“Warm lemonade,” he remarked; “but it was better than nothing. A dam’ pretty woman in the next carriage. I’ve been trying to talk to her, but it was no good: we can’t understand each other.”
Jim stared at him in horror, as at a ghost. “Then it wasn’t you at the barrier?” he gasped in awe.
“What d’you mean?” the other asked. “Hullo, where’s my baggage?”
Jim blanched. “I threw it out of the window,” he said, swallowing convulsively.
“You did what?” the man exclaimed, staring at him in amazement.
“I thought,” Jim stammered, “it was the most neighbourly thing to do; you see, I....” But the remainder of the sentence failed upon his dry lips, as the corpulent stranger rose up before him in the crimson fullness of his fury.
Never had Jim, in all his vicissitudes, been subjected to so overwhelming a bombardment of abuse; and though he managed at length to explain the mistake he had made, he failed thereby to check the passionate maledictions which spluttered and burst about his devoted head like fireworks. At last he could stand it no longer, and, rising slowly to his feet, he smote the stranger a blow upon the jaw which sent him reeling across the compartment, as the train came to a standstill at another station.
The man staggered to the door, and, tumbling out on to the platform, shouted for help in a frenzied admixture of English, French, and Italian; but while a crowd of uncomprehending passengers and officials gathered around him, Jim opened the door at the opposite end of the carriage, and descended on to the deserted track. A moment later he had disappeared behind the wall of an adjacent shed, and soon was out on the high road, heading for his destination, which was yet some ten miles distant.
“That’s enough of neighbourly duty for one day,” he muttered, as he lit a cigarette.
A great part of August he spent amidst the woods of Monte Adamello, and in the Val Camonica; but, suddenly feeling a little bored, and having a desire for the sea, he made the long train-journey to Venice, and crossed the water to the Lido, where he bought himself a mad red-and-white bathing suit, and went daily into the sea with a crowd of merry Venetians.