The Rout

by Barry Pain

The Rout.

By BARRY PAIN.

THE notice on either side of the carriage explained as tersely as possible that each seat was intended to accommodate five people. The seat facing the engine had already its full complement. The middle person of the five bore the aspect of a shy and rather elderly governess. There was an air of meticulous neatness about her. She wore gold-rimmed pince-nez, and read without ostentation and without concealment a copy of the Christian Year. It was bound in morocco and had been covered with brown paper. Her gloves were of grey kid. Her neatness was intense.

On the side opposite to her there were at present only four people. The two in the middle were women, friends who were travelling together and discussing tunnel mysteries with marked enjoyment.

At the station one last passenger entered. He was a large bull-man, with an inflated face and the reddest neck in London. His girth was great and his breathing was laborious. He wore a heavy frieze overcoat, and it was quite obvious that there was no room for him in the carriage. But bull-men make room for themselves.

Stepping as if it were his constitutional right on the toes of the two people next the door, he forced his way into the middle of the carriage. There he stood for one moment, facing the governess. He inflated his chest, grunted, and let himself drop. The two women who had been discussing the tunnel mystery did not see him coming quite soon enough. They did their best to get away from under him, but both of them were slightly flattened. The vast wall of bull-man in between them prevented them from continuing their conversation. As he thrust his shoulders back they had to sit forward. He pulled a dirty and tightly folded newspaper from his coat pocket and began to unfold it. The process required him to smite right and left with his elbows. For a moment or two nobody spoke.

Then the little governess looked up from her book. She spoke in a soft and timid voice. "They ought to put a cattle-truck on for beasts like you," she said. "You are not fit to travel with human beings."

"Are you talking to me?" said the man savagely.

"Don't ask such silly questions. You know perfectly well that I am talking to you, and that my words could not apply to anyone else in the carriage."

The bull-man inquired what the something wicked in that case she meant by it.

"If you use language like that," she said, "I will have you turned out at the next station. Your enormous bulk may be your misfortune——"

"Kindly shut your head and let me get on with my paper."

"Oh, no; you asked me what I meant, and I am going to tell you. I say that your gross unwieldiness may be your misfortune, though it is more like to be the result of self-indulgence and excess. In any case, a person with that bulk should always be ready to apologise for it. It makes him a very great nuisance in a crowded carriage, even if he does his best not to inconvenience other people. You don't know how to get into a carriage and where to put your great feet. When you see two ladies are talking together, you have no business to sit between them——"

"Once more," said the bull-man, "will you shut your head? I've paid for my ticket, and I have got as much right here as you have. These seats are arranged to hold five——"

"Yes, but that means five human beings."

"And it's none of your business, anyhow. If there are any complaints to be made, let the people make 'em who think they're injured. I'm doing no harm to you."

"On the contrary, you have used very offensive language to me, which you should not do. That offends my ears. You appear to have breakfasted on bad cigars and beer, and your hands are very dirty. That offends other senses. Also you've interrupted me, which is not at all polite. I wanted to point out that a plethoric and overgrown person like yourself should sit on the extreme edge of the seat; so as to leave as much room as possible for others. Then again——"

The train pulled up at the next station. The bull-man arose and fled, covering his retreat with the observation that he would rather get out and walk than travel with a pack of spitting she-cats. The rout was complete.

The governess looked round and sighed. "It is a pity," she said, "that ladies should be subject to such unprovoked rudeness." Then she readjusted her pince-nez and resumed her study of Keble's beautiful poems.