The train roared through a cutting and gathered speed. “Rackety-plan, rackety-plan,” it said, faster and faster, as though out of patience with its journey. The guard came through and turned down the lamps. Now the white faces of the travellers looked more cadaverous than ever. The carriage was filled with tobacco smoke. Everything felt grimy and stale. The shrill laughter of Miss Valerie Gaynes, in ecstasy over a witticism of Mr. Liversidge’s, rose above the din. She stood up, a little dishevelled in her expensive fur coat, and began to walk down the carriage. She swayed, clutched the backs of seats, stumbled and fell half across George Mason’s knees. He gave her a disinterested squeeze, and made a knowing grimace at Gascoigne who said something about: “If you will go native.” Miss Gaynes yelped and got up. As she passed Hambledon and the tall man she paused and said:
“I’m going to my sleeper. They call it ‘de luxe.’ My God, what a train!”
She staggered on. When she opened the door the iron clamour of their progress filled the carriage. Cold night air rushed in from outside bringing a taint of acrid smoke. She struggled with the door, trying to shut it behind her. They could see her through the glass panel, leaning against the wind. Hambledon got up and slammed the door and she disappeared.
“Have you taken a sleeper?” asked the tall man.
“No,” said Hambledon. “I should not sleep and I should probably be sick.”
“That’s how I feel about it, too.”
“Carolyn and Meyer have gone to theirs. They are the only other members of the company who have risked it. That young woman has just got to be expensive. Valerie, I mean.”
“I noticed that in the ship. Who is she? Any relation of old Pomfret Gaynes, the shipping man?”
“Daughter.” Hambledon leant forward again. “Academy of Dramatic Art, Lord knows how big an allowance, an insatiable desire for the footlights and adores the word ‘actress’ on her passport.”
“Is she a good actress?”
“Dire.”
“Then how—?”
“Pomfret,” said Hambledon, “and push.”
“It seems a little unjust in an overcrowded profession.”
“That’s how it goes,” said Hambledon with a shrug. “The whole business is riddled with preferment nowadays. It’s just one of those things.”
Susan Max’s head lolled to one side. Hambledon took her travelling cushion and slipped it between her cheek and the wall. She was fast asleep.
“There’s your real honest-to-God actress,” he said, leaning forward again. “Her father was an actor-manager in Australia and started life as a child-performer in his father’s stock company. Susan has trouped for forty-five years. It’s in her blood. She can play anything from grande dame to trollop, and play it well.”
“What about Miss Dacres? Or should I say Mrs. Meyer? I never know with married stars.”
“She’s Carolyn Dacres all the time. Except in hotel registers, of course. Carolyn is a great actress. Please don’t think I’m using the word ‘great’ carelessly. She is a great actress. Her father was a country parson, but there’s a streak of the stage in her mother’s family, I believe. Carolyn joined a touring company when she was seventeen. She was up and down the provinces for eight years before she got her chance in London. Then she never looked back.” Hambledon paused and glanced apologetically at his companion. “In a moment you will accuse me of talking shop.” ‘
“Why not? I like people to talk shop — I can never understand the prejudice against it.”
“You don’t do it, I notice.”
The tall man raised one eyebrow.
“I’m on a holiday. When did Miss Dacres marry Mr. Alfred Meyer?”
“About ten years ago,” said Hambledon, shortly. He turned in his seat and looked down the carriage. The Carolyn Dacres Company had settled down for the night. George Mason and Gascoigne had given up their game of two-handed whist and had drawn their rugs up to their chins. The comedian had spread a sheet of newspaper over his head. Young Courtney Broadhead was awake, but Mr. Liversidge’s mouth was open and those rolls of flesh, so well disciplined by day, were now subtly predominant. Except for Broadhead they were all asleep. Hambledon looked at his watch.
“It’s midnight,” he said.
Midnight. Outside their hurrying windows this strange country slept. Farm houses, lonely in the moonlight, sheep asleep or tearing with quick jerks at the short grass, those arching hills that ran in curves across the window-panes, and the white flowering trees that made old Susan dab her eyes. They were all there, outside, but remote from the bucketing train with its commercial travellers, its tourists and its actors.
The fascination of a train journey, thought the tall man, lies in this remoteness of the country outside, and in the realisation that it is so close. At any station one may break the spell of the train and set foot on the earth. But as long as one stays in the train, the outside is a dream country. A dream country. He closed his eyes again and presently was fast asleep and troubled by long dreams that were half broken by a sense of discomfort. When he woke again he felt cold and stiff. Hambledon, he saw, was still awake.
Their carriage seemed to be continually turning. His mind made a picture of a corkscrew with a gnat-sized train twisting industriously. He looked at his watch.
“Good Lord,” he said. “It’s ten past two. I shall stay awake. It’s a mistake to sleep in these chairs.”
“Ten past two,” said Hambledon. “The time for indiscreet conversation. Are you sure you do not want to go to sleep?”
“Quite sure. What were we speaking of before I dozed off. Miss Dacres?”
“Yes. You asked about her marriage. It is difficult even to guess why she married Alfred Meyer. Not because he is the big noise in Incorporated Playhouses. Carolyn had no need of that sort of pull. She had arrived. Perhaps she married him because he was so essentially commonplace. As a kind of set-off to her own temperament. She has the true artistic temperament.”
The tall man winced. Hambledon had made use of a phrase that he detested.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” Hambledon continued very earnestly. “Alf is a good fellow. He’s very much liked in the business. But — well, he has never been a romantic figure. He lives for the firm, you know. He and George Mason built it between them. I’ve played in I.P. productions for twelve years now. Eight pieces in all and in five of them I’ve played opposite Carolyn.”
He had the actor’s habit of giving full dramatic value to everything he said. His beautiful voice, with its practised inflexions, suggested a romantic attachment.
“She’s rather a wonderful person,” he said.
“He means that,” thought his companion. “He is in love with her.”
His mind went back to the long journey in the ship with Carolyn Dacres very much the star turn, but not, he had to admit, aggressively the great actress. She and her pale, plump, rather common, rather uninteresting husband, had sat in deck chairs, he with a portable typewriter on his knees and she with a book. Very often Hambledon had sat on the other side of her, also with a book. They had none of them joined in the all-night poker parties with young Courtney Broadhead, Liversidge and Valerie Gaynes. Thinking of these three he turned to look up the dim carriage. There was young Broadhead, still awake, still staring at the blind window-pane with its blank reflections. As if conscious of the other’s gaze he jerked his head uneasily and with an abrupt movement rose to his feet and came down the carriage. As he passed them he said:
“Fresh air. I’m going out to the platform.”
“Young ass,” said Hambledon when he had gone through the door. “He’s been losing his money. You can’t indulge in those sorts of frills, on his salary.”
They both looked at the glass door. Broadhead’s back was against it.
“I’m worried about that boy,” Hambledon went on. “No business of mine, of course, but one doesn’t like to see that kind of thing.”