One incident which occurred at this time may be recorded. He was making a journey by train one piping-hot day, and was seated alone in a smoking compartment, which was connected by a door with another compartment where smoking was not permitted. During a long run between two stations this door was opened and another traveller entered, carrying a small portmanteau and a bundle of rugs. He was a stout, florid, prosperous-looking business man, whose English nationality was entirely obvious, and when he explained in very bad Italian that he was changing his seat in order to smoke a pipe, Jim answered him in his mother tongue, and soon they passed into casual conversation.
“People on these Italian railways,” the stranger said, “seem to smoke in any carriage; but I, personally, feel that one ought to stick to the rules, and only do so in the compartments specially provided for the purpose.”
“Quite right, I’m sure,” Jim replied, having no pronounced views on the subject, but wishing to be polite.
“That is what these foreigners lack—a sense of neighborly duty,” the man went on. “Don’t you think so? I always feel that England is what she is because our people always consider the other fellow. We pull together and help each other.”
He enlarged upon this subject, and was still citing instances in support of his argument, when the train pulled up at a small station, where a halt of ten minutes or so was announced by an official upon the platform. Thereupon a number of passengers alighted from the train and made their way through the blazing sunlight to a refreshment stall which stood in the cool shade of a dusty tree in the station yard, just beyond the barriers.
Jim was in lazy mood, and did not join this throng of thirsty humanity; but his companion, who was feeling the heat, left his seat and followed the hurrying crowd.
At length the bell rang, and the guard blew his horn; and Jim, suddenly awakening from a reverie, became aware that his fellow traveller had not returned, and hastily leaned out of the window to see what had become of him. The driver sounded his whistle, and set the engine in motion; and at the same moment Jim saw a fat and frantic figure struggling to pass the barrier, and being held back by excited officials, who, it seemed, were refusing to allow him to attempt to board the moving train.
Jim waved his arm and received some sort of answering signal of distress. Instantly the thought flashed into his mind that here was an opportunity to display that sense of obligation of which they had spoken, and to aid a fellow creature in trouble. The man’s baggage! He must throw it out of the train, so that, at any rate, the owner in his dilemma should not be separated from his belongings.
Snatching the portmanteau and the rugs from the seat where they rested, he pushed them through the window, and had the satisfaction of seeing them roll to safety upon the platform at the feet of a bewildered porter. Again he waved to the struggling man, and pointed repeatedly to the baggage with downward jabbing finger; then, having thus performed what he considered to be a most neighbourly act of quick-witted succour, he sank back into his corner seat and laughed to himself at the incident.
A smile still suffused his face when, several minutes later, the door from the next compartment opened and the portly Englishman made his appearance.