The Open Air Part 9

I could write a whole history of it; the time when the leaves were fresh and green, and the sedge-birds frequented it; the time when the moorhen's young crept after their mother through its recesses; from the singing of the cuckoo by the river, till now brown and yellow leaves strew the water. They strew, too, the dry brown gra.s.s of the land, thick tuffets, and lie even among the rushes, blown hither from the distant trees. The wind works its full will over the exposed waste, and drives through the reed-gra.s.s, scattering the stalks aside, and scarce giving them time to spring together again, when the following blast a second time divides them.

A cruder piece of ground, ruder and more dismal in its unsightly holes, could not be found; and yet, because of the reed-gra.s.s, it is made as it were full of thought. I wonder the painters, of whom there are so many nowadays, armies of amateurs, do not sometimes take these sc.r.a.ps of earth and render into them the idea which fills a clod with beauty.

In one such dismal pit--not here--I remember there grew a great quant.i.ty of bulrushes. Another was surrounded with such ma.s.ses of swamp-foliage that it reminded those who saw it of the creeks in semi-tropical countries. But somehow they do not seem to see these things, but go on the old mill-round of scenery, exhausted many a year since. They do not see them, perhaps, because most of those who have educated themselves in the technique of painting are city-bred, and can never have the _feeling_ of the country, however fond they may be of it.

In those fields of which I was writing the other day, I found an artist at work at his easel; and a pleasant nook be had chosen. His brush did its work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated command of his materials. He could delineate whatever he selected with technical skill at all events. He had pitched his easel where two hedges formed an angle, and one of them was full of oak-trees. The hedge was singularly full of "bits"--bryony, tangles of gra.s.ses, berries, boughs half-tinted and boughs green, hung as it were with pictures like the wall of a room. Standing as near as I could without disturbing him, I found that the subject of his canvas was none of these. It was that old stale and dull device of a rustic bridge spanning a shallow stream crossing a lane. Some figure stood on the bridge--the old, old trick. He was filling up the hedge of the lane with trees from the hedge, and they were cleverly executed. But why drag them into this fusty scheme, which has appeared in every child's sketch-book for fifty years? Why not have simply painted the beautiful hedge at hand, purely and simply, a hedge hung with pictures for any one to copy? The field in which he had pitched his easel is full of fine trees and good "effects." But no; we must have the ancient and effete old story. This is not all the artist's fault, because he must in many cases paint what he can sell; and if his public will only buy effete old stories, he cannot help it.

Still, I think if a painter _did_ paint that hedge in its fulness of beauty, just simply as it stands in the mellow autumn light, it would win approval of the best people, and that ultimately, a succession of such work would pay.

The clover was dying down, and the plough would soon be among it--the earth was visible in patches. Out in one of these bare patches there was a young mouse, so chilled by the past night that his dull senses did not appear conscious of my presence. He had crept out on the bare earth evidently to feel the warmth of the sun, almost the last hour he would enjoy. He looked about for food, but found none; his short span of life was drawing to a close; even when at last he saw me, he could only run a few inches under cover of a dead clover-plant. Thousands upon thousands of mice perish like this as the winter draws on, born too late in the year to grow strong enough or clever enough to prepare a store. Other kinds of mice perish like leaves at the first blast of cold air. Though but a mouse, to me it was very wretched to see the chilled creature, so benumbed as to have almost lost its sense of danger. There is something so ghastly in birth that immediately leads to death; a sentient creature born only to wither. The earth offered it no help, nor the declining sun; all things organised seem to depend so much on circ.u.mstances. Nothing but pity can be felt for thousands upon thousands of such organisms. But thus, too, many a miserable human being has perished in the great Metropolis, dying, chilled and benumbed, of starvation, and finding the hearts of fellow-creatures as bare and cold as the earth of the clover-field.

In these fields outside London the flowers are peculiarly rich in colour. The common mallow, whose flower is usually a light mauve, has here a deep, almost purple bloom; the bird's-foot lotus is a deep orange. The fig-wort, which is generally two or three feet high, stands in one ditch fully eight feet, and the stem is more than half an inch square. A fertile soil has doubtless something to do with this colour and vigour. The red admiral b.u.t.terflies, too, seemed in the summer more brilliant than usual. One very fine one, whose broad wings stretched out like fans, looked simply splendid floating round and round the willows which marked the margin of a dry pool. His blue markings were really blue--blue velvet--his red, and the white stroke shone as if sunbeams were in his wings. I wish there were more of these b.u.t.terflies; in summer, dry summer, when the flowers seem gone and the gra.s.s is not so dear to us, and the leaves are dull with heat, a little colour is so pleasant. To me, colour is a sort of food; every spot of colour is a drop of wine to the spirit. I used to take my folding-stool on those long, heated days, which made the summer of 1884 so conspicuous among summers, down to the shadow of a row of elms by a common cabbage-field. Their shadow was nearly as hot as the open suns.h.i.+ne; the dry leaves did not absorb the heat that entered them, and the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat up as the sun poured it down.

