# The Listener and Other Stories/Miss Slumbubble—and Claustrophobia

The Listener and Other Stories
Miss Daphne Slumbubble was a nervous lady of uncertain age who invariably went abroad in the spring. It was her one annual holiday, and she slaved for it all the rest of the year, saving money by the many sad devices known only to those who find their incomes after forty “barely enough,” and always hoping that something would one day happen to better her dreary condition of cheap tea, tin loaves, and weekly squabbles with the laundress.
This spring holiday was the only time she really lived in the whole year, and she half starved herself for months immediately after her return, so as to put by quickly enough money for the journey in the following year. Once those six pounds were safe she felt better. After that she only had to save so many sums of four francs, each four francs meaning another day in the little cheap pension she always went to on the flowery slopes of the Alps of Valais.
Miss Slumbubble was exceedingly conscious of the presence of men. They made her nervous and afraid. She thought in her heart that all men were untrustworthy, not excepting policemen and clergymen, for in her early youth she had been cruelly deceived by a man to whom she had unreservedly given her heart. He had suddenly gone away and left her without a word of explanation, and some months later had married another woman and allowed the announcement to appear in the papers. It is true that he had hardly once spoken to Daphne. But that was nothing. For the way he looked at her, the way he walked about the room, the very way he avoided her at the tea-parties where she used to meet him at her rich sister’s house⁠—indeed, everything he did or left undone, brought convincing proof to her fluttering heart that he loved her secretly, and that he knew she loved him. His near presence disturbed her dreadfully, so much so that she invariably spilt her tea if he came even within scenting-distance of her; and once, when he crossed the room to offer her bread and butter, she was so certain the very way he held the plate interpreted his silent love, that she rose from her chair, looked straight into his eyes⁠—and took the whole plate in a state of delicious confusion!
But all this was years ago, and she had long since learned to hold her grief in subjection and to prevent her life being too much embittered by the treachery⁠—she felt it was treachery⁠—of one man. She still, however, felt anxious and self-conscious in the presence of men, especially of silent, unmarried men, and to some extent it may be said that this fear haunted her life. It was shared, however, with other fears, probably all equally baseless. Thus, she lived in constant dread of fire, of railway accidents, of runaway cabs, and of being locked into a small, confined space. The former fears she shared, of course, with many other persons of both sexes, but the latter, the dread of confined spaces, was entirely due, no doubt, to a story she had heard in early youth to the effect that her father had once suffered from that singular nervous malady, claustrophobia (the fear of closed spaces), the terror of being caught in a confined place without possibility of escape.
Thus it was clear that Miss Daphne Slumbubble, this good, honest soul with jet flowers in her bonnet and rows of coloured photographs of Switzerland on her bedroom mantelpiece, led a life unnecessarily haunted.
The thought of the annual holiday, however, compensated for all else. In her lonely room behind Warwick Square she stewed through the dusty heat of summer, fought her way pluckily through the freezing winter fogs, and then, with the lengthening days, worked herself steadily into a fever heat of joyous anticipation as she counted the hours to the taking of her ticket in the first week of May. When the day came her happiness was so great that she wished for nothing else in the world. Even her name ceased to trouble her, for once on the other side of the Channel it sounded quite different on the lips of the foreigners, while in the little pension she was known as “Mlle. Daphne,” and the mere sound brought music into her heart. The odious surname belonged to the sordid London life. It had nothing to do with the glorious days that Mlle. Daphne spent among the mountain tops.
The platform at Victoria was already crowded when she arrived a good hour before the train started, and got her tiny faded trunk weighed and labelled. She was so excited that she talked unnecessarily to anyone who would listen⁠—to anyone in station uniform, that is. Already in fancy she saw the blue sky above the shining snow peaks, heard the tinkling cowbells, and sniffed the odours of pinewood and sawmill. She imagined the cheerful table d’hôte room with its wooden floor and rows of chairs; the diligence winding up the hot white road far below; the fragrant café complet in her bedroom at 7:30⁠—and then the long mornings with sketchbook and poetry-book under the forest shade, the clouds trailing slowly across the great cliffs, and the air always humming with the echoes of falling water.
