A Duel
Copyright© 2024 by Richard Marsh
Chapter 31: Mrs. Lamb Returns to Pitmuir
When Mr. Isaac Luker and his client, Mrs. Gregory Lamb, arrived at the small roadside station, in the county of Forfar, towards which they had been journeying throughout the day, they were neither of them in the best of tempers. It had been a long day’s journey. There had been some misunderstanding about the connection of the trains at Dundee. They had missed the one by which they had meant to travel; there had been a dreary wait for the next. When at last they started on the last stage of their journey the engine went dawdling along the branch line in a style which both, in their then frame of mind, found equally trying. They would hardly, at any time, have been called a sympathetic couple. Neither, for instance, would have selected the other as an only companion on a desert island. By the time the train paused for, so far as they were concerned, its final stoppage, either would have been almost willing to fly to a desert island to escape the other’s society.
It was between nine and ten at night--a misty night. The damp seemed to be rising out of the ground, and to be covering the country with a corpse-like pallor. There was a faint movement in the air, which it did not need a very imaginative mind to compare to a whisper of death. They were the only passengers who alighted at the station, which seemed to consist of but a narrow strip of bare earth, about the centre of which was constructed what looked like a ramshackle shed. Illumination was given by two or three oil lamps, and by a lantern which the only visible official carried in his hand. To this personage Mrs. Lamb addressed herself.
“Is any one waiting for me?”
The official proved to be a Scotsman of a peculiarly Scotch type; his manners and his temper were both his own. No attempt is made to reproduce the dialect in which he spoke.
“And who might you happen to be?”
“I’m Mrs. Gregory Lamb.”
“Never heard the name. Pass out! Tickets!”
Mr. Luker nudged the lady’s arm.
“I thought you telegraphed under the name of Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame?”
She made a somewhat ill-considered attempt to correct the error she had made.
“I mean that I’m Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame.”
“Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame? You said just now that you were Mrs. Gregory Lamb.”
“I spoke without thinking. I telegraphed some instructions to the station-master in the name of Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame.”
“In the name of Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame? A body can’t have two names.”
“I ordered a close carriage to meet Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame by the train before this, then, when I found I’d missed it, I sent a wire from Dundee to order the carriage to wait for the next.”
“There’s no carriage within miles.”
“No carriage? Then what is there?”
“There’s what they call a fly.”
“And is the fly here?”
“Sam Harris wouldn’t let it come.”
“Who’s Sam Harris?”
“He’s the man that owns it.”
“And pray why wouldn’t Mr. Harris let it come?”
“You’d better be asking him instead of me. He lives about two miles from here--perhaps a trifle over.”
“Two miles! Then is there nothing here to meet us?”
“There’s a cart.”
“A cart!--an open cart!--in this weather! What kind of cart?”
“He was outside the gate when I saw him last, but maybe by now he’s grown tired of waiting, and he’s gone. If you go outside you’ll be able to see for yourself what kind of cart it is better than I can tell you. Any way, you can’t stop here; I’m off home. Tickets!--and if you haven’t your tickets you’ll have to pay your fare--that’s all.”
The two passengers surrendered their tickets. With such dignity as she could muster the lady strode towards the little wooden gate, Mr. Luker following limply behind. He made no attempt to feign a sense of dignity which he did not possess. To judge from his appearance and his attitude he had not only sunk into the lowest stage of depression, but he was willing that all the world should know it. A very woebegone figure he looked: so tall and so thin, with the pronounced stoop; in the old familiar garments which he had worn for so many years in town, a costume which seemed singularly out of place on that spot just then; the frayed, shabby frock-coat, tightly buttoned up the front, the collar of which he now wore turned up about his chin; the trousers which were at once too baggy and too short; the ancient top-hat, which had seen so many better days.
Outside the gate was what, in the semi-darkness, looked uncommonly like an ordinary farmer’s cart, and not too comfortable, or cleanly, an example of its class. Mrs. Lamb stared at it in disgust.
“Have you brought that thing for me?”
As regards manners the driver seemed to be a near relation of the railway official’s, if anything his were more pronounced.
“I don’t know who you are. How am I to know?”
“I’m Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame of Pitmuir.”
“Oh; that’s what you call yourself--ah!”
“You appear to be an impudent fellow.”
“And you appear to be a free-spoken woman.”
“How dare you talk to me like that? I ask you again, have you brought this thing for me?”
“I’ve brought this thing, as you call it, which is as decent a cart as ever you saw, and more decent maybe than you deserve to sit in, to carry the person as calls herself Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame to Pitmuir, and I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t.”
“Why is there no fly here?”
“Because Sam Harris wouldn’t let his come.”
“Why not? I ordered it.”
“You ordered it! Mr. Harris said that he wasn’t going to have the likes of you sitting in a fly of his--that’s why. So he sent this cart instead. If this cart isn’t good enough, I’ll take it back at once. I’ll take it back anyhow if there’s much more talking.”
The lady and her solicitor exchanged glances. While they were apparently seeking for words the driver volunteered another remark, in keeping with those which had gone before.
“There’s another thing. I’m to be paid before I started; Mr. Harris said I was.”
“You’ll be paid when you reach Pitmuir.”
“Shall I? Then I’ll say good-night.”
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