Chapter 8

Christina, the motor-car, found her way to the centre of this activity. There the sheep bleated in tight confinement, and to each pen was attached the appropriate dog, looking very self-conscious. Dogs who had come from great distances to buy sheep were anxiously sniffing up the smell of their purchases, so that no mistake might be made on the way home. Over the line of pens a two-plank viaduct ran, and it was bent continually by the weight of large shepherds balancing their way along to take a bird's-eye view of possible bargains. A facetious auctioneer with the village policeman's arm round his neck was sitting on the wall at the end of the field, addressing everybody very frequently as "Gentlemen." Sheep arrived and sheep departed constantly.

"Isn't it terribly slavish, somehow?" said Anonyma. "The sheep never being consulted at all. Bought and sold and smelt and spat upon as if they had no heart beating beneath that wool. No 'Me,' as Jay used to say."

Mr. Russell heard and remembered. There were few doubts left in him as to the truth of his too-funny miracle.

He had a little tune, the scaffolding of a poem, in his head, and to the sound of it he lived that day, although I don't expect he ever got the poem into words.

If you start your idea along an uncertain course, you have to stop and start afresh to get it straight. You can never finish it when once it has a crooked swing. I gather that motor cyclists occasionally have much the same experience with their machines.

But Mr. Russell, with a mind steering a tangled course, asked for nothing better. He was very nearly sure of romance for the first time in his life.

I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people who write it down. There is no luxury like it, and I hope we all share it. I think perhaps the same thrill that goes through Mr. Russell and me when the ghost of a completed thing begins to be seen, also delights the khaki coster who writes his first--and very likely last--love-letter from France; and the little old country mother who lies awake composing the In Memoriam of her son for a local paper; and the burglar "down 'Oxton" who takes off his cap as a child's funeral goes by. The feeling is: "This is a thing out of my heart that I am showing. This is my best confession, and nobody knew there was this within me." I am sure that that great glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement. If it did, what centuries would die unglorified. It is just perfection appearing, to your equal pride and shame, a perfection that never taunts you with your limitations.

Mr. Russell and Christina knew well their road through the mist that afternoon. There was no difficulty in the world, and no need to see or to think. The sign-posts all spoke the names of fated places. It was useless for Anonyma to study the map, she found no mention there of the enchanted way on which their course was set.

"We will not go through Launceston," said Anonyma. "There must be a quicker way to the sea than that."

Mr. Russell cared not for her and cared not for Launceston. The spell was cast upon Christina's wheels. There was no escaping the appointed way. Launceston reached out its net and caught them. Almost as far as the post office, Anonyma was protesting: "We will NOT go through Launceston."

"Launceston was determined to get us," laughed Mrs. Russell. "Ha-ha! isn't it humorous the way things happen?"

The sun was setting as they first saw the Cornish sea. The sky was swept suddenly clear of mist. The seagulls against the sky were like little crucified angels.

The road ran to the shore.

The sun had little delicate clouds across its face, like the islands in a Japanese painting. The wet rocks that lay in the sun's path were plated with gold, and the tall waves with shadowed faces made of that path a ladder. The fields of foam on the sea looked very blue in the pale light.

The sun was like an angel with a flaming sword. The angel dipped his feet into the sea.

The sun was like a flaming stage for the comedies of gods. A ship passed dramatically across it. One's dazzled eyes saw great phantom ships all over the sea.

The sun was like a monster with horns of fire that pierced one's two eyes. And gradually it sank.

The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it. There was suddenly no sun. The little forsaken clouds were like flames for a moment, and then they were blown out.

Mr. Russell waved his right hand towards great cliffs like the towers of kings behind the village.

"This is the place," he said.

If I have dared to surrender some imitation of splendour, Something I knew that was tender, something I loved that was brave, If in my singing I shewed songs that I heard on my road, Were they not debts that I owed rather than gifts that I gave?

If certain hours on their climb up the long ladder of time Turned my confusion to rhyme, drove me to dare an attempt, If by fair chance I might seem sometimes abreast of my theme, Was I translating a dream? Was it a dream that you dreamt?

