Fellow Passenger Read Online Free

fourteenth-century stories where the hero takes the place of husband or lover in the dark. At any rate, I trust that few other lovers could ever be mistaken for myself.
     
    There was no time for any thought. The only deliberate act I remember was wiping my hands, all dusty from the drainpipe, on my dressing-gown. I can only attempt to analyse - and that at a regrettable distance - my instinctive deductions. Horace was a bore. Horace hadn’t really been expected to come. He had perhaps been dared to come. Something of the sort I guessed from her voice. And she? Probably forbiddingly scientific, but certainly not cold. A little quick tenderness was indicated - to kiss her hair or something, on my way to the window.
     
    I tried it. I never said a word. Lord, but Horace wasn’t going to be allowed to get away so easily! I responded. What else could I do? She was delicious, and the May night was amorously scented. It seemed as if Boccaccio must be right after all. But perhaps Horace had never kissed her before, and she hadn’t much to go on. I did not dare say a word except the lightest breath of a whisper. The pace slackened, and it looked as if I would have to say something at last. That had to be avoided at all costs. I did what I hoped Horace would have done. This supple and passionate scientist had something of the scandalous attraction of the dedicated. She was startled rather than offended. She suddenly pushed me away and said:
     
    ‘Peter, you beast!’
     
    Contempt? Mingled with amusement? It was hard to tell. But if I had been Peter I should have thought the tone highly propitious. Perhaps this wing was where he was bound when he pretended to be up in the attic looking for rats. I was about to do my very best for his reputation when the door began to open. I ought to have had half an ear listening, but the complications were too absorbing. I jumped behind the curtains a little too late. Peter? Horace? Which of them was it?
     
    It was Horace.
     
    ‘I heard something,’ he remarked stolidly. ‘Is this a joke?’
     
    She was marvellous. I shall never again say a word against the higher education of women.
     
    ‘How dare you come here?’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Just because I said I wished we could go on with our talk! You must be mad!’
     
    ‘There’s a man behind those curtains,’ said Horace.
     
    His lack of tact was really astonishing. He had no right whatever to be there - or only, let us say, the very smallest - and it was no business of his if she liked to have ten men behind her curtains. Also he was about to commit the extreme indecency of turning on the light. I bounded out, hit him hard in the wind and vanished through the open door.
     
    ‘A burglar!’ she yelled. ‘Stop him! Stop him!’
     
    She had not seen my face. She still thought I was Peter. And of course she was reckoning that Peter would be able to get clear away before the hunt started, and that then he could join in it. I do not think she would have aroused the whole manor if she had known how gravely it would embarrass me. My first impression of her was - admittedly on slender evidence - that she was a woman of taste and that she should never have been confined to a routine where her heated imagination had only scientists to dwell upon.
     
    Horace was after me with the speed of light as soon as he had straightened himself out. I expect he was glad that such a very awkward situation had ended in a chance for him to play the hero. Meanwhile I was charging down the private staircase of the nunnery, and using my faithful towel as well as I could to hide my face.
     
    On the ground floor I ran into a dear old boy, full of distinction in spite of his heavy flannel pyjamas, who peered out of his room and asked me what all the excitement was.
     
    ‘Trouble up in the harem again,’ I answered. ‘Just listen to this!’
     
    And I took him by the arm and led him back into his bedroom.
     
    ‘The harem! Ho, ho!’ — he had a