It was an old man in a dirty blouse, with a gnarled elfin face – brown and lined as the scar on a tree-trunk, from which a branch had been lopped. He kept taking off his greasy hat and pointing, first upwards, and then to her head.
All at once she grasped his meaning. He was telling her that while she sat on the platform she had been attacked with sunstroke.
The explanation was a great relief, because she was both frightened and baffled by the mystery of her illness. She rarely ailed and had never fainted before. Besides, it had given her proof, that in spite of her own misgiving, the channels were not entirely blocked, provided the issues were not too involved.
Although she still felt sick with anxiety about her train, she managed to smile faintly at the porter. As though he had been waiting for some sign of encouragement, he thrust his hand into the neck of his dirty blouse and drew out her bag.
With a cry, she snatched it from him. Remembering the crowd on the platform, she had no hope of finding her money; but there was a faint chance that her passport had not been stolen.
She tore at the zip-fastener with shaking fingers, to find, to her utter amazement, that the contents were intact. Tickets, money, passport – even her receipted hotel-bill, were still there.
She had grossly maligned the native honesty, and she hastened to make amends. Here, at last, was a situation she understood. As usual, some one had come to her rescue, true to the tradition of the protective square in her palm. Her part, which was merely to overpay for services rendered, was easy.
The women received their share of the windfall with stolid faces. Apparently they were too stunned with astonishment to show excitement or gratitude. The old porter, on the other hand, beamed triumphantly and gripped Iris’ suitcase, to show that he, too, had grasped the situation.
In spite of her resistance to it, the raw spirit, together with her change of circumstance, had revived Iris considerably. She felt practically restored again and mistress of herself as she showed her ticket to the porter.
The effect on him was electric. He yammered with excitement, as he grabbed her arm and rushed with her to the door. Directly they had passed through it, Iris understood the origin of the curious pervading noise which had’ helped to complicate her nightmare.
It was the gush of steam escaping from an engine. While she had let the precious minutes slip by, the express had entered the station.
Now it was on the point of departure.
The platform was a scene of wild confusion. Doors were being slammed. People were shouting farewells and crowding before the carriages. An official waved a flag and the whistle shrilled.
They were one minute too late. Iris realised the fact that she was beaten, just as the porter – metaphorically snatched at the psychological moment, and was swung away with it on its flight. He took advantage of the brief interval between the first jerk of the engine and the revolution of the wheels to charge the crowd, like an aged tiger.
There was still strength and agility in his sinewy old frame to enable him to reach the nearest carriage and wrench open the door.
His entrance was disputed by a majestic lady in black. She was a personage to whom – as a peasant – his bones instinctively cringed. On the other hand, his patron had paid him a sum far in excess of what he earned in tips during the whole of a brief season.
Therefore, his patron must have her place. Ducking under the august lady’s arm, he hurled Iris’ suitcase into the compartment and dragged her inside after it.
The carriage was moving when he scrambled out, to fall in a heap on the platform. He was unhurt, however, for when she looked back to wave her thanks, he grinned at her like a toothless gnome.
Already he was yards behind. The station slid by, and the lake began to lap against the piles of the rough landing-stage. It rippled past the window in a sheet of emerald, ruffled by the breeze and burnished by the sun. As the train swung round the curve of the rails to the cutting in the rocks, Iris looked back for a last view of the village – a fantastic huddle of coloured toy-buildings, perched on the green shelf of the valley.
Chapter seven. Passengers
As the train rattled out of the cliff tunnel and emerged in a green tree-choked gorge, Iris glanced at her watch. According to the evidence of its hands, the Trieste express was not yet due at the village station.
“It must have stopped when I crashed,” she decided. “Sweet luck. It might have lost me my train.”
The reminder made her feel profoundly grateful to be actually on her way back to England. During the past twenty four hours she had experienced more conflicting emotion than in a lifetime of easy circumstance and arrangement. She had known the terrifying helplessness of being friendless, sick and penniless – with every wire cut. And then, at the worst, her luck had turned, as it always did.
From force of contrast the everyday business of transport was turned into a temporary rapture. Railway travel was no longer an infliction, only to be endured by the aid of such palliatives as reservations, flowers, fruit, chocolates, light literature, and a group of friends to shriek encouragement.
As she sat, jammed in an uncomfortable carriage, in train which was not too clean, with little prospect of securing a wagon-lit at Trieste, she felt the thrill of a first journey.
The scenery preserved its barbarous character in rugged magnificence. The train threaded its way past piled-up chunks of disrupted landscape, like a Doré steel-engraving of Dante’s Inferno. Waterfalls slashed the walls of granite precipices with silver-veining. Sometimes they passed arid patches, where dark pools, fringed with black-feathered rushes, lay in desolate hollows.
Iris gazed at it through the screen of the window – glad of the protective pane of glass. This grandeur was the wreckage a world shattered by elemental-force, and reminded her it she had just been bruised by her first contact with reality.
She still shrank from the memory of first facts, even although the nightmare railway station was the thick of the mountain away. Now that it was slipping farther behind the coils of the rails with every passing minute, she could dare to estimate the narrow margin by which she had escaped disaster.
Amid the crowd at the station there must have been a percentage of dishonest characters, ready to take advantage of the providential combination of an unconscious foreigner – who did not count – and an expensive handbag which promised a rich loot. Yet the little gnome-like porter chanced to the man on the spot.
“Things always do turn out for me,” she thought. “But – it must be appalling for some of the others.”
It was the first time she had realised the fate of those unfortunates who had no squares in their palms. If there were railway accident, she knew that she would be in the un-wrecked middle portion of the train, just as inevitably as certain other passengers were doomed to be in the telescoped coaches.
As she shuddered at the thought, she glanced idly at the woman who sat opposite to her. She was a negative type in every respect – middle-aged, with a huddle of small indefinite features, and vague colouring. Someone drew a face and then rubbed it nearly out again. Her curly hair was faded and her skin was bleached to oatmeal.
She was not sufficiently a caricature to suggest a stage spinster. Even her tweed suit and matching hat were not too dowdy, although lacking any distinctive note.
In ordinary circumstances, Iris would not have spared her second glance or thought. Today, however, she gazed at her with compassion.
“If she were in a jam, no one would help her out,” she thought.
It was discomforting to reflect that the population of the globe must include a percentage of persons without friends, money, or influence; nonentities who would never be missed, and who would sink without leaving a bubble.
To distract her thoughts, Iris tried to look at the scenery again. But the window was now blocked by passengers, who were unable to find seats, so stood in the corridor. For the first time, therefore, she made a deliberate survey of the other occupants