But it is not so easy to travel sixty miles up or down the Line. It is a question of permits, which take some getting, and of facilities which very properly do not exist. Military railways are not for the transport of civilian camp-followers on private business; moreover, they do go slow when there is no military occasion for much speed; and I had my work, when all was said. But my luck (if you like) was in again. The first old friend that I had met in France was a friend in a higher place than I may say. Already he had shown himself my friend indeed; now, in my need—— But here the coincidences multiply, and must be kept distinct.
On the very morning I heard from Ypres—with the watch and the invitation—I was due to visit this old friend in another part altogether. He sent his car for me, the splendid man. I showed him my letter from Ypres.
'You will have to go,' he said.
'But how?'
'In my car.'
'Sixty miles!'
(It was much more from where he was.)
'You can have it for two days.'
I could not thank him; nor can I here. How can a man speak for the mother of an only child, whose grave he was to see with her eyes as well as with his own, so that one day he might tell her all? Without a car, in fine, the thing was impossible. There are no thanks for actions such as this: none that words do not belittle. A day was fixed, ten days ahead; this gave me time to write to the boy's mother, and gave her time to send direct to Ypres all the bulbs and plants that she could get, to make her child's bed as gay that spring as he himself had been all the days they were together.
And yet—and yet—was it his grave that had been found? Was the evidence as good as it seemed? I was going all the way to Ypres on the strength of that local evidence only. If I could but have taken one or other of those two men who were there when it happened in 1915! But one of them was away on leave, his three weeks not nearly up; the other, the bandsman who knew most of all, might or might not be with the Battalion; but the Battalion itself was still away. I found that out for certain on the morning of the day before I was to start. They were still resting many kilometres back. I had no means of getting to them, even if I had had the right sort of desire; but the fact was that everything had come about so beautifully without one move of mine, that I was quite consciously content to drift in the current of an unfathomable influence.