different nature. She was leaning against the side of the carriage, as carelessly as a man, her hands shoved into the pockets of the fuzzy grey coat: a swaggering little figure, with a crinkly smile. And he suddenly got the impression that she was as lonely as himself….
Mentioning his destination as Chatterham, he inquired after her luggage. She straightened. There was a shadow somewhere. The light throaty voice, with its clipped and slurred accent, grew hesitant; she spoke low:
'My brother has the bags.' Another hesitation. 'He — he'll miss the train, I expect. There goes the horn now. You'd better get aboard.'
That horn, tooting thinly through the shed, sounded inane. It was as though something were being torn away. A toy engine began to puff and stammer; the bumping shed winked with lights.
'Look here,' he said, loudly, 'if you're taking another train?'
'You'd better hurry!'
Then Rampole grew as inane as the horn. He cried in a rush: 'To hell with the train! I can take another. I'm not going anywhere, as it is. I?'
She had to, raise her voice. He got the impression of a smile, bright and swashbuckling and pleased. 'Silly! — I'm going to Chatterham, too. I shall probably see you there. Off you go!'
'Are you sure?'
'Of course.'
'Well, that's all right, then. You see?'
She gestured at the train, and he swung aboard just as it got under way. He was craning out of one corridor window, trying to get a glimpse of her, when he heard the throaty voice call something after him, very distinctly. The voice said an extraordinary thing. It called:
'If you see any ghosts, save them for me.'
What the devil! Rampole stared at the dark lines of idle carriages sweeping past, the murky station lights which seemed to shake to the vibration of the train, and tried to understand that last sentence. The words were not exactly disturbing, but they were a little-well, cockeyed. That was the only way to express it. Had the whole business been a joke? Was this the English version of the needles, the raspberry, or any similar picturesque and delicate term? For a moment his neckband grew warm. No, damn it! You could always tell. A train guard, passing through the corridor at this moment, perceived an obviously American Young Gen'lman thrusting his face blindly out of the window into a hurricane of cinders, and breathing them with deep joyous breaths, like mountain air.
The depressed feeling had vanished. This little, swaying train, almost empty of passengers, made him feel like a man in a speedboat. London was not big and powerful now, nor the countryside a lonely place. He had drunk strong liqueur in a strange land, and he felt suddenly close to somebody.
Luggage? He froze for a moment before remembering that a porter had already stowed it into a compartment somewhere along here. That was all right. Under his feet he could feel the floor vibrating; the train jerked and whirled with a clackety roar, and a long blast of the whistle was torn backwards as it gathered speed. This was the way to begin adventure. 'If you see any ghosts, save them for me.' A husky voice-which somehow suggested a person standing on tiptoe-drifting down the platform….
If she had been an American, now, he could have asked her name. If she had been an American… but, he suddenly realized, he didn't want her to be an American. The wide-set blue eyes, the face which was just a trifle too square for complete beauty, the red and crinky-smiling mouth; all were at once exotic and yet as honestly Anglo-Saxon as the brick staunchness of Whitehall. He liked the way she pronounced her words, as though with a half mockery. She seemed cool and clean, like a person swinging through the countryside. Turning from the window, Rampole had a strong desire to chin himself on the top of one of the compartment doors. He would have done so but for the presence of a very glum and very rigid man with a large pipe, who was staring glassily out of a near-by window, with the top of his travelling-cap pulled over one ear like a beret. This person looked so exactly like a comic-strip Englishman that Rampole would have expected him to exclaim, 'What, what, what, what?' and go puffing and stumping down the corridor, had he seen any such athletic activity indulged in here.
The American was to remember this person presently. For the moment, he knew only that he felt hilarious, hungry, and in need of a drink. There was, he remembered, a restaurant-car ahead. Locating his luggage in a smoking-compartment, he groped his way along narrow corridors in search of food. The train was clattering through suburbs now, creaking and plunging and swaying under the shrillness of its whistle, and lighted walls streamed past on either side. To Rampole's surprise, the restaurant-car was almost full; it was somewhat cramped, and smelt heavily of beer and salad oil. Sliding into a chair opposite another diner, he thought that there were rather more crumbs and blotches than were necessary; whereupon he again damned himself for provincialism. The table shook to the swaying of the train, lights jolted on nickel and woodwork, and he watched the man opposite skilfully introduce a large glass of Guinness under, a corresponding moustache. After a healthy pull, the other set down the glass and spoke.
