"Guard, is this train never to start? We're half-an-hour late already."
"Italian mail very heavy, sir; still bringing up bags; so many people at Riviera in winter, writing home to their friends."...
How cruel every one is! He had not written for ten days. Something always happened, an engagement of pleasure. There was a half-finished letter; he had left it to join a Monte Carlo party.
"Writing letters--home, of course, to that idolised wife. It's beautiful, and you are an example to us all; but Mrs. Trevor will excuse descriptions of scenery; she knows you are enjoying yourself."
Had she been expecting that letter from post to post, calculating the hour of each delivery, identifying the postman's feet in that quiet street, holding her breath when he rang, stretching her hand for a letter, to let it drop unopened, and bury her face in the pillow? Had she died waiting for a letter that never came? Those letters that he wrote from the Northern Circuit in that first sweet year, a letter a day, and one day two--it had given him a day's advantage over her. Careful letters, too, though written between cases, with bits of description and amusing scenes.
Some little sameness towards the end, but she never complained of that, and even said those words were the best And that trick he played--the thought of the postman must have brought it up--how pleasant it was, and what a success! He would be his own letter one day, and take her by surprise. "A letter, ma'am," the girl said--quite a homely girl, who shared their little joys and anxieties--and then he showed his face with apologies for intrusion. The flush of love in her face, will it be like that to-night, or... What can be keeping the train now? Is this a conspiracy to torment a miserable man?
He thrusts his head out of the window in despair, and sees the guard trying to find a compartment for a family that had mistaken their train.
The husband is explaining, with English garrulity, all the station hearing, what an inconvenience it would have been had they gone in the Holbom Viaduct carriages.
"Half an hour's longer drive, you know, and it's very important we should get home in time; we are expected...."
For what? Dinner, most likely. What did it matter when they got home, to-day or next year? Yet he used to be angry if he were made late for dinner. They come into his compartment, and explain the situation at great length, while he pretends to listen.