O. W. Holmes,
_The Deacon's Masterpiece_ (DW)
and we are left sitting motionless in the middle of Edgware Road, with
the clock over the shuttered shop opposite pointing to quarter to two.
It is the spirit of Jest inside the breast of the motor bus asserting
himself. He disapproves of the passengers having all the fun. Is he not
a humorist too? May he not be merry in the dawn of this May morning?
We take our fate like Englishmen, bravely, even merrily.
The cabmen laugh recklessly. This is their moment. This is worth living
for. Their enemy is revealed in his true colours, a base betrayer of the
innocent wayfarer; their profession is justified. What though it is two
or three miles to Cricklewood, what though it is two in the morning! Who
cares?
Only the gentleman with the big bag in the corner.
“'Ow am I to git 'ome to Cricklewood?” he asks the conductor with tears
in his voice.
The conductor gives it up. He goes round to help the driver. They busy
themselves in the bowels of the machinery, they turn handles, they work
pumps, they probe here and thump there.
They come out perspiring but merry. It's all in the day's work. They
have the cheerful philosophy of people who meddle with things that
move--cab drivers, bus-drivers, engine-drivers.
If, when looking well won't move thee.
Looking ill prevail?
So they take a breather, light cigarettes, crack jokes. Then to it
again.
Meanwhile all the hansoms in nocturnal London seem to swoop down on us,
like sharks upon the dead whale. Up they rattle from this side and that,
and every cabman flings a jibe as he passes.
“Look 'ere,” says one, pulling up. “Why don't yer take the
genelmen where they want to go? That's what I asks yer.
Why--don't--yer--take--the--genelmen--where--they--want--to go? It's
only your kid. Yer don't want to go. That's what it is. Yer don't want
to go.”
For the cabman is like “the wise thrush who sings his song twice over.”
“'Ere take ole Jumbo to the 'orspital!” cries another.
“We can't 'elp larfin', yer know,” says a third feelingly.
“Well, you keep on larfin',” says the chauffeur looking up from the
inside of One a.m. “It suits your style o' beauty.”
A mellow voice breaks out:
We won't go home till morning,
Till daylight does appear.
And the refrain is taken up by half a dozen cabmen in comic chorus.
Those who can't sing, whistle, and those who can neither sing nor
whistle, croak.
We sit inside patiently. We even joke too. All but the man with the big
bag. He sits eyeing the bag as if it were his life-long enemy.
He appeals again to the conductor, who laughs.
The tipsy man with the tall hat staggers outside. He comes back, puts
his head in the doorway, beams upon the passengers, and says:
“It's due out at eight-thirty in the mor-r-ning.”
We think better of the tipsy gentleman in the tall hat. His speech is
that of the politest people on earth. His good humour goes to the heart.
He is like Dick Steele--“when he was sober he was delightful; when he
was drunk he was irresistible.”
“She won't go any more to-night,” says the conductor.
So we fold our tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away. All but
the man with the big bag. We leave him still, struggling with a problem
that looks insoluble.
Two of us jump into a hansom that still prowls around, the last of the
shoal of sharks.
“Drive up West End Lane.”
“Right, sir.”
Presently the lid opens. We look up. Cabby's face, wreathed in smiles,
beams down on us.
“I see what was coming all the way from Baker Street,” he savs. “I see
the petrol was on fire.”
“Ah!”
“Yus,” he says. “Thought I should pick you up about 'ere.”
“Ah!”
“No good, motors,” he goes on, cheerfully. “My opinion is they'll go
out as fast as they come in. Why, I hear lots o' the aristocracy are
giving 'em up and goin' back to 'orses.”
“Hope they'll get better horses than this,” for we are crawling
painfully up the tortuous reaches of West End Lane.
“Well, genelmen, it ain't because 'e's overworked. 'E ain't earned more
than three bob to-night. That's jest what' e's earned. Three bob. It's
the cold weather, you know. That's what it is. It's the cold weather
as makes 'im duck his 'ead. Else 'e's a good 'orse. And 'e does go after
all, even if 'e only goes slow. And that's what you can't say of that
there motor-bus.”
We had no reply to this thrust, and the lid dropped down with a sound of
quiet triumph.
And so home. And my dreams that night were filled with visions of a huge
Monster, reeking with strange odours, issuing hoarse-sounds of malicious
laughter and standing for ever and ever in the middle of Edgware Road
with the clock opposite pointing to a quarter to two, a rueful face in
the corner staring fixedly at a big bag and a tipsy gentleman in a
tall hat finding his way back to Baker Street in happy converse with a
policeman.
Gone is the old London over which the shade of Mr Hansom presided like
a king. Gone is the “orf horse” with all its sins; gone is the
rosy-cheeked driver with his merry jokes and his eloquent whip and his
tales of the streets; gone is the conductor who, as he gave you your
ticket, talked to you in a spirit of leisurely comradeship about the
weather, the Boat Race, or the latest clue to the latest mystery. We
amble no more. We have banished laughter and leisure from the streets,
and the face of the motor-bus driver, fixed and intense, is the symbol
of the change. We have passed into a breathless world, a world of
wonderful mechanical contrivances that have quickened the tempo of life
and will soon have made the horse as much a memory as the bow and arrow
or the wherry that used to be the principal vehicle of Elizabethan
London. As I watched the hansom bowling along Regent Street until it
was lost in the swirl of motor-buses and taxis I seemed to see in it the
last straggler of an epoch passing away into oblivion. I am glad it went
so gallantly, and I am half sorry I did not give the driver a parting
cheer as he flicked his whip in the face of the night.
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[Illustration: 0184]