Katherine Mansfield - Premium Collection: 160+ Short Stories & Poems. Katherine Mansfield
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I always tell my girls that it’s better to mistrust people at first rather than trust them, and it’s safer to suspect people of evil intentions rather than good ones. . . . It sounds rather hard but we’ve got to be women of the world, haven’t we?”
It had been nice in the Ladies’ Cabin. The stewardess was so kind and changed her money for her and tucked up her feet. She lay on one of the hard pink-sprigged couches and watched the other passengers, friendly and natural, pinning their hats to the bolsters, taking off their boots and skirts, opening dressing-cases and arranging mysterious rustling little packages, tying their heads up in veils before lying down. Thud, thud, thud, went the steady screw of the steamer. The stewardess pulled a green shade over the light and sat down by the stove, her skirt turned back over her knees, a long piece of knitting on her lap. On a shelf above her head there was a water-bottle with a tight bunch of flowers stuck in it. “I like travelling very much,” thought the little governess. She smiled and yielded to the warm rocking.
But when the boat stopped and she went up on deck, her dress-basket in one hand, her rug and umbrella in the other, a cold, strange wind flew under her hat. She looked up at the masts and spars of the ship black against a green glittering sky and down to the dark landing stage where strange muffled figures lounged, waiting; she moved forward with the sleepy flock, all knowing where to go to and what to do except her, and she felt afraid. Just a little—just enough to wish—oh, to wish that it was daytime and that one of those women who had smiled at her in the glass, when they both did their hair in the Ladies’ Cabin, was somewhere near now. “Tickets, please. Show your tickets. Have your tickets ready.” She went down the gangway balancing herself carefully on her heels. Then a man in a black leather cap came forward and touched her on the arm. “Where for, Miss?” He spoke English—he must be a guard or a stationmaster with a cap like that. She had scarcely answered when he pounced on her dress-basket. “This way,” he shouted, in a rude, determined voice, and elbowing his way he strode past the people. “But I don’t want a porter.” What a horrible man! “I don’t want a porter. I want to carry it myself.” She had to run to keep up with him, and her anger, far stronger than she, ran before her and snatched the bag out of the wretch’s hand. He paid no attention at all, but swung on down the long dark platform, and across a railway line. “He is a robber.” She was sure he was a robber as she stepped between the silvery rails and felt the cinders crunch under her shoes. On the other side—oh, thank goodness!—there was a train with Munich written on it. The man stopped by the huge lighted carriages. “Second class?” asked the insolent voice. “Yes, a Ladies’ compartment.” She was quite out of breath. She opened her little purse to find something small enough to give this horrible man while he tossed her dress-basket into the rack of an empty carriage that had a ticket, Dames Seules, gummed on window. She got into the train and handed twenty centimes. “What’s this?” shouted the man, glaring at the money and then at her, holding it up to his nose, sniffing at it as though he had never in his life seen, much less held, such a sum. “It’s a franc. You know that, don’t you? It’s a franc. That’s my fare!” A franc! Did he imagine that she was going to give him a franc for playing a trick like that just because she was a girl and travelling alone at night? Never, never! She squeezed her purse in her hand and simply did not see him—she looked at a view of St. Malo on the wall opposite and simply did not hear him. “Ah, no. Ah, no. Four sous. You make a mistake. Here, take it. It’s a franc I want.” He leapt on to the step of the train and threw the money on to her lap. Trembling with terror she screwed herself tight, tight, and put out an icy hand and took the money—stowed it away in her hand. “That’s all you’re going to get,” she said. For a minute or two she felt his sharp eyes pricking her all over, while he nodded slowly, pulling down his mouth: “Ve-ry well. Trrrès bien.” He shrugged his shoulders and disappeared into the dark. Oh, the relief! How simply terrible that had been! As she stood up to feel if the dress-basket was firm she caught sight of herself in the mirror, quite white, with big round eyes. She untied her “motor veil” and unbuttoned her green cape. “But it’s all over now,” she said to the mirror face, feeling in some way that it was more frightened than she.
People began to assemble on the platform. They stood together in little groups talking; a strange light from the station lamps painted their faces almost green. A little boy in red clattered up with a huge tea wagon and leaned against it, whistling and flicking his boots with a serviette. A woman in a black alpaca apron pushed a barrow with pillows for hire. Dreamy and vacant she looked—like a woman wheeling a perambulator—up and down, up and down—with a sleeping baby inside it. Wreaths of white smoke floated up from somewhere and hung below the roof like misty vines. “How strange it all is,” thought the little governess, “and the middle of the night, too.” She looked out from her safe corner, frightened no longer but proud that she had not given that franc. “I can look after myself—of course I can. The great thing is not to——” Suddenly from the corridor there came a stamping of feet and men’s voices, high and broken with snatches of loud laughter. They were coming her way. The little governess shrank into her corner as four young men in bowler hats passed, staring through the door and window. One of them, bursting with the joke, pointed to the notice Dames Seules and the four bent down the better to see the one little girl in the corner. Oh dear, they were in the carriage next door. She heard them tramping about and then a sudden hush followed by a tall thin fellow with a tiny black moustache who flung her door open. “If mademoiselle cares to come in with us,” he said, in French. She saw the others crowding behind him, peeping under his arm and over his shoulder, and she sat very straight and still. “If mademoiselle will do us the honour,” mocked the tall man. One of them could be quiet no longer; his laughter went off in a loud crack. “Mademoiselle is serious,” persisted the young man, bowing and grimacing. He took off his hat with a flourish, and she was alone again.
“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.
“I never could have dared to go to sleep if I had been alone,” she decided. “I couldn’t have put my feet up or even taken off my hat.” The singing gave her a queer little tremble in her stomach and, hugging herself to stop it, with her arms crossed under her cape, she felt really glad to have the old man in the carriage with her. Careful to see that he was not looking she peeped at him through her long lashes. He sat extremely upright, the chest thrown out, the chin well in, knees pressed together, reading a German paper. That was why he spoke French so funnily. He was a German. Something in the army, she supposed—a Colonel or a General—once, of course, not now; he was too old for that now. How spick and span he looked for an old man. He wore a pearl pin