Appleby's End Read Online Free Page A

sat down in a corner and curved a long white hand over his eyes. The engine hooted on a rising note and the train, which appeared now to consist of one carriage only, set off at a comparatively brisk pace for Drool. It was when they had passed this station that Mr Raven made his notable offer.
    â€œI really think, Mr – um – Appleby, that your best plan will be to spend the night with me. I should be extremely happy if you would do so. My place is three stops beyond Linger: Sleeps Hill, Boxer’s Bottom, and then my own station, at which a conveyance will be waiting. And in the morning I think we can promise to get you across to Snarl.”
    This, Appleby felt, was an offer not lightly to be turned down. Whatever the domestic circumstances of the compiler of the New Millennium might be, they could scarcely promise less in the way of hospitality than the demented Mrs Ulstrup or Brettingham Scurl’s pigs. He was about to announce his grateful acceptance when the train, which appeared to have to cope in this latter end of its journey only with the shortest laps, drew up in Linger Junction, and Mr Raven once more popped out his head. “Not a doubt of it,” he called back over his shoulder. “Gregory has gone. Ah, filling up still.” And once more he stepped back to let a new passenger enter.
    It was a girl this time. She had long haunches and slender flanks – she was, in fact, what old-fashioned writers would call tall and slim – and she had long eyelashes and what it was possible to think of as a long nose. Her manner was severe and composed. She sat down without glancing at her fellow travellers, put her toes together, smoothed her skirt and brought out a book. The train was going forward slowly again – presumably as addressing itself to whatever acclivity led to Sleeps Hill – and to its regular and soporific jolting there was now added an intermittent sideways lurch and shudder. This was accompanied by rattlings, clankings, whistlings and wailings. Upon the snowstorm there had been superimposed something between a high wind and a gale.
    Appleby turned to his prospective host. “Your invitation is very kind. But I would be sorry to put you–”
    â€œThen that’s settled,” said Mr Raven cheerfully. And Mr Raven, it occurred to Appleby, was on the whole steadily cheerful. Or if he would not show up in normal surroundings as absolutely cheerful in himself, yet he had, in this present melancholy setting, a large share of the quality relatively regarded. Appleby frowned at this dubiously philosophical speculation. But the gloom of all else surrounding him was indisputable. Chirico’s hotel, the ranked waitresses, the holiday-makers in their overwhelming mourning: all these were becoming more sinister station by station. Nor were the new passengers at all out of key. The man with the inky cloak was staring at Appleby at once fixedly and with a vast inattention – much, Appleby thought, as one stares through a window at some distant and displeasing scene. And the girl had laid down her book and was looking at him too. The girl was really looking at him , but rather – surely – as if he were an oddly eroded garden ornament or a freak potato in a horticultural show… “Sleeps Hill,” said Mr Raven comfortably. “And filling up.”
    Something long, pale and flattened had appeared against the window, like the under-belly of a sea-slug sucked hard against the side of an aquarium. Slightly above and to either side of this were what might have been two writhing caterpillars of the furry sort, and below each of these was a faint but baleful gleam of fire. The whole, in fact, was a human face engaged in some act of reconnaissance, and a moment later the door was thrown open and its owner heaved himself violently into the compartment.
    It was odd, thought Appleby, that here should be another passenger with a notably long nose. And