Dry, dead leaves--dead with heat, as with frost--strewed the gra.s.s, dry, too, and withered at my feet.

But among the cabbages, which were very small, there grew thousands of poppies, fifty times more poppies than cabbage, so that the pale green of the cabbage-leaves was hidden by the scarlet petals falling wide open to the dry air. There was a broad band of scarlet colour all along the side of the field, and it was this which brought me to the shade of those particular elms. The use of the cabbages was in this way: they fetched for me all the white b.u.t.terflies of the neighbourhood, and they fluttered, hundreds and hundreds of white b.u.t.terflies, a constant stream and flow of them over the broad band of scarlet. Humble-bees came too; bur-bur-bur; and the buzz, and the flutter of the white wings over those fixed red b.u.t.terflies the poppies, the flutter and sound and colour pleased me in the dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my camp-stool by a humble-bees' nest. I like to see and hear them go in and out, so happy, busy, and wild; the humble-bee is a favourite. That summer their nests were very plentiful; but although the heat might have seemed so favourable to them, the flies were not at all numerous, I mean out-of-doors. Wasps, on the contrary, flourished to an extraordinary degree. One willow tree particularly took their fancy; there was a swarm in the tree for weeks, attracted by some secretion; the boughs and leaves were yellow with wasps. But it seemed curious that flies should not be more numerous than usual; they are dying now fast enough, except a few of the large ones, that still find some sugar in the flowers of the ivy. The finest show of ivy flower is among some yew trees; the dark ivy has filled the dark yew tree, and brought out its pale yellow-green flowers in the sombre boughs. Last night, a great fly, the last in the house, buzzed into my candle. I detest flies, but I was sorry for his scorched wings; the fly itself hateful, its wings so beautifully made. I have sometimes picked a feather from the dirt of the road and placed it on the gra.s.s. It is contrary to one's feelings to see so beautiful a thing lying in the mud. Towards my window now, as I write, there comes suddenly a shower of yellow leaves, wrested out by main force from the high elms; the blue sky behind them, they droop slowly, borne onward, twirling, fluttering towards me--a cloud of autumn b.u.t.terflies.

A spring rises on the summit of a green brow that overlooks the meadows for miles. The spot is not really very high, still it is the highest ground in that direction for a long distance, and it seems singular to find water on the top of the hill, a thing common enough, but still sufficiently opposed to general impressions to appear remarkable. In this shallow water, says a faint story--far off, faint and uncertain, like the murmur of a distant cascade--two ladies and some soldiers lost their lives. The brow is defended by thick bramble-bushes, which bore a fine crop of blackberries that autumn, to the delight of the boys; and these bushes partly conceal the sharpness of the short descent. But once your attention is drawn to it, you see that it has all the appearance of having been artificially sloped, like a rampart, or rather a glacis. The gra.s.s is green and the sward soft, being moistened by the spring, except in one spot, where the gra.s.s is burnt up under the heat of the summer sun, indicating the existence of foundations beneath.

There is a beautiful view from this spot; but leaving that now, and wandering on among the fields, presently you may find a meadow of peculiar shape, extremely long and narrow, half a mile long, perhaps; and this the folk will tell you was the King's Drive, or ride. Stories there are, too, of subterranean pa.s.sages--there are always such stories in the neighbourhood of ancient buildings--I remember one, said to be three miles long; it led to an abbey. The lane leads on, bordered with high hawthorn hedges, and occasionally a stout hawthorn tree, hardy and twisted by the strong hands of the pa.s.sing years; thick now with red haws, and the haunt of the redwings, whose "chuck-chuck" is heard every minute; but the birds themselves always perch on the outer side of the hedge. They are not far ahead, but they always keep on the safe side, flying on twenty yards or so, but never coming to my side.

The little pond, which in summer was green with weed, is now yellow with the fallen hawthorn-leaves; the pond is choked with them. The lane has been slowly descending; and now, on looking through a gateway, an ancient building stands up on the hill, sharply defined against the sky. It is the banqueting hall of a palace of old times, in which kings and princes once sat at their meat after the chase. This is the centre of those dim stories which float like haze over the meadows around.