High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes; All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true. Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me; Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?

Man ought to feel humble when he reflects upon the fact that he can survive, and even thrive on, any distress except distress of the body. God can wither his soul, and still he lives. Grief can swallow his heart, and still he lives. But his stomach can kill him.

"All is apparently over between me and Peace," thought Jay. "But there must be something to take the place of Peace."

There is only one thing that can adequately usurp the place of Peace. But its name did not occur to Jay.

She did not know what had happened to her. She felt constantly a little mad. Irresponsible wants clamoured in her breast from morning till night, and all night the company of her Secret Friend was more glorious than ever. She ran to her world as you perhaps run to church, yet even there she felt expectant.

When a tall tough thundercloud bends across the sky I watch for the first flash, and listen for the first roar, and in my heart stillness seems impossible and at the same time imperative.

So Jay waited, feeling all the time that she could not wait another minute.

You shall not hear whence comes my fear. You shall not know the name of it. But out of strife it came to life, And only striving came of it. Though for its sake my heart may break, Yet worse would I endure for it. This thing shall be a God to me, I will not seek a cure for it.

She thought a good deal about Mr. Russell. I am sure that he would have laughed painfully could he have seen the picture of himself that remained with the 'bus-conductor. The picture made him thinner, and his eyes more intelligent, and the line of his mouth happier, but it did not make him look younger, because Jay liked him to be Older and Wiser. He never came into the Secret World; several times she tried to drag him thither, but always at the critical moment he got left outside. Yet I cannot say that in her Secret World she missed him; the point of the bubble enchantment is that there is nothing lacking in it.

'Bus-conducting is a profession that does not engross the mind unduly. The eye and the ear and the hand work by themselves. Charing Cross whispered in a conductor's ear at the Bank produces a white ticket from her hand without any calculation on her part. She becomes a penny-in-the-slot machine, with her human brain free for other matters. She grows a great hatred for all fares above fourpence, because they need special thought.

Jay filled her day with unsatisfactory thinking. She found to her surprise that one may love life and yet also think lovingly of death. To live is most interesting in an uneasy way, but to die is to forget at once all these trivial turbulences, to forget equally the people you have loved and the people you have hated, to forget everything you ever knew, to be alone, and to be no longer disturbed by unceasing voices.

At this time I think Jay felt more hatred of everybody than love of any one person. But then, of course, she had vowed to Chloris after the affair with young William Morgan that she would never fall in love again. She said, "I have been through love. It is not a sea, as people say. It is only a river, and I have waded through it."

"Yet there is certainly something very remarkable about that man," she thought. "I don't believe I like him much, I don't want to know him better, though I should like him to know me. I believe he is my real next of kin. I believe he has a Secret World too."

She was on her last homeward journey, and it was one of her early days. The hours of a conductor move up and down the day. Sometimes Jay punctured her first ticket at a time when you and I are asleep, and when the coster-barrows, waving with ferns and fuchsias, move up the Strand like Birnam Wood moving to Dunsinane. On those days she was due home at half-past four or so. On other days she was able to have a late breakfast and to darn her stockings after it, but that meant that she did not get home till very late. Some 'buses, I gather, are called "single 'buses," but in this case the word does not imply celibacy alone. The single 'bus is occupied by one conductor all day Jong for a fortnight. The "double 'bus" is shared by two conductors, one presiding in the morning and the other in the afternoon. The double state also lasts a fortnight; it is arranged as an opportunity for lady 'bus-conductors to recuperate after the rigours (the more remunerative rigours) of service on a single 'bus. These statements of mine are open to extensive correction. Jay's hours always struck me as so very confusing that it is unlikely I should be able to retail the information correctly. However, it doesn't matter very much.

This was one of the early days on a double 'bus, and Jay was on her last journey, with several restless waking hours between her and possible sleep. Her 'bus was full, but not pressed down and running over. For the moment everybody in it was provided with a ticket. Jay was laboriously thinking small thoughts because she was tired of thinking of Love and Life and other things with capital letters.

