Prelude to Eternity. Brian Stableford
sufficiently cruel to prevent him from marrying Cecilia Langstrade, he would die a bachelor—quite probably of a broken heart.
He was distracted from this tender thought by the sight of a man elbowing his way urgently through the crowd, red-faced and perspiring in spite of his near-spectral thinness, which contrasted strongly with Hope’s healthy rotundity. James Escott, it seemed, was not lurking in the first-class carriage reserved for the inner circle of Lord Langstrade’s weekend guests, avoiding soot and his rival’s lyrical speeches on the modern wonders of steel, steam and telegraphy.
“There you are, Hope!” the thin man said, extending his hand as he arrived. “Good to see you, Laurel!” he added, swiftly.
This time, Michael had had time to prepare himself. His hat was safely ensconced on his head and his handkerchief had been discreetly retired to his trouser pocket. As soon as Escott released Hope’s hand, Michael took his, and gripped it with what he hoped might pass for manly firmness.
“We’ll have to hurry,” Escott said, swiftly, obviously intent on interrupting Hope’s anticipated eulogy. “The guard will be calling ‘All Aboard’ at any moment, and we’re in the carriage next to the guard’s van, right at the back. It was hardly worth the trouble of coming all the way up here, but I knew you’d be rooted to the spot, staring at the engine like some mesmerized somniloquist, and I knew that you’d be sure to miss the train if I didn’t shepherd you aboard.” He glanced at Michael as he added: “These starry-eyed optimists are all the same, Laurel. Heads in the clouds. No practicality. You’ll join us, of course?”
“I only bought a second-class ticket,” Michael admitted, blushing deeply. “I’ll find a seat closer to the engine.”
“Nonsense!” said Escott. “We have a spare seat in our reserved carriage—Sir Geoffrey Chatham has been detained in London, and won’t be able to make the party at all. Signor Monticarlo and his daughter are there, and Lady Phythian arrived half an hour in advance, as usual, but there’s one seat to spare now. We can’t offer it to Carp, even if we wanted to, because he’ll be traveling with his somniloquist.”
“To be frank,” Hope put in, “you’d be doing us a favor—raising the intellectual average, so to speak. I say nothing against Monticarlo, mind; he’s a clever fellow, in his way, and his English is good when he plucks up the courage to use it, but he’s not a great conversationalist. Lady Phythian, on the other hand, is an utter wet blanket—always treats Escott and myself as if we were a pair of naughty boys squabbling over our toys. It’s a long way to York, and even a steam locomotive can’t do the trip in the blink of an eye. Besides, I’ve promised to indoctrinate you in the philosophy of progress, and there’s no better place to start than a railway carriage.”
“And I can provide you with the necessary intellectual balance,” Escott said, “to make sure that you’re not blinded by the glare of Hope’s rose-tinted spectacles. But we have to hurry, Hope, or we’ll never get back to the carriage in time.”
Michael was still hesitant, unsure as to what the rules of etiquette required or permitted him to say in response to the unexpected invitation.
“I can make sure you sit next to the lovely Carmela, if you like,” Hope said. “She’s said to be very artistic, and she makes up for the fact that she’s reluctant to risk her English by smiling a lot.”
Michael blushed yet again, this time in pure confusion. He had no idea whether Hope was simply trying to be kind, or whether he really did want the option of having someone else other than Escott to listen to him while he rode his favorite hobby-horse, but the one thing he did know was that he definitely did not want to arrive at Langstrade Hall in close company with a smiling Carmela Monticarlo, amid a drizzle of suggestive remarks about how well they had got on during the four-and-a-half-hour train journey and the subsequent ride in a hired diligence.
“Hope’s right, for once in his life,” Escott put in, his voice full of urgency. “If we’re to have any decent conversation on the journey, we really do need a decent substitute for Chatham. Oblige us, please.”
“But I only have a second-class ticket!” Michael protested, feebly, as Hope and Escott each took one of his arms and began to hustle him along the platform toward the rear of the train. “Won’t I get into trouble if the guard catches me in a first-class compartment?”
“Not at all,” Hope assured him, accelerating his pace. “The entire compartment’s reserved; the seat’s booked and paid for. Lord Langstrade would never forgive us if we allowed one of his guests to travel second-class while we had a seat to spare.”
“Even a painter,” Escott added, a trifle mischievously, as he lengthened his stride in order to keep pace with the scurrying optimist, “who’s only been invited to immortalize his Folly. I’ll wager that you’d rather be painting Miss Cecilia’s portrait!”
Michael couldn’t help noticing that this off-hand remark provoked a sharp glance of disapproval from Quentin Hope. He suffered a momentary stab of panic as he wondered whether the renowned optimist might be entertaining hopes in regard to Lord Langstrade’s daughter.
It was not impossible, Michael supposed, that Hope might take advantage of the weekend to ask Langstrade for Cecilia’s hand—and what Langstrade’s response might be was anybody’s guess, given that he had obviously inherited his father’s legendary eccentricity. Who else but a Langstrade, after all, would have invited a little-known portrait-painter all the way to the wilds of Yorkshire to paint a mock-Medieval Keep in the heart of a Maze, designed according to a plan that had supposedly been drawn up by Dedalus himself?
“Isn’t Gregory Marlstone traveling on the train?” Michael asked, although he cursed himself silently as soon as the words had spilled from his mouth. For one thing, the remark was bound to sound somewhat ungrateful, in view of the two men’s generosity in offering to pluck him out of second-class chaos into first-class comfort, and the urgency with which they were exercising their invitation. For another, if there was the slightest possibility that Hope might be a rival for Cecilia’s hand—if not her affection—then he certainly ought to seize the opportunity to confirm or falsify the hypothesis.
“Marlstone set off five days ago with six assistants and half a dozen carts,” Escott told him. He had to pause thereafter when the cry of “All aboard!” was raised and echoed all along the platform, accompanied by a blast on the station-manager’s whistle, but as soon as the thin man could make himself heard again, he continued: “Anyone else would have sent the equipment on ahead and followed at his leisure, but Marlstone won’t let the components of his precious time machine out of his sight, all the more so since the fiascos at Horton Lacey and Chatsworth. If all has gone well with the convoy, he’ll be there ahead of us, but my guess is that he’ll have got bogged down somewhere in the Midlands, and probably won’t arrive until Sunday. By the time he’s got his blessed machine set up, the rest of us will be on our way home.”
In spite of the difficulties of shoving their way through the crowd, Hope and Escott had succeeded in reaching the carriage containing their reserved compartment without ever letting go of Michael’s captive arms. They literally lifted him off the ground in order to deposit him in the carriage, somewhat to the surprise and alarm of Lady Phythian, who had taken advantage of her early arrival to claim a window seat. The famous violinist Signor Monticarlo and his daughter Carmela had taken the two opposed seats on the far side of the carriage, next to the door to the corridor. Michael had been introduced to all of them at one time or another, but knew them even more slightly that he knew Hope and Escott.
The virtuoso and the two ladies did not seem unduly surprised to see Michael, obviously having no inkling of the ignominy of the second-class ticket, but they did not seem unduly delighted either. They greeted him politely, but rather coolly; when Hope propelled him toward the vacant seat between the two ladies, both of them seemed to Michael’s anxious eyes to be a trifle disappointed that Hope had not taken the seat himself. In fact, the optimist took the spare window seat, while his meager companion took the seat opposite Michael.
Now that the carriage was fully-loaded it seemed rather cramped, largely