Chapter 1: The Afternoon Express

THAT’S what my mother was fond of saying to me. “Least said, soonest mended, Kitty,” says she, when people gossiped, or when folks got angry. And, dear me, there’s a lot of hot words spoken, and a lot of gossip going on, and no mistake! Anyway, there was in those days when I was a girl. Talk! talk! the neighbours rattling like a set of parrots about anything and nothing. I’ll not say either that the men were much better than the women, though there’s no doubt they ought to be, seeing man was made superior.

“Least said, soonest mended, Kitty!” says my mother to me many a time, when she thought my tongue had been wagging too fast. Mother was a rare one for silence. Looking back now, I’m sure there’s not many like her. She’d go for hours, and be quite content, never saying a word. I don’t think she ever did speak just for the sake of speaking, and without a needs-be.

She wasn’t dull either. Some silent people are dull; but not mother. For, you see, she didn’t keep silent because she never had anything to say; and there was something about her very look that kept people alive.

I think I see her now—middle-aged, and going on for plumpness, with smooth brown hair, and a smooth forehead, and such a pair of quick eyes. Mother’s eyes did a lot of speaking, when her lips were silent. Nothing ever escaped those eyes. She didn’t always talk about what she saw, and she didn’t forget it.

Mother was always neat, as if she had just come out of a band-box. She used to wear a brown stuff gown commonly, after her rough work of a morning was done, and a white apron. Every hour of the day, and every day of the week, had its own work. She never got into a muddle like the neighbours, who were for ever cleaning up, and for ever in a mess: and as for doing her washing “just any day,” like them, she would have scorned the thought. I believe things would have been the same with her, if she had had a dozen children, instead of only one girl. But, after all, there’s no knowing. It’s a wonderful drag on a woman, to have a lot of children, and not enough money or room for the bringing of them up.

Well, I wasn’t of mother’s way of thinking about talk, for I did like to hear my own voice. Most girls do, I suppose; and it’s only natural. But still I might have spared myself many a bother in life, if I had not been so ready with my tongue.

For, after all, the main part of the good and evil that we do in our lives is done with the tongue. Is not that what the Bible means, when it says that the man who can bridle his tongue is a perfect man? I suppose that is the hardest part of what we have to do. Mother must have come near to being a perfect woman, for the control she had over her tongue was something wonderful.

Father liked well enough to talk on occasion, but he was never a mischief-maker, and his tongue was not given to wagging ill-naturedly. Father was one of the kindest of men. I never saw him really out of temper in his life; and that’s more than many children can say of their fathers. He was a thoughtful man, and he read a deal; and when he could get a sensible listener, he liked to talk about what he had read.

I am afraid I wasn’t much of a listener, for I loved best to talk myself. Mother was always trying to check me; not harshly, but in the way of giving advice, “Waste of breath, Kitty, my dear,” she’d say. “Keep your breath to cool your porridge.” “Mind you, it’s ‘least said, soonest mended,’ in the long run.” “What’s said can never be unsaid.” And often she’d add— “We’ve got to give an account, by-and-by, of every idle word we speak. Every single idle word!”

But I don’t think I paid heed to what she said. Young folks don’t? Everybody has to learn out of his own experience, mostly; for experience can’t be passed on from one to another like a sixpence. Perhaps mother pushed things a little too far. She saw the evil of careless talk, and she got to have almost a dread of any talk at all. After all, the power of talking is a gift, and it ought to be rightly used, not left to rust. We have influence over others by means of our talk, and we have to see that the influence isn’t cast away, nor made to pull in the wrong direction.

I have spoken of neighbours, though there were no neighbours quite close to us. The nearest row of cottages was three minutes off, round the corner of the road that led from the station to the village. Beyond them came shops and a few other houses. Claxton was a small place, very scattered, and the railway-station was small too. My father was the station-master. A good many trains passed, but not many stopped.

Father had a cottage almost close to the line, and our garden was very gay. Flowers did so well with us—I don’t know why, unless it was the soil, and his tending.

I was not an over-indulged child, like many only-children. My father and mother would not let me have my own way wrongly, and I was always made to obey. That’s something to be thankful for. Half the misery of many grown-up people comes from their never having learnt to submit in childhood.

But though not indulged, I do think I was rather spoilt; that’s to say, I was made too much of, and I got to think myself too important, nobody being to blame particularly.

I suppose there’s no denying that I was a pretty girl. I had dark eyes, and short curly brown hair, and a colour that came and went at a word. Then mother had trained me to be as particular as a lady about my dress and hair and hands. That does make a difference, to be sure. Nobody can look nice, if she don’t keep her hair in order; and the prettiest girl in the world isn’t pretty with a smudge on her cheek.

Father used to call me “his little wild rose,” because of my colour and my shy manner; and Rupert used to talk of the way in which I dropped my eyes under their lashes.

Rupert Bowman was our ticket-collector. When I was seventeen, which is the time I am chiefly thinking about, he was over nineteen, not tall, but broad and strong, and a perfect slave to me. He had an honest plain face of his own, and a blunt way of speaking, commonly, which I think came from bashfulness. There wasn’t a thing I could not make Rupert do, if I chose. He lived near with his widowed mother, and a sister; and he was in and out among us all day. Father liked Rupert ever so!

But about the spoiling, —I suppose it was a difficult thing to keep clear of. I had been a sickly child, often at home from school; and for years father and mother were in a fright every winter lest they should lose me. At seventeen I was much stronger, and had pretty well outgrown the weakness; but still I did not look strong, and they could not get over the habit of always watching and thinking about me.

It was not my way to be cross-grained and discontented like most spoilt girls. I can remember being pretty nearly always happy. Good spirits are a gift worth having, and I had very good spirits. I liked seeing people, and I liked to know that they counted me pretty and clever. I liked still more to feel that I could make myself loved. People do like that, women more especially, perhaps; and I don’t say that the feeling is in itself wrong. Only there is something wrong when a girl gets to be always thinking about herself, and doing everything for the sake of being admired or loved. She may be ever so pleasant, but none the less there’s something wrong. One ought to have a better reason for doing.