Many a wild red stag has been carried thither after the hunt, and many a wild boar slain in the glades of the forest.

The acorns are dropping now as they dropped five centuries since, in the days when the wild boars fed so greedily upon them; the oaks are broadly touched with brown; the bramble thickets in which the boars hid, green, but strewn with the leaves that have fallen from the lofty trees. Though meadow, arable, and hop-fields hold now the place of the forest, a goodly remnant remains, for every hedge is full of oak and elm and ash; maple too, and the lesser bushes. At a little distance, so thick are the trees, the whole country appears a wood, and it is easy to see what a forest it must have been centuries ago.

The Prince leaving the grim walls of the Tower of London by the Water-gate, and dropping but a short way down with the tide, could mount his horse on the opposite bank, and reach his palace here, in the midst of the thickest woods and wildest country, in half an hour.

Thence every morning setting forth upon the chase, he could pa.s.s the day in joyous labours, and the evening in feasting, still within call--almost within sound of horn--of the Tower, if any weighty matter demanded his presence.

In our time, the great city has widened out, and comes at this day down to within three miles of the hunting-palace. There still intervenes a narrow s.p.a.ce between the last house of London and the ancient Forest Hall, a s.p.a.ce of corn-field and meadow; the last house, for although not nominally London, there is no break of continuity in the bricks and mortar thence to London Bridge. London is within a stone's-throw, as it were, and yet, to this day the forest lingers, and it is country. The very atmosphere is different. That smoky thickness characteristic of the suburbs ceases as you ascend the gradual rise, and leave the outpost of bricks and mortar behind. The air becomes clear and strong, till on the brow by the spring on a windy day it is almost like sea-air. It comes over the trees, over the hills, and is sweet with the touch of gra.s.s and leaf. There is no gas, no sulphurous acid in that.

As the Edwards and Henries breathed it centuries since, so it can be inhaled now. The sun that shone on the red deer is as bright now as then; the berries are thick on the bushes; there is colour in the leaf.

The forest is gone; but the spirit of nature stays, and can be found by those who search for it. Dearly as I love the open air, I cannot regret the mediaeval days. I do not wish them back again, I would sooner fight in the foremost ranks of Time. Nor do we need them, for the spirit of nature stays, and will always be here, no matter to how high a pinnacle of thought the human mind may attain; still the sweet air, and the hills, and the sea, and the sun, will always be with us.

ON THE LONDON ROAD

The road comes straight from London, which is but a very short distance off, within a walk, yet the village it pa.s.ses is thoroughly a village, and not suburban, not in the least like Sydenham, or Croydon, or Balham, or Norwood, as perfect a village in every sense as if it stood fifty miles in the country. There is one long street, just as would be found in the far west, with fields at each end. But through this long street, and on and out into the open, is continually pouring the human living undergrowth of that vast forest of life, London. The nondescript inhabitants of the thousand and one nameless streets of the unknown east are great travellers, and come forth into the country by this main desert route. For what end? Why this tramping and ceaseless movement?

what do they buy, what do they sell, how do they live? They pa.s.s through the village street and out into the country in an endless stream on the shutter on wheels. This is the true London vehicle, the characteristic conveyance, as characteristic as the Russian droshky, the gondola at Venice, or the caique at Stamboul. It is the camel of the London desert routes; routes which run right through civilisation, but of which daily paper civilisation is ignorant. People who can pay for a daily paper are so far above it; a daily paper is the mark of the man who is in civilisation.

Take an old-fas.h.i.+oned shutter and balance it on the axle of a pair of low wheels, and you have the London camel in principle. To complete it add shafts in front, and at the rear run a low free-board, as a sailor would say, along the edge, that the cargo may not be shaken off. All the skill of the fas.h.i.+onable brougham-builders in Long Acre could not contrive a vehicle which would meet the requirements of the case so well as this. On the desert routes of Palestine a donkey becomes romantic; in a coster-monger's barrow he is only an a.s.s; the donkey himself doesn't see the distinction. He draws a good deal of human nature about in these barrows, and perhaps finds it very much the same in Surrey and Syria. For if any one thinks the familiar barrow is merely a truck for the conveyance of cabbages and carrots, and for the exposure of the same to the choice of housewives in Bermondsey, he is mistaken. Far beyond that, it is the symbol, the solid expression, of life itself to the owner, his family, and circle of connections, more so than even the s.h.i.+p to the sailor, as the sailor, no matter how he may love his s.h.i.+p, longs for port, and the joys of the sh.o.r.e, but the barrow folk are always at sea on land, Such care has to be taken of the miserable pony or the shamefaced jacka.s.s; he has to be groomed, and fed, and looked to in his shed, and this occupies three or four of the family at least, lads and strapping young girls, night and morning.

