The Wheel Spins by Ethel White Read Free Book Online Page A

suitcase, to show that he, too, had grasped the situation.
    In spite of her resistance to it, the raw spirit, together with her change of circumstance, had revived Iris considerably. She felt practically restored again and mistress of herself as she showed her ticket to the porter.
    The effect on him was electric. He yammered with excitement, as he grabbed her arm and rushed with her to the door. Directly they had passed through it, Iris understood the origin of the curious pervading noise which had helped to complicate her nightmare.
    It was the gush of steam escaping from an engine. While she had let the precious minutes slip by, the express had entered the station.
    Now it was on the point of departure.
    The platform was a scene of wild confusion. Doors were being slammed. People were shouting farewells and crowding before the carriages. An official waved a flag and the whistle shrilled.
    They were one minute too late. Iris realised the fact that she was beaten, just as the porter—metaphorically—snatched at the psychological moment, and was swung away with it on its flight. He took advantage of the brief interval between the first jerk of the engine and the revolution of the wheels, to charge the crowd, like an aged tiger. There was still strength and agility in his sinewy old frame to enable him to reach the nearest carriage and wrench open the door.
    His entrance was disputed by a majestic lady in black. She was a personage to whom—as a peasant—his bones instinctively cringed. On the other hand, his patron had paid him a sum far in excess of what he earned in tips during the whole of a brief season.
    Therefore, his patron must have her place. Ducking under the august lady’s arm, he hurled Iris’ suitcase into the compartment and dragged her inside after it.
    The carriage was moving when he scrambled out, to fall in a heap on the platform. He was unhurt, however, for when she looked back to wave her thanks, he grinned at her like a toothless gnome.
    Already he was yards behind. The station slid by, and the lake began to lap against the piles of the rough landing-stage. It rippled past the window in a sheet of emerald, ruffled by the breeze and burnished by the sun. As the train swung round the curve of the rails to the cutting in the rocks, Iris looked back for a last view of the village—a fantastic huddle of coloured toy-buildings, perched on the green shelf of the valley.

CHAPTER SEVEN
PASSENGERS
    As the train rattled out of the cliff tunnel and emerged in a green tree-choked gorge, Iris glanced at her watch. According to the evidence of its hands, the Trieste express was not yet due at the village station.
    “It must have stopped when I crashed,” she decided. “Sweet luck. It might have lost me my train.”
    The reminder made her feel profoundly grateful to be actually on her way back to England. During the past twenty-four hours she had experienced more conflicting emotions than in a lifetime of easy circumstance and arrangement. She had known the terrifying helplessness of being friendless, sick, and penniless—with every wire cut. And then, at the worst, her luck had turned, as it always did.
    From force of contrast the everyday business of transport was turned into a temporary rapture. Railway travel was no longer an infliction, only to be endured by the aid of such palliatives as reservations, flowers, fruit, chocolates, light literature, and a group of friends to shriek encouragement.
    As she sat, jammed in an uncomfortable carriage, in a train which was not too clean, with little prospect of securing a wagon-lit at Trieste, she felt the thrill of a first journey.
    The scenery preserved its barbarous character in rugged magnificence. The train threaded its way past piled-up chunks of disrupted landscape, like a Doré steel-engraving of Dante’s Inferno. Waterfalls slashed the walls of granite precipices with silver-veining. Sometimes they passed arid patches, where dark pools, fringed with