“And you feel sure the passage will be calm, do you?” she asked the porter for the third time, as she bustled to and fro by his side.
“Well, there ain’t no wind ’ere, at any rate, Miss,” he replied cheerfully, putting her small box on a barrow.
“Such a lot of people go by this train, don’t they?” she piped.
“Oh, a tidy few. This is the season for foreign parts, I suppose.”
“Yes, yes; and the trains on the other side will be very full, too, I dare say,” she said, following him down the platform with quick, pattering footsteps, chirping all the way like a happy bird.
“Quite likely, Miss.”
“I shall go in a ‘Ladies only,’ you know. I always do every year. I think it’s safer, isn’t it?”
“I’ll see to it all for yer, Miss,” replied the patient porter. “But the train ain’t in yet, not for another ’arf hour or so.”
“Oh, thank you; then I’ll be here when it comes. ‘Ladies only,’ remember, and second class, and a corner seat facing the engine⁠—no, back to the engine, I mean; and I do hope the Channel will be smooth. Do you think the wind⁠—?”
But the porter was out of hearing by this time, and Miss Slumbubble went wandering about the platform watching the people arrive, studying the blue and yellow advertisements of the Côte d’azur, and waggling her jet beads with delight⁠—with passionate delight⁠—as she thought of her own little village in time high Alps where the snow crept down to a few hundred feet above the church and the meadows were greener than any in the whole wide world.
“I’ve put yer wraps in a ‘Lidies only,’ Miss,” said the porter at length, when the train came in, “and you’ve got the corner back to the engine all to yerself, an’ quite comfortable. Thank you, Miss.” He touched his cap and pocketed his sixpence, and the fussy little traveller went off to take up her position outside the carriage door for another half hour before the train started. She was always very nervous about trains; not only fearful of possible accidents to the engine and carriages, but of untoward happenings to the occupants of corridor-less compartments during long journeys without stops. The mere sight of a railway station, with its smoke and whistling and luggage, was sufficient to set her imagination in the direction of possible disaster.
The careful porter had piled all her belongings neatly in the corner for her: three newspapers, a magazine and a novel, a little bag to carry food in, two bananas and a Bath bun in paper, a bundle of wraps tied with a long strap, an umbrella, a bottle of Yanatas, an opera-glass (for the mountains), and a camera. She counted them all over, rearranged them a little differently, and then sighed a bit, partly from excitement, partly by way of protest at time delay.
A number of people came up and eyed the compartment critically and seemed on the point of getting in, but no one actually took possession. One lady put her umbrella in the corner, and then came tearing down the platform a few minutes later to take it away again, as though she had suddenly heard the train was not to start at all. There was much bustling to and fro, and a good deal of French was audible, and the sound of it thrilled Miss Daphne with happiness, for it was another delightful little anticipation of what was to come. Even the language sounded like a holiday, and brought with it a whiff of mountains and the subtle pleasures of sweet freedom.
Then a fat Frenchman arrived and inspected the carriage, and attempted to climb in. But she instantly pounced upon him in courageous dismay.
“Mais, c’est pour dames, m’sieur!” she cried, pronouncing it “dam.”
“Oh, damn!” he exclaimed in English; “I didn’t notice.” And the rudeness of the man⁠—it was the fur coat over his arm made her think he was French⁠—set her all in a flutter, so that she jumped in and took her seat hurriedly, and spread her many parcels in a protective and prohibitive way about her.
For the tenth time she opened her black beaded bag and took out her purse and made sure her ticket was in it, and then counted over her belongings.
“I do hope,” she murmured, “I do hope that stupid porter has put in my luggage all right, and that the Channel won’t be rough. Porters are so stupid. One ought never to lose sight of them till the luggage is actually in. I think I’d better pay the extra fare and go first class on the boat if it is rough. I can carry all my own packages, I think.”
