Helen with the High Hand Part 21

"Bless us!" he said, as the express flashed through Preston without stopping. "It's fust time as I've begun a bottle o' Ba.s.s in one town and finished it in another."

He grew positively jolly, and the journey seemed to be accomplished with the rapidity of a dream.

CHAPTER XIX

THE TOSSING

"You said you'd seen it into the van," pouted Helen--she who never pouted!

"Nay, la.s.s," he corrected her, "I said I'd seen 'em bringing all th'

luggage over."

The inevitable moment of reckoning had arrived. They stood together on the platform of St. Enoch's, Glasgow. The last pieces of luggage were being removed from the guard's van under the direction of pa.s.sengers, and there was no sign whatever of Helen's trunks. This absence of Helen's trunks did not in the least surprise James Ollerenshaw; he was perfectly aware that Helen's trunks reposed, at that self-same instant, in the lost luggage office at Crewe; but, of course, he had to act surprise. In case of necessity he could act very well. It was more difficult for him to act sorrow than to act surprise; but he did both to his own satisfaction. He climbed into the van and scanned its corners--in vain. Then, side by side, they visited the other van at the head of the train, with an equal result.

The two guards, being Scotch, responded to inquiries with extreme caution. All that they would answer for was that the trunks were not in the train. Then the train was drawn out of the station by a toy-engine, and the express engine followed it with grave dignity, and Helen and Jimmy were left staring at the empty rails.

"Something must be done," said Helen, crossly.

"Ay!" Jimmy agreed. "It's long past my tea-time. We must find out if there's anything to eat i' Scotland."

But Helen insisted on visiting the stationmaster. Now, the stationmaster at St. Enoch's is one of the most important personages north of the Tweed, and not easily to be seen. However, Helen saw him. He pointed out that the train came from London in two portions, which were divided in Scotland, one going to Edinburgh, and his suggestion was that conceivably the luggage had been put into the Edinburgh van in mistake for the Glasgow van. Such errors did occur sometimes, he said, implying that the North Western was an English railway, and that surprising things happened in England. He said, also, that Helen might telephone to Edinburgh and inquire.

She endeavoured to act on this counsel, but came out of the telephone cabin saying that she could not get into communication with Edinburgh.

"Better go over to Edinburgh and see for yourself," said Jimmy, tranquilly.

"Yes, and what about my steamer?" Helen turned on him.

"Scotland canna' be so big as all that," said Jimmy. "Not according to th' maps. Us could run over to Edinburgh to-night, and get back to Glasgow early to-morrow."

She consented.

Just as he was taking two second returns to Edinburgh (they had s.n.a.t.c.hed railway eggs and railway tea while waiting for a fast train) he stopped and said:

"Unless ye prefer to sail without your trunks, and I could send 'em on by th' next steamer?"

"Uncle," she protested, "I do wish you wouldn't be so silly. The idea of me sailing without my trunks! Why don't you ask me to sail without my head?"

"All right--all right!" he responded. "But don't snap mine off. Two second returns to Edinburgh, young man, and I'll thank ye to look slippy over it."

In the Edinburgh train he could scarcely refrain from laughing. And Helen, too, seemed more in a humour to accept the disappearance of five invaluable trunks, full of preciosities, as a facetious sally on the part of destiny.

He drew out a note-book which he always carried, and did mathematical calculations.

"That makes twenty-seven pounds eighteen and ninepence as ye owe me," he remarked.

"What? For railway tickets?"

"Railway tickets, tips, and that twenty-five pounds I lent ye. I'm making ye a present o' _my_ fares, and dinner, and tea and so forth."

"Twenty-five pounds that you lent me!" she murmured.

"Yes," he said. "Tuesday morning, while I was at my cashbox."

"Oh, _that_!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "I thought you were giving me that. I never thought you'd ask me for it again, uncle. I'd completely forgotten all about it."

She seemed quite sincere in this amazing a.s.sertion.

His acquaintance with the ways of women was thus enlarged, suddenly, and at the merely nominal expense of twenty-five pounds. It was a wondrous proof of his high spirits and his general contentedness with himself that he should have submitted to the robbery without a groan.

"What's twenty-five pun'?" he reflected. "There'll be no luggage for her at Edinburgh; that steamer'll go without her; and then I shall give in.

I shall talk to her about the ways o' Providence, and tell her it's borne in upon me as she must have Wilbraham Hall if she's in a mind to stay. I shall save my face, anyhow."

And he further decided that, in case of necessity, in case of Helen at a later stage pushing her inquiries as to the luggage inconveniently far he would have to bribe the porter at Shawport to admit to her that he, the porter, had made a mistake in the labelling.

When they had satisfied themselves that Edinburgh did not contain Helen's trunks--no mean labour, for the lost luggage office was closed, and they had to move mountains in order to get it opened on the plea of extremest urgency--Jimmy Ollerenshaw turned to Susan's daughter, saying to himself that she must be soothed regardless of cost. Miracles would not enable her to catch the steamer now, and the hour was fast approaching when he would benevolently offer her the gift of Wilbraham Hall.

"Well, la.s.s," he began, "I'm right sorry. What's to be done?"

"There's nothing at all to be done," she replied, smiling sadly. She might have upbraided him for carelessness in the matter of the luggage.

She might have burst into tears and declared pa.s.sionately that it was all _his_ fault. But she did not. "Except, of course, that I must cable to mother. She's coming to Quebec to meet me."

"That'll do to-morrow," he said. "What's to be done to-night? In th' way o' supper, as ye might say?"

"We must go to an hotel. I believe the station hotel is the best." She pointed to a sign and a directing black hand which said: "To the hotel."

In a minute James Ollerenshaw found himself in the largest and most gorgeous hotel in Scotland.

"Look here, wench," he said. "I don't know as this is much in my line.

Summat a thought less gaudy'll do for my old bones."

"I won't move a step farther this night!" Helen declared. "I'm ready to drop."

He remembered that she must be soothed.

"Well," he said, "here goes!"

And he strode across the tessellated pavement under the cold, scrutinizing eye of menials to a large window marked in gold letters: "Bureau."

"Have ye gotten a couple of bedrooms like?" he asked the clerk.

"Yes, sir," said the clerk (who was a perfect lady). "What do you want?"

"Don't I tell ye as we want a couple o' bedrooms, miss?"