Part 21

Marlow was at his best in the pentameter, but Ford usually got his thrill in a chipped line of about three words--three words which, while they mean nothing, mean everything. All depends on what you “read into” them. And the true impassioned student of human nature will read into the overheard exclamations of the street a whole revealing philosophy. What! Two temperaments are separately born, by the agency of chance or the equally puzzling agency of design, they one day collide, become intimate, and run parallel for a space. You perceive them darkly afar off; they approach you; you are in utter ignorance of them; and then in the instant of passing you receive a blinding flash of illumination, and the next instant they are eternally hidden from you again. That blinding flash of illumination may consist of “My big wolf!” or it may consist of “It is solely a question of the cache-corset.” But in any case it is and must be profoundly significant. In any case it is a gleam of light on a mysterious place. Even the matter of the height of the floor on which she lived is charged with an overwhelming effect for one who loves his fellow-man. And lives there the being stupid or audacious enough to maintain that the French national character does not emerge charmingly and with a curious coherence from the fragments of soul-communication which I have set down?

*****

On New Year’s Eve I was watching the phenomena of the universal scheme of things in Putney High-street. A man and a girl came down the footpath locked in the most intimate conversation. I could see that they were perfectly absorbed in each other. And I heard the man say:--

“Yes, Charlie is a very good judge of beer--Charlie is!”

And then they were out of hearing, vanished from the realm of my senses for ever more. And yet people complain that the suburbs are dull! As for me, when I grasped the fact that Charlie was a good judge of beer I knew for certain that I was back in England, the foundation of whose greatness we all know. I walked on a little farther and overtook two men, silently smoking pipes. The companionship seemed to be a taciturn communion of spirits, such as Carlyle and Tennyson are said to have enjoyed on a certain historic evening. But I was destined to hear strange messages that night. As I forged ahead of them, one murmured:--

“I done him down a fair treat!”

No more! I loitered to steal the other’s answer. But there was no answer. Two intelligences that exist from everlasting to everlasting had momentarily joined the path of my intelligence, and the unique message was that some one had been done down a fair treat. They disappeared into the unknown of Werter-road, and I was left meditating upon the queer coincidence of the word “beer” preceding the word “treat.” A disturbing coincidence, a caprice of hazard! And my mind flew back to a smoking-concert of my later youth, in which “Beer, beer, glorious beer” was followed, on the programme, by Handel’s Largo.

*****

In the early brightness of yesterday morning fate led me to Downing-street, which is assuredly the oddest street in the world (except Bow-street). Everything in Downing-street is significant, save the official residence of the Prime Minister, which, with its three electric bells and its absurdly inadequate area steps, is merely comic. The way in which the vast pile of the Home Office frowns down upon that devoted comic house is symbolic of the empire of the permanent official over the elected of the people. It might be thought that from his second-floor window the Prime Minister would keep a stern eye on the trembling permanent official. But experienced haunters of Downing-street know that the Hessian boot is on the other leg. Why does that dark and grim tunnel run from the side of No. 10, Downing-street, into the spacious trackless freedom of the Horse Guards Parade, if it is not to facilitate the escape of Prime Ministers fleeing from the chicane of conspiracies? And how is it that if you slip out of No. 10 in your slippers of a morning, and toddle across to the foot of the steps leading to St. James’s Park, you have instantly a view (a) of Carlton House Terrace and (b) of the sinister inviting water of St. James’s Park pond? I say that the mute significance of things is unsettling, in the highest degree. That morning a motor-brougham was seeking repose in Downing-street. By the motorbrougham stood a chauffeur, and by the chauffeur stood a girl under a feathered hat. They were exchanging confidences, these two. I strolled nonchalantly past. The girl was saying:--

“Look at this skirt as I’ve got on now. Me and her went ’alves in it. She was to have it one Sunday, and me the other. But do you suppose as I could get it when it come to my turn? Not me! Whenever I called for it she was always--” I heard no more. I could not decently wait. But I was glad the wearer had ultimately got the skirt. The fact was immensely significant.

III--ON THE ROAD

The reader may remember a contrivance called a bicycle on which people used to move from one place to another. The thing is still employed by postmen in remote parts. We discovered a couple in the stable, had them polished with the electroplate powder and went off on them. It seemed a strange freak. Equally strange was the freak of quitting Fontainebleau, even for three days. I had thought that no one ever willingly left Fontainebleau.