'Good evening,' he said, affably. 'You're young Rampole, aren't you?'
If the stranger had added, 'You come from Afghanistan, I perceive,' Rampole could not have been more startled. A capacious chuckle enlivened the other man's several chins. He had a way of genially chuckling, 'Heh- heh-heh,' precisely like a burlesque villain on the stage. Small eyes beamed on the American over eyeglasses on a broad black ribbon. His big face grew more ruddy; his great mop of hair danced to the chuckles, or the motion of the train, or both; and he thrust out his hand.
'I'm Gideon Fell, d'ye see? Bob Melson wrote me about you, and I knew you must be the person as soon as you walked in the car. We must have a bottle of wine on this. We must have two bottles of wine. One for you, and one for me, d'ye see? Heh-heh-heh. Waiter!'
He rolled in his chair like a feudal baron, beckoning imperiously.
'My wife,' continued Dr. Fell, after he had given a Gargantuan order — 'my wife would never have forgiven me if I'd missed you. She's in a stew as it is, what with plaster falling off in the best bedroom, and the new revolving sprinkler for the lawn, which wouldn't work until the rector came to call, and then it doused him like a shower-bath. Heh-heh. Have a drink. I don't know what kind of wine it is, and I never ask; it's wine, and that's enough for me.'
'Your health, sir.'
'Thank'e, my boy. Permit me,' said Dr. Fell, apparently with some vague recollections of his stay in America, 'to jump the gutter. Nunc bibendum est. Heh.- So you're Bob Melson's senior wrangler, eh? English history, I think he said. You're thinking of a Ph.D., and then teaching?'
Rampole suddenly felt very young and very foolish, despite the doctor's amiable eye. He mumbled something noncommittal.
'That's fine,' said the other. 'Bob praised you, but he said, `Too imaginative by half'; that's what he said. Bah! give 'em the glory, I say; give 'em the glory. Now, when I lectured at your Haverford, they may not have learned much about English history, but they cheered, my boy, they cheered when I described battles. I remember,' continued the doctor, his vast face glowing as with a joyous sunset, and puffing beneath it 'I remember teaching 'em the Drinking Song of Godfrey of Bouillon's men on the First Crusade in 1187, leading the chorus myself. Then they all got to singing and stamping on the floor, as it were; and a maniacal professor of mathematics came stamping up with his hands entangled in his hair — as it were-and said (admirably restrained chap) would we kindly stop shaking the blackboards off the wall in the room below? `It is unseemly,' says he; 'burpf, burpf, ahem, very unseemly.' `Not at all,' says I. `It is the 'Laus Vini Exercitus Crucis,' `It is, like hell,' says he. `Do you think I don't know 'We Won't Be Home until Morning' when I hear it?' And then I had to explain the classic derivation.
“Hallo, Payne!' the doctor boomed, breaking off to flourish his napkin at the aisle.
Turning, Rampole saw the exceedingly glum and rigid man with the pipe, whom he had noticed before in the corridor of the train. The cap was off now, to show a close-shaven skull of wiry white hair, a long brown face, and a general air of doddering down the aisle, looking for a place to fall. He grumbled something, not very civilly, and paused by the table.
'Mr. Payne, Mr. Rampole,' said Dr. Fell. Payne's eyes turned on the American with a startling flash of their whites; they seemed suspicious. 'Mr. Payne is Chatterham's legal adviser,' the doctor explained. 'I say, Payne, where are your charges? I wanted young Starberth to have a glass of wine with us.'
A thin hand fluttered to Payne's brown chin, and stroked it. His voice was dry, with a premonitory rasp and difficulty, as though he were winding himself up.
'Didn't arrive,' replied the lawyer, shortly.
