I had a long journey before me, and I looked forward to it with dread.
It is my habit when forced to travel in France, the part of France
chiefly affected by the war, to resign myself to a period of misery. I
relapse into a condition of sulky torpor. Railway Transport Offices may
amuse themselves by putting me into wrong trains. Officers in command of
trains may detach the carriage in which I am and leave it for hours in
a siding. My luggage may be--and generally is--hopelessly lost. I may
arrive at my destination faint for want of food. But I bear all
these things without protest or complaint. This is not because I am
particularly virtuous or self-trained to turn the other cheek to the
smiter. I am morally feeble, deficient in power of self-defence, a lover
of peace with discomfort, rather than honourable strife.
I felt no small joy when I discovered that Thompson was to be my
travelling companion on this particular journey. I had travelled with
Thompson before. I knew that he always secured food, that he never lost
his luggage, that he had an instinct for recognizing the right train
when he saw it, and that he had a healthy disregard for the dignity of
the official persons who clog the feet of wayfarers in France.
We met at the station. Thompson’s breezy good humour gave me fresh
confidence at once. He looked energetic, hopeful and charged with
vitality.
“Come along.” he said, “we’ll report to the R.T.O. at once and get it
over.”
In France under existing conditions the traveller reports to the Railway
Transport Officer when he starts his journey, when he finishes it and
at all intervening opportunities. An R.T.O. must lead a harassed and
distressful life. He sees to it that the traveller has a fair share of
life’s trouble.
This particular R.T.O. began by trying to get us into a wrong train. I
suppose that was the line of least resistance for him. It was easier to
put us into the first train that came along. We should have been off his
hands, and another R.T.O stationed somewhere else, would have had the
job of getting us switched back on to our proper track again. The first
man--and this was all he cared for--would have been rid of us. Thompson
was equal to the situation. He talked vigorously to that R.T.O..
Thompson holds no very exalted rank in the army. I often wonder he is
not tried by Court Martial for the things he says. But the R.T.O., so
far from resenting Thompson’s remarks, offered us a sort of apology.
“I’ve been on duty ten hours,” he said, “and there’s a whole battery
of artillery lost somewhere along the line. It never was my fault; but
every general in the whole army has been ringing me up about it. The
telephone bell hasn’t stopped all day. Damn! There it is again.”
It was; loud, angry and horribly persistent. Even Thompson felt sorry
for the R.T.O.
“Never mind,” he said, “you’ll get your Military Cross all right in the
end. All you fellows do. Now buck up a bit and find our train for us.
It’s X. we want to get to.”
I mention this incident to show the kind of man Thompson is and his way
of dealing with difficulties. Under his care I felt that I should travel
safely and get to X. in the end. Comfort was not to be expected, but
Thompson did all that could be done to mitigate our misery.
We made our start from a platform blocked with piles of officers’
luggage and crowded with confused and anxious men. Subalterns in charge
of drafts asked other subalterns what they ought to do and received
counter inquiries by way of reply. Sergeants stormed blasphemously at
men who had disappeared in search of tea. Staff officers, red tabbed
and glorious, tried to preserve an appearance of dignity while their
own servants staggering under the weight of kit bags, bumped into them.
Hilarious men, going home on leave, shouted sudden snatches of song.
A decrepit Frenchman, patient in the performance of duty, blew
feeble blasts on a small horn. Thompson, alert and competent, found a
compartment. He put me in and then he bundled in my valise. After
that he found his own luggage, an enormous kit bag, two sacks, a camp
bedstead, a hammock chair and a number of small parcels.
“Get them in somehow,” he said. “We’ll settle down afterwards.”
Thompson did the settling afterwards. He so arranged our belongings that
we each had a seat The door by which anyone else might have to get in
at another station was hopelessly blocked. The small parcels were put on
the rack above our heads. Thompson gave me a list of their contents
as he put them in their places. They contained bread, butter, meat,
biscuits, cheese, a bottle of wine and a flask of brandy.
“We’re here till two o’clock to-morrow morning--till two o’clock at best.
We must have something to eat.”
A selfish traveller--I am profoundly selfish--would have been content
to keep that compartment secure from intrusion. We had completely
barricaded the door and no one could have got in if we had chosen to
defend our position. But Thompson was not selfish. The train stopped at
a station every quarter of an hour or so, and Thompson climbing up the
barricade, opened the window and took a look out every time we stopped.