At that moment the man came for tickets. She searched everywhere for her own, but could not find it.
“I’m certain I had it a moment ago,” she said breathlessly, while the man stood waiting at the open door. “I know I had it⁠—only this very minute. Dear me, what can I have done with it? Ah here it is!”
The man took so long examining the little tourist cover that she was afraid something must he wrong with it, and when at last he tore out a leaf and handed back the rest a sort of panic seized her.
“It’s all right, isn’t it, guard? I mean I’m all right, am I not?” she asked.
The guard closed the door and locked it.
“All right for Folkestone, ma’am,” he said, and was gone.
There was much whistling and shouting and running up and down the platform, and the inspector was standing with his hand raised and the whistle at his lips, waiting to blow and looking cross. Suddenly her own porter flew past with an empty barrow. She dashed her head out of the window and hailed him.
“You’re sure you put my luggage in aren’t, you?” she cried. The man did not or would not hear, and as the train moved slowly off she bumped her head against an old lady standing on the platform who was looking the other way and waving to someone in a front carriage.
“Ooh!” cried Miss Slumbubble, straightening her bonnet, “you really should look where you’re looking, madam!”⁠—and then, realising she had said something foolish, she withdrew into the carriage and sank back in a fluster on the cushions.
“Oh!” she gasped again, “oh dear! I’m actually off at last. It’s too good to be true. Oh, that horrid London!”
Then she counted her money over again, examined her ticket once more, and touched each of her many packages with a long finger in a cotton glove, saying, “That’s there, and that, and that, and⁠—that!” And then turning and pointing at herself she added, with a little happy laugh, “and that!”
The train gathered speed, and the dirty roofs and sea of ugly chimneys flew by as the dreary miles of depressing suburbs revealed themselves through the windows. She put all her parcels up in the rack and then took them all down again; and after a bit she put a few up⁠—a carefully selected few that she would not need till Folkestone⁠—and arranged the others, some upon the seat beside her, and some opposite. The paper bag of bananas she kept in her lap, where it grew warmer and warmer and more and more dishevelled in appearance.
“Actually off at last!” she murmured again, catching her breath a little in her joy. “Paris, Berne, Thun, Frutigen,” she gave herself a little hug that made the jet beads rattle; “then the long diligence journey up those gorgeous mountains,” she knew every inch of the way, “and a clear fifteen days at the pension, or even eighteen days, if I can get the cheaper room. Wheeeee! Can it be true? Can it be really true?” In her happiness she made sounds just like a bird.
She looked out of the window, where green fields had replaced the rows of streets. She opened her novel and tried to read. She played with the newspapers in a vain attempt to keep her eye on any one column. It was all in vain. A scene of wild beauty held her inner eye and made all else dull and uninteresting. The train sped on⁠—slowly enough to her⁠—yet every moment of the journey, every turn of the creaking wheels that brought her nearer, every little detail of the familiar route, became a source of keenest anticipatory happiness to her. She no longer cared about her name, or her silent and faithless lover of long ago, or of anything in the world but the fact that her absorbing little annual passion was now once again in a fair way to be gratified.
Then, quite suddenly, Miss Slumbubble realised her actual position, and felt afraid, unreasonably afraid. For the first time she became conscious that she was alone, alone in the compartment of an express train, and not even of a corridor express train.
Hitherto the excitement of getting off had occupied her mind to the exclusion of everything else, and if she had realised her solitude at all, she had realised it pleasurably. But now, in the first pause for breath as it were, when she had examined her packages, counted her money, glared at her ticket, and all the rest of it for the twentieth time, she leaned back in her seat and knew with a distinct shock that she was alone in a railway carriage on a comparatively long journey, alone for the first time in her life in a rattling, racing, shrieking train. She sat bolt upright and tried to collect herself a little.