Everybody knows what the roads of France are. Smooth and straight perfection, bordered by double rows of trees. They were assuredly constructed with a prevision of automobiles. They run in an absolutely straight line for about five miles, then there is a slight bend and you are faced with another straight line of five miles. It is magnificent on a motor-car at a mile a minute. On a bicycle it is tedious; you never get anywhere, and the one fact you learn is that France consists of ten thousand million plane trees and a dust-cloud. We left the main road at the very first turn. As a rule, the bye-roads of France are as well kept as the main roads, often better, and they are far more amusing. But we soon got lost in a labyrinth of bad roads. We went back to the main roads, despite their lack of humour, and they were just as bad. All the roads of the department which we had invaded were criminal--as criminal as anything in industrial Yorkshire. A person who had travelled only on the roads of the Loiret would certainly say that French roads were the worst in Europe. This shows the folly of generalising. We held an inquisition as to these roads when we halted for lunch.

“What would you?” replied the landlady. “It is like that!” She was a stoic philosopher. She said the state of the roads was due to the heavy loads of beetroot that pass over them, the beetroot being used for sugar. This seemed to us a feeble excuse. She also said we should find that the roads got worse. She then proved that in addition to being a great philosopher she was a great tactician. We implored lunch, and it was only 11:15. She said, with the most charming politeness, that her regular clients--_ces messieurs_--arrived at twelve, and not before, but that as we were “pressed” she would prepare us a special lunch (founded on an omelette) instantly. Meanwhile we could inspect her fowls, rabbits and guinea-pigs. Well, we inspected her fowls, rabbits and guinea-pigs till exactly five minutes past twelve, when _ces messieurs_ began to arrive. The adorable creature had never had the least intention of serving us with a special lunch. Her one desire was not to hurt our sensitive, high-strung natures. The lunch consisted of mackerel, ham, cutlets, _fromage à la crème_, fruits and wine. I have been eating at French inns for years, and have not yet ceased to be astonished at the refined excellence of the repast which is offered in any little poky hole for a florin.

*****

She was right about the roads. Emphatically they got worse. But we did not mind, for we had a strong wind at our hacks. The secret of happiness in such an excursion as ours is in the wind and in naught else. We bumped through some dozen villages, all exactly alike--it was a rolling pasture country--and then came to our first town, Puiseaux, whose church with its twisted spire must have been destined from its beginning to go on to a picture post card. And having taught the leading business house of Puiseaux how to brew tea, we took to the wind again, and were soon in England; that is to say, we might have been in England, judging by the hedges and ditches and the capriciousness of the road’s direction, and the little occasional orchards, bridges and streams. This was not the hedgeless, severe landscape of Gaul--not a bit! Only the ancient farmhouses and the châteaux guarded by double pairs of round towers reminded us that we were not in Shropshire. The wind blew us in no time to within sight of the distant lofty spire of the great church of Pithiviers, and after staring at it during six kilomètres, we ran down into a green hollow and up into the masonry of Pithiviers, where the first spectacle we saw was a dog racing towards the church with a huge rat in his mouth. Pithiviers is one of the important towns of the department. It demands and receives respect. It has six cafés in its picturesque market square, and it specialises in lark patties. What on earth led Pithiviers to specialise in lark patties I cannot imagine. But it does. It is revered for its lark patties, which are on view everywhere. We are probably the only persons who have spent a night in Pithiviers without partaking of lark patties. We went into the hotel and at the end of the hall saw three maids sewing in the linen-room--a pleasing French sight--and, in a glass case, specimens of lark patties. We steadily and consistently refused lark patties. Still we did not starve. Not to mention lark patties, our two-and-tenpenny dinner comprised soup, boiled beef, carrots, turnips, _gnocchi_, fowl, beans, leg of mutton, cherries, strawberries and minor details. During this eternal meal, a man with a bag came vociferously into the _salle à manger_. He was selling the next day’s morning paper! Chicago could not surpass that!

Largely owing to the propinquity and obstinacy of the striking clock of the great church I arose at 6 a. m. The market was already in progress. I spoke with! an official about the clock, but I could not make him see that I had got up in the middle of the night. In spite of my estimate of his clock, he good-naturedly promised me much better roads. And the promise was fulfilled. But we did not mind. For now the strong wind was against us. This altered all our relations with the universe, and transformed us into impolite, nagging pessimists; previously we had been truly delightful people.

All that day till tea-time we grumbled over a good road that wound its way through a gigantic wheat-field. True that sometimes the wheat was oats, or even a pine plantation; but, broadly speaking, the wheat was all wheat, and the vast heaving sea of it rolled up to the very sides of the road under our laggard wheels. And it was all right, and it was all being cut with two-horse McCormick reapers. We actually saw hundreds of McCormick reapers. Near and far, on all the horizons, we could detect the slow-revolving paddle of the McCormick reaper. And at least we reached Chateau Landon, against the walls of which huge waves of wheat were breaking. Chateau Landon was our destination. We meant to discover it and we did.

