Chapter Twenty Two.
A Queer Traveller.
The swells who diurnally take their departure for Windsor and the West were one afternoon, in the year 18—, called upon to use their eye-glasses upon a somewhat strange-looking traveller, who, coming from heaven knows where, made his appearance on the platform of the Paddington Station.
And yet there was nothing so very remarkable about the man—except on the Paddington platform. At London Bridge you might there have seen his like any day in the year: a personage of dark complexion, dressed in black, with a loose poncho-like garment hanging from his shoulders, and a hat upon his head, half wide-awake, but tending toward a steeple-crown—in short, a “Calabrian.”
Such was the costume of the individual who had caused the raising of eye-glasses on the Paddington platform. In an instant they were down again, the object of supercilious attention having dissipated scrutiny by diving into the interior of a second-class carriage.
“Demmed queer-looking fella!” was the remark, and with this he was forgotten.
At Slough he appeared again upon that gloomiest of platforms, commanded by a station-master possessing the loudest voice upon all the G.W.R. line. The strange traveller did not show himself until the swells, such of them as stopped, at Slough, had given up their tickets, and passed through the gate. Then, tumbling out of the carriage, the queer traveller, with a small portmanteau in his hand, placed himself in communication with the great Boanerges who directs the startings and departures at the Slough Station.
Between the two individuals thus accidentally coming together there was a contrast so striking that the most careless lounger on the platform could not have restrained himself from giving them attention. As they stood, en rapport, the very types of extremes—the negative and positive—the one a grand colossal form of true Saxon physiognomy, the other a diminutive specimen of Latinic humanity—for such the cloaked traveller appeared to be.
At the time, I myself chanced to be on the down platform, waiting for a down train. I was so struck with the tableau that I involuntarily drew nigh, to hear what the little dark man in the capote had to say to the giant in green frock and gilt buttons.
The first word that fell upon my ears was the name of General Harding! It was not pronounced in the ordinary way, but with an accent plainly foreign, and which I could easily tell to be Italian.