Algernon Blackwood

“ The man did not or would not hear, and as the train moved slowly off she bumped her head against an old lady standing on the platform who was looking the other way and waving to someone in a front carriage.
“Ooh!” cried Miss Slumbubble, straightening her bonnet, “you really should look where you’re looking, madam!”⁠—and then, realising she had said something foolish, she withdrew into the carriage and sank back in a fluster on the cushions.
“Oh!” she gasped again, “oh dear! I’m actually off at last. It’s too good to be true. ”

“ Thus it was clear that Miss Daphne Slumbubble, this good, honest soul with jet flowers in her bonnet and rows of coloured photographs of Switzerland on her bedroom mantelpiece, led a life unnecessarily haunted.
The thought of the annual holiday, however, compensated for all else. ”

“ He touched his cap and pocketed his sixpence, and the fussy little traveller went off to take up her position outside the carriage door for another half hour before the train started. She was always very nervous about trains; not only fearful of possible accidents to the engine and carriages, but of untoward happenings to the occupants of corridor-less compartments during long journeys without stops. The mere sight of a railway station, with its smoke and whistling and luggage, was sufficient to set her imagination in the direction of possible disaster. ”

“ The train was slackening speed; already it was in the cutting where it reverses and is pushed backwards onto the pier. Miss Slumbubble was desperate. She had never tipped a man before in her life except for obvious and recognised services, and this seemed to her like compounding a felony, or some such dreadful thing. Yet so much was at stake: she might be detained at Folkestone for days before the matter came into court, to say nothing of a £5 fine, which meant that her holiday would be utterly stopped. ”

“ Searching for the cause, moreover, tends to confuse the mind, and searching in vain, to terrify.
Miss Slumbubble pulled herself sharply together, and began to search for what made her afraid, but for a long time she searched in vain.
At first she searched externally: she thought perhaps it had something to do with one of her packages, and she placed them all out in a row on the seat in front of her and examined each in turn, bananas, camera, food bag, black bead bag, etc. etc. But she discovered nothing among them to cause alarm. ”

“ The young man would certainly kill her and steal all her packages.
She ran once or twice frantically up and down the narrow floor. Then she looked out of the window.
“Oh, bless my heart and soul!” she cried out, “he’s out already!”
The young man, evidently thinking the lady was being assaulted, had climbed out of the window and was pluckily coming to her rescue. He was already on the footboard, swinging by the brass bars on the side of the coach as the train rocked down the line at a fearful pace.
But Miss Slumbubble took a deep breath and a sudden determination. ”

“ After that she only had to save so many sums of four francs, each four francs meaning another day in the little cheap pension she always went to on the flowery slopes of the Alps of Valais.
Miss Slumbubble was exceedingly conscious of the presence of men. They made her nervous and afraid. She thought in her heart that all men were untrustworthy, not excepting policemen and clergymen, for in her early youth she had been cruelly deceived by a man to whom she had unreservedly given her heart. ”

“ With a fear of known origin one can argue, humour it, pacify, turn on the hose of ridicule⁠—in a word, suggest that it depart; but with a fear that rises stealthily out of no comprehensible causes the mind finds itself at a complete loss. ”

“ But all this was years ago, and she had long since learned to hold her grief in subjection and to prevent her life being too much embittered by the treachery⁠—she felt it was treachery⁠—of one man. She still, however, felt anxious and self-conscious in the presence of men, especially of silent, unmarried men, and to some extent it may be said that this fear haunted her life. ”

“ She found her new seat no more comfortable than the one before it, and shifted in turn into all the corners of the carriage, and down the middle as well, till at last she had tried every possible part of it. In each place she felt less at ease than in the one before. She got up and looked into the empty racks, under the seats, beneath the heavy cushions, which she lifted with difficulty. Then she put all the packages back again into the rack, dropping several of them in her nervous hurry, and being obliged to kneel on the floor to recover them from under the seats. ”

“ She no longer cared about her name, or her silent and faithless lover of long ago, or of anything in the world but the fact that her absorbing little annual passion was now once again in a fair way to be gratified. ”

“ He meant to crawl out and come to her carriage by the window! A man, a young man, would shortly be in the compartment with her. Locked in, too! No, it was impossible. That was worse than the claustrophobia, and she could not endure such a thing for a moment. ”

“ For the tenth time she opened her black beaded bag and took out her purse and made sure her ticket was in it, and then counted over her belongings.
“I do hope,” she murmured, “I do hope that stupid porter has put in my luggage all right, and that the Channel won’t be rough. Porters are so stupid. One ought never to lose sight of them till the luggage is actually in. I think I’d better pay the extra fare and go first class on the boat if it is rough. I can carry all my own packages, I think.” ”

“ She did, in fact, the only thing left to her to do. She pulled the communication cord once, twice three times, and then drew the window up with a sudden snap just before the young man’s head appeared round the corner of the sash. Then, stepping backwards, she trod on the slippery banana bag and fell flat on her back upon the dirty floor between the seats. ”