Then the scene presented to my view beggars description. A more complete wreck of the interior of a saloon it is impossible to conceive.
The doors of every cupboard and locker had been forced open with the awful shaking, and their contents lay on the deck mixed up in one chaotic heap—china, delft, and broken glass, my papers, manuscripts, and letters, my choicest photographs and best bound books, butter, bread, the cruets, eggs, and portions of my wardrobe, while the whole was freely besprinkled with paraffin, and derisively, as it were, bestrewn with blooming heather and hothouse flowers! Among the litter lay my little ammunition magazine and scattered matches—safety matches I need not say, else the probability is there would have been a bonfire on the line, and no more Wanderer to-day.
It seemed to me to be the work of fiends. It was enough to make an angel weep. The very rods on which ran the crimson silken hangings of the skylight windows were wrenched out and added to the pile.
It struck me at first, and the same thought occurred to the goods manager, that burglars had been at work and sacked the Wanderer.
But no, for nothing was missing.
Moral to all whom it concerns: Never put your caravan on a railway track.
It took me days of hard work to restore the status quo ante.
And all the while it was raining, and the streets covered with mud. The noise, and din, and dirt around me, were maddening. How I hated London then! Its streets, its shops, its rattling cabs, its umbrellaed crowds, the very language of its people. And how I wished myself back again on the wolds of Yorkshire, among the Northumbrian hills or the Grampian range—anywhere—anywhere out of the world of London, and feel the fresh, pure breezes of heaven blowing in my face, see birds, and trees, and flowers, and listen to the delightful sounds of rural life, instead of to cockney-murdered English.
Caravans like the Wanderer have no business to be in cities. They ought to give cities a wide, wide berth, and it will be my aim to do so in future.
The journey through London was accomplished in safety, though we found ourselves more than once in a block. When we had crossed over Chelsea Bridge, however, my spirits, which till now had been far below freezing point, began to rise, and once upon the common, with dwarf furze blooming here and there, and crimson morsels of ling (Erica communis), a balmy soft wind blowing, and the sun shining in a sky of blue, I forgot my troubles, and found myself singing once more, a free and independent gipsy.