Besides which, the circle of connections look in to see how he is going on, and to hear the story of the day's adventures, and what is proposed for to-morrow. Perhaps one is invited to join the next excursion, and thinks as much of it as others might do of an invitation for a cruise in the Mediterranean. Any one who watches the succession of barrows driving along through the village out into the fields of Kent can easily see how they bear upon their wheels the fortunes of whole families and of their hangers-on. Sometimes there is a load of pathos, of which the race of the a.s.s has carried a good deal in all ages. More often it is a heavy lump of dull, evil, and exceedingly stupid cunning.

The wild evil of the Spanish contrabandistas seems atoned by that wildness; but this dull wickedness has no flush of colour, no poppy on its dirt heaps.

Over one barrow the sailors had fixed up a tent--canvas stretched from corner poles, two fellows sat almost on the shafts outside; they were well. Under the canvas there lay a young fellow white and emaciated, whose face was drawn down with severe suffering of some kind, and his dark eyes, enlarged and accentuated, looked as if touched with belladonna. The family council at home in the close and fetid court had resolved themselves into a medical board and ordered him to the sunny Riviera. The s.h.i.+p having been fitted up for the invalid, away they sailed for the south, out from the ends of the earth of London into the ocean of green fields and trees, thence past many an island village, and so to the sh.o.r.es where the Kentish hops were yellowing fast for the pickers. There, in the vintage days, doubtless he found solace, and possibly recovery. To catch a glimpse of that dark and cavernous eye under the shade of the travelling tent reminded me of the eyes of the wounded in the ambulance-waggons that came pouring into Brussels after Sedan. In the dusk of the lovely September evenings--it was a beautiful September, the lime-leaves were just tinted with orange--the waggons came in a long string, the wounded and maimed lying in them, packed carefully, and rolled round, as it were, with wadding to save them from the jolts of the ruts and stones. It is fifteen years ago, and yet I can still distinctly see the eyes of one soldier looking at me from his berth in the waggon. The glow of intense pain--the glow of long-continued agony--lit them up as coals that smouldering are suddenly fanned. Pain brightens the eyes as much as joy, there is a fire in the brain behind it; it is the flame in the mind you see, and not the eyeball. A thought that might easily be rendered romantic, but consider how these poor fellows appeared afterwards. Bevies of them hopped about Brussels in their red-and-blue uniforms, some on crutches, some with two sticks, some with sleeves pinned to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, looking exactly like a company of dolls a cruel child had mutilated, snapping a foot off here, tearing out a leg here, and battering the face of a third. Little men most of them--the bowl of a German pipe inverted would have covered them all, within which, like bees in a hive, they might hum "Te Deum Bismarck.u.m Laudamus." But the romantic flame in the eye is not always so beautiful to feel as to read about.

Another shutter on wheels went by one day with one little pony in the shafts, and a second harnessed in some way at the side, so as to a.s.sist in pulling, but without bearing any share of the load. On this shutter eight men and boys balanced themselves; enough for the Olympian height of a four-in-hand. Eight fellows perched round the edge like s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners, clinging to one plank. They were so balanced as to weigh chiefly on the axle, yet in front of such a mountain of men, such a vast bundle of ragged clothes, the ponies appeared like rats.

On a Sunday morning two fellows came along on their shutter: they overtook a girl who was walking on the pavement, and one of them, more sallow and cheeky than his companion, began to talk to her. "That's a nice nosegay, now--give us a rose. Come and ride--there's plenty of room. Won't speak? Now, you'll tell us if this is the road to London Bridge." She nodded. She was dressed in full satin for Sunday; her cla.s.s think much of satin. She was leading two children, one in each hand, clean and well-dressed. She walked more lightly than a servant does, and evidently lived at home; she did not go to service. Tossing her head, she looked the other way, for you see the fellow on the shutter was dirty, not "dressed" at all, though it was Sunday, poor folks' ball-day; a dirty, rough fellow, with a short clay pipe in his mouth, a chalky-white face--apparently from low dissipation--a disreputable rascal, a monstrously impudent "chap," a true London mongrel. He "cheeked" her; she tossed her head, and looked the other way. But by-and-by she could not help a sly glance at him, not an angry glance--a look as much as to say, "You're a man, anyway, and you've the good taste to admire me, and the courage to speak to me; you're dirty, but you're a man. If you were well-dressed, or if it wasn't Sunday, or if it was dark, or n.o.body about, I wouldn't mind; I'd let you 'cheek'

