“If this,” he said afterwards, “is war, the sooner it comes to England the better.”
It is pleasant to be treated as an honoured guest, and the friendliness of that officer was reassuring. But I had not yet done with the new-boy feeling. It came on me with full force when I was led into an inner office for an interview with the Deputy-Chaplain-General. He was both a bishop and a general. I have met so many bishops, officially and otherwise, that I am not in the least afraid of them. Nor do generals make me nervous when I am not myself in uniform. But a combination of bishop and general was new to me. I felt exactly as I did in 1875, when Mr. Waterfield of Temple Grove tested my knowledge of Latin to see what class I was fit for.
There was no real cause for nervousness. The Deputy-Chaplain-General, in spite of his double dose of exalted rank, is kind and friendly: but I fear I did not make any better impression on him than I did on my first head master. Mr. Waterfield put me in his lowest class. The Deputy-Chaplain-General sent me to the remotest base, the town farthest of any town in British occupation from the actual seat of war. M., whose interview came after mine, might perhaps have done better for himself if he had not been loyal to our newly formed friendship. As Ruth to Naomi so he said to me, “Where thou goest I will go,” and expressed his wish to the Deputy-Chaplain-General. This, I am sure, was an act of self-denial on his part, for M. has an adventurous spirit. The Deputy-Chaplain-General is too kind and courteous a man to refuse such a request. It was settled that M. and I should start work together.
We set forth on our journey at 4 o’clock that afternoon, having first gone through the necessary business of interviewing the R.T.O. He was a young man of a most detestable kind. The R.T.O. has a bad name among officers who travel in France. He is supposed to be both uncivil and incompetent. My own experience is not very large, but I am disinclined to join in the general condemnation. I have come on R.T.O.’s who did not know their job. I have come on others wearied and harassed to the point at which coherent thought ceases to be possible. I only met one who deliberately tried to be insolent without even the excuse of knowing the work he was supposed to be doing. On the other hand I have met men of real ability engaged on military railway work, who remain quietly courteous and helpful even when beset by stupid, fussy, and querulous travellers.
M. and I struggled into a train and immediately became possessed by the idea that it was going the wrong way, carrying us to the front instead of the remote base to which we were bound. I do not remember that we were in any way vexed. We had a good store of provisions, thanks to my foresight and determination. We were in a fairly comfortable carriage. We were quite ready to make the best of things wherever the train took us.
A fellow-traveller, a young officer, offered us comfort and advice. He had a theory that trains in France run round and round in circles, like the London Underground. The traveller has nothing to do but sit still in order to reach any station in the war area; would in the end get back to the station from which he started, if he sat still long enough. M. refused to believe this. He insisted on making inquiries whenever the train stopped, and it stopped every ten minutes. His efforts did not help us much. The porters and station masters whom he hailed did not understand his French, and he could make nothing of their English. The first real light on our journey came to us in an odd way. At one station our compartment was suddenly boarded by three cheerful young women dressed in long overalls, and wearing no hats.
“Are you,” they asked, “going to B.?”
“Not if we can help it,” I said. “But we may be. The place we are trying to go to is H.”
The young women consulted hurriedly.
“If you’re going to H.,” said one, “you must go through B.”