CHAPTER V.
DURING that last month at school Anne was indefatigable: in the face of the vague future which was so rapidly approaching, she felt bound to clutch hold of the present, thinking that time which was employed in some way went less quickly. The fact was that she was in a state of great excitement—half impatience and half terror; she wished the days to go by quicker, and she wished them to go by slower; she was at once dragged wearisomely, and hurried along. At length it became a question no longer of weeks but of days. And then came another letter from Hamlin. He remembered the desire she had once expressed to go down the Rhine, to be on the sea: he proposed that she should come through Belgium and cross from Antwerp to page: 242 London. “I am sure you will enjoy it much more than the vile, vulgar, usual route,” he wrote. But he did not tell her that he was unwilling she should get any impressions of England before meeting him, however slight they might be; that he preferred to meet her, in the evening, on the Thames wharf, to receiving his Amazon Queen, his mysterious and tragic Madonna, rather than in the shed at Victoria or Charing Cross. Anne did not care how she was to go: she was to go, to embark on a new life, to see him, to be seen by him. This thought, which had never struck her before, began to haunt her now: if he should be disgusted with her? if he should recognise that he had been mistaken in his choice?
The morning before her departure, Mrs Sireson handed Anne a letter at breakfast.
“Mr Hamlin has sent a girl to fetch you, dear,” she said.
“To fetch me?” cried Anne, in astonishment.
page: 243Mrs Simson opened the door—“Pray, come in,” she said.
A young woman entered, whose immaculate smartness and cheerful alertness never would have let one guess that she had just been travelling twenty‐four hours.
“This is Miss Brown,” said Mrs Simson. The girl curtsied, and waited for Miss Brown to speak. But Anne could not utter a word.
“Mrs Macgregor, Mr Hamlin’s aunt, engaged me as your travelling‐maid, miss,” said the young woman, handing a note to Anne.
It was from Hamlin, and ran briefly—
“MY DEAR MISS BROWN,—My aunt is unfortunately too delicate to admit of my asking her to fetch you from Coblenz; but she has engaged the bearer to be your maid, unless you have some previous. choice at Coblenz, in which case, please forgive our interference. She is highly recommended, and seems a good girl, and accustomed to travel. She will telegraph me how you are from Cologne and Ant‐ page: 244 werp Antwerp . I shall await you Thursday evening on the wharf. Till then, farewell.—Your sincere and impatient friend,
“WALTER HAMLIN.”
For some unaccountable reason Anne felt quite angry. She did not require any one to travel with her; she did not want a maid. The very word maid seemed to bring up her whole past.
“You had better go and rest yourself,” she said to the girl coldly.
“How sweet and considerate!” said Mrs Simson, reading Hamlin’s note.
“I don’t want a maid!” cried Anne, angrily.
“A young lady of your age cannot travel alone, my dear,” answered Mrs Simson, blandly. But Anne felt miserable, she knew not why, and hated the maid.
Presently she went up to her room to pack her trunk. On opening the door she discovered the maid—her maid—on her knees, emp‐ page: 245 tying emptying the chest of drawers, and folding thing after thing.
“Please don’t do that!” cried Anne, turning purple. “I will do it myself, please.”
The girl stared politely, and answered in a subdued, respectfully chiding tone—
“I was only packing your trunk, miss.”
“I will do it myself!” cried Anne, excitedly.
“As you wish, madam,” was the maid’s icy answer; and she rose.
“Can I do nothing for you?” she said, standing by the door, with a reproachful, prim little face.
Anne was ashamed.
“You can help me if you like,” she answered, rather humbled; and she began folding her things. But the girl was much quicker than she, and Anne soon remained with nothing to do, looking on vacantly. She felt as if she would give worlds to get the girl away; she felt as if she ought to say to her, “Don’t do that for me; I am not a real lady; I am no better than you; I am a servant, a maid, my‐ page: 246 self myself ,”—and as if every moment of silence were a kind of deceit. At last she could bear it no longer—
“Please,” she cried, “let me pack my things myself; I have always packed them myself; I should be so glad if you would let me.”
The girl rose and retired.
“As you like, miss,” she replied, fixing her eyes on Anne’s strange excited face.
“She knows I am only a servant like herself, and she thinks me proud and ungrateful,” thought Anne.
The next evening, among the lamentations of Mrs Simson’s establishment, Anne Brown set off for Cologne. This first short scrap of journey moved her very much: when the train puffed out of the station, and the familiar faces were hidden by outhouses and locomotives, the sense of embarking on unknown waters rushed upon Anne; and when, that evening, her maid bade her good night at the hotel at Cologne, offering to brush her hair and help her to undress, she was seized with intolerable home‐ page: 247 sickness homesickness for the school,—the little room she had just left,—and she would have implored any one to take her back. But the next days she felt quite different: the excitement of novelty kept her up, and almost made it seem as if all these new things were quite habitual; for there is nothing stranger than the way in which excitement settles one in novel positions, and familiarises one with the unfamiliar. Seeing a lot of sights on the way, and knowing that a lot more remained to be seen, it was as if there were nothing beyond these three or four days—as if the journey would have no end; that an end there must be, and what that end meant seemed a thing impossible to realise. She scarcely began to realise it when the ship began slowly to move from the wharf at Antwerp; when she walked up and down the deserted and darkened deck watching the widening river under the clear blue spring night, lit only by a ripple of moonlight, widening mysteriously out of sight, bounded only by the shore‐lights, with here or there the page: 248 white or blue or red light of some ship, and its long curl of smoke, making you suddenly conscious that close by was another huge moving thing, more human creatures in this solitude,—till at last all was mere moonlight‐permeated mist of sky and sea. And only as the next day—as the boat cut slowly through the hazy, calm sea—was drawing to its close, did Anne begin to feel at all excited. At first, as she sat on deck, the water, the smoke, the thrill of the boat, the people walking np and down, the children wandering about among the piles of rope, and leaning over the ship’s sides—all these things seemed the only reality. But later, as they got higher up in the Thames, and the unwonted English sunshine became dimmer, a strange excitement arose in Anne—an excitement more physical than mental, which, with every movement of the boat, made her heart beat faster and faster, till it seemed as if it must burst, and a lot of smaller hearts to start up and throb all over her body, tighter and tighter, till she had to press her page: 249 hand to her chest, and sit down gasping on a bench.
The afternoon was drawing to a close, and the river had narrowed; all around were rows of wharves and groups of ships; the men began to tug at the ropes. They were in the great city. The light grew fainter, and the starlight mingled with the dull smoke‐grey of London; all about were the sad grey outlines of the old houses on the wharves, the water grey and the sky also, with only a faint storm‐red where the sun had set. The rigging, interwoven against the sky, was grey also; the brownish sail of some nearer boat, the dull red sides of some steamer hard by, the only colour. The ship began to slacken speed and to turn, great puffs and pants of the engine running through its fibres; the sailors began to halloo, the people around to collect their luggage: they were getting alongside of the wharf. Anne felt the maid throw a shawl round her; heard her voice, as if from a great distance, saying, “There’s Mr Hamlin, miss;” felt herself walk‐ page: 250 ing walking along as if in a dream; and as if in a dream a figure come up and take her hand, and slip her arm through his, and she knew herself to be standing on the wharf, in the twilight, the breeze blowing in her face, all the people jostling and shouting around her. Then a voice said—“I fear you must be very tired, Miss Brown.” It was at once so familiar and so strange that it made her start; the dream seemed dispelled. She was in reality, and Hamlin was really by her side.