me, though I have got satin on." The fellow "cheeked" her again, told her she had a pretty face, "cheeked" her right and left. She looked away, but half smiled; she had to keep up her dignity, she did not feel it. She would have liked to have joined company with him. His leer grew leerier--the low, cunning leer, so peculiar to the London mongrel, that seems to say, "I am so intensely knowing; I am so very much all there;"

and yet the leerer always remains in a dirty dress, always smokes the coa.r.s.est tobacco in the nastiest of pipes, and rides on a barrow to the end of his life. For his leery cunning is so intensely stupid that, in fact, he is as "green" as gra.s.s; his leer and his foul mouth keep him in the gutter to his very last day. How much more successful plain, simple straightforwardness would be! The pony went on a little, but they drew rein, and waited for the girl again; and again he "cheeked"

her. Still, she looked away, but she did not make any attempt to escape by the side-path, nor show resentment. No; her face began to glow, and once or twice she answered him, but still she would not quite join company. If only it had not been Sunday--if it had been a lonely road, and not so near the village, if she had not had the two tell-tale children with her--she would have been very good friends with the dirty, chalky, ill-favoured, and ill-savoured wretch. At the parting of the roads each went different ways, but she could not help looking back.

He was a thorough specimen of the leery London mongrel. That hideous leer is so repulsive--one cannot endure it--but it is so common; you see it on the faces of four-fifths of the ceaseless stream that runs out from the ends of the earth of London into the green sea of the country. It disfigures the faces of the carters who go with the waggons and other vehicles--not nomads, but men in steady employ; it defaces--absolutely defaces--the workmen who go forth with vans, with timber, with carpenters' work, and the policeman standing at the corners, in London itself particularly. The London leer hangs on their faces. The Mosaic account of the Creation is discredited in these days, the last revelation took place at Beckenham; the Beckenham revelation is superior to Mount Sinai, yet the consideration of that leer might suggest the idea of a fall of man even to an Amoebist. The horribleness of it is in this way, it hints--it does more than hint, it conveys the leerer's decided opinion--that you, whether you may be man or woman, must necessarily be as coa.r.s.e as himself. Especially he wants to impress that view upon every woman who chances to cross his glance. The fist of Hercules is needed to dash it out of his face.

RED ROOFS OF LONDON

Tiles and tile roofs have a curious way of tumbling to pieces in an irregular and eye-pleasing manner. The roof-tree bends, bows a little under the weight, curves in, and yet preserves a sharpness at each end.

The Chinese exaggerate this curve of set purpose. Our English curve is softer, being the product of time, which always works in true taste.

The mystery of tile-laying is not known to every one; for to all appearance tiles seem to be put on over a thin bed of hay or hay-like stuff. Lately they have begun to use some sort of tarpaulin or a coa.r.s.e material of that kind; but the old tiles, I fancy, were comfortably placed on a shake-down of hay. When one slips off, little bits of hay stick up; and to these the sparrows come, removing it bit by bit to line their nests. If they can find a gap they get in, and a fresh couple is started in life. By-and-by a chimney is overthrown during a twist of the wind, and half a dozen tiles are shattered. Time pa.s.ses; and at last the tiler arrives to mend the mischief. His labour leaves a light red patch on the dark dull red of the breadth about it. After another while the leaks along the ridge need plastering: mortar is laid on to stay the inroad of wet, adding a dull white and forming a rough, uncertain undulation along the general drooping curve. Yellow edgings of straw project under the eaves--the work of the sparrows. A cl.u.s.ter of blue-tinted pigeons gathers about the chimney-side; the smoke that comes out of the stack droops and floats sideways, downwards, as if the chimney enjoyed the smother as a man enjoys his pipe. Shattered here and cracked yonder, some missing, some overlapping in curves, the tiles have an aspect of irregular existence. They are not fixed, like slates, as it were for ever: they have a newness, and then a middle-age, and a time of decay like human beings.

