The Foolish Lovers Part 30

John sat back in his seat and stared at the driver. He was incapable of speaking, and the driver, busy with his horses, said no more. The 'bus crossed the river, drove along King William Street into Prince's Street, and stopped. The conductor climbed to the roof and called to John. "You chynge 'ere," he said, beckoning him.

"Good-morning," John said to the driver as he rose from his seat.

"Goo'-mornin'!" said the driver. He paused while John got out of the seat into the gangway. "You know," he went on, "you wown't git so excited abaht things after you bin 'ere a bit. You'll tyke things more calm. Like me. I down't go an' lose my 'ead abaht Shykespeare!..."

"Good-morning," said John.

"Ow, goo'-mornin'!" said the driver.

The conductor was standing on the pavement when John descended.

"You'll get a 'bus owver there at the Mansion 'Ouse," he said, "thet'll tyke you right into Fleet Street. Or you can walk it easy from 'ere.

'Long Cheapside, just rahnd the corner!..."

"Cheapside!" John said with interest. Uncle Matthew had told him that Herrick, the poet, was born in Cheapside, and that Richard Whittington, resting in Highgate Woods, had heard Bow Bells pealing from a Cheapside steeple, bidding him return to be Lord Mayor of London and marry the mercer's daughter.

"Yus, Cheapside!" the conductor dully repeated. "Go 'long Cheapside, turn to the left pas' St. Paul's, and you'll be in Ludgate 'ill. After thet, follow your nowse! See?"

"Thank you!" said John.

The throng of traffic seemed to be greater here than it had been at Elephant and Castle, and John, confused by it, stood looking about him.

"Thet's the Benk of England, thet!" the conductor hurriedly continued, pointing across the street to the low, squat, dirty-looking building which occupied the whole of one side of the street. "An' thet's the Royal Exchynge owver there, an' this 'ere is the Mansion 'Ouse where the Lord Mayor lives. I can't stop to tell you no more. Ayngel, Ayngel, Ayngel! Any more for the Ayngel?..."

Several persons climbed on to the 'bus, and then, after attempting to persuade people, anxious to go to Charing Cross, to go to the Angel at Islington instead, the conductor rang his bell. He waved his hand in farewell to John, who smiled at him. The 'bus lumbered off, John watched it roll out of sight and, when it had gone, turned to find Cheapside. There was an immense pressure of people in the streets, and for a few moments he imagined that he had wandered into the middle of a procession.

"Is there anything up?" he said to a lounger.

"Up?" the man repeated in a puzzled tone.

"Yes. All these people!..."

"Oh, no," the man said, "It's always like this!"

_Always like this!_...

He had never seen so many people or so much traffic before. The crowd of workmen pouring out of the shipyards in Belfast was more impressive than this London crowd, but not so perturbing, for that was a definite crowd, having a beginning and an end and a meaning: it was composed entirely of men engaged in a common enterprise; but this crowd had no beginning and no end and no meaning: there was no common enterprise. It was an amorphous herd, and almost it frightened him. If that herd were to become excited ... to lose its head!... Hardly had the thought come into his mind when an accident happened. A four-wheeler cab, trundling across Mansion House Place towards Liverpool Street, overbalanced and fell on its side. The driver was thrown into the road, and John, imagining that he must be killed by a pa.s.sing vehicle, shut his eyes so that he might not see the horrible thing happen.... When he opened his eyes again, the driver was on his feet and, a.s.sisted by policemen and some pa.s.sers-by, was freeing his horse from its harness, while two other policemen dragged an old lady through the window of the cab and placed her on the pavement.

"Really, driver!" she said, "you ought to be mere careful. I shall lose my train!"

"You'd think I'd done it a-purpose to 'ear 'er," the driver mumbled.

And the traffic swept by on either side of the overturned cab, and there was no confusion, no excitement, no disaster. The careless, traffic of the streets which seemed so likely to end in disorder never ended otherwise than satisfactorily. There was control over it, but the control was not obtrusive.

He felt rea.s.sured in a measure, but a sense of loneliness filled him. He stood with his back, against the wall of a large building and regarded the scene. Wherever he looked there were ma.s.ses of people and vehicles and tall buildings. Crowds and crowds of people with no common, interest save that of speedily reaching a destination.

