Page:Aaron's Rod, Lawrence, New York 1922.djvu/240

 then stared also at the luggage overhead: and with his almost invisible north-Italian gesture said much plainer than words would have said it: "Go to hell. I'm here and I'm going to stop here."

There was something insolent and unbearable about the look—and about the rocky fixity of the large man. He sat as if he had insolently taken root in his seat. Aaron flushed slightly. Francis and Angus strolled along the train, outside, for the corridor was already blocked with the mad Bologna rush, and the baggage belonging. They joined Aaron as he stood on the platform.

"But where is your seat?" cried Francis, peering into the packed and jammed compartments of the third class.

"That man's sitting in it."

"Which?" cried Francis, indignant.

"The fat one there—with the collar on his knee."

"But it was your seat—!"

Francis' gorge rose in indignation. He mounted into the corridor. And in the doorway of the compartment he bridled like an angry horse rearing, bridling his head. Poising himself on one hip, he stared fixedly at the man with the collar on his knee, then at the baggage aloft. He looked down at the fat man as a bird looks down from the eaves of a house. But the man looked back with a solid, rock-like impudence, before which an Englishman quails: a jeering, immovable insolence, with a sneer round the nose and a solid-seated posterior.

"But," said Francis in English—none of them had any Italian yet. "But," said Francis, turning round to Aaron, "that was your seat?" and he flung his long fore-finger in the direction of the fat man's thighs.

"Yes!" said Aaron.

"And he's taken it—!" cried Francis in indignation.

"And knows it, too," said Aaron.

"But—!" and Francis looked round imperiously, as if to summon his bodyguard. But bodyguards are no longer forthcoming, and train-guards are far from satisfactory. The fat man sat on, with a sneer-grin, very faint but very