One roof is not much; but it is often a study. Put a thousand roofs, say rather thousands of red-tiled roofs, and overlook them--not at a great alt.i.tude but at a pleasant easy angle--and then you have the groundwork of the first view of London over Bermondsey from the railway. I say groundwork, because the roofs seem the level and surface of the earth, while the glimpses of streets are glimpses of catacombs.

A city--as something to look at--depends very much on its roofs. If a city have no character in its roofs it stirs neither heart nor thought.

These red-tiled roofs of Bermondsey, stretching away mile upon mile, and brought up at the extremity with thin masts rising above the mist--these red-tiled roofs have a distinctiveness, a character; they are something to think about. Nowhere else is there an entrance to a city like this. The roads by which you approach them give you distant aspects--minarets, perhaps, in the East, domes in Italy; but, coming nearer, the highway somehow plunges into houses, confounding you with facades, and the real place is hidden. Here from the railway you see at once the vastness of London. Roof-tree behind roof-tree, ridge behind ridge, is drawn along in succession, line behind line till they become as close together as the test-lines used for microscopes. Under this surface of roofs what a profundity of life there is! Just as the great horses in the waggons of London streets convey the idea of strength, so the endlessness of the view conveys the idea of a ma.s.s of life. Life converges from every quarter. The iron way has many ruts: the rails are its ruts; and by each of these a ceaseless stream of men and women pours over the tiled roofs into London. They come from the populous suburbs, from far-away towns and quiet villages, and from over sea.

Glance down as you pa.s.s into the excavations, the streets, beneath the red surface: you catch a glimpse of men and women hastening to and fro, of vehicles, of horses struggling with mighty loads, of groups at the corners, and fragments, as it were, of crowds. Busy life everywhere: no stillness, no quiet, no repose. Life crowded and crushed together; life that has hardly room to live. If the train slackens, look in at the open windows of the houses level with the line--they are always open for air, smoke-laden as it is--and see women and children with scarce room to move, the bed and the dining-table in the same apartment. For they dine and sleep and work and play all at the same time. A man works at night and sleeps by day: he lies yonder as calmly as if in a quiet country cottage. The children have no place to play in but the living-room or the street. It is not squalor--it is crowded life. The people are pushed together by the necessities of existence. These people have no dislike to it at all: it is right enough to them, and so long as business is brisk they are happy. The man who lies sleeping so calmly seems to me to indicate the immensity of the life around more than all the rest. He is oblivious of it all; it does not make him nervous or wakeful; he is so used to it, and bred to it, that it seems to him nothing. When he is awake lie does not see it; now he sleeps he does not hear it. It is only in great woods that you cannot see the trees. He is like a leaf in a forest--he is not conscious of it. Long hours of work have given him slumber; and as he sleeps he seems to express by contrast the immensity and endlessness of the life around him.

Sometimes a floating haze, now thicker here, and now lit up yonder by the suns.h.i.+ne, brings out objects more distinctly than a clear atmosphere. Away there tall thin masts stand out, rising straight up above the red roofs. There is a faint colour on them; the yards are dark--being inclined, they do not reflect the light at an angle to reach us. Half-furled canvas droops in folds, now swelling a little as the wind blows, now heavily sinking. One white sail is set and gleams alone among the dusky folds; for the canvas at large is dark with coal-dust, with smoke, with the grime that settles everywhere where men labour with bare arms and chests. Still and quiet as trees the masts rise into the hazy air; who would think, merely to look at them, of the endless labour they mean? The labour to load, and the labour to unload; the labour at sea, and the long hours of ploughing the waves by night; the labour at the warehouses; the labour in the fields, the mines, the mountains; the labour in the factories. Ever and again the suns.h.i.+ne gleams now on this group of masts, now on that; for they stand in groups as trees often grow, a thicket here and a thicket yonder. Labour to obtain the material, labour to bring it hither, labour to force it into shape--work without end. Masts are always dreamy to look at: they speak a romance of the sea; of unknown lands; of distant forests aglow with tropical colours and abounding with strange forms of life. In the hearts of most of us there is always a desire for something beyond experience. Hardly any of us but have thought, Some day I will go on a long voyage; but the years go by, and still we have not sailed.

A WET NIGHT IN LONDON

Opaque from rain drawn in slant streaks by wind and speed across the pane, the window of the railway carriage lets nothing be seen but stray flashes of red lights--the signals rapidly pa.s.sed. Wrapped in thick overcoat, collar turned up to his ears, warm gloves on his hands, and a rug across his knees, the traveller may well wonder how those red signals and the points are worked out in the storms of wintry London, Rain blown in gusts through the misty atmosphere, gas and smoke-laden, deepens the darkness; the howl of the blast humming in the telegraph wires, hurtling round the chimney-pots on a level with the line, rus.h.i.+ng up from the archways; steam from the engines, roar, and whistle, shrieking brakes, and grinding wheels--how is the traffic worked at night in safety over the inextricable windings of the iron roads into the City?