Of all the emotions, that of fear is probably the least susceptible to the power of suggestion, certainly of autosuggestion; and of vague fear that has no obvious cause this is especially true. With a fear of known origin one can argue, humour it, pacify, turn on the hose of ridicule⁠—in a word, suggest that it depart; but with a fear that rises stealthily out of no comprehensible causes the mind finds itself at a complete loss. The mere assertion “I am not afraid” is as useless and empty as the subtler kind of suggestion that lies in affecting to ignore it altogether. Searching for the cause, moreover, tends to confuse the mind, and searching in vain, to terrify.
Miss Slumbubble pulled herself sharply together, and began to search for what made her afraid, but for a long time she searched in vain.
At first she searched externally: she thought perhaps it had something to do with one of her packages, and she placed them all out in a row on the seat in front of her and examined each in turn, bananas, camera, food bag, black bead bag, etc. etc. But she discovered nothing among them to cause alarm.
Then she searched internally: her thoughts, her rooms in London, her pension, her money, ticket, plans in general, her future, her past, her health, her religion, anything and everything among the events of her inner life she passed in review, yet found nothing that could have caused this sudden sense of being troubled and afraid.
Moreover, as she vainly searched, her fear increased. She got into a regular nervous flurry.
“I declare if I’m not all in a perspiration!” she exclaimed aloud, and shifted down the dirty cushions to another place, looking anxiously about her as she did so. She probed everywhere in her thoughts to find the reason of her fear, but could think of nothing. Yet in her soul there was a sense of growing distress.
She found her new seat no more comfortable than the one before it, and shifted in turn into all the corners of the carriage, and down the middle as well, till at last she had tried every possible part of it. In each place she felt less at ease than in the one before. She got up and looked into the empty racks, under the seats, beneath the heavy cushions, which she lifted with difficulty. Then she put all the packages back again into the rack, dropping several of them in her nervous hurry, and being obliged to kneel on the floor to recover them from under the seats. This made her breathless. Moreover, the dust got into her throat and made her cough. Her eyes smarted and she grew uncomfortably warm. Then, quite accidentally, she caught sight of her reflection in the coloured picture of Boulogne under the rack, and the appearance she presented added greatly to her dismay. She looked so unlike herself, and wore such an odd expression. It was almost like the face of another person altogether.
The sense of alarm, once wakened, is fed by anything and everything, from a buzzing fly to a dark cloud in the sky. The woman collapsed onto the seat behind her in a distressing fluster of nervous fear.
But Miss Daphne Slumbubble had pluck. She was not so easily dismayed after all. She had read somewhere that terror was sometimes dispersed by the loud and strong affirmation of one’s own name. She believed much that she read, provided it was plainly and vigorously expressed, and she acted at once on this knowledge.
“I am Daphne Slumbubble!” she affirmed in a firm, confident tone of voice, sitting stiffly on the edge of the seat; “I am not afraid⁠—of anything.” She added the last two words as an afterthought. “I am Daphne Slumbubble, and I have paid for my ticket, and know where I am going, and my luggage is in the van, and I have all my smaller things here!” She enumerated them one by one; she omitted nothing.
Yet the sound of her own voice, and especially of her own name, added apparently to her distress. It sounded oddly, like a voice outside the carriage. Everything seemed suddenly to have become strange, and unfamiliar, and unfriendly. She moved across to the opposite corner and looked out of the window: trees, fields, and occasional country houses flew past in endless swift succession. The country looked charming; she saw rooks flying and farm-horses moving laboriously over the fields. What in the world was there to feel afraid of? What in the world made her so restless and fidgety and frightened? Once again she examined her packages, her ticket, her money. All was right.
Then she dashed across to the window and tried to open it. The sash stuck. She pulled and pulled in vain. The sash refused to yield. She ran to the other window, with a like result. Both were closed. Both refused to open. Her fear grew. She was locked in! The windows would not open. Something was wrong with the carriage. She suddenly recalled the way everyone had examined it and refused to enter. There must be something the matter with the carriage⁠—something she had omitted to observe. Terror ran like a flame through her. She trembled and was ready to cry.
