'Tis my vocation, 'tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.
FOR some weeks our adventurer divided his time between working in Mr.
Martin's yard and office, studying the map of London, and being driven
about the city in a car of instruction with seven or eight other
aspirants to the taxi-driving profession. Most of them were depressed
and bored, smoked incessantly, and spoke little, but every now and
then René would find one to talk to him and take pity on his gentility
and give him advice and consolation. The drives would begin cheerfully
enough, often with excitement and humor, but soon listlessness would
creep over the party, the more sober individuals would produce maps
and notebooks, while the younger would conceitedly assume that their
knowledge could not be enlarged, or perhaps they were ashamed to be
caught out in ignorance. On the whole, they made René unhappy, for
most of them were drifting so helplessly and with such dull
indifference. By contrast the energy, the power, and richness of
London streets were almost appalling.
He would return home exhausted and confused, and, to avoid thought,
would go on with his map, taking Hyde Park Corner, Oxford Circus, and
the Bank as the centers of three circles into which he had divided the
city of his future operations. He found it easy to memorize the
thoroughfares that connected them and their dependent roads. He had
observed that certain districts were devoid of cabs or cab-ranks, and
marking these districts off on his map, he concentrated upon the rest.
The cabs served to connect one moneyed region with another, and with
the stations and places of business and pleasure. And he selected the
moneyed district where he would begin when he had his cab.
Casey was a Liverpool Irishman who had begun life as a clerk in a
shipping office and had then, at twenty-seven, revolted and gone out
to South Africa to work in the mines until one of his lungs gave out.
Then he came home and had a nasty time in London in an office until he
was told by a doctor that he must find some outdoor occupation. With
the little money he had left, he had learned how to drive and repair a
car, had been with one of the big companies for some time; then
married a niece of old Martin's and thought he could do better by
working for him on a profit-sharing basis. That was René's
arrangement; he was given the alternative of buying his car on the
hire-purchase system and using the yard as a garage, but on Casey's
advice chose the first proposition. Casey said it was better, because
you needed capital to stand the heavy wear and tear of a car in
constant use in London traffic. That settled, Casey took his novice
out in the early morning to satisfy himself that the car would not
suffer at his hands. He was delighted with the way the machine was
handled. René, too, was pleased. He had been rather nervous at the
thought of driving a more powerful engine than that to which he had
been accustomed; but the greater power was only an added pleasure and
no difficulty.
He took out his license and received a number and a number-plate,
joined the union, bought a thick green suit that buttoned up to his
neck, shiny leggings, and a peaked cap; a waterproof overall, enormous
gloves, a leather purse, a rug. Then on a day early in the autumn he
drove his car out of the mews and plunged into the eastward stream of
traffic. He had not gone above a hundred yards when he was hailed by a
gentleman in tail-coat and top-hat carrying a red brief-bag. Drawing
up by the curb, he flung back his arm and opened the door as he had
seen drivers do, and received the one word: Temple.
Absurdly hoping that he would be seen by no one who knew him, and
feeling that the eyes of the occupant of the car were boring into the
back of his neck, he drove to the Temple, and there received more
exact directions from the gentleman, who poked his head out of the
window, until they stopped outside a doorway with steps covered with
the leaves of a plane-tree. The gentleman got out:
"You forgot to put down your flag."
René started and blushed. So he had!
"The fare's half a crown."
"Thank you, . . . sir."
He was given two and nine. His first tip! Threepence.
It was a busy day. He had only half an hour to wait on the stand which
he had chosen for his headquarters. He drove home at night worn out
and sleepy.
The excitement did not last. Very soon he hardly noticed his fares; a
stick or an umbrella raised in the street, a whistle blown by a
servant, and off he sped, shipped his freight, and discharged it
uninterested. From his district in the morning the gentlemen went to
their business; later in the day their ladies went to the shops; in
the evening both went about their pleasures. Occasionally he was taken
out to the suburbs, far west or north, but for the most part it was
routine work, varied in the evenings, sometimes, with the conveyance
of brilliantly-attired young men and women from a restaurant to a
theater in the West End, or of dubious couples to dubious habitations.
And he was happy. The monotony was a relief. It never ceased to be a
source of pride to him to keep the paint and brass of his car gleaming
and his engine sweet and in tune. Always it was a delight to him at
night, when the traffic was abated, to let the throttle open and send
the car spinning and humming over the shining streets. If he lost
interest in his fares, he never weakened in his joy in the streets
with their color and activity, as changing as the sky or as the water
in the river, their music swelling through the day, to almost every
hour its individual harmony, a music growing and falling with the
seasons: vigor and hope in October; in the winter a humorous
desperation out of which grew miraculously the spring, and that again
was lost in the maddening rout of June and then the slackness and the
excited pleasure-hunting of the summer months when the genius of the
city flees before the horde of aliens and visitors who come to gape
and peer and see the sights. He was happy, and most of all he loved
his independence, to be free of organization of any kind. Company? The
car was company. He and it worked together. Here was no uncertainty,
no fumbling. The day's work was marked out and must be well done.
There was always satisfaction in it and never compromise, never the
sense of being driven on by some obscure and undirected energy other
than his own that had so often overcome him in Thrigsby. And because
his mind and body were engaged in the discipline of skilled work, his
intellect, his imagination began to grow, to reach out, to desire to
use their powers upon all that he observed and thought and felt. A
little joy grew in him slowly and brought him at first to a dreaming,
wistful mood wherein desires expanded of which he did not begin to be
conscious until spring airs stirred in London.
