A Fellow-Traveller
England!
England after many years!
How was he going to like it?
Luke Fitzwilliam asked himself that question as he walked down the gang-plank to the dock. It was present at the back of his mind all through the wait in the Customs’ shed. It came suddenly to the fore when he was finally seated in the boat-train.
England on leave was one thing. Plenty of money to blue (to begin with anyway!), old friends to look up, meetings with other fellows home like himself—a carefree atmosphere of ‘Well, it won’t be long. Might as well enjoy myself! Soon be going back.’
But now there was no question of going back. No more of the hot stifling nights, no more blinding sun and tropical beauty of rich vegetation, no more lonely evenings reading and re-reading old copies of The Times.
Here he was, honourably retired on a pension, with some small private means of his own, a gentleman of leisure, come home to England. What was he going to do with himself?
England! England on a June day, with a grey sky and a sharp biting wind. Nothing welcoming about her on a day like this! And the people! Heavens, the people! Crowds of them, all with grey faces like the sky—anxious worried faces. The houses too, springing up everywhere like mushrooms. Nasty little houses! Revolting little houses! Chicken coops in the grandiose manner all over the countryside!
With an effort Luke Fitzwilliam averted his eyes from the landscape outside the railway carriage window and settled down to a perusal of the papers he had just bought. The Times, the Daily Clarion and Punch.
He started with the Daily Clarion. The Clarion was given over entirely to Epsom.
Luke thought: ‘A pity we didn’t get in yesterday. Haven’t seen the Derby run since I was nineteen.’
He had drawn a horse in the Club sweep and he looked now to see what the Clarion’s racing correspondent thought of its chance. He found it dismissed contemptuously in a sentence.
‘Of the others, Jujube the II, Mark’s Mile, Santony and Jerry Boy are hardly likely to qualify for a place. A likely outsider is—’
But Luke paid no attention to the likely outsider. His eye had shifted to the betting. Jujube the II was listed at a modest 40 to 1.
He glanced at his watch. A quarter to four. ‘Well,’ he thought. ‘It’s over now.’ And he wished he’d had a bet on Clarigold who was the second favourite.
Then he opened The Times and became absorbed in more serious matters.
Not for long, however, for a fierce-looking colonel in the corner opposite was so incensed at what he himself had just read that he had to pass on his indignation to his fellow-passenger. A full half-hour passed before the colonel tired of saying what he thought about ‘these damned Communist agitators, sir’.
The colonel died down at last and finally dropped off to sleep with his mouth open. Shortly afterwards the train slowed down and finally stopped. Luke looked out of the window. They were in a large empty-looking station with many platforms. He caught sight of a bookstall some way up the platform with a placard: DERBY RESULT. Luke opened the door, jumped out, and ran towards the bookstall. A moment later he was staring with a broad grin at a few smudged lines in the stop press.
Derby Result
JUJUBE THE II
MAZEPPA
CLARIGOLD
Luke grinned broadly. A hundred pounds to blue! Good old Jujube the II, so scornfully dismissed by all the tipsters.
He folded the paper, still grinning to himself, and turned back—to face emptiness. In the excitement of Jujube the II’s victory, his train had slipped out of the station unnoticed by him.
‘When the devil did that train go out?’ he demanded of a gloomy-looking porter.
The latter replied:
‘What train? There hasn’t been no train since the 3.14.’
‘There was a train here just now. I got out of it. The boat express.’
The porter replied austerely:
‘The boat express don’t stop anywhere till London.’
‘But it did,’ Luke assured him. ‘I got out of it.’
‘No stop anywhere till London,’ repeated the porter immovably.
‘It stopped at this very platform and I got out of it, I tell you.’
Faced by facts, the porter changed his ground.
‘You didn’t ought to have done,’ he said reproachfully. ‘It don’t stop here.’
‘But it did.’
‘That ’twas signal, that was. Signal against it. It didn’t what you’d call “stop”.’
‘I’m not so good at these fine distinctions as you are,’ said Luke. ‘The point is, what do I do next?’
The porter, a man of slow ideas, repeated reproachfully: ‘You didn’t ought to have got out.’
‘We’ll admit that,’ said Luke. ‘The wrong is done, past all recall—weep we never so bitterly we can never bring back the dead past—Quoth the raven “Nevermore”—The moving finger writes; and having writ moves on, etc., etc., and so on and so forth. What I’m trying to get at is, what do you, a man experienced in the service of the railway company, advise me to do now?’
‘You’re asking what you’d better do?’
‘That,’ said Luke, ‘is the idea. There are, I presume, trains that stop, really officially stop, here?’
‘Reckon,’ said the porter. ‘You’d best go on by the 4.25.’
‘If the 4.25 goes to London,’ said Luke, ‘the 4.25 is the train for me.’
Reassured on that point, Luke strolled up and down the platform. A large board informed him that he was at Fenny Clayton Junction for Wychwood-under-Ashe, and presently a train consisting of one carriage pushed backwards by an antiquated little engine came slowly puffing in and deposited itself in a modest bay. Six or seven people alighted, and crossing over a bridge, came to join Luke on his platform. The gloomy porter suddenly awoke to life and began pushing about a large truck of crates and baskets, another porter joined him and began to rattle milk cans. Fenny Clayton awoke to life.
At last, with immense importance the London train came in. The third-class carriages were crowded, and of firsts there were only three and each one contained a traveller or travellers. Luke scrutinized each compartment. The first, a smoker, contained a gentleman of military aspect smoking a cigar. Luke felt he had had enough of Anglo-Indian colonels today. He passed on to the next one, which contained a tired-looking genteel