At one station--it was then about 7 p.m. and quite dark--he discovered
a forlorn boy--a second-lieutenant--who was trying to find room for
himself and his belongings. Thompson hailed him. The next five minutes
were passed in fierce toil by all of us. But before the train started
Thompson got the boy and his belongings into our compartment. In my
opinion no second-lieutenants ought to be allowed to possess a suit-case
as well as a valise. This boy also had three top-coats and a Jaeger rug.
We spent nearly half an hour settling down again after that. Then we
dined, sharing the food--Thompson’s food--with the second-lieutenant. He
was a nice boy and very grateful. I thought him a little garrulous, but
Thompson encouraged him to talk. He told us all about his job. It was
his duty to go up in captive balloons and send down messages to the
artillery. It was, by his account, a sea-sicky business, worse by several
degrees than crossing the Channel in the leave boat. Thompson, who has
a thirst for every kind of information, questioned and cross-questioned
the boy. After dinner--dinner was Thompson’s name for our meal--I
prepared to go to sleep. Thompson arranged valises on the floor in such
a way that I could stretch my legs. The boy went on talking. He told
Thompson that he had dropped out of the ballooning business and that he
was going to X. to submit to a special course of training. I forget what
it was, bombing probably, or the use of trench mortars, possibly
map reading or--a subject part of the school curriculum of our
grandmothers--the use of globes. The army has a passion for imparting
knowledge of any kind to temporary lieutenants. I went to sleep while
Thompson was explaining just where the boy’s particular course of
instruction was given, a camp some three or four miles out of X.
Thompson has an amazing knowledge of what naturalists would call the
habitat of the various parts of the army.
At 3 a.m. I was awakened from my sleep. We had reached, an hour late,
the junction at which we had to change. Thompson and the boy were both
alert and cheerful. They had, I fancy, been talking all the time. Our
junction proved to be a desolate, windswept platform, without a sign of
shelter of any kind except a bleak-looking cabin, the habitation of the
local R.T.O. Thompson roused him ruthlessly and learned that, with luck,
we might expect our next train to start at six. I shivered. Three hours,
the very coldest in the twenty-four, on that platform, did not strike me
as a pleasant prospect. Thompson used a favourite phrase of his.
“After all,” he said, “it’s war; what the French call _La Guerre_.”
He professed to have discovered, not from the R.T.O. but from a sleepy
French railway official, that the train, our train in which we were to
travel, was somewhere in the neighbourhood, waiting for its engine. It
did not come to us from anywhere else; but made its start, so to speak
took its rise, at that junction. Thompson and our new friend, the boy,
proposed to get into the train when they found it.
Thompson can speak French of a sort, but he does not understand the
language as spoken by the French people. I did not believe that he had
really found out about that train. I declined to join in the search.
He and the boy went off together. They came back in about half an hour.
They said they had found a train standing by itself in a field and that
it must be ours because there was no other. The reasoning did not seen
conclusive to me, but I agreed to go and sleep in whatever train they
had found. I suggested that we should leave our luggage on the platform
and pick it up when the train got there at 6 a.m.
“That,” said Thompson, “is just the way luggage gets lost. Suppose--I
don’t say it’s likely or even possible--but suppose the train we get
into goes somewhere else. Nice fools we’d look, turning up in Paris or
Marseilles without a brush or comb among us. No. Where I go I take my
luggage with me.”
Thompson was evidently not so sure about that train as he pretended
to be. But I had reached a pitch of hopeless misery which left me
indifferent about the future. It did not seem to me to matter much
just then whether I ever got to X. or not. We had to make three trips,
stumbling over railway lines and sleepers, in the dark, falling into
wet ditches and slipping on muddy banks; but in the end we got all our
luggage, including the boy’s top-coats, into a train which lay lifeless
and deserted in a siding.
This time Thompson and the boy slept. I sat up stiff with cold. At
half-past five a French railway porter opened our door and invited us
to descend, alleging that he wanted to clean the carriage. I was quite
pleased to wake Thompson who was snoring.
“Get up,” I said, “there’s a man here who wants to clean the carriage
and we’ve got to get out.”