Through the winter the habit of labor and his pride in it brought him
slowly nearer to understanding of Ann Pidduck and her absorption in
fun. He began to share her pleasure in relaxation. She taught him to
dance, and they attended shilling balls together and she communicated
to him her Cockney pleasure in the streets, the prowling in the
lighted thoroughfares, the making of chance acquaintances, the full
gusto of broad jests. He introduced her to Kilner and tried to make
her include him in their intimacy and their jaunts; but she seemed to
be scared of the artist, and when René appeared with him would make
excuses of other engagements.
Then there were evenings of talk with Kilner, René hardly listening to
him but rejoicing in the vigor of his words. He was painting in his
spare time and on Saturdays and Sundays, and through his pictures and
the painter's enthusiasm for things seen René learned to use his eyes.
That was a slow process, too. Often he saw beautiful things and
creatures that so moved him that he lost sight of them, and dwelt only
in the emotion they had roused, falsifying his vision. He would
constantly be overcome in that way when he tried to describe anything
he had seen to his friend, who would then turn upon him and call him a
bloody liar, and a sentimentalist, and a filthy spitter upon the
world's beauty, a crapulous cheat, trying to steal a winged joy and
turn it into a selfish pleasure; and much more that was beyond René
except that he would feel ashamed but also invigorated by being so
fiercely flung back into humility. Kilner took him to the National
Gallery and very carefully explained the difference between a real
picture and a fraud. There were, according to him, very few real
pictures. He talked René into a very pretty bewilderment from which
his hours with Ann were a welcome relief. There everything was what it
seemed, everybody was taken (more or less) at his or her own
valuation; there was fun to be extracted from everything and
everybody, if only you approached them good-humoredly enough. And if
you failed and did not find the expected fun--Oh, well, try elsewhere.
There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.
And then one morning Spring came to London. The black trees were
powdered with green; the air was magical; the car was filled with a
blithe new energy; the light gave the street and the things and people
in them form and definiteness. René was up and out very early that
morning to take a family to one of the stations. Three children were
going away to the country. They beamed at him as though he were
already a part of their coming delights. He laughed at them, and they
said he was a nice funny driver, and was he coming to the country,
too? Uncle George had got a new calf which they would like him to see.
When he had unloaded the happy party at the station--it was that at
which he had arrived the year before--he caught sight of the hill at
Highgate, like a green mountain towering above the long gray streets.
He turned northward and sped out over the hills and far away. Here the
trees were less advanced than in London, but their green was peeping,
and in a field were ewes and lambs. He stopped his engine and stood by
the fence and gazed at them. Two of the lambs were playing, running
races backward and forward. In the sky there were little clouds, and
they too seemed to be playing. He remembered words of Kilner's:
"Real seeing is through, not with, your eyes. Then you recognize that
all things visible are within you as well as without. Then the spirit
in you sees the spirit shining in all things, and it is only the
spirit that can really see."
And away up north was a black city, dark and hard and remorseless,
from which he had escaped. The memory of it clung to him now and
filled him with a stabbing terror that, though it could not rob him of
his joy, could yet bring him to a new discontent, a hungry and almost
angry desire.
Back then he went to the city, and all day long busily plied his
trade. To-day he closely observed all things. The wonder of the early
morning was gone. He hated those who hired him, the insolent women and
busy, indifferent men, for it seemed to him that they had destroyed
it. Unconsciously he contrasted these people, who went so insensibly
about their habitual stale employments, with the happy children going
to the country.
He was engaged to seek amusement with Ann that night. She was for the
Pictures, but he persuaded her to go on the top of a bus to Kew.
"But they've got the Miserables at the Pictures," she said, "and they
say it's It."
"Look at the sky, my dear," he protested.
She looked at it.
"Yes. It's all right."
Usually now when he met her in the evening he kissed her, because she
expected it. She had kissed him first when he had given her a present
at Christmas, and thereafter it became their practice, comradely.
To-night he did not kiss her. He was stirred at the sight of her; her
friendliness, the bright greeting of her eyes thrust him back into
himself and inwardly alarmed him. And she looked up at him and laughed
mischievously, and swung her body from the hips up, and then moved
slowly away from him, pouting her lips.
"Would you like anywhere better than Kew?" he asked.
"Wimbledon, where we saw the picture-actors. D'you remember?" They
boarded a bus and were swiftly borne out over the river, up through
the holiday town that had reminded him of Buxton, and out to the wide
common. There they wandered. A thin moon came up. They passed
whispering lovers, and men and women for whom that word was too great.
Here again was spring, the first spring evening.
Ann chattered, but René spoke never a word. Once she said:
"Dull to-night, aren't you? Are you tired?"
Her questions met with so hard a silence that she too ceased to talk.
She thought he must be offended with her, and as they returned she
slipped her hand on his knee. He gripped her forearm, held it for a
moment, then put her away from him.
After a long while she said:
"I didn't know I'd made you angry."
"Angry? My dear child!"
"What is it, then?"
"This damned world. This morning I took three happy children to the
country, and all day long I've been at the beck and call of men and
women who have lost the power and the will to be happy."
"I don't know how you know. And you're not very good at it yourself
to-night, are you?"
"How do I know? Ask Kilner."
"That beast, Kilner."
"He's my friend."
"He's no friend of mine."
Then again he was silent. The thought of Kilner had made him just a
little angry with her. With Kilner the day that had begun so
beautifully might have come to a glorious and brave end.
Presently she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and said:
"Don't be cross. You'll soon be dead, and it's no good being cross. I
do like being with you, really, even when we can't have fun, and you
go wasting your time thinking."
He turned, and their eyes met, and he astonished her by saying:
"Ann, you don't know how beautiful you are."
She gave a little cry on that, put out her hand, and this time he held
it strongly clasped. They could be happy in their silence then.
When they reached the mews she said she had supper in her room and he
could come up if he liked. They ate and drank and were very merry, and
it was late when he rose to go. He opened the door. She was at his
side.
"Good night, Ann."
"You needn't go," she whispered.
V