She thought of the various indignities to which the public submits its 'bus-tickets. Some people use the ticket as a toothpick, some put spectacles on and read it without understanding, some decorate outstanding features of the 'bus with it. But I myself tear it gradually into small strips, and grind the strips by means of massage into fine powder. If the inspector comes, I am perfectly willing to pour the powder into his hand, and yet he often seems annoyed.

Jay reviewed the perspective of faces that lined her 'bus. They were all ugly, and not one of them was eager. The British public as a whole considers a deaf, dumb, and blind expression the only decent one to wear in a public conveyance. We roar through a wonderful and exciting world, and all the while we sit with glazed eyes and cotton-wool in our ears, and think about ourselves. They were mostly men in Jay's 'bus at that moment; they were almost all alike, and all insignificant, but not one of them knew it. Such a lot of men could never be loved by women, only found expedient.

But there was a sailor, a simple sub-lieutenant, sitting by the door. Sailors are a race apart. They have twisty faces, their boots and gloves look curiously accidental. In London they are rarely seen without a _London Mail_ or a _London Opinion_ in their grasp. There is something about a sailor that conduces to sentiment in every passer-by, and Jay, who was fleeing from that very feeling, looked hastily at some one else. Her seeking eye lit on a lady who had a complete skunk climbing up the nape of her neck, and a hat of the approximate size of a five-shilling piece worn over her right eyebrow. She looked such a fool that Jay concluded that the look was intentional, and indeed I suppose it must be, for the worst insult you can offer to young ladies of this type is to suggest that they have brains. Jay pondered on this, and then turned elsewhere for inspiration. All roads of thought at that time led to one destination, so she only allowed herself to go a little way along each road.

And presently she reached the end of her journey. She walked home, and Chloris was as usual waiting for her just outside the rocking-horse factory at the corner. Jay, as she passed that factory every day, watched with interest the progress of the grey ghost rocking-horses, eyeless, maneless, and tailless, as they ripened hourly into a form more like that of the friend of youth.

She smelt the little smell that is always astray in Mabel Place, she heard outside in the damp afternoon two rival barrow-men howling a cry that sounded like "One pound hoo-ray!" A neighbour in the garden was exchanging repartee with a gentleman caller. "Biby, siy Naughty Man, Biby, tell 'im what a caution 'e is." But there seemed little hope that the baby would. These sounds were provided with the constant Brown Borough background of shouts and quarrels and laughter and children crying and innumerable noises of work.

"Something has happened," said Jay to Chloris, as they went in. "I feel as if I had no friends to-night. Not even a Secret Friend."

Chloris lay on her lap in her usual attitude, bent into a circle like a tinned tongue. Chloris knew it was no use worrying about these things.

"Funny," thought Jay. "King David was a healthy man of ruddy countenance, and presumably he never lived in the Brown Borough, yet he knew very well what it feels like to have a temperature, and a sore heart, and to be alone in lodgings. Whenever I am very tired, it is funny how my heart quotes those tired Psalms of his, without my brain remembering the words. I wonder how David knew."

The little house was empty but for her. I ought perhaps to have told you before that Nana had been taken ill a month or so ago, and had gone away at Jay's expense to a South Coast Home.

"I'll go round and see Mrs. 'Ero Edwards," said Jay, when she had changed into mufti. "Neither Chloris nor David is adequate to the moment."

The ground-floor back room of Mrs. 'Ero Edwards was crowded. The Chap from the Top Floor was there, and Mrs. Dusty Morgan, and little Mrs. Love from Tann Street, and Mrs. 'Ero Edwards's daughter, Queenie, and several people's children. Conversation never wavered as Jay knocked and came in. When you find that your entrance no longer fills a Brown Borough room with sudden silence, you may be glad and know that you have ceased to be a lidy or a toff.

The Chap from the Top Floor was talking, and everybody else was there to hear him do it, except Mrs. 'Ero Edwards who could hardly bear it, because she only liked listening to herself. Jay sat modestly in a corner and listened, like the other representatives of her generation.