“I’m damned if I get out,” said Thompson.
The Frenchman repeated his request most politely. If the gentlemen would
be good enough to descend he would at once clean the carriage.
Thompson fumbled in his pocket and got out an electric torch. At first
I thought he meant to make sure that the carriage required cleaning.
Thinking things over I came to the conclusion that he felt he could talk
French better if he could see a little. He turned his ray of light on
the Frenchman and said slowly and distinctly:
“Nous sommes officiers anglais, et les officiers anglais ne descendent
pas--jamais.”
The Frenchman blinked uncertainly. Thompson added:
“Jamais de ma vie.”
That settled the French porter. He was face to face with one of
the national idiosyncrasies of the English, a new one to him and
incomprehensible, but he submitted at once to the inevitable. He gave up
all idea of cleaning the carriage and Thompson went to sleep again. The
boy slept soundly through the whole business.
At half-past seven--the train had been jogging along since six--Thompson
woke and said he thought he’d better shave. The proposal struck me as
absurd.
“We can’t possibly shave,” I said, “without water.”
Thompson was quite equal to that difficulty. The next time the train
stopped--it stopped every ten minutes or so--he hopped out with a
folding drinking cup in his hand. He returned with the cup full of hot
water. He had got it from the engine driver. He and I shaved. The boy
still slept, but, as Thompson pointed out, that did not matter. He was
too young to require much shaving.
“Nice boy that,” said Thompson. “Son of an archdeacon; was at Cambridge
when the war broke out. Carries a photo of his mother about with him.
Only nice boys carry photos of their mothers. He has it in a
little khaki-coloured case along with one of the girl he’s going to
marry--quite a pretty girl with tously hair and large eyes.”
“Oh, he’s engaged to be married, is he?”
“Of course he is. That sort of boy is sure to be. Just look at him.”
As he lay there asleep his face looked extraordinarily young and
innocent. I admitted that he was just the sort of boy who would get
engaged to the first girl who took him seriously.
“Girl’s out here nursing,” said Thompson. “V.A.D. Evidently has a strong
sense of duty or she wouldn’t be doing it. V.A.D.-ing isn’t precisely a
cushy job. He’s tremendously in love.”
“Seems to have confided most of his affairs in you,” I said.
“Told me,” said Thompson, “that the girl has just been home on leave. He
hoped to get back, too, to meet her, thinks he would have got a week if
he hadn’t been ordered off on this course, bombing or whatever it is.”
Thompson washed while he talked. It could scarcely be called a real
wash, but he soaped his face, most of his neck and his ears with his
shaving brush and then dipped his handkerchief in the drinking cup and
wiped the soap off. He was certainly cleaner afterwards; but I felt that
what was left of the water would not clean me.
Later on Thompson secured some rolls of bread, two jam pastries and six
apples. The bread and pastry I think he bought. The apples I am nearly
sure he looted. I saw a large basket of apples in one of the waggons of
a train which was standing in the station at which Thompson got out to
buy our breakfast. They were exactly like the apples he brought back.
We woke up the boy then. It did not matter whether he shaved or not; but
at his age it is a serious thing to miss a chance of food.
About midday we arrived at a large town. Thompson learned from the
R.T.O. who inhabited the railway station there that we could not get a
train to take us any further till ten o’clock that night. He said again
that was war, what the French call _guerre_, but he seemed quite pleased
at the prospect of the wait. He spoke of looking for a proper meal and
a Turkish bath. The bath we did not succeed in getting; but we had an
excellent luncheon: omelette, fried fish, some kind of stewed meat and a
bottle of red wine. The boy stuck to us and told us a lot more about his
girl. His great hope, he said, was that he would meet her somewhere in
France. I could see that what he really looked forward to was a wound of
a moderately painful kind which would necessitate a long residence, as
a patient, in her hospital. He was, as Thompson said, a nice boy; but
he talked too much about the girl. He was also a well-educated boy and
anxious to make the best of any opportunities which came his way. He
told us that there was an interesting cathedral in the town and proposed
that we should all go and see it after lunch. Thompson is not an
irreligious man. Nor am I. We both go to church regularly, though not to
excess, but we do not either of us care for spending week day afternoons
in a cathedral. Thompson still hankered after a Turkish bath. I had a
plan for getting a bedroom somewhere and going to sleep. We sent the boy
off to the cathedral by himself.
