Waltz Into Darkness

49

She led the way down the railroad car aisle, he following, the railroad porter struggling along in the rear with their hand baggage, three or four pieces on each arm. She had the jaunty little stride of one who has been on trains a great deal, enjoys traveling, and knows just how to go about getting the most out of it.

“No, not there,” she called back, when Durand had stopped tentatively beside one of the padded green-plush double seats. “Down here, on this side. You’ll get the sun on you, on that side.”

They moved on obediently to her bidding.

She stood by, supervising with attentive look, piece by piece, the disposing of their luggage to the rack overhead. Intervening once to counsel: “Put that lighter one on top of the other; the other one will crush it if you don’t.”

Then when he had finished: “Draw up the shade a little higher.”

Durand gave her a quickly cautioning glance over the porter’s bent back, implying they should not make themselves too conspicuous.

“Nonsense,” she answered it aloud. “Draw it up a little more, porter. There, that will do.” Then gestured benevolently toward Durand, to have him tip the man for his trouble.

She sidled into the seat, when it had been sufficiently readied, drawing out her skirts sideward and settling them about her comfortably. Durand inserted himself beside her, his face pale and strained, as though he were sitting on spikes.

She turned her head and began to survey the scene outside the window with enjoyable interest, bending the back of her hand to support her chin.

“How soon do they start?” she asked presently.

He didn’t answer.

She must have been able to view his reflection on the pane of glass. Without turning her head, she said slurringly out of the corner of her mouth: “Don’t take on so. People will think you are ill.”

“I am,” he shuddered, blowing into his hands as if to warm them. “I am.”

Her little lace-mittened hand suddenly reached across his body, below cover of the seat top before them. “Take my hand, hold it for a moment. We’ll be out of here before you know.”

“Merciful God,” he whispered, with furtively downcast eyes, “why don’t they start, what are they waiting for?”

“Read something,” she suggested in a low voice, “take your mind off it.”

Read something, he thought despairingly, read something! He could not have joined the letters of a single word together to make sense.

A locomotive bell began to peal, somewhere up front, and then a steam whistle blew in shrill warning.

“There,” she said reassuringly. “Now!”

There was a sudden preliminary jar, that set aquiver the row of oil lamps dangling from the deep-set trough bisecting the car ceiling, then a secondary, lesser one; then the train stuttered into creaking motion. The fixed scene outside became fluid, began to slip slowly onward past the limits of their window pane, while a new one continually flowed into it, without a break, at the opposite side. She released his hand, turned her full attention to it, as enthralled as a child.

“I love to be on the go,” she remarked. “Anywhere, I don’t care where it is.”

A butcher made his way slowly down the aisle, basket over arm, crying his wares to add to the noisy confusion of grinding wheels, creaking woodwork, and hum of blended voices that filled the car.

“Here you are, ladies and gentlemen. Mineral water, fresh fruit, all kinds of delicious sweets for yourselves or your children. Caramellos, gumdrops, licorice lozenges. It’ll be a long, dusty ride. Here you are. Here you are.”

She suddenly whisked her head around from the window that had absorbed her until now. “Lou,” she said vivaciously, “buy me an orange, I’m thirsty. I love to suck an orange whenever I’m riding on a train.”

The vendor stopped at his reluctant signal.

She leaned across him, pawing, rummaging, in the basket. “No, that one over there. It’s plumper.”

Durand hoisted himself sideward on the seat, to be able to reach into his pocket and draw up some coins.

The butcher took one and moved on.

Suddenly he stared, stricken, at the residue he had been left holding. Downs’s collar button lay within the palm of his hand.

“Oh, God!” he moaned, and cast it furtively under the seat they were on.