Being Bullied

From Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"— a newly-wed couple travel for once, above their means, in a first-class Pullman railway car:

To the minds of the pair, their surroundings reflected the glory of their marriage that morning in San Antonio. This was the environment of their new estate, and the man's face, in particular, beamed with an elation that made him appear ridiculous to the Negro porter. This individual at times surveyed them from afar with an amused and superior grin. On other occasions he bullied them with skill in ways that did not make it exactly plain to them that they were being bullied. He subtly used all the manners of the most unconquerable kind of snobbery. He oppressed them, but of this oppression they had small knowledge, and they speedily forgot that unfrequently a number of travellers covered them with stares of derisive enjoyment. Historically there was supposed to be something infinitely humourous in their situation.

     'We are due in Yellow Sky at 3.42,' he said, looking tenderly into her eyes. 

     'Oh, are we?' she said, as if she had not been aware of it. 

     To evince surprise at her husband's statement was part of her wifely amiability She took from a pocket a little silver watch, and as she held it before her, and stared at it with a frown of attnetion, the new husband's face shone.

     'I bought it in San Anton' from a friend of mine,' he told her gleefully.

     'It's seventeen minutes past twelve, she said, looking up at him with a kind of shy and clumsy coquetry.

     A passenter, noting this play, grew excessively sardonic, and winked at himself in one of the numerous mirrors.

     At last they went into the dining-car. Two rows of Negro waiters in dazzling white suits surveyed their entrance with the interest, and also the equanimity, of men who had been fore-warned. The pair fell to the lot of a waiter who happened to feel pleasure in steering them through their meal. He viewed them with the manner of a fatherly pilot, his countenance radiant with benevolence. The patronage entwined with the ordinary deference was not palpable to them. And yet as they returned to their coach they showed in their faces a sense of escape.