TEXT A Theodoric Voler had been
brought up, from infancy to the confines of middle age, by a fond mother whose
chief solicitude had been to keep him screened from what she called the coarser
realities of life. When she died she left Theodoric alone in a world that was as
real as ever, and a good deal coarser than he considered it had any need to be.
To a man of his temperament and upbringing even a simple railway journey was
crammed with petty annoyances and minor discords, and as he settled himself down
in a secondclass compartment one September morning he was conscious of ruffled
feelings and general mental discomposure. He had been staying at
a country vicarage, the inmates of which had been certainly neither brutal nor
bacchanalian, but their supervision of the domestic establishment had been of
that lax order which invites disaster. The pony carriage that was to take him to
the station had never been properly ordered, and when the moment for his
departure drew near, the handyman who should have produced the required article
was nowhere to be found. In this emergency Theodoric, to his mute but very
intense disgust, found himself obliged to collaborate with the vicar’s daughter
in the task of harnessing the pony, which necessitated groping about in an
ill-lighted outbuilding called a stable, and smelling very like one--except in
patches where it smelled of mice. As the train glided out of the
station Theodoric’s nervous imagination accused himself of exhaling a weak odour
of stable yard, and possibly of displaying a mouldy straw or two on his
unusually well-brushed garments. Fortunately the only other occupation of the
compartment, a lady of about the same age as himself, seemed inclined for
slumber rather than scrutiny; the train was not due to stop till the terminus
was reached, in about an hour’s time, and the carriage was of the old-fashioned
sort that held no communication with a corridor, therefore no further travelling
companions were likely to intrude on Theodoric’s semiprivacy. And yet the train
had scarcely attained its normal speed before he became reluctantly but vividly
aware that he was not alone with the slumbering lady; he was not even alone in
his own clothes. A warm, creeping movement over his flesh
betrayed the unwelcome and highly resented presence, unseen but poignant, of a
strayed mouse, that had evidently dashed into its present retreat during the
episode of the pony harnessing. Furtive stamps and shakes and wildly directed
pinches failed to dislodge the intruder, whose motto, indeed, seemed to be
Excelsior; and the lawful occupant of the clothes lay back against the cushions
and endeavoured rapidly to evolve some means for putting an end to the dual
ownership. Theodoric was goaded into the most audacious undertaking of his life.
Crimsoning to the hue of a beetroot and keeping an agonised watch on his
slumbering fellow traveller, he swiftly and noiselessly secured the ends of his
railway rug to the racks on either side of the carriage, so that a substantial
curtain hung athwart the compartment. In the narrow dressing room that he had
thus improvised he proceeded with violent haste to extricate himself partially
and the mouse entirely from the surrounding casings of tweed and
half-wool. As the unravelled mouse gave a wild leap to the
floor, the rug, slipping its fastening at either end, also came down with a
heart-curdling flop, and almost simultaneously the awakened sleeper opened her
eyes. With a movement almost quicker than the mouse’s, Theodoric pounced on the
rug and hauled its ample folds chin-high over his dismantled person as he
collapsed into the farther corner of the carriage. The blood raced and beat in
the veins of his neck and forehead, while he waited dumbly for the communication
cord to be pulled. The lady, however, contented herself with a silent stare at
her strangely muffled companion. How much had she seen, Theodoric queried to
himself; and in any case what on earth must she think of his present
posture Which of the following does NOT describe Theodoric’s feeling when he was on the train