris truthfully. “It’s rather the other way round. That’s the amusing part. I can’t understand myself a bit.”
“Well, how did it start?”
“In the usual way. She was very kind to me—helpful, and all that, so that at first, I missed her because she wasn’t at the back of me any more. And then, when every one declared I dreamed her, it all turned to a horrible nightmare. It was like trying to explain that every one was out of step but myself.”
“Hopeless. But why had you to prove that she was there?”
“Oh, can’t you understand? If I didn’t, I could never feel that anything, or any one, was
real
again?”
“I shouldn’t fly off the handle,” remarked Hare stolidly. “I should know it was a post-symptom of brain injury, and therefore perfectly logical.”
“But you can’t compare your own experience with mine,” protested Iris. “You saw a real person and mistook him for the Prince. But I was supposed to have talked to the thin air, while the thin air answered back. I can’t tell you what a
relief
it was when Mrs. Barnes remembered her.”
She smiled with happiness as she looked out of the window. Now that she was safely anchored to a rational world again, after spinning amid mists of fantasy, the gloomy surroundings had no power to depress her. The afternoon had drawn in early, so that the period of twilight was protracted and it added the final touch of melancholy to the small town through which the express was slowly steaming.
Whenever they crossed a street, Iris could see mean shops, with pitifully shrunken wares—cobbled roads—and glimpses of a soupy swollen river through the gaps between the buildings. The houses—clinging to the rocky hillside, like tufts of lichen on a roof—seemed semi-obliterated by time and weather. Long ago, wood and plaster had been painted grey, but the rain had washed and the sun had peeled some of the walls to a dirty white. Every aspect betrayed poverty and desolation.
“What a horrible place,” shuddered Iris, as they passed tall rusty iron gates which enclosed a dock-grown garden. “I wonder who can live here, besides suicides.”
“Miss Froy,” suggested Hare.
He expected an outburst, but Iris was not listening to him.
“When do we reach Trieste?” she asked.
“Twenty-two-ten.”
“And it’s five to six now. We mustn’t waste any more time. We
must
find her. It sounds exactly like some sloppy picture, but her people are expecting her home. They’re old and rather pathetic. And the fool of a dog meets every train.”
She stopped—aghast at the sound of her choked voice. To her surprise she found that she was actually affected by the thought of the parents’ suspense. As emotion was treason to the tradition of the crowd, she felt ashamed of her weakness.
“I’ll have that drink, after all,” she declared, blinking the moisture from her eyes. “I feel all mushy—and that’s absurd. Old people aren’t nearly as pathetic as young ones. They’re nearly through—and we’ve got it all to come.”
“You
do
want a drink,” agreed Hare. “I’ll dig out a waiter.”
As he was rising Iris pulled him back.
“Don’t go now,” she whispered. “There’s that horrible doctor.”
The spade-bearded gentleman seemed to be searching for some one; and directly his glasses flashed over the young couple his quest was finished. He crossed directly to their table and bowed to Iris.
“Your friend has returned to the carriage,” he said.
“Miss Froy?” Iris forgot her repulsion in her excitement. “How marvellous. Where was she?”
He spread his hands and shrugged.
“All the time she was so near. In the next carriage, talking with my nurses.”
“Yes,” declared Iris, laughing, “that’s just where she would be. The first place I ought to have looked in, and didn’t.”
“Hum.” Hare rubbed his chin doubtfully. “It’s all very rum. Sure it’s the right one?”
“She is the lady who accompanied madame to the restaurant-car,” replied the doctor. “A little short lady—not young, but not very old, with a blue feather in her hat.”
“That’s Miss Froy,” cried Iris.
“But why was there all the mystery?” persisted Hare. “No one knowing a thing about her—and all that.”
“Ah, that was because we did not understand madame.” The doctor shrugged deprecatingly. “She talked so fast and she talked of an English lady. Now the lady is German, maybe, or Austrian—I do not know—but she is not English.”
Iris nodded to Hare.
“I made the same mistake, myself, at first,” she told him. “She looks anything and she speaks every language. Come on and you shall check up on her.”
The journey along the train was growing so familiar that Iris felt she could make it blindfolded. As she passed by the Barnes’ compartment she peeped inside. The vicar looked grimly heroic, with folded arms and knotted brow, while his wife showed visible signs of strain. Her eyes were sunken in black circles, but she smiled bravely at Iris.
“Still looking for your friend?” she asked.
“No,” called Iris. “She’s found.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“I didn’t like that holy woman,” Iris confided to Hare as they struggled on again, “but her stock has simply soared with me. She’s really kind.”
When they reached the reserved coupés, Iris insisted on collecting the professor, to whom she told her news.
“I want you to come, too, and meet my Miss Froy,” she said. “She’ll be thrilled when she hears of the sensation she’s made.”
“A desire to attract attention seems a feminine characteristic,” observed the professor acidly.
Iris only laughed with excitement as her heart gave a sudden bound.
“There she is,” she cried. “There she is, at the end of the corridor.”
Once again she was overwhelmed by the derided human element as she saw the familiar flat figure in the light tweed suit.
“Miss Froy,” she cried huskily.
The lady turned so that Iris saw her face. At the sight she recoiled with a cry of horror.
“That’s
not
Miss Froy,” she said.
As Iris stared at the face of a stranger, she was plunged back into the inky darkness of the tunnel. She believed that she had emerged into the daylight and her heart was still singing for the joy of deliverance. But she had been deceived by a ray of sunshine striking through a shaft in the roof.
The horror persisted. Blackness was behind her and before—deadening her faculties and confusing her senses. She felt that she was trapped in a nightmare which would go on for ever, unless she could struggle free.
Miss Froy. She must hold on to Miss Froy. At that moment she suddenly remembered her elusive face distinctly in its strange mixture of maturity and arrested youth, with blue saucer eyes and small features all scratched and faded faintly by time.