第32章

ON THE MINDING OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS

I walked one bright September morning in the Strand.I love London best in the autumn.Then only can one see the gleam of its white pavements, the bold, unbroken outline of its streets.I love the cool vistas one comes across of mornings in the parks, the soft twilights that linger in the empty bye-streets.In June the restaurant manager is off-hand with me; I feel I am but in his way.

In August he spreads for me the table by the window, pours out for me my wine with his own fat hands.I cannot doubt his regard for me: my foolish jealousies are stilled.Do I care for a drive after dinner through the caressing night air, I can climb the omnibus stair without a preliminary fight upon the curb, can sit with easy conscience and unsquashed body, not feeling I have deprived some hot, tired woman of a seat.Do I desire the play, no harsh, forbidding "House full" board repels me from the door.During her season, London, a harassed hostess, has no time for us, her intimates.Her rooms are overcrowded, her servants overworked, her dinners hurriedly cooked, her tone insincere.In the spring, to be truthful, the great lady condescends to be somewhat vulgar--noisy and ostentatious.Not till the guests are departed is she herself again, the London that we, her children, love.

Have you, gentle Reader, ever seen London--not the London of the waking day, coated with crawling life, as a blossom with blight, but the London of the morning, freed from her rags, the patient city, clad in mists? Get you up with the dawn one Sunday in summer time.

Wake none else, but creep down stealthily into the kitchen, and make your own tea and toast.

Be careful you stumble not over the cat.She will worm herself insidiously between your legs.It is her way; she means it in friendship.Neither bark your shins against the coal-box.Why the kitchen coal-box has its fixed place in the direct line between the kitchen door and the gas-bracket I cannot say.I merely know it as an universal law; and I would that you escaped that coal-box, lest the frame of mind I desire for you on this Sabbath morning be dissipated.

A spoon to stir your tea, I fear you must dispense with.Knives and forks you will discover in plenty; blacking brushes you will put your hand upon in every drawer; of emery paper, did one require it, there are reams; but it is a point with every housekeeper that the spoons be hidden in a different place each night.If anybody excepting herself can find them in the morning, it is a slur upon her.No matter, a stick of firewood, sharpened at one end, makes an excellent substitute.

Your breakfast done, turn out the gas, remount the stairs quietly, open gently the front door and slip out.You will find yourself in an unknown land.A strange city grown round you in the night.

The sweet long streets lie silent in sunlight.Not a living thing is to be seen save some lean Tom that slinks from his gutter feast as you approach.From some tree there will sound perhaps a fretful chirp: but the London sparrow is no early riser; he is but talking in his sleep.The slow tramp of unseen policeman draws near or dies away.The clatter of your own footsteps goes with you, troubling you.You find yourself trying to walk softly, as one does in echoing cathedrals.A voice is everywhere about you whispering to you "Hush." Is this million-breasted City then some tender Artemis, seeking to keep her babes asleep? "Hush, you careless wayfarer; do not waken them.Walk lighter; they are so tired, these myriad children of mine, sleeping in my thousand arms.They are over-worked and over-worried; so many of them are sick, so many fretful, many of them, alas, so full of naughtiness.But all of them so tired.Hush! they worry me with their noise and riot when they are awake.They are so good now they are asleep.Walk lightly, let them rest."Where the ebbing tide flows softly through worn arches to the sea, you may hear the stone-faced City talking to the restless waters:

"Why will you never stay with me? Why come but to go?""I cannot say, I do not understand.From the deep sea I come, but only as a bird loosed from a child's hand with a cord.When she calls I must return.""It is so with these children of mine.They come to me, I know not whence.I nurse them for a little while, till a hand I do not see plucks them back.And others take their place."Through the still air there passes a ripple of sound.The sleeping City stirs with a faint sigh.A distant milk-cart rattling by raises a thousand echoes; it is the vanguard of a yoked army.Soon from every street there rises the soothing cry, "Mee'hilk--mee'hilk."London like some Gargantuan babe, is awake, crying for its milk.

These be the white-smocked nurses hastening with its morning nourishment.The early church bells ring."You have had your milk, little London.Now come and say your prayers.Another week has just begun, baby London.God knows what will happen, say your prayers."One by one the little creatures creep from behind the blinds into the streets.The brooding tenderness is vanished from the City's face.The fretful noises of the day have come again.Silence, her lover of the night, kisses her stone lips, and steals away.And you, gentle Reader, return home, garlanded with the self-sufficiency of the early riser.

But it was of a certain week-day morning, in the Strand that I was thinking.I was standing outside Gatti's Restaurant, where I had just breakfasted, listening leisurely to an argument between an indignant lady passenger, presumably of Irish extraction, and an omnibus conductor.

"For what d'ye want thin to paint Putney on ye'r bus, if ye don't GOto Putney?" said the, lady.

"We DO go to Putney," said the conductor.

"Thin why did ye put me out here?"

"I didn't put you out, yer got out."

"Shure, didn't the gintleman in the corner tell me I was comin'

further away from Putney ivery minit?"

"Wal, and so yer was."

"Thin whoy didn't you tell me?"