Impressions of a War Correspondent Part 5

My Oriental alighted from the train. As his j.a.panese servant was quite capable of looking after his luggage and bringing it to his hotel, his master was left free to come right on with me and exercise his industrious curiosity-a curiosity that seemed never to be surprised at anything he saw, but took everything as a matter of course. He was a man of the world in his own estimation. Nevertheless, what an important part of it he had not yet seen! Was it not a great epoch in his life, this arrival of his in London?

"This is our North Gate."

"Ah, yes, Hou-Men," he said. "A very dark day, is it not?"

We drove away in a cab under that sepulchral prison-like portico; we had the gla.s.s down, it was raining so hard, and even he, whose Westernisation was princ.i.p.ally confined to New York, noticed the absurdly asphyxiating arrangement of the London cab, which hermetically seals its frame-bound occupants. The New Yorkers got their idea of the cab from us, but they have improved upon the window by having it slanting outwards, so that, while protecting people from the rain, it admits air. For Londoners there is no alternative between spatteration and suffocation. In the New York cabs they can have shelter and fresh air.

It was not an inspiriting entrance through these first streets outside Euston into London. The pavement of Melton Street was little better than that of Pekin, and from each side those dreary-looking small hotels blinked out of their closed windows on the muddy street as if wondering when a G.o.d-forsaken guest would come and occupy them. And then on through grimy Gower Street, looking like the empty bottom of a drained ca.n.a.l.

It's not very inspiriting, this entrance into London from this North Gate of ours.

The people we pa.s.sed there were not an interesting lot; they seemed all to belong to the two-storeyed houses. They were two-storeyed people, apparently keeping themselves moderately busy making a moderate amount of money, but hampered in the money-making by the mud and rain. We pa.s.sed a little square carpeted with fresh gra.s.s, but the trees on the other side were vague in mist, and the square and its vegetation gave the suggestion of a tank with seaweeds in it. It was a day for studying men and women by their umbrellas and boots. Boots tell confessions for the most Low Church Protestants, and the umbrellas above them generally corroborate the sins of the boots.

My Oriental friend was gazing out gravely.

It was on a warm evening in a tea-garden that he had talked about his coming visit to London. I recollect his enthusing over the phrase

"Beneath the rule of men supremely great The pen is mightier than the sword."

A great motto for a great country, he then said it was. He professed an anxiety to see or meet some of the great English writers, our literati, as he called them. He liked the honesty of Englishmen in business, and wanted to see them at work. He had helped to show me something of the life of the East-that part of the life most difficult to see, the life of the home-and in return I promised to show him something of the life of the West, how and where people work and play, and pray-when they do so.

"Show me the house of one of your literati if we pa.s.s one," he said. "Is that one, there?" pointing to a gorgeous public-house, as we pa.s.sed a street corner.

I saw the probable toppling of an ideal. We pa.s.sed a couple of quick-driving vans with a green placard of an evening paper, and I explained to him what a reading public we were, and how many editions of the papers were quickly distributed during the afternoon, how the appet.i.te for them had grown, like the craving for cheap cigarettes, as a relief from being obliged to inhale pure literary air. The newspaper habit and the cigarette habit are about on a par after all.

Hospital Train Leaving Ladysmith For Pietermaritzburg.

We pa.s.sed a church with closed doors, and he seemed surprised. I explained to him that the churches were open on Sunday, on which day the more numerous temples of Bacchus were closed for a while.

We reached the Strand, where he was greatly interested in a line of 'buses. "Have you no street cars like in New York?" I submitted that these were kept on chiefly in order to have a supply of artillery horses in times of war.

"And have you no high buildings either?"

The explanation of ancient lights and the overhead s.p.a.ce wasted in London was too much to go into. His attention was diverted by a newspaper placard.

"Ah," said he, "another earthquake, is it not?"

"Collapse of Australia" stared from that vermilion placard. It began to dawn on me that I had undertaken rather a large order in showing this Oriental London life.

"And you have not shown me any of your literati yet, or any of their houses."

We were stopped in a block of omnibuses and cabs. A line of sandwich-men were straggling along between vehicles and the curb. One of them stopped just by our cab; the rain was trickling down his nose; he looked as dismal as the weather. I could not resist the temptation of explaining that these were some of our literati undergoing punishment for some of the books or plays they had written. In China the crime is set forth on a board hung on the neck of the criminal, called the cangue. It was only a very mild surprise he showed when I gave him the names of the line of sandwich-men. "How like the head of your Shakespeare!" he said of one.

We were received at the hotel door by a bra.s.s-bound German in the undress uniform of a British admiral, who pays the hotel 500 for receiving tips. The rooms and corridors of the big building did not look hospitably cheering. There were no fires in the grates, because, being June, the weather ought to have been warm; and the electric lights were not turned on, because, being daytime, there ought to have been light. He liked the smoking-room. "It is more like one of our big tea-houses," he said. "Men do business here," pointing to a man with a sheaf of papers talking earnestly to another beside him.

"Yes, that is a company promoter."

"What is a company promoter?"

The nearest definition that occurred was, "A man who sells something he hasn't got to another who does not want to buy it."

"I think London is a very interesting city," he said.

XVIII

TIRED

It was the f.a.g 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sed, 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 s.h.i.+ning flanks, who c.o.c.ked their ears, and tossed their foam-dripping mouths as they pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s behind. Between those luxuriating on the gra.s.s, men lying in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, with heads a-resting in the laps of tired-faced women, whose children played or cried noisily around, and those who pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed the age either of matrimony or naughtiness. What thousands of friendless and lonely people there must be in this great Dingy City! The cla.s.s that lies on the gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sed.

But it wasn't. The little fellow sitting beside her glowed with the importance of proprietors.h.i.+p; 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed and the high-stepping horses, which were indeed the exception, for the majority ambled along half somnolent from careless coachmans.h.i.+p, 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.