The Husbands of Edith | Page 8

did not give her a chance for further protest, but darted out of the
compartment. As he closed the door he had the disquieting impression
that she was sitting upon the edge of her berth, giggling hysterically.
The garde listened to his demand for a separate compartment with the
dejection of a capable French attendant who is ever ready with joint
commiseration and obduracy. No, he was compelled to inform
Monsieur the American (to the dismay of the pseudo-Englishman) it
would be impossible to arrange for another compartment. The train was
crowded to its capacity. Many had been turned away. No, a louis would
not be of avail. The deepest grief and anguish filled his soul to see the
predicament of Monsieur, but there was no relief.
Brock's miserable affectation of the English drawl soon gave way to
sharp, emphatic Americanisms. It was after eight o'clock and the train
was well under way. The street lamps were getting fewer and fewer,
and the soft, fresh air of the suburbs was rushing through the window.
"But, hang it all, I _can't_ sit up all night!" growled Brock in
exasperated finality.
"Monsieur forgets that he has a berth. It is not the fault of the
compagnie that he is without a bed. Did not M'sieur book the
compartment himself? _Très bien!_"
As the result of strong persuasion, the garde consented to make "the

grand tour" of the train de luxe in search of a berth. It goes without
saying that he was intensely mystified by Brock's incautious remark
that he would be satisfied with "an upper if he couldn't do any better."
For the life of him, Monsieur the garde could not comprehend the
situation. He went away, shaking his head and looking at the tickets, as
much as to say that an American is never satisfied--not even with the
best.
Brock lowered a window-seat in the passage and sat down, staring
blankly and blackly out into the whizzing night. The predicament had
come upon him so suddenly that he had not until now found the
opportunity to analyse it in its entirety. The worst that could come of it,
of course, was the poor comfort of a night in a chair. He knew that it
was a train of sleeping-coaches--Ah! He suddenly remembered the
luggage van! As a last resort, he might find lodging among the trunks!
And then, too, there was something irritating in the suspicion that she
had laughed as if it were a huge joke--perhaps, even now, she was
doubled up in her narrow couch, stifling the giggle that would not be
suppressed.
When the garde came back with the lugubrious information that
nothing, positively nothing, was to be had, it is painful to record that
Brock swore in a manner which won the deepest respect of the
trainman.
"At four o'clock in the morning, M'sieur, an old gentleman and his wife
will get out at Strassburg, their destination. They are in this carriage
and you may take their compartment, if M'sieur will not object to
sleeping in a room just vacated by two mourners who to-day buried a
beloved son in Paris. They have kept all of the flowers in their--"
"Four o'clock! Good Lord, what am I to do till then?" groaned Brock,
glaring with unmanly hatred at the door of the Medcroft compartment.
"Perhaps Madame may be willing to take the upper--" ventured the
guard timorously, but Brock checked him with a peremptory gesture.
He proposed, instead, the luggage van, whereupon the guard burst into

a psalm of utter dejection. It was against the rules, irrevocably.
"Then I guess I'll have to sit here all night," said Brock faintly. He was
forgetting his English.
"If M'sieur will not occupy his own bed, yes," said the guard, shrugging
his shoulders and washing his hands of the whole incomprehensible
affair. "M'sieur will then be up to receive the Customs officers at the
frontier. Perhaps he will give me the keys to Madame's trunks, so that
she may not be disturbed."
"Ask her for 'em yourself," growled Brock, after one dazed moment of
dismay.
The hours crawled slowly by. He paced the length of the wriggling
corridor a hundred times, back and forth; he sat on every window-seat
in the carriage; he nodded and dozed and groaned, and laughed at
himself in the deepest derision all through the dismal night. Daylight
came at four; he saw the sun rise for the first time in his life. He neither
enjoyed nor appreciated the novelty. Never had he witnessed anything
so mournfully depressing as the first grey tints that crept up to mock
him in his vigil; never had he seen anything so ghastly as the soft red
glow that suffused the morning sky.
"I'll sleep all day if I ever get