TIRED

It was the fag end of the week in the Dingy City. A heavy weight of

dusty grey cloud lay oppressively inert, vaguely resting on the house

and tree tops, and underneath the cloud the air seemed stagnantly

confined; in its lowest strata people had been breathing it all

day--all the week, in fact--in and out of their lungs, so that it was

no wonder it felt tired and second-hand and used up.

The air-thirst of their lungs had impelled those who were energetic to

go away to where fresh air was to be breathed; but the very tired, and

those who lacked the energy for initial impetus, remained. The shops

had been closed, and the sunlight beat upon the shuttered eyelids of

their windows on the Phryne side of Piccadilly. By that hour on

Saturday afternoon Regent Street and Piccadilly were wearing almost a

Sunday appearance; Ranelagh and Hurlingham and the new club at

Roehampton were crowded with smart people, and for hours past trains

from Paddington and Waterloo had been carrying thousands of

Panama-hatted, white-trousered men and summer-clad women riverwards.

Though the shops were closed, some belated workers, in ones or twos or

threes, continued to dribble out from their doors.

Going westward, along Piccadilly, a slight, dark-haired young girl

stepped out from one. She was dressed in a thin white blouse that

showed the outline of her arms and shoulders; she did not join the

crowd of others who were scaling the 'buses on the opposite side of

the street, but turned to walk along the pavement parkwards. One fell

to speculating as to why she walked. There was no spring or elasticity

in her step as if she were doing so for the enjoyment of the

exercise. Her feet, in boots with heels slightly rounded on the

outside, seemed to drag on that hot pavement. Possibly the 'bus fare

was an item of consideration, even though she looked as if she had

spent all the morning on her feet in the shop. With thick, dark hair

and good eyes, it would have taken very little aid in the way of dress

to make her appear quite good-looking. As it was, men turned to look

at her as she passed, and one even came across the street, followed,

and leered at her as he came abreast; she held on the even tenor of

her way, taking no notice of them. On, past the clubs, through the

street vocal with the clanking stamp of the horses' hoofs--horses with

shining flanks, who cocked their ears, and tossed their foam-dripping

mouths as they passed the water-trough.

Wooden stands here and there still disfigured some of the house

fronts, and here and there a red pole, looking like a sugar-stick that

a child had been sucking, stood as a memento of one of the most

hideous schemes of tawdry decoration that a civilised city has ever

shown.

At Hyde Park corner she turned in towards the trees, following the

stream-crowd direction of other pedestrians. She stopped near the

railings, watching the procession of carriages going by. A girl, so

like herself that they might almost have been sisters, passed in a

high C-springed carriage. Looking from one to the other, the great

difference made by little things was apparent. An application of

powder-puff to the moist face of the girl at the railings would have

worked improvement; her cotton gloves hung down flaccidly from the

bare hand which held up her skirt; perhaps some such thought as that

of the unfair distribution of C-spring carriages in this world crossed

her mind, as she turned away and languidly continued her journey

westward under the trees.

The seats were full of a heterogeneous collection of people, all more

or less under the drowsy influence of that stagnant air. Here and

there men were to be seen asleep in the chairs. Heads in tall hats

nodded, debarred the luxury enjoyed by those tramps who lay at full

length under the trees on the grass behind. Between those luxuriating

on the grass, men lying in their shirt-sleeves, with heads a-resting

in the laps of tired-faced women, whose children played or cried

noisily around, and those who passed in the procession of carriages,

was the intervening line of people from which all sorts of specimens

could be taken of the great mediocracy of England--those who could no

more afford a carriage than they could afford to lie on the grass. The

men's heads were branded with tall hats, remnants and summer sales

were suggested in the costumes of many of the women; an occasional

glimpse of shoes or hosiery explained why the graceful holding up of

the skirts should be unstudied or unknown on this side of the Channel.

And their gloves were of the same character as the hose.

Curious specimens were to be found amongst that crowd. A man passed

whom I recollect seeing there as long as I can recollect going to the

park. Go round the world and back, and here one was certain to find

him. I know his income--it is just three hundred a year; except that

his whiskers had got a little whiter, he looked just the same as

usual. The frock-coat he wore I have a sort of suspicion was the same

as I saw on him two years ago. I could swear to the umbrella--at least

the handle, because possibly it had been recovered. The frock-coat

would obviously not see another season--not that it was showing any

tinge of green about the shoulders, far from it. But perhaps it was a

feeling of doubtfulness about the coat, which prompted a startling

departure in his costume. He had gone in for a pair of those yellow,

chamois-coloured gloves which have made their appearance this season.

He sauntered along leisurely, watching the people and the carriages

with apparently the same degree of interest as he had done for the

past ten years. I have heard that long ago he had a good tenor voice,

and he used to speak authoritatively of great singers, when they

really were great singers, not such as now.... I've never seen him

talking to anybody in the park, and I've never seen him smoke; yet his

lips are seldom at rest. They have now got a motion something between

that of a nervous American with a cigar and a cow chewing the cud.

This is the result of the movableness of his artificial teeth. Perhaps

an extra visit to his dentist was an item of expenditure not to be

lightly incurred.