*****

Château Landon is one of the most picturesque towns in France; but, as the landlady of the Red Hat said to us, “no one has yet known how to make come _messieurs_, the tourists.” I should say that (except Carcassone, of course) Vezelay, in the Avalonnais, is perhaps _the_ most picturesque town in all France. Chateau Landon comes near it, and is much easier to get at. On one side it rises straight up in a tremendous sheer escarpment out of the little river Fusain, in which the entire town washes its clothes. The view of the city from the wooded and murmurous valley is genuinely remarkable, and the most striking feature of the view is the feudal castle which soars with its terrific buttresses out of a thick mass of trees. Few more perfect relics of feudalism than this formidable building can exist anywhere. It will soon celebrate its thousandth birthday. In putting it to the uses of a home for the poor (Asile de St. Severin) the townsmen cannot be said to have dishonoured its old age. You climb up out of the river by granite steps cut into the escarpment and find yourself all of a sudden in the market square, which looks over a precipice. Everybody is waiting to relate to you the annals of the town since the beginning of history: how it had its own mint, and how the palace of the Mint still stands; how many an early Louis lived in the town, making laws and dispensing justice; how Louis le Gros put himself to the trouble of being buried in the cathedral there; and how the middlemen come from Fontainebleau to buy game at the market. We sought the tomb in the cathedral, but found nothing of interest there save a stout and merry priest instructing a class of young girls in the aisle. However, we did buy a pair of fowls in the market for 4s. and carried them at our saddles, all the way back to Fontainebleau. The landlady of the Red Hat asked us whether her city was not wondrous? We said it was. She asked us whether we should come again? We said we should. She asked us whether we could do anything to spread the fame of her wondrous town? We said we would do what we could.

To reach Fontainebleau it was necessary to pass through another ancient town which we have long loved, largely on account of Balzac, to wit, Nemours. After Chateau Landon, Nemours did not seem to be quite the exquisite survival that we had thought. It had almost a modern look. Thus on the afternoon of the third day we came to Fontainebleau again. And there was no wind at all. We had covered a prodigious number of miles, about as many as a fair automobile would swallow, up in two hours; in fact, eighty.

IV--A TRAIN

At the present moment probably the dearest bed of its size in the world is that to be obtained on the Calais-Mediterranean express, which leaves Calais at 1.05 every afternoon and gets to Monte Carlo at 9.39 the next morning. This bed costs you between £4 and £5 if you take it from Calais, and between £3 and £4 if you take it from Paris (as I did), in addition to the first-class fare (no bagatelle that, either!), and, of course, in addition to your food. Why people should make such a terrific fuss about this train I don’t know. It isn’t the fastest train between Paris and Marseilles, because, though it beats almost every other train by nearly an hour, there is, in February, just one train that beats _it_--by one minute. * And after Marseilles it is slow. And as for comfort, well, Americans aver that it “don’t cut much ice, anyway” (this is the sort of elegant diction you hear on it), seeing that it doesn’t even comprise a drawingroom! car. Except when you are eating, you must remain boxed up in a compartment decidedly not as roomy as a plain, common, ordinary, decent Anglo-Saxon first-class compartment between Manchester and Liverpool.

* In 1904.

However, it is the train of trains, outside the Siberian express, and the Chicago and Empire City Vestibule Flyer, Limited, and if decorations, silver, rare woods, plush, silk, satin, springs, cut-flowers, and white-gloved attendants will make a crack train, the International Sleeping Car Company (that bumptious but still useful association for the aggrandisement of railway directors) has made one. You enter this train with awe, for you know that in entering you enrol yourself once and for ever among the élite. You know that nobody in Europe can go one better. For just as the whole of the Riviera coast has been finally specials ised into a winter playground for the rich idlers, dilettanti, hypochondriacs, and invalids of two or three continents, and into a field of manouvres for the always-accompanying gilded riff-raff and odalisques, so that train is a final instance of the specialisation of transit to suit the needs of the aforesaid plutocrats and adventurers. And whether you count yourself a plutocrat or an adventurer, you are correct, doing the correct thing, and proving every minute that money is no object, and thus realising the ideal of the age.

