Europe -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; New Zealand -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, New Zealand
“_En voiture. En voi-ture!_” Some one ran up and down beside the train.
“I wish it wasn’t night-time. I wish there was another woman in the
carriage. I’m frightened of the men next door.” The little governess
looked out to see her porter coming back again—the same man making for
her carriage with his arms full of luggage. But—but what _was_ he
doing? He put his thumb nail under the label _Dames Seules_ and tore it
right off and then stood aside squinting at her while an old man
wrapped in a plaid cape climbed up the high step. “But this is a
ladies’ compartment.” “Oh, no, Mademoiselle, you make a mistake. No,
no, I assure you. Merci, Monsieur.” “_En voi-turre!_” A shrill whistle.
The porter stepped off triumphant and the train started. For a moment
or two big tears brimmed her eyes and through them she saw the old man
unwinding a scarf from his neck and untying the flaps of his Jaeger
cap. He looked very old. Ninety at least. He had a white moustache and
big gold-rimmed spectacles with little blue eyes behind them and pink
wrinkled cheeks. A nice face—and charming the way he bent forward and
said in halting French: “Do I disturb you, Mademoiselle? Would you
rather I took all these things out of the rack and found another
carriage?” What! that old man have to move all those heavy things just
because she . . . “No, it’s quite all right. You don’t disturb me at
all.” “Ah, a thousand thanks.” He sat down opposite her and unbuttoned
the cape of his enormous coat and flung it off his shoulders.
The train seemed glad to have left the station. With a long leap it
sprang into the dark. She rubbed a place in the window with her glove
but she could see nothing—just a tree outspread like a black fan or a
scatter of lights, or the line of a hill, solemn and huge. In the
carriage next door the young men started singing “_Un, deux, trois._”
They sang the same song over and over at the tops of their voices.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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