She ran up and down between the cushioned seats like a bird in a cage, casting wild glances at the racks and under the seats and out of the windows. A sudden panic took her, and she tried to open the door. It was locked. She flew to the other door. That, too, was locked. Good Heavens, both were locked! She was locked in. She was a prisoner. She was caught in a closed space. The mountains were out of her reach⁠—the free open woods⁠—the wide fields, the scented winds of heaven. She was caught, hemmed in, celled, restricted like a prisoner in a dungeon. The thought maddened her. The feeling that she could not reach the open spaces of sky and forest, of field and blue horizon, struck straight into her soul and touched all that she held most dear. She screamed. She ran down between the cushioned seats and screamed aloud.
Of course, no one heard her. The thunder of the train killed the feeble sound of her voice. Her voice was the cry of the imprisoned person.
Then quite suddenly she understood what it all meant. There was nothing wrong with the carriage, or with her parcels, or with the train. She sat down abruptly upon the dirty cushions and faced the position there and then. It had nothing to do with her past or her future, her ticket or her money, her religion or her health. It was something else entirely. She knew what it was, and the knowledge brought icy terror at once. She had at last labelled the source of her consternation, and the discovery increased rather than lessened her distress.
It was the fear of closed spaces. It was claustrophobia!
There could no longer be any doubt about it. She was shut in. She was enclosed in a narrow space from which she could not escape. The walls and floor and ceiling shut her in implacably. The doors was fastened; the windows were sealed, there was no escape.
“That porter might have told me!” she exclaimed inconsequently, mopping her face. Then the foolishness of the saying dawned upon her, and she thought her mind must be going. That was the effect of claustrophobia, she remembered: the mind went, and one said and did foolish things. Oh, to get out into a free open space, uncornered! Here she was trapped, horribly trapped.
“The guard man should never have locked me in⁠—never!” she cried, and ran up and down between the seats, throwing her weight first against the door and then against the other. Of course, fortunately, neither of them yielded.
Thinking food might calm her, perhaps, she took down the banana bag and peeled the squashy overripe fruit, munching it with part of the Bath bun from the other bag, and sitting midway on the forward seat. Suddenly the right-hand window dropped with a bang and a rattle. It had only been stuck after all, and her efforts, aided by the shaking of the train, had completed its undoing, or rather its unclosing. Miss Slumbubble shrieked, and dropped her banana and bun.
But the shock passed in a moment when she saw what had happened, and that the window was open and the sweet air pouring in from the flying fields. She rushed up and put her head out. This was followed by her hand, for she meant to open the door from the outside if possible. Whatever happened, the one imperative thing was that she must get into open space. The handle turned easily enough, but the door was locked higher up and she could not make it budge. She put her head farther out, so that the wind tore the jet bonnet off her head and left it twirling in the dusty whirlwind on the line far behind, and this sensation of the air whistling past her ears and through her flying hair somehow or other managed to make her feel wilder than ever. In fact, she completely lost her head, and began to scream at the top of her voice:
“I’m locked in! I’m a prisoner! Help, help!” she yelled.
A window opened in the next compartment and a young man put his head out.
“What the deuce is the matter? Are you being murdered?” he shouted down the wind.
“I’m locked in! I’m locked in!” screamed the hatless lady, wrestling furiously with the obdurate door handle.
“Don’t open the door!” cried the young man anxiously.
“I can’t, you idiot! I can’t!”
“Wait a moment and I’ll come to you. Don’t try to get out. I’ll climb along the footboard. Keep calm, madam, keep calm. I’ll save you.”
He disappeared from view. Good Heavens! He meant to crawl out and come to her carriage by the window! A man, a young man, would shortly be in the compartment with her. Locked in, too! No, it was impossible. That was worse than the claustrophobia, and she could not endure such a thing for a moment. The young man would certainly kill her and steal all her packages.
