"Oh, yes," John replied, smiling. "I used to sing that song at home!"
"Did you nah. An' w'ere is your 'ome?"
"In Ireland!"
"Ow! Thet acahnts for it. I couldn't myke aht 'ow it was you never
'eard of the 'Orns. Fency you hearin' abaht the Elephant in Ireland!"
"Well, you see, Shakespeare mentions it!..."
"I down't tyke much interest in 'im. 'Ere's the Elephant! Thet's
Spurgeon's Tabernacle over there!..."
The driver became absorbed in the business of pulling up at the
stopping-place and alluring fresh passengers on to the 'bus in place of
those who were now leaving it, and John had time to look about him. The
public-house was big and garish and even at this hour of the morning
the hot odour of spirits floated out of it when a door was swung open.
"I don't suppose it was like that in Shakespeare's day," he said to
himself, as he turned away and gazed at the flow of people and traffic
that passed without ceasing through the circus where the six great
roads of South London meet and cross. It seemed to him that an accident
must happen, that these streams of carts and trams and 'buses and
hurrying people must become so involved that disaster must follow. He
became reassured when he observed how imperturbed everyone was. There
were moments when the whole traffic seemed to become chaotic and the
roads were choked, and then as suddenly as the congestion was created,
it was relieved. He felt enthralled by this wonder of traffic, of great
crowds moving with ease through a criss-cross of confusing streets.
"It's wonderful," he said, leaning forward and speaking almost in a
whisper to the driver.
"Wot is?"
"All that traffic!"
"Ow, thet's nothink. We think nothink of thet owver 'ere," the driver
replied. "We down't tyke no notice of a little lot like thet!"
The conductor rang his bell, and the driver whipped up his horses, and
the 'bus proceeded on its way.
John remembered that he had not heard any witticisms from the driver.
Uncle Matthew had told him that one could always depend upon a 'busman
to provide comic entertainment, but this man, although, after a while,
he had become talkative enough, had not said one funny thing. He had
not chaffed a policeman or a footpassenger or another 'busman, and now
that they had passed away from the Elephant and Castle, his
conversation seemed to have dried up. The 'bus tooled through the
Newington Butts, along the Borough High Street (past the very inn where
Mr. Pickwick first met Sam Weller, although John was then unaware that
he was passing it) and under the railway bridge at St. Saviour's
Cathedral Church of Southwark.
"What's that place?" John said to the driver, pointing to the
Cathedral.
"Eih? Ow, thet! Thet's a cathedral!"
"A cathedral! Hidden away like that!..."
A hideous railway bridge cramped St. Saviour's on one side, and hideous
warehouses and offices cramped it on the other. There was a mess of
vegetable debris lying about the Cathedral pavement, the refuse from
the Borough Market.
"What cathedral is it?" John demanded.
"Southwark!" the driver replied, pronouncing it "Suth-ark." "Suthark!"
John said vaguely. "Do you mean Southwark?..." He pronounced the name
as it is spelt.
"We call it Suthark!" said the driver. "Yes, thet's it, Southwark
Cathedral!..."
"But that's where Shakespeare used to go to church!" John exclaimed.
"Ow!" the driver replied.
"And look at it!..."
"Wot's wrong with it?" The 'bus was now rolling over London Bridge, and
the Cathedral could not be seen.
"They've hidden it. That awful bridge!..."
"I down't see nothink wrong with it," the driver interrupted.
"Nothing wrong with it! You'd think they were ashamed of it, they've
hidden it so!"
"I down't see nothink wrong with it. Wot you gettin' so excited abaht?"
"_Shakespeare said his prayers there!_" John ejaculated.
"Well, wot if 'e did?" the driver replied. "We down't think nothink of
Cathedrals owver 'ere! We've got 'undreds of 'em!"
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 passing 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, assisted by policemen and
some passers-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 reassured 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 masses 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 Saturday
morning, the workmen would hurry over the bridge to their homes:
a thick, black, unyielding mass of men; but at thirty minutes after
twelve, that thick, black, seemingly solid mass 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 passersby 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 assurance 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_.