*****

French railway platforms are so low that in the vast and resounding Gare de Lyon when the machine rolled magnificently in I was obliged to look up to it, whether I wanted to or not; and so I looked up reverently. The first human being that descended from it was an African; not a negro, but something nobler. He was a very big man, with a distinguished mien, and he wore the uniform, including the white gloves, of the dining-car staff. Now, I had learnt from previous excursions in this gipsy-van of the élite that the proper thing to do aboard! it is to display a keen interest in your stomach. So I approached the African and demanded the hour of dinner. He enveloped me in a glance of courteous but cold and distant disdain, and for quite five seconds, as he gazed silently down at me (I am 5ft.-8 3/4in.), he must have been saying to himself: “Here’s another of ’em.” I felt inclined to explain to him, as the reporter explained to the revivalist who inquired about his soul, that I was on the Press, and therefore not to be confused with the general élite. But I said nothing. I decided that if I told him that I worked as hard as he did he would probably take me for a liar as well as a plutocratic nincompoop.

Then the train went off, carrying its cargo of human parcels all wrapped up in pretty cloths and securely tied with tapes and things, and plunged with its glitter and meretricious flash down through the dark central quietudes of France. I must say that as I wandered about its shaking corridors, looking at faces and observing the deleterious effects of idleness, money, seasickness, lack of imagination, and other influences, I was impressed, nevertheless, by the bright gaudiness of the train’s whole entity. It isn’t called a train _de luxe_; it is called a train _de grand luxe_; and though the artistic taste displayed throughout is uniformly deplorable, still it deserves the full epithet. As an example of ostentation, of an end aimed at and achieved, it will pass muster. And, lost in one of those profound meditations upon life and death and luxury which even the worst novelists must from time to time indulge in, I forgot everything save the idea of the significance of the train rushing, so complete and so self-contained, through unknown and uncared-for darkness. For me the train might have been whizzing at large through the world as the earth whizzes at large through space. Then that African came along and asserted with frigid politeness that dinner was ready.

*****

And in the highly-decorated dining-car, where vines grew all up the walls, and the table-lamps were electric bulbs enshrined in the metallic curves of the _art nouveau_, and the fine cut flowers had probably been brought up from Grasse that morning, it happened that the African himself handed me the menu and waited on me. And when he arrived balancing the elaborate silver “contraption” containing ninety-nine varieties of _hors-d’oeuvres_, but not the particular variety I wanted, I determined that I would enter the lists with him. And, catching his eye, I said with frigid politeness: ‘_N’y a-t-il pas de sardines?_’

He restrained himself for his usual five seconds, and then he replied, with a politeness compared to which mine was sultry:

“_Non, monsieur_.”

And he went on to say (without speaking, but with his eyes, arms, legs, forehead, and spinal column): “Miserable European, parcel, poltroon, idler, degenerate, here I offer you ninety-and-nine _hors d’ouvres_, and you want the hundredth! You, living your unnatural and despicable existence! If I cared sufficiently I could kill every man on the train, but I don’t care sufficiently! Have the goodness not to misinterpret my politeness, and take this Lyons sausage, and let me hear no more about sardines.”

Hence I took the sausage and obediently ate it. I gave him best. Among the few men that I respected on that train were the engine-driver, out there in the nocturnal cold, with our lives in his pocket, and that African. He really could have killed any of us. I may never see him again. His circle of eternal energy just touched mine at the point where a tin of sardines ought to have been but was not. He was emphatically a man. He had the gestures and carriage of a monarch. Perhaps he was one, _de jure_, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Timbuctoo. For practical European, Riviera, plutocratic purposes he was a coloured waiter in the service of the International Sleeping Car Company.

V--ANOTHER TRAIN

After six hours’ continuous sleep, I felt full of energy and joy. There were no servants to sadden by their incompetence; so I got up and made the tea and prepared the baths, and did many simple domestic things, the doing of which personally is the beginning of “the solution of the servant problem,” so much talked about. Shall we catch the 9.25 fast or the 9.50 slow? Only my watch was going among all the clocks and watches in the flat. I looked at it from time to time, fighting against the instinct to hurry, the instinct to beat that one tiny watch in its struggle against me. Just when I was quite ready, I had to button a corsage with ten thousand buttons--toy buttons like sago, that must be persuaded into invisible nooses of thread. I turned off the gas at the meter and the electricity at the meter, and glanced ’round finally at the little museum of furniture, pictures, and prints that was nearly all I had to show in the way of spoils after forty years of living and twenty-five years of sharpshooting. I picked up the valise, and we went out on the staircase. I locked and double locked the door. (Instinct of property.) At the concierge’s lodge a head stuck itself out and offered the “Mercure de France,” which had just come. Strange how my pleasure in receiving new numbers never wanes! I shoved it into my left-hand pocket; in my right-hand pocket a new book was already reposing.

*****