She ran once or twice frantically up and down the narrow floor. Then she looked out of the window.
“Oh, bless my heart and soul!” she cried out, “he’s out already!”
The young man, evidently thinking the lady was being assaulted, had climbed out of the window and was pluckily coming to her rescue. He was already on the footboard, swinging by the brass bars on the side of the coach as the train rocked down the line at a fearful pace.
But Miss Slumbubble took a deep breath and a sudden determination. She did, in fact, the only thing left to her to do. She pulled the communication cord once, twice three times, and then drew the window up with a sudden snap just before the young man’s head appeared round the corner of the sash. Then, stepping backwards, she trod on the slippery banana bag and fell flat on her back upon the dirty floor between the seats.
The train slackened speed almost immediately and came to a stop. Miss Slumbubble still sat on the floor, staring in a dazed fashion at her toes. She realised the enormity of her offence, and was thoroughly frightened. She had actually pulled the cord!⁠—the cord that is meant to be seen but not touched, the little chain that meant a £5 fine and all sorts of dire consequences.
She heard voices shouting and doors opening, and a moment later a key rattled near her head, and she saw the guard swinging up onto the steps of the carriage. The door was wide open, and the young man from the next compartment was explaining volubly what he seen and heard.
“I thought it was murder,” he was saying.
But the guard pushed quickly into the carriage and lifted the panting and dishevelled lady onto the seat.
“Now, what’s all this about? Was it you that pulled the cord, ma’am?” he asked somewhat roughly. “It’s serious stoppin’ a train like this, you know, a mail train.”
Now Miss Daphne did not mean to tell a lie. It was not deliberate, that is to say. It seemed to slip out of its own accord as the most natural and obvious thing to say. For she was terrified at what she had done, and had to find a good excuse. Yet, how in the world could she describe to this stupid and hurried official all she had gone through? Moreover, he would be so certain to think she was merely drunk.
“It was a man,” she said, falling back instinctively upon her natural enemy. “There’s a man somewhere!” She glanced round at the racks and under the seats. The guard followed her eyes.
“I don’t see no man,” he declared; “all I know is you’ve stopped the mail train without any visible or reasonable cause. I’ll be obliged with your name and address, ma’am, if you please,” he added, taking a dirty notebook from his pocket and wetting the blunt pencil in his mouth.
“Let me get air⁠—at once,” she said. “I must have air first. Of course you shall have my name. The whole affair is disgraceful.” She was getting her wits back. She moved to the door.
“That may be, ma’am,” the man said, “but I’ve my duty to perform, and I must report the facts, and then get the train on as quick as possible. You must stay in the carriage, please. We’ve been waiting ’ere a bit too long already.”
Miss Slumbubble met her fate calmly. She realised it was not fair to keep all the passengers waiting while she got a little fresh air. There was a brief confabulation between the two guards, which ended by the one who had first come taking his seat in her carriage, while the other blew his whistle and the train started off again and flew at great speed the remaining miles to Folkestone.
“Now I’ll take the name and address, if you please, ma’am,” he said politely. “Daphny, yes, thank you; Daphny without a hef, all right, thank you.”
He wrote it all down laboriously while the hatless little lady sat opposite, indignant, excited, ready to he voluble the moment she could think what was best to say, and above all fearful that her holiday would he delayed, if not prevented altogether.
Presently the guard looked up at her and put his notebook away in an inner pocket. It was just after he had entered the number of the carriage.
“You see, ma’am,” he explained with sudden suavity, “this communication cord is only for cases of real danger, and if I report this, as I should do, it means a ’eavy fine. You must ’ave just pulled it as a sort of hexperiment, didn’t you?”
Something in the man’s voice caught her ear there was a change in it; his manner, too, had altered somehow. He suddenly seemed to have become apologetic. She was quick to notice the change, though she could not understand what caused it. It began, she fancied, from the moment he entered the number of the carriage in his notebook.