At London Bridge the door is opened by some one who gets out, and the cold air comes in; there is a rush of people in damp coats, with dripping umbrellas, and time enough to notice the archaeologically interesting wooden beams which support the roof of the South-Eastern station. Antique beams they are, good old Norman oak, such as you may sometimes find in very old country churches that have not been restored, such as yet exist in Westminster Hall, temp. Rufus or Stephen, or so. Genuine old woodwork, worth your while to go and see.

Take a sketch-book and make much of the ties and angles and bolts; ask Whistler or Macbeth, or some one to etch them, get the Royal Antiquarian Society to pay a visit and issue a pamphlet; gaze at them reverently and earnestly, for they are not easily to be matched in London. Iron girders and s.p.a.cious roofs are the modern fas.h.i.+on; here we have the Middle Ages well-preserved--slam! the door is banged-to, onwards, over the invisible river, more red signals and rain, and finally the terminus. Five hundred well-dressed and civilised savages, wet, cross, weary, all anxious to get in--eager for home and dinner; five hundred stiffened and cramped folk equally eager to get out--mix on a narrow platform, with a train running off one side, and a detached engine gliding gently after it. Push, wriggle, wind in and out, b.u.mps from portmanteaus, and so at last out into the street.

Now, how are you going to get into an omnibus? The street is "up," the traffic confined to half a narrow thoroughfare, the little s.p.a.ce available at the side crowded with newsvendors whose contents bills are spotted and blotted with wet, crowded, too, with young girls, bonnetless, with ap.r.o.ns over their heads, whose object is simply to do nothing--just to stand in the rain and chaff; the newsvendors yell their news in your ears, then, finding you don't purchase, they "Yah!"

at you; an aged crone begs you to buy "lights"; a miserable young crone, with pinched face, offers artificial flowers--oh, Naples! Rush comes the rain, and the gas-lamps are dimmed; whoo-oo comes the wind like a smack; cold drops get in the ears and eyes; clean wristbands are splotched; greasy mud splashed over s.h.i.+ning boots; some one knocks the umbrella round, and the blast all but turns it. "Wake up!"--"Now then--stop here all night?"--"Gone to sleep?" They shout, they curse, they put their hands to their mouths trumpet wise and bellow at each other, these cabbies, vanmen, busmen, all angry at the block in the narrow way. The 'bus-driver, with London stout, and plenty of it, polis.h.i.+ng his round cheeks like the bra.s.swork of a locomotive, his neck well wound and b.u.t.tressed with thick comforter and collar, heedeth not, but goes on his round, now fast, now slow, always stolid and rubicund, the rain running harmlessly from him as if he were oiled. The conductor, perched like the showman's monkey behind, hops and twists, and turns now on one foot and now on the other as if the plate were red-hot; now holds on with one hand, and now dexterously s.h.i.+fts his grasp; now shouts to the crowd and waves his hands towards the pavement, and again looks round the edge of the 'bus forwards and curses somebody vehemently. "Near side up! Look alive! Full inside"--curses, curses, curses; rain, rain, rain, and no one can tell which is most plentiful.

The cab-horse's head comes nearly inside the 'bus, the 'bus-pole threatens to poke the hansom in front; the brougham would be careful, for varnish sake, but is wedged and must take its chance; van-wheels catch omnibus hubs; hurry, scurry, whip, and drive; slip, slide, b.u.mp, rattle, jar, jostle, an endless stream clattering on, in, out, and round. On, on--"Stanley, on"--the first and last words of cabby's life; on, on, the one law of existence in a London street--drive on, stumble or stand, drive on--strain sinews, crack, splinter--drive on; what a sight to watch as you wait amid the newsvendors and bonnetless girls for the 'bus that will not come! Is it real? It seems like a dream, those nightmare dreams in which you know that you must run, and do run, and yet cannot lift the legs that are heavy as lead, with the demon behind pursuing, the demon of Drive-on. Move, or cease to be--pa.s.s out of Time or be stirring quickly; if you stand you must suffer even here on the pavement, splashed with greasy mud, shoved by coa.r.s.e ruffianism, however good your intentions--just dare to stand still! Ideas here for moralising, but I can't preach with the roar and the din and the wet in my ears, and the flickering street lamps flaring. That's the 'bus--no; the tarpaulin hangs down and obscures the inscription; yes. Hi! No heed; how could you be so confiding as to imagine conductor or driver would deign to see a signalling pa.s.senger; the game is to drive on.

