he arrangements of the next
day or the next week, as though he had forgotten all about the train that
was imminent, or was careless whether he caught it or not. And when at last
he had got to the train, he began to remember things. He would stroll off
to get a time-table or to buy a book, or to look at the engine--especially
to look at the engine. And the nearer the minute for starting the more
absorbed he became in the mechanism of the thing, and the more animated was
his explanation of the relative merits of the P.L.M. engine and the
North-Western engine. He was always given up as lost, and yet always
stepped in as the train was on the move, his manner aggravatingly
unruffled, his talk pursuing the quiet tenor of his thought about engines
or about what we should do the week after next.
Now I am different. I have been catching trains all my life, and all my
life I have been afraid I shouldn't catch them. Familiarity with the habits
of trains cannot get rid of a secret conviction that their aim is to give
me the slip if it can be done. No faith in my own watch can affect my
doubts as to the reliability of the watch of the guard or the station clock
or whatever deceitful signal the engine-driver obeys. Moreover, I am
oppressed with the possibilities of delay on the road to the station. They
crowd in on me like the ghosts into the tent of King Richard. There may be
a block in the streets, the bus may break down, the taxi-driver may be
drunk or not know the way, or think I don't know the way, and take me round
and round the squares as Tony Lumpkin drove his mother round and round the
pond, or--in fact, anything may happen, and it is never until I am safely
inside (as I am now) that I feel really happy.
Now, of course this is a very absurd weakness. I ought to be ashamed to
confess it. I am ashamed to confess it. And that is the advantage of
writing under a pen name. You can confess anything you like, and nobody
thinks any the worse of you. You ease your own conscience, have a gaol
delivery of your failings--look them, so to speak, straight in the face,
and pass sentence on them--and still enjoy the luxury of not being found
out. You have all the advantages of a conviction without the nuisance of
the penalty. Decidedly, this writing under a pen name is a great easement
of the soul.
It reminds me of an occasion on which I was climbing with a famous rock
climber. I do not mind confessing (over my pen name) that I am not g
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