The Chap from the Top Floor was an Older and Wiser Man. His wife could not live with him, but he was very kind and fatherly to every one else, and Jay was rather fond of him. He was about fifty, and anything but beautiful. Also the C.O.S. would not have admired him. But I believe he did a good deal of thinking inside that bristly head of his.

"Ow my dear," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, laying a fat hand on Jay's knee. "We're all so 'appy. Dusty's wrote to siy 'e's got the sack from the Army becos of 'is rheumatics. We're 'avin' a bit of a beano becos of it."

Everybody smiled at Jay, and her heart grew warmer. Some one handed her a cup of tea sweetened with half an inch of sugar at the bottom of the cup. The spoon had been plunged to its hilt in condensed milk. What vulgar tastes she had!

"You can never mike a pal of a woman," said the Chap from the Top Floor, continuing an argument for the benefit of an audience of women. "One feller an' another--well--a pal's a pal. But women are all either wives or--, there ain't no manner of palliness in them."

"'Tain't gentlemanly to talk so, Elbert," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards. "Yore mother was a woman, an' from 'er comes all you know, I'm thinkin', an' all you are. Women is pals with women, an' men is pals with men. It's only when men an' women gets assorted-like that palliness drops out."

"'Usbinds an' wives can be pals," said Mrs. Dusty. "Me an' Dusty useter 'ave a drop an' a jaw together every night for three months after we married. Never 'ad a thought apart, we didn't."

"If I ars't Dusty," said the Top Floor Chap, "I don't know but what 'e wouldn't tell a different tile."

"'Ere, 'bus-conductor, you can talk, an' you're a suffragette," said Mrs. Dusty. "Ain't bein' a pal just as much a woman's job as a man's?"

"What is bein' a pal?" asked Mrs. Love bitterly. "'Avin' some one 'oo drinks wiv you until she's sick, and then blacks your eye for you. There ain't no pals, men or women."

"I think they're rare," said Jay. "Isn't being a pal just refusing to admit a limit? Some people draw the line at a murderer, and some at a suffragette, and some at a vegetarian, and some at a lady who wears the same dress Sundays and week-days, but a real pal draws no line. Women and dogs as well as men can be faithful beyond limit, I think, but it's very rare in anybody."

"'Bus-conductors don't know nothink," said the Chap from the Top Floor in a loud belligerent voice, illuminated by an amiable smile. "I orfen look at 'bus-conductors, an' think, 'Pore devils, they don't know 'arf of life, not even a quarter. They only meets the harisocracy wot 'as pennies to frow about, they never passes the time of day with a plain walkin' feller like me wot ses 'is mind an' never puts on no frills. 'Bus-conducting oughter be done by belted earls an' suchlike, it ain't a real man's job. Pore devils,' I ses, lookin' at 'em bouncin' along, doin' the pretty to all the nobs, wivout so much as puttin' their toe in the mud. 'Pore devils.'"

"'Ere Elbert, 'old your jaw," said the tactful Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, nervous lest Jay should resent this insult to her calling. "Let's all go roun' to the Cross'n Beetle, an' see whether that won't stop 'is noise."

"After all, it's Dusty's birfdiy," said Mrs. Dusty with alacrity.

The day was evidently growing in importance every minute.

"You come along too," said little Mrs. Love, suddenly putting her hand in Jay's.

"No treatin' nowadiys," said the Top Floor Chap amiably. "But I don't mind 'andin' around the price of a drink before we start."

He only extended half-hearted generosity to Jay, because she was, after all, a 'bus-conductor, and to that extent a nob. She shook her head and laughed, when he held out to her the Law-circumventing coin.

Mrs. 'Ero Edwards only really found scope for her voice out of doors. No sooner was she in the street than she seized the arm of the Chap from the Top Floor and shouted him down, as she led him towards the Cross'n Beetle.

Mrs. Dusty and young Queenie walked arm in arm behind them, and whenever they saw a soldier they squeaked loudly, and addressed him invariably as "Colonel Mawmajuke."

Jay and little Mrs. Love, both rather confused and unhappy people, walked hand in hand a little way behind.

