Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/108

Rh Dishevelled, emaciated, pitiful in the extreme, and just then seized by another racking fit of his coughing, the peasant finally appeared from under the bench. The controller watched this pitiful figure with a tired, half-contemptuous expression.

"Where's your ticket?" insisted the conductor.

"Your Honor, I've lost it. God is my witness . . . As though I would . . .?"

"Where did you get on?" shouted the conductor, now thoroughly exasperated.

"On the last station, your Honor. May I never move from this spot . . . I lost the ticket, and my senses, too, I guess, so I hid under the bench."

The peasant attempted to twist his face into a pitiful smile, as though he himself considered the "incident" funny.

The controller was silent.

"It is not true. It is not true," the lady said with a coquettish smirk. "He's been in the car for a long time. How can you let them in . . . They might steal something, or murder somebody."

"Something like this happened to me once," said the retired Captain from his corner, "That is, not to me exactly, but to a trunk."

At that moment a whistle sounded at a distance.

The train began to slow down.

"Come on over to the station," said the conductor and began to "encourage" the peasant to move on.

The controller thanked the lady with over-emphasized politeness. She was delighted. The passengers began to discuss the incident. Some of them denounced the peasant, others spoke disapprovingly of the lady's action. Many a lance was broken. The retired Captain, silent until now, began to narrate enthusiastically the scarcely credible adventures of some phenomenal suitcase. Only the dark official took no part in the conversation. He was still sitting by the window, and, as the train pulled out, he alone saw a tall gendarme leading the peasant into the interior of the dark station along the dimly-lit platform, with its gas-light violently swayed by the strong north wind.