The Happy Foreigner | Page 2

through the broken roof as she crossed the lines
of the platform on the further side, where, vaguely expecting to be met
she questioned civilians and military police. But the pall of death that
hung over Bar stretched even to the station, where nobody knew
anything, expected anything, cared anything, except to hurry out and
away into the rain.
She, too, followed at last, leaving her bag and box in the corner of a
deserted office, and crossing the station yard tramped out in the thick
mud on to a bridge. The rain was falling in torrents, and crouching for a
minute in a doorway she made her bundles faster and buttoned up her

coat. Roofs jutted above her, pavements sounded under her feet, the
clock struck three near by. If there was an hotel anywhere there was no
one to give information about it. The last train had emptied itself, the
travellers had hurried off into the night, and not a foot rang upon the
pavements. The rain ran in a stream down her cap and on to her face;
down her sleeves and on to her hands.
A light further up the street attracted her attention, and walking towards
it she found that it came from an open doorway above which she could
make out the letters "Y.M.C.A."
She did not know with what complicated feelings she would come to
regard these letters--with what gratitude mixed with irritation,
self-reproach with greed.
Climbing the steps she looked inside. The hall of the building was
paved with stone, and on a couple of dozen summer chairs of cane sat
as many American officers, dozing in painful attitudes of unrest. By
each ran a stream of water that trickled from his clothes, and the
streams, joining each other, formed aimless rivers upon the floor.
The eye of a captain opened.
"Come in, ma'am," he said without moving. She wondered whether she
should.
The eye of a lieutenant opened.
"Come in, ma'am," he said, and rose. "Take my chair."
"Could you tell me if there is any hotel?"
"There is some sort of a shanty down the street. I'll take you."
Further up the street a faint light shone under a slit between two boards.
There was no door near it, no keyhole or shutter. The American
thundered at the boards with a tin of jam which he took out of his
pocket. The noise was monstrous in the blackness, but the town had

heard noises more monstrous than that, and it lay in a barred and blind,
unanswering stupor.
"God!" said the American, quickly angered, and kicked the board till
the slit grew larger. The light went out.
"Some one is coming round to the door," said Fanny, in time to prevent
the destruction of the board.
Higher up the street bolts were being withdrawn and a light fell upon
the pavement.
"Who's there?" creaked a voice. The American moved towards the
light.
"The hotel is shut to Americans," said the voice.
"The devil it is," shouted the American. "And why, then?"
"Man killed here last night," said the voice briefly. Fanny moved
towards the light and saw an old man with a shawl upon his shoulders,
who held a candle fixed in the neck of a bottle.
"I am English," she said to the old man. "I am alone. I want a room
alone."
"I've a room ... If you're not American!"
"I don't know what kind of a hole this is," said the American wrathfully.
"I think you'd better come right back to the 'Y.' Say, here, what kind of
a row was this last night you got a man killed in?"
"Kind of row your countrymen make," muttered the old man, and
added "Bandits!"
Soothing, on the one hand, entreating on the other, the girl got rid of
her new friend, and effected an entrance into the hotel. ("If hotel it is!"
she thought, in the brief passage of a panic while the old man stooped
to the bolts of the door.)

"I've got rooms enough," he said, "rooms enough. Now they've gone.
Follow me."
She followed his candle flame and he threw open a door upon the
ground floor.
"I've no light to give you."
"Yet I must have a light."
Grumbling, he produced half an inch of wax candle.
"Hurry into bed and that will last you. It's all I have."
The bed wore a coloured rug, bare and thin, an eiderdown, damp and
musty. Spreading her wet mackintosh on the top she rolled herself up
as well as she could, and developing a sort of warmth towards morning,
slept an hour or two. The daylight showed her nothing to wash in, no
jug, no basin, no bell to pull.
As no one would come to her, as there