The Turkish bath, as I said, was unobtainable. We walked through most of
the streets of that town looking for it. Then Thompson proposed that we
should have afternoon tea. That we got in a small room above a
pastry cook’s shop. The girl who served us brought us tea and a large
assortment of sticky pastry. Thompson hates sticky pastry. There is only
one kind of cake made in France which he will eat. I knew what it was,
for I had often had tea with Thompson before. I should have recognized
one if I had seen it; but I could not remember the French name for it.
Thompson insisted on describing its appearance to the girl. He gave his
description in English and the girl looked puzzled. I tried to translate
what he said into French and she looked still more puzzled.
Then from the far corner of the room came a pleasant voice.
“I think _brioche_ is the word you want.” It was. I recollected it
directly I heard it. I turned to thank our interpreter. She was a young
woman in the uniform of a V.A.D. She was sitting at a table by herself,
was, in fact, the only other occupant of the room. I thanked her.
Thompson joined in and thanked her effusively. There was not much light
in the room and her corner was decidedly gloomy. Still, it was possible
to see that she was a decidedly pretty girl. We both said that if there
was anything we could do for her we should be very pleased to do it
After the way she helped us out with the _brioche_ we could scarcely say
less.
“Perhaps,” she said, “you may be able to tell me when I will be able to
get a train to----?”
She mentioned one of those towns of which the English have taken
temporary possession, turning the hotels into hospitals, to the great
profit of the original proprietors.
“Certainly,” said Thompson. “There’s a train at 9 p.m. But you’ll be
travelling all night in that. If I were you I’d stay here till to-morrow
morning and then----”
“Can’t,” said the girl. “Properly speaking I’m due back to-day; but I
missed the early train this morning and only got here an hour ago. The
boat was horribly late.”
“Ah,” said Thompson, “you’re coming back after leave, I suppose.”
The girl sighed faintly.
“Yes.” she said, “but I’ve had a fortnight’s leave; I can’t complain.”
“I’ll just write down that train for you,” said Thompson.
He scribbled 9 p.m. on a piece of paper and carried it over to the girl.
It seemed to me an unnecessary thing to do. Nine is a simple number,
easy to remember. Some thought of the same kind occurred to the girl.
She looked at Thompson, first with some surprise, and then, I thought,
rather coldly. She was evidently not inclined to accept any further
friendly offers from Thompson. He did not seem in the least abashed even
when she turned her shoulder to us and looked the other way.
“Have you seen the cathedral here?” said Thompson.
The girl made no answer.
“I really think,” said Thompson, “that you ought to pay a visit to the
cathedral. You’ll like it, you really will. And you’ve got hours before
you. I don’t see how you can fill in the time if you don’t go to the
cathedral.”
“Thank you,” said the girl without turning round.
“I’m not going there,” said Thompson, “or I’d offer to show you the way.
But you can’t miss it. You can see the spire from the window. It’s the
finest specimen of early Gothic in the north of France. The glass is
superb. There’s an altar piece by Raphael or Botticelli, I forget which.
The screen is late Italian Renaissance, and there’s a tomb in the west
transept which is supposed to be that of the Venerable Bede.”
The girl got up and walked out of the room. I was not surprised.
“Thompson,” I said, “what do you mean by behaving like a cad? Any one
could see that she is a nice girl; a lady, not that sort at all.”
Thompson grinned.
“And as for that rigmarole of yours about the cathedral--what the
devil do you know about Italian Renaissance, or Botticelli or early
Gothic? I never heard such rot in my life. As a matter of fact I’ve
always heard that the glass in this cathedral is poor.”
“All the same,” said Thompson, “if she goes there she’ll be pleased.
She’ll find something she’ll like a great deal better than stained
glass.”
“As for the Venerable Bede,” I said, “he was buried in Oxford if he
was buried anywhere, and I don’t know that he was. He might have been
cremated, or minced up by high explosives so that they couldn’t bury
him.”
“I thought I recognized her,” said Thompson, “I went over to her table
and had a good look to make sure.”
“Don’t pretend you know her,” I said “She certainly didn’t know you.”
“I looked at her photograph five times at least last night while you
were asleep.”