"Dear me!" he said, turning away again.
He began to feel hungry, and he moved away to search for a place in
which to find a meal.
"Good-morning," he said to the man who had instructed him concerning
the Tube.
"Oh. goo'-mornin'!"
V
He walked along Queen Victoria Street and, without considering what he
was doing, turned into a narrow street that ran off it at an angle of
seventy-five degrees. It was a perilous street to traverse for every
building in it seemed to have a crane near its roof, and every crane
seemed to have a heavy bale dangling from it in mid-air; and from the
narrow pavement cellar flaps were raised so that an unwary person might
suddenly find himself descending into deep, dark holes in the ground.
The roadway was occupied by lorries, and John had to turn and cross,
and cross and turn many times before he could extricate himself from
the labyrinth into which he had so carelessly intruded. While he was
crossing the street at one point, and passing between two lorries, he
found himself in front of a coffee-house, and again aware of his
hunger, he entered it. He passed to the back of the L-shaped shop, and
sat down at a small marble-topped table and waited for a waitress to
come and take his order. There was a girl sitting on the other side of
the table, but he did not observe her particularly, for her head was
bent over a letter which she was reading. He looked about him. The room
was full of men and young women, all eating or waiting to eat, and from
a corner of the room came a babble of conversation carried on by a
group of young clerks, and while John looked at them, a waitress came
to him, and said, "Yes, sir?"
He looked up at her hurriedly. "Oh, I want something to eat!" he said.
She waited for him to proceed. "What have you?" he asked. She handed a
bill of fare to him, and he glanced through it, feeling incapable of
choice.
"The sausages are very nice," the waitress suggested.
"I'll have sausages," he replied, thankful for the suggestion.
"Two?"
He nodded his head.
"Tea or coffee?"
"Tea, please. And a roll and butter!"
The waitress left him, and he sat back in his chair, and now he
regarded the bent head of the girl sitting opposite to him, and as he
did so, she looked up and their eyes met. She looked away.
"What lovely eyes she has," John said to himself.
She stood up as he thought this, and prepared to leave the restaurant,
and he saw again that her eyes were very beautiful: blue eyes that had
a dark look in them; and he said to himself that a woman who had
beautiful eyes had everything. He wished that he had come earlier to
the restaurant or that she had come later, so that they might have sat
opposite to each other for a longer time. He listened while she asked
the waitress for her bill. The softness of her voice was like gentle
music. He thought of the tiny noise of a small stream, of the song of a
bird heard at a distance, of leaves slightly stirring in a quiet wind,
and told himself that the sound of her voice had the quality of all
these. He wondered what it was that brought her to the City of London.
Perhaps she was employed in an office. Perhaps she had come up to do
some shopping.... She moved away, and as she did so, he saw that she
had left her letter lying on the table. He leant over and picked it up,
reading the name written on the envelope: _Miss Eleanor Moore_. He
got up and hurried after her.
The restaurant was a narrow cramped one, and it was not easy for him to
make his way through the people who were entering or leaving it, and he
feared that he would not be able to catch up with her before she had
reached the street. Customers in that restaurant, however, had to stop
at the counter to pay their bills, and so he reached her in time.
"Excuse me," he said. "I think you left this letter behind you."
She looked up in a startled manner, and then, seeing the letter which
he held out to her, smiled and said, "Oh, thank you! Thank you very
much. I left it on the table!"
She took it from him, and put it in a pocket of her coat.
"Thank you very much," she said again, and turned to take her change
from the man behind the counter.
John stood for a moment, looking at her, and then, remembering his
manners, went back to his seat and began to eat his meal of tea and
bread and butter and sausages.
"Eleanor Moore!" he murmured to himself as he cut off a large piece of
sausage and put it into his mouth. "That's a very nice name!" He
munched the sausage. "A very nice name," he thought again. "Much nicer
than Maggie Carmichael."