Diary of a Pilgrimage [32]
separately B. and I lost ourselves and each other some twenty-four times. For about half an hour we seemed to be doing nothing else but rushing up and down the station looking for each other, suddenly finding each other, and saying, "Why, where the dickens have you been? I have been hunting for you everywhere. Don't go away like that," and then immediately losing each other again.
And what was so extraordinary about the matter was that every time, after losing each other, we invariably met again--when we did meet-- outside the door of the third-class refreshment room.
We came at length to regard the door of the third-class refreshment room as "home," and to feel a thrill of joy when, in the course of our weary wanderings through far-off waiting-rooms and lost-luggage bureaus and lamp depots, we saw its old familiar handle shining in the distance, and knew that there, beside it, we should find our loved and lost one.
When any very long time elapsed without our coming across it, we would go up to one of the officials, and ask to be directed to it.
"Please can you tell me," we would say, "the nearest way to the door of the third-class refreshment room?"
When three o'clock came, and still we had not found the 3.10 train, we became quite anxious about the poor thing, and made inquiries concerning it.
"The 3.10 train to Ober-Ammergau," they said. "Oh, we've not thought about that yet."
"Haven't thought about it!" we exclaimed indignantly. "Well, do for heaven's sake wake up a bit. It is 3.5 now!"
"Yes," they answered, "3.5 in the afternoon; the 3.10 is a night train. Don't you see it's printed in thick type? All the trains between six in the evening and six in the morning are printed in fat figures, and the day trains in thin. You have got plenty of time. Look around after supper."
I do believe I am the most unfortunate man at a time-table that ever was born. I do not think it can be stupidity; for if it were mere stupidity, I should occasionally, now and then when I was feeling well, not make a mistake. It must be fate.
If there is one train out of forty that goes on "Saturdays only" to some place I want to get to, that is the train I select to travel by on a Friday. On Saturday morning I get up at six, swallow a hasty breakfast, and rush off to catch a return train that goes on every day in the week "except Saturdays."
I go to London, Brighton and South Coast Railway-stations and clamour for South-Eastern trains. On Bank Holidays I forget it is Bank Holiday, and go and sit on draughty platforms for hours, waiting for trains that do not run on Bank Holidays.
To add to my misfortunes, I am the miserable possessor of a demon time-table that I cannot get rid of, a Bradshaw for August, 1887. Regularly, on the first of each month, I buy and bring home with me a new Bradshaw and a new A.B.C. What becomes of them after the second of the month, I do not know. After the second of the month, I never see either of them again. What their fate is, I can only guess. In their place is left, to mislead me, this wretched old 1887 corpse.
For three years I have been trying to escape from it, but it will not leave me.
I have thrown it out of the window, and it has fallen on people's heads, and those people have picked it up and smoothed it out, and brought it back to the house, and members of my family--"friends" they call themselves--people of my own flesh and blood--have thanked them and taken it in again!
I have kicked it into a dozen pieces, and kicked the pieces all the way downstairs and out into the garden, and persons--persons, mind you, who will not sew a button on the back of my shirt to save me from madness--have collected the pieces and stitched them carefully together, and made the book look as good as new, and put it back in my study!
It has acquired the secret of perpetual youth, has this time-table. Other time-tables that I buy become dissipated-looking wrecks in about a week. This book looks as fresh and new and clean as it did on the day when it first lured me into
And what was so extraordinary about the matter was that every time, after losing each other, we invariably met again--when we did meet-- outside the door of the third-class refreshment room.
We came at length to regard the door of the third-class refreshment room as "home," and to feel a thrill of joy when, in the course of our weary wanderings through far-off waiting-rooms and lost-luggage bureaus and lamp depots, we saw its old familiar handle shining in the distance, and knew that there, beside it, we should find our loved and lost one.
When any very long time elapsed without our coming across it, we would go up to one of the officials, and ask to be directed to it.
"Please can you tell me," we would say, "the nearest way to the door of the third-class refreshment room?"
When three o'clock came, and still we had not found the 3.10 train, we became quite anxious about the poor thing, and made inquiries concerning it.
"The 3.10 train to Ober-Ammergau," they said. "Oh, we've not thought about that yet."
"Haven't thought about it!" we exclaimed indignantly. "Well, do for heaven's sake wake up a bit. It is 3.5 now!"
"Yes," they answered, "3.5 in the afternoon; the 3.10 is a night train. Don't you see it's printed in thick type? All the trains between six in the evening and six in the morning are printed in fat figures, and the day trains in thin. You have got plenty of time. Look around after supper."
I do believe I am the most unfortunate man at a time-table that ever was born. I do not think it can be stupidity; for if it were mere stupidity, I should occasionally, now and then when I was feeling well, not make a mistake. It must be fate.
If there is one train out of forty that goes on "Saturdays only" to some place I want to get to, that is the train I select to travel by on a Friday. On Saturday morning I get up at six, swallow a hasty breakfast, and rush off to catch a return train that goes on every day in the week "except Saturdays."
I go to London, Brighton and South Coast Railway-stations and clamour for South-Eastern trains. On Bank Holidays I forget it is Bank Holiday, and go and sit on draughty platforms for hours, waiting for trains that do not run on Bank Holidays.
To add to my misfortunes, I am the miserable possessor of a demon time-table that I cannot get rid of, a Bradshaw for August, 1887. Regularly, on the first of each month, I buy and bring home with me a new Bradshaw and a new A.B.C. What becomes of them after the second of the month, I do not know. After the second of the month, I never see either of them again. What their fate is, I can only guess. In their place is left, to mislead me, this wretched old 1887 corpse.
For three years I have been trying to escape from it, but it will not leave me.
I have thrown it out of the window, and it has fallen on people's heads, and those people have picked it up and smoothed it out, and brought it back to the house, and members of my family--"friends" they call themselves--people of my own flesh and blood--have thanked them and taken it in again!
I have kicked it into a dozen pieces, and kicked the pieces all the way downstairs and out into the garden, and persons--persons, mind you, who will not sew a button on the back of my shirt to save me from madness--have collected the pieces and stitched them carefully together, and made the book look as good as new, and put it back in my study!
It has acquired the secret of perpetual youth, has this time-table. Other time-tables that I buy become dissipated-looking wrecks in about a week. This book looks as fresh and new and clean as it did on the day when it first lured me into