What appeared to be corresponding feminine types were to be seen in

profusion. Women with incomes of one hundred, two hundred, three

hundred a year, women who had passed the age either of matrimony or

naughtiness. What thousands of friendless and lonely people there must

be in this great Dingy City! The class that lies on the grass is more

sociable; they are free from a thousand tyrannies that oppress the

mediocracy.

The face of a woman dressed in black, seated between two children,

seemed familiar; not until she bowed did I recognise her as the wife

of an old friend who had been killed in Ladysmith. She used to be the

prettiest officer's wife of his smart regiment; and from her account

it would have been better if she had not been so pretty, or the

regiment so smart. She was now left with barely his pension for

herself and the two children to live on.... Yet very bravely,

apparently, she had faced the change!

"Oh, I have tried various things for the last couple of years," she

said, "but I am afraid there is nothing I can do. I even tried the

stage for a time." She used to have a good voice. "But the managers

were horrid, and the pay was very small. Then I tried to give music

lessons; but what I got was hardly worth the distances I had to go; so

now I have to settle down to working out daily problems in domestic

economy."

"And all your friends?"

"Oh, they all were very nice and kind; but one cannot go about without

being properly dressed, and when one keeps refusing invitations, one

gradually becomes forgotten in time. I felt rather lonely just now

when I saw the people driving down to Hurlingham. Come along, chicks,

we must be going now. You see," she said, "it is a long 'bus ride to

our little flat."

At the end of the long free seat, beyond where they had been sitting,

was a strange, haggard-looking woman; a pair of cheap cotton gloves

showed her thin white wrists, and her black dress looked dusty and

draggled. She had a strange haunted look on her face, as if she had

left some tragedy behind her at home. Every time a carriage with

scarlet-liveried coachmen passed, she got up and stood on the seat.

Perhaps she had journeyed there to see the Queen. She looked cross and

disappointed each time she stepped down again. On the other side a

couple of girls were discussing those that passed in the carriages,

and speculating as to who they might be. It was interesting to follow

their surmises.

"I think that's Lady X.," one of them said, as a lady, driving a pair

of high-steppers, passed.

But it wasn't. The little fellow sitting beside her glowed with the

importance of proprietorship; but, smart little chap that he was in

Throgmorton Street, he had no idea how many understudies there were to

his part, and did not realise that there are syndicates outside those

of the City.

"What an awfully common-looking woman!" the other said, as an old lady

passed in her carriage behind a sleepy pair of horses, sleepily

driven, the fat pug dog at her feet suffering eclipse by the

jelly-shaking arc of her redundant figure. She happened not to be

common by any means, but one of the brightest and most good-natured

members of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in

England.

"My goodness, isn't that Lord Roberts?" said the other, as a pair of

chestnuts passed, with a rigid and angular lady in the carriage

sitting beside a red-faced, white-moustached little man with his nose

in the air.

It was not Lord Roberts. He really looked much too important for

"Bobs," although he was a military man in a sense, being colonel of a

Volunteer regiment.

And how nasally obviously numerous in the procession was the

proportion of Jews, and the Jewesses whose plumpness seemed the

retribution inflicted by prosperity.

As the smart carriages passed and the high-stepping horses, which were

indeed the exception, for the majority ambled along half somnolent

from careless coachmanship, one sought in vain for some idea of what

they were doing it all for. They did not seem to enjoy it. If they did

not enjoy it, why did they do it? The expression that was common and

universal to almost all was their seriousness. The Volunteer colonel

took himself seriously, as did the fair frailty behind the

high-steppers, no less than the best ladies of the land who seemed to

be doing it as a traditional duty; but each and every one looked so

serious.

How was it that no one seemed to be laughing and enjoying himself out

of all the crowd? The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne seemed to belong to

another planet. The listless languor of these girls did not at least

obviously claim Transatlantic cousinship; the gaiety of a Japanese

street seemed so remote as to belong to a planet of another system;

and the seriousness seemed reflected in the faces of the great

mediocracy sauntering along inside the railings or solemnly seated in

the chairs with their faces turned carriagewards.

Here it did not seem the Dingy City; there was colour enough--bright

splashes of colour, both colour in movement and colour from the

rhododendron bushes, backgrounded with the fresh grass, that an artist

was making a picture of over the way; it was not the Dingy City here.

At least this was an oasis in it. But here, in this oasis, playground

or pleasure-ground, the People of the Serious City was what was writ

on their faces.

Five hours later the park was almost deserted, and the gleam of white

shirt-front or tulle-foam was caught as a closed carriage passed.

The old bachelor was asleep in his chair at an open window looking

across the narrow street at the familiar sooty face of the house

opposite.

"Good-night, Tom; I do hope it will be fine for to-morrow," the

black-haired girl was saying at her door, holding in her hand the new

hat she had been trimming.

The Volunteer colonel was discussing Buller and port across the

glittering dinner-field.

The little fair-haired boy had climbed softly out of his cot, and,

going over to his mother's bed, whispered coaxingly, "Will 'oo let

me sleep with 'oo, mummy?" and when he had nestled his head on her

arm, "Now tell me the story how daddy died," and was asleep before the

familiar story was finished.

[Illustration: Boer Prisoners.]