The eleven-five tram-car from Stratford started for Bow a trifle before
its time. The conductor knew what he might escape by stealing a march on
the closing public-houses; as also what was in store for all the
conductors in his wake, till there were no more revellers left to swarm
the cars. For it was Saturday night, and many a week's wages were
a-knocking down; and the publicans this side of Bow Bridge shut their
doors at eleven under Act of Parliament, whereas beyond the Bridge,
which is the county of London, the law gives them another hour, and a
man may drink many pots therein. And for this, at eleven every Saturday,
there is a great rush westward, a vast migration over Lea, from all the
length of High Street. From the nearer parts they walk, or do their best
to walk; but from further Stratford, by the Town Hall, the Church, and
the Martyrs' Memorial, they crowd the cars. For one thing, it is a long
half-mile, and the week's work is over. Also, the car being swamped, it
is odds that a man shall save his fare, since no conductor may fight
his way a quarter through his passengers before Bow Bridge, where the
vehicle is emptied at a rush. And that means yet another half-pint.
So the eleven-five car started sooner than it might have done. As it was
spattering with rain, I boarded it, sharing the conductor's forlorn
hope, but taking care to sit at the extreme fore-end inside. In the
broad street the market clamored and flared, its lights and shadows
flickering and fading about the long churchyard and the steeple in the
midst thereof; and toward the distant lights, the shining road sparkled
in long reaches, like a blackguard river.
A gap fell here and there among the lights where a publican put his gas
out; and at these points the crowds thickened. A quiet mechanic came in,
and sat near a decent woman with children, a bundle, a basket, and a
cabbage. Thirty yards on the car rumbled, and suddenly its hinder end
was taken in a mass of people--howling, struggling, and blaspheming--who
stormed and wrangled in at the door and up the stairs. There were lads
and men whooping and flushed, there were girls and women screaming
choruses; and in a moment the seats were packed, knees were taken, and
there was not an inch of standing room. The conductor cried, "All
full!" and tugged at his bell-strap, whereunto many were hanging by the
hand; but he was swept from his feet, and made to push hard for his own
place. And there was no more foothold on the back platform nor the
front, nor any vacant step upon the stairway; and the roof was thronged;
and the rest of the crowd was fain to waylay the next car.
This one moved off slowly, with shrieks and howls that were racking to
the wits. From divers quarters of the roof came a bumping thunder as of
cellar-flapping clogs. Profanity was sluiced down, as it were by
pailfuls, from above, and was swilled back as it were in pailfuls from
below. Blowses in feathered bonnets bawled hilarious obscenity at the
jiggers. A little maid with a market-basket, hustled and jostled and
elbowed at the far end, listened eagerly and laughed when she could
understand; and the quiet mechanic, whose knees had been invaded by an
unsteady young woman in a crushed hat, tried to look pleased. My own
knees were saved from capture by the near neighborhood of an enormous
female, seated partly on the seat and partly on myself, snorting and
gulping with sleep, her head upon the next man's shoulder. (To offer
your seat to a standing woman would, as beseems a foreign antic, have
been visited by the ribaldry of the whole crowd.) In the midst of the
riot the decent woman sat silent and indifferent, her children on and
about her knees. Further along, two women ate fish with their fingers
and discoursed personalities in voices which ran strident through the
uproar, as the odor of their snack asserted itself in the general fetor.
And opposite the decent woman there sat a bonnetless drab, who said
nothing, but looked at the decent woman's children as a shoeless brat
looks at the dolls in a toyshop window.
"So I ses to 'er, I ses"--this from the snacksters--"I'm a respectable
married woman, I ses. More'n you can say, you barefaced hussey, I ses--"
Then a shower of curses, a shout, and a roar of laughter; and the
conductor, making slow and laborious progress with the fares nearest
him, turned his head. A man had jumped upon the footboard and a
passenger's toes. A scuffle and a fight, and both had rolled off into
the mire, and got left behind. "Ain't they fond o' one another?" cried a
girl. "They're a-goin' for a walk together;" and there was a guffaw.
"The silly bleeders'll be too late for the pubs," said a male voice; and
there was another, for the general understanding was touched.
Then--an effect of sympathy, perhaps--a scuffle broke out on the roof.
But this disturbed not the insides. The conductor went on his plaguy
task: to save time, he passed over the one or two that, asked now or
not, seemed likely to pay at the journey's end. The snacking women
resumed their talk, the choristers their singing; the rumble of the
wheels was lost in a babel of vacant ribaldry; the enormous woman choked
and gasped and snuggled lower down upon her neighbor's shoulder; and the
shabby strumpet looked at the children.
A man by the door vomited his liquor: whereat was more hilarity, and his
neighbors, with many yaups, shoved further up the middle. But one of the
little ones, standing before her mother, was pushed almost to falling;
and the harlot, seeing her chance, snatched the child upon her knee. The
child looked up, something in wonder, and smiled; and the woman leered
as honestly as she might, saying a hoarse word or two.
Presently the conflict overhead, waxing and waning to an accompaniment
of angry shouts, afforded another brief diversion to those within, and
something persuaded the standing passengers to shove toward the door.
The child had fallen asleep in the street-walker's arms. "Jinny!" cried
the mother, reaching forth and shaking her. "Jinny! wake up now--you
mustn't go to sleep." And she pulled the little thing from her perch to
where she had been standing.
The bonnetless creature bent forward, and, in her curious voice (like
that of one sick with shouting), "She can set on my knee, m'm, if she
likes," she said; "she's tired."
The mother busied herself with a jerky adjustment of the child's hat and
shawl. "She mustn't go to sleep," was all she said, sharply, and without
looking up.
The hoarse woman bent further forward, with a propitiatory grin. "'Ow
old is she?... I'd like to--give 'er a penny."
The mother answered nothing; but drew the child close by the side of her
knee, where a younger one was sitting, and looked steadily through the
fore windows.
The hoarse woman sat back, unquestioning and unresentful, and turned her
eyes upon them that were crowding over the conductor; for the car was
rising over Bow Bridge. Front and back they surged down from the roof,
and the insides made for the door as one man. The big woman's neighbor
rose, and let her fall over on the seat, whence, awaking with a loud
grunt and an incoherent curse, she rolled after the rest. The conductor,
clamant and bedevilled, was caught between the two pell-mells, and,
demanding fares and gripping his satchel, was carried over the
footboard in the rush. The stramash overhead came tangled and swearing
down the stairs, gaining volume and force in random punches as it came;
and the crowd on the pavement streamed vocally toward a brightness at
the bridge foot--the lights of the Bombay Grab.
The woman with the children waited till the footboard was clear, and
then, carrying one child and leading another (her marketings attached
about her by indeterminate means), she set the two youngsters on the
pavement, leaving the third on the step of the car. The harlot,
lingering, lifted the child again--lifted her rather high--and set her
on the path with the others. Then she walked away toward the Bombay
Grab. A man in a blue serge suit was footing it down the turning between
the public-house and the bridge with drunken swiftness and an
intermittent stagger; and, tightening her shawl, she went in chase.
The quiet mechanic stood and stretched himself, and took a corner seat
near the door; and the tram-car, quiet and vacant, bumped on westward.