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 w............