A Cab Ride Across Country - Page 2

appointment.

. . . . .

But I must resume the real details of my tale. I found that there
was only one train in the whole of that Sunday by which I could
even get within several hours or several miles of the time or place.
I therefore went to the telephone, which is one of my
favourite toys, and down which I have shouted many valuable,
but prematurely arrested, monologues upon art and morals.
I remember a mild shock of surprise when I discovered that one
could use the telephone on Sunday; I did not expect it to be
cut off, but I expected it to buzz more than on ordinary days,
to the advancement of our national religion. Through this instrument,
in fewer words than usual, and with a comparative economy of epigram,
I ordered a taxi-cab to take me to the railway station.
I have not a word to say in general either against telephones
or taxi-cabs; they seem to me two of the purest and most
poetic of the creations of modern scientific civilisation.
Unfortunately, when the taxi-cab started, it did exactly
what modern scientific civilisation has done--it broke down.
The result of this was that when I arrived at King's Cross my
only train was gone; there was a Sabbath calm in the station,
a calm in the eyes of the porters, and in my breast, if calm
at all, if any calm, a calm despair.

There was not, however, very much calm of any sort in my
breast on first making the discovery; and it was turned
to blinding horror when I learnt that I could not even send
a telegram to the organisers of the meeting. To leave
my entertainers in the lurch was sufficiently exasperating;
to leave them without any intimation was simply low.
I reasoned with the official. I said: "Do you really mean
to say that if my brother were dying and my mother in this place,
I could not communicate with her?" He was a man of literal
and laborious mind; he asked me if my brother was dying.
I answered that he was in excellent and even offensive health,
but that I was inquiring upon a question of principle.
What would happen if England were invaded, or if I
alone knew how to turn aside a comet or an earthquake.
He waved away these hypotheses in the most irresponsible spirit,
but he was quite certain that telegrams could not reach this
particular village. Then something exploded in me; that element
of the outrageous which is the mother of all adventures sprang
up ungovernable, and I decided that I would not be a cad merely
because some of my remote ancestors had been Calvinists.
I would keep my appointment if I lost all my money and all my wits.
I went out into the quiet London street, where my quiet London
cab was still waiting for its fare in the cold misty morning.
I placed myself comfortably in the