The afternoon train was crawling up the Rhone valley, wending its leisurely way over the flat and low-lying bottom as though to afford its passengers, mostly foreigners, every opportunity of admiring its native marsh. In the corner of a second-class smoking-carriage sat the typical British matron whom her feelings had moved to unburden herself as above. Beside her, half effaced by her imposing personality, sat her spouse, a mild country parson. A great number of bundles and a great number of wraps completed the outfit.
“I must say it is most disagreeable,” went on the lady, with renewed sniffs. “And how ill-mannered these foreigners are, smoking in the presence of ladies.” This with a dagger-glance at the other two occupants of the carriage, who each, with a knapsack on the rack above his head and clad in serviceable walking attire, were lounging back on the comfortable seats, placidly blowing clouds.
“Hush, my dear!” expostulated the parson. “It’s a smoking-carriage, you know. I told you so before we got in at Martigny. Why not go into the other compartment? It’s quite empty.”
It was. On the Swiss lines the carriages are generally built on American principles; you can walk the entire length of them, and indeed of the whole train. They are, however, divided into two compartments, the smaller being reserved for the convenience of non-smokers, the other way about, as with us.
“No, I shall certainly not take the trouble to move,” replied the offended matron. “Smoking-carriage or not, those two men are most unmannerly. Suppose, Augustus, you go over to them and ask them to put out their cigars? Remind them that it is not usual in England to smoke in the presence of ladies.”
But the Rev. Augustus was not quite such a fool as that.
“Not a bit of use, my dear,” he said wearily. “They’d certainly retort that we are not in England—probably request us to step into the non-smoking compartment.”
Fordham, who at the first remonstrance had rapidly signalled his friend not to talk and thus betray their nationality, was leaning back enjoying the situation thoroughly.
“Que diable allait elle faire dans cette galère?” he murmured, rightly judging the other travellers’ command of modern languages to be of the limited order. Phil for his part was obliged to put his head out of the window in order to laugh undetected. Meanwhile the aggrieved British matron in her corner continued to fume and sniff and inveigh against the abominable manners of those foreigners, and otherwise behave after the manner of her kind when, by virtue of honouring it with their presence, they have taken some continental country under their august wing. Then the crawl of the train settled down to an imperceptible creep as it drew nearer and nearer to the old-world and picturesque capital of the Valais.
There was whispering between the pair. Then, in obedience to a conjugal mandate, the mild parson diffidently approached our two friends.