He might stand there for hours, with his back to this wall, and not see the end of that crowd. In Belfast, at twelve o'clock on Sat.u.r.day morning, the workmen would hurry over the bridge to their homes: a thick, black, unyielding ma.s.s of men; but at thirty minutes after twelve, that thick, black, seemingly solid ma.s.s would be dissolved into the ordinary groupings of a provincial city and there would be no sign of it. This London crowd would never dissolve. The man had told him that "it's always like this"!... There were nearly seven millions of men and women and children in London, but he did not know one of them. He had seen George Hinde for a few moments, and he had spoken to Miss Squibb, and to Lizzie ... but he did not know anyone. He was alone in this seven-million-fold herd, without a relative or an intimate friend. He might stand at this corner for days, for weeks, on end, viewing the pa.s.sersby until his eyes were sore with the sight of them, and never see one person whom he knew even slightly. In Ballyards, he could not walk a dozen yards without encountering an acquaintance. In Belfast, he was certain to see someone whom he knew in the course of a day. But in this place!... He became horrified at the thought that if he were suddenly to drop dead at that moment, none of the persons who would gather round his body could say who he was. He would be carried off to a morgue and laid on a marble slab in the hope that someone would turn up and identify him ... and he might never be identified; he might be buried as "a person unknown."

He determined to keep a note of his name and address in his breast-pocket, together with a note of his mother's name and address.

"I'm not going to run the risk of them burying me without knowing who I am." he murmured to himself.

Someone jostled him roughly, and mumbling "Sorry!" hurried on. In Ireland, John thought to himself, had a man jostled a stranger so rudely, he would have stopped and apologised to him and would have asked for a.s.surance that he had not hurt him. "I beg your pardon, sir,"

he would have said. "I'm very sorry. I hope I haven't hurt you!" But this stranger who had roughly shoved against him, had not paused in his rude progress. He had shouted "Sorry!" at him, but he had barely turned his head to do it.

"Of course, I ought not to be standing here, blocking the way!" John admitted to himself. "I wonder is London always like this, rough and in a hurry!"

He crossed the street, not without alarm, and stood by the entrance to the Central London Railway. There were some flower-sellers sitting by the railings, but they had no resemblance to the flower-girls of whom Uncle Matthew had often told him. He glanced at them with distaste.

"It's queer," he thought, "how disappointed I am with everything!" and then, as if he would account for his disappointment, he added, "I'm bitter. That's what's wrong with me! I'm bitter about Maggie Carmichael!"

He turned to a man who was leaning against the iron railings. "What's down there?" he asked, pointing to the stairs leading to the Central London Railway.

"The Toob," said the man.

"The what?"

"The Toob. The Tuppeny Toob. Undergrahnd Rylewy!"

"Oh, is that what you call the Tuppeny Tube?" John exclaimed, as comprehension came to him. He had read of the Underground Railway built in the shape of two long tubes stretching from the centre of the City to Shepherd's Bush, but he had imagined a much more dramatic entrance to it than this dull flight of steps.

"But you _walk_ into it," he exclaimed to his informant.

"There's lifts down below," the man replied unemotionally.

"I thought it would be different," John continued.

"Different? 'Ow ... different?"

"Well ... different!"

The man spat. "I down't see wot more you could expect," he said. "It's there, ain't it? Wot more du want?"

"Oh, it's there, of course ... only!..."

The man interrupted him. "Wot's a toob for?" he said. He answered his own question. "To travel by. Well, you can travel by it. Wot more du want?"

"But I thought it would be exciting!..."

"An' 'oo the 'ell wants excitement in a toob!" the man answered.

John considered the matter for a moment or two. "I expect you're right," he said, and then, more briskly, added, "Yes, of course. Of course, you're right. Travelling in a train would not be pleasant if it were exciting."

"It would not," the man answered.

"But it sounded such an extraordinary thing, a Tube, when I read about it that I expected to see something different," John continued.

"Well, it is an extraordinary thing," the man said. "You walk down them steps there, an' get into a lift, an' wot'll 'appen to you? You'll be dropped 'undreds of feet into the earth, an' when you get ta the bottom, you'll find trains runnin' by electricity. I call that extraordinary, if you down't ... only I down't want to myke a song abaht it!"

John felt that he had been rebuked for an excess of enthusiasm. The Englishman was right about the Tube. It was a wonderful thing, more wonderful, perhaps, because of the quietness of its approach: it would not be any more wonderful if people were to go about the town uttering shouts of astonishment over it, nor was it any less wonderful because the English people treated it as if it were an ordinary affair.

He looked across the road at the Bank of England, devoid equally of dignity and sensation, and then turned and looked at the Royal Exchange. A pigeon flew up from the ground and perched among the figures carved over the portico, and as he watched it, he read the inscription beneath the figure of Justice: _The Earth is the Lord's and the Fullness Thereof_.