“It’s the delay to the train I’ve got to explain,” he continued, as if speaking to himself, “and I can’t put it all onto the engine-driver⁠—”
“Perhaps we shall make it up and there won’t be any delay,” ventured Miss Slumbubble, carefully smoothing her hair and rearranging the stray hairpins.
“⁠—and I don’t want to get no one into any kind of trouble, least of all myself,” he continued, wholly ignoring the interruption. Then he turned round in his seat and stared hard at his companion with rather a worried, puzzled expression of countenance and a shrug of the shoulders that was distinctly apologetic. Plainly, she thought, he was preparing the way for a compromise⁠—for a tip!
The train was slackening speed; already it was in the cutting where it reverses and is pushed backwards onto the pier. Miss Slumbubble was desperate. She had never tipped a man before in her life except for obvious and recognised services, and this seemed to her like compounding a felony, or some such dreadful thing. Yet so much was at stake: she might be detained at Folkestone for days before the matter came into court, to say nothing of a £5 fine, which meant that her holiday would be utterly stopped. The blue and white mountains swam into her field of vision, and she heard the wind in the pine forest.
“Perhaps you would give this to your wife,” she said timidly, holding out a sovereign.
The guard looked at it and shook his head.
“I ’aven’t got a wife, exackly,” he said; “but it isn’t money I want. What I want is to ’ush this little matter up as quietly as possible. I may lose my job over this⁠—but if you’ll agree to say nothing about it, I think I can square the driver and t’other guard.”
“I won’t say anything, of course,” stammered the astonished lady. “But I don’t think I quite understand⁠—”
“You couldn’t understand either till I tell you,” he replied, looking greatly relieved; “but the fact is, I never noticed the carriage till I come to put the number down, and then I see it’s the very one⁠—the very same number⁠—”
“What number?”
He stared at her for a moment without speaking. Then he appeared to take a great decision.
“Well, I’m in your ’ands anyhow, ma’am, and I may as well tell you the lot, and then we both ’elps the other out. It’s this way, you see. You ain’t the first to try and jump out of this carriage⁠—not by a long ways. It’s been done before by a good number⁠—”
“Gracious!”
“But the first who did it was that German woman, Binckmann⁠—”
“Binckmann, the woman who was found on the line last year, and the carriage door open?” cried Miss Slumbubble, aghast.
“That’s her. This was the carriage she jumped from, and they tried to say it was murder, but couldn’t find anyone who could have done it, and then they said she must have been crazy. And since then this carriage was said to be ’aunted, because so many other people tried to do the same thing and throw theirselves out too, till the company changed the number⁠—”
“To this number?” cried the excited spinster, pointing to the figures on the door.
“That’s it, ma’am. And if you look you’ll see this number don’t follow on with the others. Even then the thing didn’t stop, and we got orders to let no one in. That’s where I made my mistake. I left the door unlocked, and they put you in. If this gets in the papers I’ll be dismissed for sure. The company’s awful strict about that.”
“I’m terrified!” exclaimed Miss Slumbubble, “for that’s exactly what I felt⁠—”
“That you’d got to jump out, you mean?” asked the guard.
“Yes. The terror of being shut in.”
“That’s what the doctors said Binckmann had⁠—the fear of being shut up in a tight place. They gave it some long name, but that’s what it was: she couldn’t abide being closed in. Now, here we are at the pier, ma’am, and, if you’ll allow me, I’ll help you to carry your little bits of luggage.”
“Oh, thank you, guard, thank you,” she said faintly, taking his proffered hand and getting out with infinite relief onto the platform.
“Tchivalry ain’t dead yet, Miss,” he replied gallantly, as he loaded himself up within her packages and led the way down to the steamer.
Ten minutes later the deep notes of the syren echoed across the pier, and the paddles began to churn the green sea. And Miss Daphne Slumbubble, hatless but undismayed, went abroad to flutter the remnants of her faded youth before the indifferent foreigners in the cheap pension among the Alps.