EDINBURGH TO BLETCHLEY
By E. L. WOODWARD
ABOUT eleven o'clock on spring and summer mornings the through carriage from Edinburgh to Manches- ter is uncoupled from the Scots express at Symington Junction; and waits, like a neglected child, at a side platform while the grown-up train has the attention of station-master and signalmen and porters. In five minutes' time another express comes to Symington ; the Manchester carriage is tied to it, and drawn southwards on its scheduled way. From the distant hills this coupling and uncoupling, and division of long red-black snakes, fire-breathing, must seem like the fertilization of some prehistoric creature, dependent upon men for the fulfil- ment of its clumsy cycle of life. In return for such services performed-and this gross midwifery, the serpents, so one might guess, had learned to tolerate men as para- sites in their incessant, regular migrations.
Even as a drone I had my part in these cosmic acts. With solemnity I closed two carriage doors ; I spoke to the men in uniform, the servants of the snake, that God might know I had not made the great refusal. Then I was free to notice the silence of the air, the quiet of a country station after the clashing, metallic rhythm of the train. This was a relief from tension of the mind, because one is for ever listening, in this rhythm of fast trains, to hear a strange overtone. Above the sharply repeated note of pairs of wheels passing over the junctions of the rails—when I went by train to school I used to do my Greek and Latin verses to this measured beat—there rises and falls a slow, wave-like sound. It is a strong sound, born of strain and effort, becoming more insistent as the course of the line bends to right or left, and dying down when the engine has a long, straight run ; this was the sound which Charlemagne heard on the wind, the sound of a horn, very far away.
Soon I should hear this sound again ; but I had no need, while the train was still, to set my ear to the long- distant past. From the platform I watched two larks rising, a hare motionless for a time against a little cairn -of stones, and then scampering into the high grasses. I must have passed Symington ten times or more ; yet I have only seen the surrounding hills from this platform, and the place is as remote from me as the landscape of the moon. It appears to me as a country conquered and settled by Scandinavian tribes ; the home of a people who knew the tides of the northern sea, and had passed the north cape ; a steady people, without the fugitive moods and waywardness of races less strong, less occupied with conquest and inheritance. It is an absurd accident of my reading, and the distribution of my travel, that I should think of Scotland and Hungary—countries which I never saw till I was past thirty—as beyond the boun- daries of civilization in its older sense. I cannot escape from the belief that these countries are newly settled ; that the people carry arms ; that if I could talk to the old men I should hear stories of battles fought some fifty years ago when the invaders first took the strongholds.
There is indeed more than one curious similarity be- tween Edinburgh and Budapest; for example, the likeness of type between the view of the high town from Princes Street and the view of Buda from the other side of the Danube. As the trains go south towards Hadrian's Wall, leaving the line of military posts between Forth and Clyde, I cannot help taking account, as though I were leading an army, of certain defiles which could be defended in a rearguard action against men from the north. On this day, as I marked a road set narrowly between the railway and the hills, we passed a line of red petrol pumps, ordered like a detachment of soldiers stiffly dressed for parade. Then came deep, tapestry- flowered cuttings, and the plain of Carlisle. Carlisle was a frontier town, where burr'd Latin once mixed with old tribal words, and a few men might have read Daphnis and Chloe, and forgotten the burden of the time.
Between Carlisle and the chimneys and slagheaps of Lancashire rainclouds were drifting over the hills ; we saw for a few seconds a chemical factory with stores of amphorae which might have belonged to the base camp of a Roman army. At one point outside Warrington there is a marshland of singular beauty. Its southern boundary is the ship canal ; to the north there are factory chimneys, and a long line of factory roofs ; westwards from the railway arc two shallow lakes. For many miles after Crewe I thought of the grey and silver and green of this marshland, the geometric pattern of the canals. We had left behind us the Promethean magnificence of the industrial places, and come again into a region of flocks and herds, corn lands and grass. Beyond Stafford we were approaching a kingdom of sleep, though I still heard the sound of the horn of Roland as the train swung from curve to curve. I watched the boundary hedges 'rise and fall ; the bridges which divided the noise of the wheels, like an axe cutting through wood ; slowly the quiet fields had the contours of a dream. Under the speed of the train the firmly rooted trees, the solid masonry and station buildings took new attributes, and were turned to mockery. Churches and chapels passed in the twinkling of an eye to Judgement; inns rushed by, and travellers stood still ; what use to plough and reap, when all the barns and granaries were tossed aside like the souls of the damned in a picture of doom ? No doubt rich men south of Rugby were making ready their feasts, but when I should have passed them their hearts would shrivel and be whirled away in the wind. Behind my avenging course there must be league upon league of destruction ; a world free at last of men.
When I awoke, I was aware suddenly of the passengers in the train. In one corner a man was reading a technical journal about motor-cars. He read slowly, from page to page, finding equal satisfaction in text and advertise- ments, illustrations, jokes, editorial notes. I wondered what he would do with a page of Sir Thomas Browne on Urn Burial, or a chapter of the Golden Ass. A mother and two children had come into the carriage at Rugby. At first I could not escape from a wish to keep them out ; but I was ashamed that even by my unwillingness to inoVe'my luggage I might have added to the trouble and friction of the day. The children were happy. enough ; the mother was tired, and had worked hard for ten years or more. I thought of these tired mothers with their children on long journeys. The children's clothes get dirty soon in trains ; it is easy to spoil things on which care and money have been spent.. The journey is un- familiar, leading, it may be, to an unfriendly destination ; to critical relations, or to lodgings where there is little comfort. The day has begun early, and with turmoil. Luggage must be packed ; the house must be arranged, cups and plates left clean ; the children are excited and easily fretful. There is no one to share the work. On journeys, as at home, little economies must be made ; a tram or a 'bus instead of a taxi. Of these things the children know nothing, and never guess the price at which their vitality is ransomed. Years afterwards, perhaps, years afterwards, when they are well off and need not care about shillings here and there, they may suddenly remember a journey of other days and other times. In this way there came into my mind the memory of more than one journey, and at the last, strangely enough, the thought of a journey taken as humbly as any I had known, and ending with a salutation Benedicia to in mulieribus, and a song Deposuit potentes de sede et exalt- arit hu
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