Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a Story

by E. V. Lucas

Some years ago, I was travelling by a small cross-country railway in Belgium. It was a bad train at all times, but on this occasion it behaved with alarming eccentricity: at one time tearing along by leaps and bounds, and then becoming snailier than the snailiest, until at last, just outside a station, it stopped altogether. We waited and waited; nothing happened; and so first one passenger and then another alighted to see what was the matter, until gradually every one of us was on the line. Why the train did not immediately rush on and leave us all behind I cannot say; but, as you will agree, it might easily have done so, for when we reached the engine it was discovered that both the driver and stoker were gloriously and wildly drunk.

There are never lacking leaders on such occasions as these—and we quickly had several, equally noisy; but by degrees some kind of policy was agreed upon, and we all marched in a foolish procession to the station behind the group of three gentlemen who led us, and who walked (and stumbled over the sleepers) abreast, either sideways or backwards as they thought of new words and new gestures to apply to the outrage. At the station we were met by the station-master, and a battle of explanations and protests and repetitions set in and was waged terrifically, the issue of which was the production of a large sheet of paper on which we all, one by one, signed our names beneath a record of the offence, with the date and place carefully noted. By the time this was done the station-master had managed to find a new and sober driver and stoker, and the train could resume its journey.

I—perhaps because I was English, and there was nothing to gain—happened to be the last to sign, and therefore the last to rejoin the train. As I was getting into it I found that I had left my pipe in the office, and I hurried back to recapture it. I was just in time to see the station-master placing the last of the pieces of the torn-up manifesto on the fire.

After that I feel that you must have something more than usually beautiful in the way of a short poem. Try this:—

Here lies a most beautiful lady,

Light of step and heart was she;

I think she was the most beautiful lady

That ever was in West Country.

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;

However rare—rare it be;