Noughts and Crosses Part 1

Noughts and Crosses.

by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.

THE OMNIBUS.

It was not so much a day as a burning, fiery furnace. The roar of London's traffic reverberated under a sky of coppery blue; the pavements threw out waves of heat, thickened with the reek of restaurants and perfumery shops; and dust became cinders, and the wearing of flesh a weariness. Streams of sweat ran from the bellies of 'bus-horses when they halted. Men went up and down with unb.u.t.toned waistcoats, turned into drinking-bars, and were no sooner inside than they longed to be out again, and baking in an ampler oven. Other men, who had given up drinking because of the expense, hung about the fountains in Trafalgar Square and listened to the splash of running water. It was the time when London is supposed to be empty; and when those who remain in town feel there is not room for a soul more.

We were eleven inside the omnibus when it pulled up at Charing Cross, so that legally there was room for just one more. I had travelled enough in omnibuses to know my fellow-pa.s.sengers by heart-- a governess with some sheets of music in her satchel; a minor actress going to rehearsal; a woman carrying her incurable complaint for the hundredth time to the hospital; three middle-aged city clerks; a couple of reporters with weak eyes and low collars; an old loose-cheeked woman exhaling patchouli; a bald-headed man with hairy hands, a violent breast-pin, and the indescribable air of a matrimonial agent. Not a word pa.s.sed. We were all failures in life, and could not trouble to dissemble it, in that heat. Moreover, we were used to each other, as types if not as persons, and had lost curiosity. So we sat listless, dispirited, drawing difficult breath and staring vacuously. The hope we shared in common--that n.o.body would claim the vacant seat--was too obvious to be discussed.

But at Charing Cross the twelfth pa.s.senger got in--a boy with a stick, and a bundle in a blue handkerchief. He was about thirteen; bound for the docks, we could tell at a glance, to sail on his first voyage; and, by the way he looked about, we could tell as easily that in stepping outside Charing Cross Station he had set foot on London stones for the first time. When we pulled up, he was standing on the opposite pavement with dazed eyes like a hare's, wondering at the new world--the hansoms, the yelling news-boys, the flower-women, the crowd pus.h.i.+ng him this way and that, the ugly shop-fronts, the hurry and stink and din of it all. Then, hailing our 'bus, he started to run across--faltered--almost dropped his bundle--was s.n.a.t.c.hed by our conductor out of the path of a running hansom, and hauled on board.

His eyelids were pink and swollen; but he was not crying, though he wanted to. Instead, he took a great gulp, as he pushed between our knees to his seat, and tried to look brave as a lion.

The pa.s.sengers turned an incurious, half-resentful stare upon him, and then repented. I think that more than one of us wanted to speak, but dared not.

It was not so much the little chap's look. But to the knot of his sea-kit there was tied a bunch of cottage-flowers--sweet williams, boy's love, love-lies-bleeding, a few common striped carnations, and a rose or two--and the sight and smell of them in that frowsy 'bus were like tears on thirsty eyelids. We had ceased to pity what we were, but the heart is far withered that cannot pity what it has been; and it made us shudder to look on the young face set towards the road along which we had travelled so far. Only the minor actress dropped a tear; but she was used to expressing emotion, and half-way down the Strand the 'bus stopped and she left us.

The woman with an incurable complaint touched me on the knee.

"Speak to him," she whispered.

But the whisper did not reach, for I was two hundred miles away, and occupied in starting off to school for the first time. I had two s.h.i.+llings in my pocket; and at the first town where the coach baited I was to exchange these for a coco-nut and a clasp-knife. Also, I was to break the knife in opening the nut, and the nut, when opened, would be sour. A sense of coming evil, therefore, possessed me.

"Why don't you speak to him?"

The boy glanced up, not catching her words, but suspicious: then frowned and looked defiant.

"Ah," she went on in the same whisper, "it's only the young that I pity. Sometimes, sir--for my illness keeps me much awake--I lie at night in my lodgings and listen, and the whole of London seems filled with the sound of children's feet running. Even by day I can hear them, at the back of the uproar--"

The matrimonial agent grunted and rose, as we halted at the top of Ess.e.x Street. I saw him slip a couple of half-crowns into the conductor's hand: and he whispered something, jerking his head back towards the interior of the 'bus. The boy was brus.h.i.+ng his eyes, under pretence of putting his cap forward; and by the time he stole a look around to see if anyone had observed, we had started again.

I pretended to stare out of the window, but marked the wet smear on his hand as he laid it on his lap.

In less than a minute it was my turn to alight. Unlike the matrimonial agent, I had not two half-crowns to spare; but, catching the sick woman's eye, forced up courage to nod and say--

"Good luck, my boy."

"Good day, sir."

