The Man in Lower Ten | Page 7

chastened
"All-right-I-will."
I grew more and more wide-awake. At Cresson I got up on my elbow
and blinked out at the station lights. Some passengers boarded the train
there and I heard a woman's low tones, a southern voice, rich and full.
Then quiet again. Every nerve was tense: time passed, perhaps ten
minutes, possibly half an hour. Then, without the slightest warning, as
the train rounded a curve, a heavy body was thrown into my berth. The
incident, trivial as it seemed, was startling in its suddenness, for
although my ears were painfully strained and awake, I had heard no
step outside. The next instant the curtain hung limp again; still without
a sound, my disturber had slipped away into the gloom and darkness. In
a frenzy of wakefulness, I sat up, drew on a pair of slippers and
fumbled for my bath-robe.
>From a berth across, probably lower ten, came that particular
aggravating snore which begins lightly, delicately, faintly soprano,
goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping the
listener tense with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears the
very air. I was more and more irritable: I sat on the edge of the berth
and hoped the snorer would choke to death. He had considerable
vitality, however; he withstood one shock after another and survived to
start again with new vigor. In desperation I found some cigarettes and
one match, piled my blankets over my grip, and drawing the curtains
together as though the berth were still occupied, I made my way to the
vestibule of the car.
I was not clad for dress parade. Is it because the male is so restricted to
gloom in his every-day attire that he blossoms into gaudy colors in his

pajamas and dressing-gowns? It would take a Turk to feel at home
before an audience in my red and yellow bathrobe, a Christmas
remembrance from Mrs. Klopton, with slippers to match.
So, naturally, when I saw a feminine figure on the platform, my first
instinct was to dodge. The woman, however, was quicker than I; she
gave me a startled glance, wheeled and disappeared, with a flash of two
bronze-colored braids, into the next car.
Cigarette box in one hand, match in the other, I leaned against the
uncertain frame of the door and gazed after her vanished figure. The
mountain air flapped my bath-robe around my bare ankles, my one
match burned to the end and went out, and still I stared. For I had seen
on her expressive face a haunting look that was horror, nothing less.
Heaven knows, I am not psychological. Emotions have to be written
large before I can read them. But a woman in trouble always appeals to
me, and this woman was more than that. She was in deadly fear.
If I had not been afraid of being ridiculous, I would have followed her.
But I fancied that the apparition of a man in a red and yellow bath-robe,
with an unkempt thatch of hair, walking up to her and assuring her that
he would protect her would probably put her into hysterics. I had done
that once before, when burglars had tried to break into the house, and
had startled the parlor maid into bed for a week. So I tried to assure
myself that I had imagined the lady's distress - or caused it, perhaps -
and to dismiss her from my mind. Perhaps she was merely anxious
about the unpleasant gentleman of the restaurant. I thought smugly that
I could have told her all about him: that he was sleeping the sleep of the
just and the intoxicated in a berth that ought, by all that was fair and
right, to have been mine, and that if I were tied to a man who snored
like that I should have him anesthetized and his soft palate put where it
would never again flap like a loose sail in the wind.
We passed Harrisburg as I stood there. It was starlight, and the great
crests of the Alleghanies had given way to low hills. At intervals we
passed smudges of gray white, no doubt in daytime comfortable farms,
which McKnight says is a good way of putting it, the farms being a lot
more comfortable than the people on them.

I was growing drowsy: the woman with the bronze hair and the
horrified face was fading in retrospect. It was colder, too, and I turned
with a shiver to go in. As I did so a bit of paper fluttered into the air
and settled on my sleeve, like a butterfly on a gorgeous red and yellow
blossom. I picked it up curiously and glanced at it. It was part of a
telegram that had been torn into