I gently agreed with him and talked boastfully of foreign politics (for that was the trend of his own mind apparently), but his ideas upon these were not only simple but few. He had a craze that made it very difficult to keep up, if I may use that expression, for his one obsession was the French; and though he was too patriotic to prophesy their arrival upon these shores his head shook more nervously than ever when he had turned on to that topic. However, he said, we had beaten them before and we should beat them again; and he added that it was not the same Napoleon. His mind fastened upon this relief and he repeated it several times. Then he remained silent for a while, too tired to notice the towns among which we were passing.
I asked him whether he was acquainted with the Vale of the White Horse. He told me sadly, and with the first faint smile I had seen upon his face, that he had known it years ago, but "not now." He said that when he had known it the White Horse was much more distinct and much more like a horse, and he wandered on to tell me that Swindon to-day was not at all the place it had been. This was his universal judgment of everything along the line, and for a little he would have told me that the crest of the downs had changed.
He remarked that there was no wheat in the fields, which, after all, was not surprising at this time of year, and looking at the dull earth as we passed it he assured me he could remember the time when the whole of it had been yellow with corn, and if I had said: "But not in January?" I might have compelled him to an uneasy silence, which was the last thing in the world I wished.
Perhaps what I most remarked about him as strange was his not reading. I have already said that he had bought no newspaper for himself, but he did not ask for mine. When his eyes fell upon it where it lay upon the seat they looked at it as a man looks at the cat upon the hearthrug. But he did not take up the paper, though the moment through which we were passing was not without interest—and this leads me to the way in which we parted.
We had sat for some time in silence, his old face still turned to the rapid landscape, which took on with every mile more and more the unmistakable nature of the West of England, the sharp hills, the combes, and with it all that which has something about it Roman, a note I never miss when I cross its boundaries. At last we drew up into the great station of the city. I opened the door for him and got out first in case he should wish to hand me his bag. But though he was feeble he took it down himself and slowly came out of the carriage backwards and with the utmost caution; when he reached the platform he gasped, with some little hint of adventure in his tone, "There!" And he told me that railways were dangerous things. So we went down the platform together, for I wished to get all the experience of him I could before we had to part. He knew his way out, and when we got into the main place of the town an enormous mob, pushing and shoving, cheering and doing all that mobs do, was filling the whole of it. For the first time since we had met I saw a look of terror in his old eyes. He whispered to me, instead of speaking, "What's all that?"
"It's only a crowd," I said. "They're good-natured enough. It's the election."
"The election?" he answered, his look of terror increasing. "Whose election? Oh, I never could abide a riot! I never could abide one!"
I assured him I would get him through without any danger, and I took his thin arm in mine, and pushed and scrambled him through to a hotel that was near and there I left him. The terror had left his eyes, but he was much weaker. I asked him if I could do anything more, but the manageress told me that she knew him and that he often came there. She was a very capable person, and she reassured me, and so I left the Abstracted Man, he telling me in a tone still low, but no longer in a whisper, that he dursen't go out until the riot was gone.
And all this shows that during an election you meet more different kinds of men and explore more corners of England than at any other time. Not until I had lost him did I remember that I had forgotten to ask him on which side of our present struggle he had formed his opinion, but perhaps it was just as well I did not. It would only have confused him.