A gentleman makes a desperate rush and grabs the handrail; his foot slips on the asphalt or wood, which is like oil, he slides, his hat totters; happily he recovers himself and gets in. In the block the 'bus is stayed a moment, and somehow we follow, and are landed--"somehow"

advisedly. For how do we get into a 'bus? After the pavement, even this hard seat would be nearly an easy-chair, were it not for the damp smell of soaked overcoats, the ceaseless rumble, and the knockings overhead outside. The noise is immensely worse than the shaking or the steamy atmosphere, the noise ground into the ears, and wearying the mind to a state of drowsy narcotism--you become chloroformed through the sense of hearing, a condition of dreary resignation and uncomfortable ease. The illuminated shops seem to pa.s.s like an endless window without division of doors; there are groups of people staring in at them in spite of the rain; ill-clad, half-starving people for the most part; the well-dressed hurry onwards; they have homes. A dull feeling of satisfaction creeps over you that you are at least in shelter; the rumble is a little better than the wind and the rain and the puddles.

If the Greek sculptors were to come to life again and cut us out in bas-relief for another Parthenon, they would have to represent us shuffling along, heads down and coat-tails flying, splash-splosh--a nation of umbrellas.

Under a broad archway, gaily lighted, the broad and happy way to a theatre, there is a small crowd waiting, and among them two ladies, with their backs to the photographs and bills, looking out into the street. They stand side by side, evidently quite oblivious and indifferent to the motley folk about them, chatting and laughing, taking the wet and windy wretchedness of the night as a joke. They are both plump and rosy-cheeked, dark eyes gleaming and red lips parted; both decidedly good-looking, much too rosy and full-faced, too well fed and comfortable to take a prize from Burne-Jones, very worldly people in the roast-beef sense. Their faces glow in the bright light--merry sea coal-fire faces; they have never turned their backs on the good things of this life. "Never shut the door on good fortune," as Queen Isabella of Spain says. Wind and rain may howl and splash, but here are two faces they never have touched--rags and battered shoes drift along the pavement--no wet feet or cold necks here. Best of all they glow with good spirits, they laugh, they chat; they are full of enjoyment, clothed thickly with health and happiness, as their shoulders--good wide shoulders--are thickly wrapped in warmest furs. The 'bus goes on, and they are lost to view; if you came back in an hour you would find them still there without doubt--still jolly, chatting, smiling, waiting perhaps for the stage, but anyhow far removed, like the G.o.ddesses on Olympus, from the splash and misery of London. Drive on.

The head of a great grey horse in a van drawn up by the pavement, the head and neck stand out and conquer the rain and misty dinginess by sheer force of beauty, sheer strength of character. He turns his head--his neck forms a fine curve, his face is full of intelligence, in spite of the half dim light and the driving rain, of the thick atmosphere, and the black hollow of the covered van behind, his head and neck stand out, just as in old portraits the face is still bright, though surrounded with crusted varnish. It would be a glory to any man to paint him. Drive on.

How strange the dim, uncertain faces of the crowd, half-seen, seem in the hurry and rain; faces held downwards and m.u.f.fled by the darkness--not quite human in their eager and intensely concentrated haste. No one thinks of or notices another--on, on--splash, shove, and scramble; an intense selfishness, so selfish as not to be selfish, if that can be understood, so absorbed as to be past observing that any one lives but themselves. Human beings reduced to mere hurrying machines, worked by wind and rain, and stern necessities of life; driven on; something very hard and unhappy in the thought of this. They seem reduced to the condition of the wooden cabs--the mere vehicles--pulled along by the irresistible horse Circ.u.mstance. They shut their eyes mentally, wrap themselves in the overcoat of indifference, and drive on, drive on. It is time to get out at last.

The 'bus stops on one side of the street, and you have to cross to the other. Look up and down--lights are rus.h.i.+ng each way, but for the moment none are close. The gas-lamps s.h.i.+ne in the puddles of thick greasy water, and by their gleam you can guide yourself round them. Cab coming! Surely he will give way a little and not force you into that great puddle; no, he neither sees, nor cares, Drive on, drive on. Qick!

the shafts! Step in the puddle and save your life!