"We needn't go as fur as the Cross'n Beetle, if we don't like," said Mrs. Love. "They'll never notice if we 'ook it."

"I don't want to 'ook it," said Jay. "I want to keep very busy listening to noisy people. I don't want to hear myself think."

"You're mopey, eh?" asked Mrs. Love gently.

"I'm cold," said Jay. "I believe I've lost something. I believe I've lost a friend of mine."

"Friends is always gettin' lost," said Mrs. Love. "I told you so. Let's go an' 'ave a look at the pictures. They've got the 'Curse of a Crook' on up the street. Fairly mike yer 'air curl."

"I want noise," said Jay, "a much louder noise than that old piano. The pictures are so horribly quiet. Just an underfed man turning a handle, and an underfed woman hitting an underfed piano. At a play you can at least pretend that the actors are having a little fun too, but the pictures--there's only two sad people without smiles at the bottom of it all. I won't go to the pictures, I'll go and get drunk."

"Come on then," said Mrs. Love. "You won't find no lost friends there, but come on. I'll be yer pal for to-night. You've been a pal to me before now. We're temp'ary pals right enough, there' ain't no permanent kind. You won't find no shivers straying around in the ole Cross'n Beetle. Let's 'urry, an' get drunk, and keep 'and in 'and all the time. That's wot pals oughter do."

Jay suddenly saw the whole world as a thing running away from its thoughts. The crowd that filled the pavement was fugitive, and every man felt the hot breath of fear on the back of his neck. One only used one's voice for the drowning of one's thoughts; one only used one's feet for running away. The whole world was in flight along the endless streets, and the lucky ones were in trams and donkey carts that they might flee the faster.

"Hurry, hurry," said Jay. And she and little Mrs. Love ran hand in hand.

The Chap from the Top Floor and Mrs. 'Ero Edwards were already leading society in the Cross'n Beetle when Jay and Mrs. Love reached it. The barman knew Mrs. Edwards too well to think that she was drunk already, but you or I, transported suddenly thither, would have supposed that her beano was over instead of yet to come.

"'Elbert," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, "yo're an 'Un, yo're an internal alien, thet's what's the metter with you. I wonder I 'aven't blacked yer eye for you many a time and oft."

There was almost enough noise even for Jay, and she and Mrs. Love, each armed with a generously topped glass, sat in the background, on the shiny seat that lined the wall.

To Jay this evening was an experiment, an experiment born of weariness of a well-worn road. She watched Mrs. Love blow some of the superfluous froth on to the floor, and did likewise. Directly she had put her lips to the thick brim of her glass she knew that here was the stuff of which certain dreams are made.

She had, I suppose, the weakest head in the world, and in three minutes she was giddy and much comforted. The noise seemed to clothe itself in a veil of music, there was hope in the shining brightness that shone from the bar. The placards that looked like texts and were advertisements of various drinks, seemed like jokes to Jay.

"There are only dreams," she thought very lucidly, "to keep our souls alive. We are lucky if we get good dreams. We'll never get anything better."

Through the glass between the patriotic posters that darkened the windows she could see the morbid colour of London air.

"Apart from dreams," thought this busconducting Omar Khayyám, "there is nothing but disappointment. We expected too much. We expected satisfaction. There is nothing in the world but second bests, but dreams are an excellent second best. Our last attitude must be 'How interesting, but how very far from what I wanted....'"

The speed of time, and the hurry of life suddenly rushed upon her again.

"I must hurry," she said. "Or I shan't have lived before I die. I must hurry."

"No 'urry, Jine," said Mrs. Love. "Let's keep in the light for a bit."

"Is this the only light left us, after a deluge of War?" thought Jay. "It doesn't matter, because of course War is hurrying too. Rushing over our heads like the sea over drowned sailors. But it will be over in a minute; this new kind of death must be a temporary death for temporary soldiers. What do fifty years without friends matter? You can hardly breathe before they're done."

She was dazzled and deafened. She had emptied her glass, and she did not know what steps she took to fill it again. Only she found it was suddenly full.

And in a minute she was on the path to the House by the Sea. She had come by a new way.