Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/60

 has not been able to make me indifferent. The pain and heartbreak of it are as keen to-day as they were when first I saw it. On the platform are women—old women for the most part, mothers and grandmothers—weeping without restraint. Their eyes are swollen; their cheeks are tear-stained. Every now and then one of them wails aloud, and the others, catching the sound, wail with her, their voices rising and falling in a weird melody, like the Church's ancient plain song.

The men stand more silent; but very often their eyes are wet, too. Their lips, tightly pressed, twitch spasmodically. Occasionally an uncontrollable sob breaks from one of them.

The windows of the railway carriages are crowded with the faces of boys and girls, all of them weeping with the helpless abandonment of sheer despair. The engine whistles. There is a rush to the carriage windows. Faces and hands are thrust out of them. There is a frenzied pressing of lips to lips, a clinging of fingers intertwined, until some railway official, mercifully brutal, by main force pushes the people back.

The train moves slowly and gathers speed. A long, sad cry comes from the people left behind, swelling to a pitch of actual agony, until some brave soul somewhere in the crowd chokes down a sob, waves his hat, and makes a pretence to cheer.

That day I saw among the crowd on the plat-