Tremendous Trifles | Page 6

something shall happen, if it be only the slaughter of a policeman. But
this is a digressive way of stating what I have said already--that the
bleak sky awoke in me a hunger for some change of plans, that the
monotonous weather seemed to render unbearable the use of the
monotonous train, and that I set out into the country lanes, out of the
town of Oxford. It was, perhaps, at that moment that a strange curse
came upon me out of the city and the sky, whereby it was decreed that
years afterwards I should, in an article in the DAILY NEWS, talk about
Sir George Trevelyan in connection with Oxford, when I knew
perfectly well that he went to Cambridge.
As I crossed the country everything was ghostly and colourless. The
fields that should have been green were as grey as the skies; the

tree-tops that should have been green were as grey as the clouds and as
cloudy. And when I had walked for some hours the evening was
closing in. A sickly sunset clung weakly to the horizon, as if pale with
reluctance to leave the world in the dark. And as it faded more and
more the skies seemed to come closer and to threaten. The clouds
which had been merely sullen became swollen; and then they loosened
and let down the dark curtains of the rain. The rain was blinding and
seemed to beat like blows from an enemy at close quarters; the skies
seemed bending over and bawling in my ears. I walked on many more
miles before I met a man, and in that distance my mind had been made
up; and when I met him I asked him if anywhere in the neighbourhood
I could pick up the train for Paddington. He directed me to a small
silent station (I cannot even remember the name of it) which stood well
away from the road and looked as lonely as a hut on the Andes. I do not
think I have ever seen such a type of time and sadness and scepticism
and everything devilish as that station was: it looked as if it had always
been raining there ever since the creation of the world. The water
streamed from the soaking wood of it as if it were not water at all, but
some loathsome liquid corruption of the wood itself; as if the solid
station were eternally falling to pieces and pouring away in filth. It took
me nearly ten minutes to find a man in the station. When I did he was a
dull one, and when I asked him if there was a train to Paddington his
answer was sleepy and vague. As far as I understood him, he said there
would be a train in half an hour. I sat down and lit a cigar and waited,
watching the last tail of the tattered sunset and listening to the
everlasting rain. It may have been in half an hour or less, but a train
came rather slowly into the station. It was an unnaturally dark train; I
could not see a light anywhere in the long black body of it; and I could
not see any guard running beside it. I was reduced to walking up to the
engine and calling out to the stoker to ask if the train was going to
London. "Well--yes, sir," he said, with an unaccountable kind of
reluctance. "It is going to London; but----" It was just starting, and I
jumped into the first carriage; it was pitch dark. I sat there smoking and
wondering, as we steamed through the continually darkening landscape,
lined with desolate poplars, until we slowed down and stopped,
irrationally, in the middle of a field. I heard a heavy noise as of some
one clambering off the train, and a dark, ragged head suddenly put

itself into my window. "Excuse me, sir," said the stoker, "but I think,
perhaps--well, perhaps you ought to know-- there's a dead man in this
train."
. . . . .
Had I been a true artist, a person of exquisite susceptibilities and
nothing else, I should have been bound, no doubt, to be finally
overwhelmed with this sensational touch, and to have insisted on
getting out and walking. As it was, I regret to say, I expressed myself
politely, but firmly, to the effect that I didn't care particularly if the
train took me to Paddington. But when the train had started with its
unknown burden I did do one thing, and do it quite instinctively,
without stopping to think, or to think more than a flash. I threw away
my cigar. Something that is as old as man and has to do with all
mourning and ceremonial told me to do