He was sitting in the acrid unpleasantness of a London fog holding a
steering-wheel and--the lives of men and women. It was Sunday.
Inside the well-lit and almost pleasant omnibus a young man, wearing
his Sunday hat, and a young girl, completely Sundayfied, sat holding
hands as they pretended to read a newspaper. They saw no more than
each other's eyes, and what more could they possibly have seen?
Portentous women with unnaturally clean children entered or made a
fussy exit from time to time, bent, no doubt, on that awfulness of a
London Sunday--a visit to relatives. On some faces you could read a
kind of comfortable condescension that somehow suggested a glittering
descent on poor relations; on others a dutiful resignation--the
composure of an ordained martyr preparing to meet the lions--and you
pictured a stiff and patronizing tea in a distant but exalted suburb,
with criticism underlying an afternoon of smooth insincerity!
All the time the Man at the Wheel exhibited a broad and stocky back
to the human comedy he was carrying; sometimes his face, tense and
questioning, was turned towards the lit interior as he tried to gauge
the right moment to accelerate after the descent of an agile
passenger. Mostly, however, he just sat there peering into the white
cotton-wool world of fog that was hung with saffron lights, his big
hands in gloves, expertly and suddenly taking his vehicle from an
unexpected near rush of light as a tramcar clanged past. And the
passengers did not notice him. They had paid twopence to be taken in
safety through the fog!
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