# Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3814/The Extenuating Circumstance

THE EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCE.
It was a seaside railway station, the arriving place of one of those health resorts where people flock in their millions to enjoy a little peace quiet together. He, no doubt as a punishment for a misspent youth, was the station-master; she was one of those many kind ladies who come to meet their relatives and to make their arrival even more peaceful and quiet than such events usually are.
"Was that the train from London?" she asked him.
He temporized. "Have you asked a porter?" he enquired.
She nodded.
"And have you asked another porter?"
She nodded again.
"And then the foreman porter? And then a ticket collector? And then the inspector? And then a casual postman? And then did you come across your original porter and try him again?"
She admitted the list without a blush.
"And now tell me all about your dear lost one—a weak, helpless man, no doubt?"
"It was my husband," she explained.
"A medium-sized man, in a macintosh and a straw hat, of course?" ​She acquiesced.
"But none the less," continued the official, "a man of sterling worth? You do not think he can be in some lost property office en route, waiting to be called for?"
The suggestion was an attractive one, but was rejected. "Then," he said, "let us go and discuss this intimate tragedy in some less public spot."
He took her to his office and begged her to be seated. "Repose all confidence in me, Madam," he said, "for I am not without experience in husbands. Good fellows on the whole, with their gladstone bags and their pince-nez and their unmistakable respectability. But somehow they have not acquired the knack of arriving when they are expected. Yours is the seventh who has failed us by this train. True, the other six were coming from Liverpool, whereas the 6.30 has come from London, but that is no excuse for them or us."
"My husband is coming from London," she asserted, searching in her reticule for documentary evidence.
He looked out of the window, avoiding her eye. "In less than twenty minutes we have a nice fat competent train arriving partly from Birmingham, partly from Manchester, partly from Sheffield and partly from Birkenhead. There is even a dusty bit at the end which will have come all the way from Scotland, though why I cannot say. It will be simply full of husbands; you wouldn't care to try it, at any rate to let us show it you?"
"But my husband," she repeated.
"Is essentially a London man? Madam, we do not wish you to take any of these husbands we shall show you if they do not suit your requirements; but do let us show them you."
"I know that my husband is coming from London," she persisted.
"Believe me, Madam," he protested, "I should not accuse you of being mistaken, even if your husband should prove to be in this train I recommend. He might have deceived you."
She refused to budge. "My husband's postcard says he is coming in the 6.30 train from London. The train has come and he is not in it."
The station-master asked to be allowed to see the postcard, not, he explained, because he didn't believe her, but because he would like to have his worst suspicions of his Company's inefficiency confirmed.
She handed it to him. He read the announcement, made briefly and without enthusiasm, of the husband's proposed arrival "by the 6.30 train to-morrow." The woman smiled with triumph; the station-master referred to the postmark. He did not smile triumphantly. He was too old a hand for that.
"Will you allow me to intercede as a friend for all parties?" he asked. "Give him and us another chance; go away now and give us all twenty-four hours to think it over. Then call again, and, if your patience is rewarded, be generous and forgive us all."
After some debate she was induced to see reason in the proposal and consented to take the lenient course. She rose to go.
"And if," said the station-master, showing her out, "if a train should arrive at 6.30 from London to-morrow and disgorge this husband of yours, won't you do us all a little kindness? Won't you make a point of telling the porter, all the porters, foreman porters, ticket collectors, inspectors, casual postmen and even myself? You have no idea what a change it would be for us to hear a lady saying, 'My husband ought to have come by this train, and he has!'"