The Beautiful Visit Read Online Free PDF

station. I know I felt faintly apologetic in the midst of my apathy; he disliked trains; they made him nervous. He found me a corner seat in a second-class carriage
which possessed a large old lady who looked at me with inquisitive kindness, assuring my father of her protection.
    ‘Well,’ said my father. ‘You know where you have to get out?’ I nodded.
    ‘Got something to read?’ I shook my head. There was a lump in my throat.
    ‘Well, you can amuse yourself looking out of the window. Your luggage is at the back of the train.’ He edged out of the carriage, and looked up the platform, at the clock, I
guessed.
    ‘Don’t wait,’ I said. I wanted him to very much, but he nodded, offered me his pale grey face to kiss, almost smiled, and was gone.
    I opened my bag, containing a new leather purse, my ticket, one sovereign, and sixpence for the porter; shook out my handkerchief and blew my nose. It had begun. I stared out of the window and
wondered whether everyone in the station had travelled alone and how much they had minded. The old lady suddenly offered me a pear drop which I accepted. It was rather common to eat sweets in a
train in the morning but I was afraid she would be hurt.
    The old lady asked me where I was going, and what did I do at home, and whether I liked animals; and then told me about herself. She told me nearly her whole life, because the train started
quite soon, and she never stopped talking. Her life was very dull; mostly about how animals loved her and how much her sister disapproved, because her sister was very religious, and didn’t
believe that animals had souls and went to heaven. It all seemed pretty dull to me, or else she never told me the interesting bits. She had always lived in one house; and now she was left with her
sister, whom I don’t think she liked; their father having been a clergyman who died of a stroke when he was quite old. That was a horrible bit: she described his face and muttering with no
one able to understand a word he said. They had nursed him devotedly, until one day when he sat up, said ‘Thank God,’ and died.
    We were in the country by then. There was fine drizzling rain, so that houses looked remote, mysterious and too small; and the cows in the fields lay and waited like sofas on a pavement;
patient, uncomfortable and somehow rakish. The train stopped four times, but it was never my station, and the old lady didn’t get out; until I began to think that she didn’t have a
station, but simply lived on pear drops in a train and told people about animals.
    The old lady eventually said that my station was next. I tidied my hair, and looked in my purse to see if the sixpence was still there.
    The train stopped, and I got out. The old lady said I was sure to enjoy myself, young people always did, and settled herself back in her corner seat.
    I collected my trunk and it was wheeled outside the small station by a porter. I could see no one to meet me at all. It was cold and still raining; and I began to feel very frightened again. The
rain dripped off the scalloped edges of the platform roofs and gathered in sullen little puddles on the gravel; the tree trunks looked black and slippery like mackintosh. The porter asked me where
I was going. I told him The Village, whereupon he said They thought the train came fifteen minutes later than she do, they’ll be along, well miss he’d be leaving me. So there was
nothing for it but to give him the sixpence and wait.
    They came at last, a boy and a girl, in a pony trap.
    ‘How long have you been waiting?’
    ‘Not very long.’
    ‘Mother’s fault again. She’s hopeless about trains. She simply makes up the time they arrive and it’s always wrong. Last week we were half an hour early.’
    The boy shouted:
    ‘Joe. I want a hand with this trunk. Here I’ll find him.’ He disappeared.
    The girl smiled encouragingly.
    ‘Get in. It’s no drier, but at least there’s a seat.’ I climbed up clumsily and