i had occasion the other day to catch a train which was going to the west of england from paddington, and i was in a taxi, which was open because the weather was clear.
now when we came to within about a quarter of a mile of paddington we got into a block, which was exasperating in the extreme, for my time was short, and immediately in front of me, also in an open taxi—an astonishing thing, and one i had never seen before—sat a man who though all alone yet had his back to the driver. even in the rush of the moment i could not help being fixed and somewhat stirred by his face. it was a face of intense weariness, yet in it there was a sort of patient rest. he had a thin, straggling beard, so thin that it was composed, as it were, of separate hairs; his eyes were very hollow and long-drawn, and his eyebrows arched unduly, as though on some occasion in his life—long past and by this time half forgotten—he had suffered some immense surprise.
the expression in those eyes was one of unchangeable but meek sadness. he had a high-domed [pg 113]forehead, as some poets have, and he wore upon it, tilted rather far back, a dirty grey hat, soft and somewhat on one side. he had a heavy old grey overcoat upon him. he was thin. he had no gloves upon his hands, which were long and bony and very withered. these hands of his were clasped one over the other upon the handle of his umbrella. so he sat, and so i watched him; i in a fever to catch a train, he apparently no longer fighting the complexities of this world.
the block broke up and we all began to dodge past each other towards paddington. his taxi turned into the station just in front of mine. we got out together. i was interested to note that he asked for a ticket to the same station in the same town which i was about to visit. so great was my curiosity that i did what perhaps no one should do save a servant of the state in pursuit of a criminal, that is, i deliberately watched into which carriage he got and i got in with him. the express started and we were alone together for some two hours. he sat in the opposite corner to mine, still patient and still silent. he had bought no newspaper, his hands were still clasped on his umbrella, and he looked out of the window without interest as we passed by the various degrees of sordid and unhappy life which fringe london. and when we came out into the open country he still continued to gaze thus emptily.
i was most eager to speak to him, but i did not know how to begin. he solved the difficulty for[pg 114] me by saying at a point where the great mass of windsor is to be seen to the south of the line upon a clear day (and he leant forward to say it and said it in a low, rather pleading voice): "stands out well?"
"yes," said i.
"stands out wonderful well!" he said again, and sighed, not profoundly, but in a manner that was very touching to hear.
when a little while later we crossed the thames he moved his head slowly to look down at the water, and he sighed as we passed the town of maidenhead. then he said to me again spontaneously, "d'you often travel upon this line?"
i said i travelled upon it fairly often, and i asked him, since this appeared to strike some slight note of interest in his mind, whether he travelled upon it also. he answered, in a tone a little lower and sadder than that which he had used before and shaking his poor grey head from side to side. "not now!... i did once.... but it was broad gauge then!" and again he sighed profoundly.
he continued upon this topic, which apparently had been one of the thin veins of interest in the mine of his heart. he told me they would never have anything like the old broad gauge again—never; and he shook his head pathetically once more. he proceeded to remember the name of isambard brunel, and he spoke of the thames tunnel and how men could go dry shod under the river. "under the[pg 115] river! dry shod from one shore to the other! marvellous...."
then, still on that theme, he referred to the great eastern and said what a mighty great ship she was.
"they will never have another like her—never! no one else will ever make a ship as big as that!"
now at this point i would have contradicted him had i known him to be a man upon whom contradiction might act as a tonic and he might have told me something about his extraordinary self. for it is certain that now-a-days ships much larger than the great eastern and fifty times more efficient sail in and out of our harbours every hour. and i could even have told him that the great eastern had been broken up—but i did not know that such a truth might not provoke tears in those old eyes, so i forbore.
after a little pause he continued again, for he was now fairly on the run: "wonderful thing—steam!" and then he was silent for a long while.
i began to wonder whether perhaps he was much older than i had guessed, but in a little while he settled this for me by talking to me with some enthusiasm of lord palmerston. it was an enthusiasm of youth. i know not how many metaphors he did not use. little bits of sly slang—as dead as the pyramids—peeped into his conversation as he described his hero, and he would always end a paragraph of his panegyric by wagging his head and[pg 116] letting his heart sink again at the reflection that such men could not endure for ever.
i gently agreed with him and talked boastfully of foreign politics (for that was the trend of his own mind apparently), but his ideas upon these were not only simple but few. he had a craze that made it very difficult to keep up, if i may use that expression, for his one obsession was the french; and though he was too patriotic to prophesy their arrival upon these shores his head shook more nervously than ever when he had turned on to that topic. however, he said, we had beaten them before and we should beat them again; and he added that it was not the same napoleon. his mind fastened upon this relief and he repeated it several times. then he remained silent for a while, too tired to notice the towns among which we were passing.
i asked him whether he was acquainted with the vale of the white horse. he told me sadly, and with the first faint smile i had seen upon his face, that he had known it years ago, but "not now." he said that when he had known it the white horse was much more distinct and much more like a horse, and he wandered on to tell me that swindon to-day was not at all the place it had been. this was his universal judgment of everything along the line, and for a little he would have told me that the crest of the downs had changed.
he remarked that there was no wheat in the fields, which, after all, was not surprising at this time[pg 117] of year, and looking at the dull earth as we passed it he assured me he could remember the time when the whole of it had been yellow with corn, and if i had said: "but not in january?" i might have compelled him to an uneasy silence, which was the last thing in the world i wished.
perhaps what i most remarked about him as strange was his not reading. i have already said that he had bought no newspaper for himself, but he did not ask for mine. when his eyes fell upon it where it lay upon the seat they looked at it as a man looks at the cat upon the hearthrug. but he did not take up the paper, though the moment through which we were passing was not without interest—and this leads me to the way in which we parted.
we had sat for some time in silence, his old face still turned to the rapid landscape, which took on with every mile more and more the unmistakable nature of the west of england, the sharp hills, the combes, and with it all that which has something about it roman, a note i never miss when i cross its boundaries. at last we drew up into the great station of the city. i opened the door for him and got out first in case he should wish to hand me his bag. but though he was feeble he took it down himself and slowly came out of the carriage backwards and with the utmost caution; when he reached the platform he gasped, with some little hint of adventure in his tone, "there!" and he told me[pg 118] that railways were dangerous things. so we went down the platform together, for i wished to get all the experience of him i could before we had to part. he knew his way out, and when we got into the main place of the town an enormous mob, pushing and shoving, cheering and doing all that mobs do, was filling the whole of it. for the first time since we had met i saw a look of terror in his old eyes. he whispered to me, instead of speaking, "what's all that?"
"it's only a crowd," i said. "they're good-natured enough. it's the election."
"the election?" he answered, his look of terror increasing. "whose election? oh, i never could abide a riot! i never could abide one!"
i assured him i would get him through without any danger, and i took his thin arm in mine, and pushed and scrambled him through to a hotel that was near and there i left him. the terror had left his eyes, but he was much weaker. i asked him if i could do anything more, but the manageress told me that she knew him and that he often came there. she was a very capable person, and she reassured me, and so i left the abstracted man, he telling me in a tone still low, but no longer in a whisper, that he dursen't go out until the riot was gone.
and all this shows that during an election you meet more different kinds of men and explore more corners of england than at any other time. not[pg 119] until i had lost him did i remember that i had forgotten to ask him on which side of our present struggle he had formed his opinion, but perhaps it was just as well i did not. it would only have confused him.
