Leaves in the Wind

by A. G. Gardiner

This collection of essays, now republished in the "Wayfarers' Library," were written during the war, and first appeared in book form during the war. Like the preceding volume, Pebbles on the Shore, they were the literary diversions of a time of great public anxiety and heavy personal tasks. The writing of them was a happy distraction from unhappy things, and now that the great wind has passed it is a pleasure to find the leaves it blew down gathered between the companionable covers of the "Wayfarer." I leave them as they fell.

CONTENTS

[A Fellow Traveller]
[On a Famous Sermon]
[On Pockets and Things]
[On a Country Platform]
[On a Distant View of a Pig]
[In Defence of Ignorance]
[On a Shiny Night]
[On Giving up Tobacco]
[The Great God Gun]
[On a Legend of the War]
[On Talk and Talkers]
[On a Vision of Eden]
[On a Comic Genius]
[On a Vanished Garden]
[All About a Dog]
[On the American Soldier]
['Appy 'Einrich]
[On Fear]
[On Being Called Thompson]
[On Thinking for One's Self]
[On Sawing Wood]
[Variations on an Old Theme]
[On Clothes]
[The Duel that Failed]
[On Early Rising]
[On Being Known]
[On a Map of the Oberland]
[On a Talk in a Bus]
[On Virtues that don't Count]
[On Hate and the Soldier]
[On Taking the Call]
[A Dithyramb on a Dog]
[On Happy Faces in the Strand]
[On Word-Magic]
[Odin Grown Old]
[On a Smile in a Shaving Glass]
[On the Rule of the Road]
[On the Indifference of Nature]
[If Jeremy Came Back]
[On Sleep and Thought]
[On Mowing]

LEAVES IN THE WIND

A FELLOW TRAVELLER

I do not know which of us got into the carriage first. Indeed I did not know he was in the carriage at all for some time. It was the last train from London to a Midland town—a stopping train, an infinitely leisurely train, one of those trains which give you an understanding of eternity. It was tolerably full when it started, but as we stopped at the suburban stations the travellers alighted in ones and twos, and by the time we had left the outer ring of London behind I was alone—or, rather, I thought I was alone.

There is a pleasant sense of freedom about being alone in a carriage that is jolting noisily through the night. It is liberty and unrestraint in a very agreeable form. You can do anything you like. You can talk to yourself as loud as you please and no one will hear you. You can have that argument out with Jones and roll him triumphantly in the dust without fear of a counter-stroke. You can stand on your head and no one will see you. You can sing, or dance a two-step, or practise a golf stroke, or play marbles on the floor without let or hindrance. You can open the window or shut it without provoking a protest. You can open both windows or shut both. Indeed, you can go on opening them and shutting them as a sort of festival of freedom. You can have any corner you choose and try all of them in turn. You can lie at full length on the cushions and enjoy the luxury of breaking the regulations and possibly the heart of D.O.R.A. herself. Only D.O.R.A. will not know that her heart is broken. You have escaped even D.O.R.A.

On this night I did not do any of these things. They did not happen to occur to me. What I did was much more ordinary. When the last of my fellow-passengers had gone I put down my paper, stretched my arms and my legs, stood up and looked out of the window on the calm summer night through which I was journeying, noting the pale reminiscence of day that still lingered in the northern sky; crossed the carriage and looked out of the other window; lit a cigarette, sat down and began to read again. It was then that I became aware of my fellow traveller. He came and sat on my nose.... He was one of those wingy, nippy, intrepid insects that we call, vaguely, mosquitoes. I flicked him off my nose, and he made a tour of the compartment, investigated its three dimensions, visited each window, fluttered round the light, decided that there was nothing so interesting as that large animal in the corner, came and had a look at my neck.

I flicked him off again. He skipped away, took another jaunt round the compartment, returned, and seated himself impudently on the back of my hand. It is enough, I said; magnanimity has its limits. Twice you have been warned that I am someone in particular, that my august person resents the tickling impertinences of strangers. I assume the black cap. I condemn you to death. Justice demands it, and the court awards it. The counts against you are many. You are a vagrant; you are a public nuisance; you are travelling without a ticket; you have no meat coupon. For these and many other misdemeanours you are about to die. I struck a swift, lethal blow with my right hand. He dodged the attack with an insolent ease that humiliated me. My personal vanity was aroused. I lunged at him with my hand, with my paper; I jumped on the seat and pursued him round the lamp; I adopted tactics of feline cunning, waiting till he had alighted, approaching with a horrible stealthiness, striking with a sudden and terrible swiftness.