A moment after I was in the hot crowd, whose roar rolled east and west for miles. And at the back of it, as the woman had said, in street and side-lane and blind-alley, I heard the footfall of a mult.i.tude more terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless pelting feet of children--of Whittingtons turning and turning again.

FORTUNIO.

At Tregarrick Fair they cook a goose in twenty-two different ways; and as no one who comes to the fair would dream of eating any other food, you may fancy what a reek of cooking fills the narrow grey street soon after mid-day.

As a boy, I was always given a holiday to go to the goose-fair; and it was on my way thither across the moors, that I first made Fortunio's acquaintance. I wore a new pair of corduroys, that smelt outrageously--and squeaked, too, as I trotted briskly along the bleak high road; for I had a bright s.h.i.+lling to spend, and it burnt a hole in my pocket. I was planning my purchases, when I noticed, on a windy eminence of the road ahead, a man's figure sharply defined against the sky.

He was driving a flock of geese, so slowly that I soon caught him up; and such a man or such geese I had never seen. To begin with, his rags were worse than a scarecrow's. In one hand he carried a long staff; the other held a small book close under his nose, and his lean shoulders bent over as he read in it. It was clear, from the man's undecided gait, that all his eyes were for this book. Only he would look up when one of his birds strayed too far on the turf that lined the highway, and would guide it back to the stones again with his staff. As for the geese, they were utterly draggle-tailed and stained with travel, and waddled, every one, with so woe-begone a limp that I had to laugh as I pa.s.sed.

The man glanced up, set his forefinger between the pages of his book, and turned on me a long sallow face and a pair of the most beautiful brown eyes in the world.

"Little boy," he said, in a quick foreign way--"rosy little boy.

You laugh at my geese, eh?"

No doubt I stared at him like a ninny, for he went on--

"Little wide-mouthed Cupidon, how you gaze! Also, by the way, how you smell!"

"It's my corduroys," said I.

"Then I discommend your corduroys. But I approve your laugh.

Laugh again--only at the right matter: laugh at this--"

And, opening his book again, he read a long pa.s.sage as I walked beside him; but I could make neither head nor tail of it.

"That is from the 'Sentimental Journey,' by Laurence Sterne, the most beautiful of your English wits. Ah, he is more than French!

Laugh at it."

It was rather hard to laugh thus to order; but suddenly he set me the example, showing two rows of very white teeth, and fetching from his hollow chest a sound of mirth so incongruous with the whole aspect of the man, that I began to grin too.

"That's right; but be louder. Make the sounds that you made just now--"

He broke off sharply, being seized with an ugly fit of coughing, that forced him to halt and lean on his staff for a while. When he recovered we walked on together after the geese, he talking all the way in high-flown sentences that were Greek to me, and I stealing a look every now and then at his olive face, and half inclined to take to my heels and run.

We came at length to the ridge where the road dives suddenly into Tregarrick. The town lies along a narrow vale, and looking down, we saw flags waving along the street and much smoke curling from the chimneys, and heard the church-bells, the big drum, and the confused mutterings and hubbub of the fair. The sun--for the morning was still fresh--did not yet pierce to the bottom of the valley, but fell on the hillside opposite, where cottage-gardens in parallel strips climbed up from the town to the moorland beyond.

"What is that?" asked the goose-driver, touching my arm and pointing to a dazzling spot on the slope opposite.

"That's the sun on the windows of Gardener Tonken's gla.s.s-house."

"Eh?--does he live there?"

"He's dead, and the garden's 'to let;' you can just see the board from here. But he didn't live there, of course. People don't live in gla.s.s-houses; only plants."

"That's a pity, little boy, for their souls' sakes. It reminds me of a story--by the way, do you know Latin? No? Well, listen to this:-- if I can sell my geese to-day, perhaps I will hire that gla.s.s-house, and you shall come there on half holidays, and learn Latin. Now run ahead and spend your money."

I was glad to escape, and in the bustle of the fair quickly forgot my friend. But late in the afternoon, as I had my eyes glued to a peep-show, I heard a voice behind me cry "Little boy!" and turning, saw him again. He was without his geese.

"I have sold them," he said, "for 5 pounds; and I have taken the gla.s.s-house. The rent is only 3 pounds a year, and I shan't live longer, so that leaves me money to buy books. I shall feed on the snails in the garden, making soup of them, for there is a beautiful stove in the gla.s.s-house. When is your next half-holiday?"

"On Sat.u.r.day."

"Very well. I am going away to buy books; but I shall be back by Sat.u.r.day, and then you are to come and learn Latin."

It may have been fear or curiosity, certainly it was no desire for learning, that took me to Gardener Tonken's gla.s.s-house next Sat.u.r.day afternoon. The goose-driver was there to welcome me.